SARATOGA LIVINGThe City. The Culture. The Life.

By now, you should know that I’m a music obsessive. Any chance I get to write about the artists that move me for saratoga living I take—whether it be The Weepies or The Figgs or Garland Nelson (there are many more). Some of you might also know that I enjoy playing music in my free time; I rock a mean acoustic and electric guitar (and some decent vocals) in my band, Turnover Mule. (We’ve been in the studio with recent saratoga living Power Player Jim Mastrianni, working on our first EP and drinking a lot of his seltzer.) But something most of you probably don’t know about me is that long before I ever spilled any ink on a band or picked up a six-string, I was very much a classical music nerd. I started off on the piano, which I studied for six years, taking lessons privately and then at Skidmore College. I then switched over to the cello in Fourth Grade, which I played for more than a decade, performing in all of the city, county and state orchestras, and even doing a short turn with the Skidmore College orchestra as a teenager. I took lessons from Skidmore’s then-cellist in residence Ann Alton, who also taught at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division and the PreCollege Division of the famed Juilliard School. And I kept the instrument up in college, playing for a semester in Connecticut College’s orchestra and working under (and playing in ensembles with) the late, great Frank Church of the Yale Cellos.

Then I up and quit.

I never did give up listening to classical music, though. Mixed in with my favorite rock albums from artists such as Son Volt, The Misfits, Big Star and Pete Yorn were always a number of go-to classical records. My favorite of them all was always the six-song, hour-plus-long Copland: Greatest Hits (1991), featuring the best-known compositions of American composer Aaron Copland. The album kicks into gear with the “call to arms” for the ages, Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), which gives Rush (and most ’70s rock bands, for that matter) a run for their money with its next-level gong work; and includes other choice cuts such as the ballet suite, Billy the Kid (1938), and the album-closing “Hoedown” (from the 1942 ballet, Rodeo), which I performed numerous times in high school orchestras and later rediscovered on the 1972 prog-rock classic Trilogy by Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

But it was always track No.2, Appalachian Spring (1944), that I kept coming back to, time and again. At this point, I’ve probably listened to the 20-minute-plus piece more than Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and The Who’s Tommy combined. What I love so much about Appalachian Spring is its distinct American-ness; every time I listen to it, I’m whisked away to this verdant prairie, awash with wild flowers, where I can picture untethered horses roaming hither and yon; farmers up before the sun, tending to their fields; and farmhouses, surrounded by white picket fences, with American flags hanging triumphantly on their front porches. It’s a sonic Andrew Wyeth painting. And I’m not alone in thinking this: Appalachian Spring became an American classic soon after it was premiered, later winning Copland a 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music. It’s a musical masterwork of mysterious power that genuinely makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it.

Fourteen years before Copland even had the germ of the idea for what would become Appalachian Spring, he was sitting in quiet contemplation at Yaddo, the famed artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, NY, working on his first major solo piano work, Piano Variations, which itself would help turn the American classical music scene on its head. “Even though he was born in Brooklyn and spent most of the first half of his life based in New York City, he always tried to get out of the city whenever he could, and he’d take short-term rentals in then-rural environs [outside] of New York City and was an inveterate residency- and artist-colony-goer,” says Michael Boriskin, artistic and executive director of Copland House. During the previous decade, the upstart composer’s star was on the rise considerably. Having studied music at the American Conservatory near Paris in the early 1920s, Copland returned to the states and almost immediately began publishing, seeing major performances of one of his orchestral works occur in New York City and Boston and winning a Guggenheim fellowship, among other highlights. By the time Copland found his way to Yaddo in 1930, America was steeped in the Great Depression. But despite hard times, Copland’s home territory of NYC was a focal point for the avant-garde movement, and he found himself in the right place at the right time. “Copland was one of the first to help define the sound and shape and sense of an American musical identity in the concert hall, in film and on the dance stage,” says Boriskin. He felt that there wasn’t a recognizably American musical idiom, and he did so by bringing the rhythmic quirkiness of the music du jour, jazz, into his compositions, along with cowboy and Western themes and other hat-tips to the music of the times. In other words, he was taking the assumed-to-be unchangeable format of classical music and giving it a 360-degree makeover. Sort of what artists such as Kanye West and Billie Eilish have done in recent years within their genres.

While many Americans didn’t see the other side of the Great Depression, Copland was able to hang on by teaching music at The New School for Social Research. There, he met ballet dancer Martha Graham, for whom he’d eventually write Appalachian Spring. Graham and pianist Liz Coolidge commissioned the ballet in 1942, and Copland composed the score in a number of different places, including Mexico, where he’d be earlier inspired to compose El Salón México (1938), and while working on a 1943 Hollywood film, The North Star, about Ukrainian villagers fighting off the Nazis. (It was later targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for being pro-Communist.)

Appalachian Spring premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in 1944, and as Boriskin notes, just before the show started, Copland noticed something a little bit strange in the program. When he’d completed the ballet, he’d given it the simple, placeholder-y name of Ballet for Martha. But on the program, it had a much trendier, sexier name, Appalachian Spring. It turned out that his friend Graham had renamed it. When Copland asked her where she’d gotten the name, she explained that it was a line from a poem by Hart Crane. He then asked her if his composition had anything to do with the poem, and Graham said no; she’d just liked the phrase. “This raises the issue of how much a title can affect how listeners or viewers perceive [a work],” says Boriskin. And I think it begs the question: Would Copland have won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for a composition entitled, Ballet for Martha?

The ballet itself depicted an American pioneer wedding at a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, with a cast of characters that included a revivalist preacher, pioneer woman and the young, soon-to-be-married couple. Despite portions of Pennsylvania being located along the Appalachian Trail and the state part of the region known as Appalachia, Copland didn’t have an Appalachian-tinged image in his mind when writing the score, as is evidenced by his original title for the work. He later admitted that “I gave voice to that region without knowing I was giving voice to it.” The basic scenes depicted in the ballet were also metaphoric, explains Boriskin. “The [story of the ballet] was just the device to get into the story and scenario about community and friendship and struggle and survival and love,” he says.

The ballet, which originally called for a 13-instrument orchestra, was later shortened by 10 minutes and arranged to accommodate a much larger orchestra, maybe its best-known or most-listened-to version. (It clocks in at just over 20 minutes, all said and done.) It then went through a few more orchestral nips and tucks, explains Jeremy Rothman, vice president of artistic planning at the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of which was done at the request of maestro Eugene Ormandy, who originally brought the orchestra to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) for its first summer residency, one that it’s kept every year since the mid ’60s. It’s this full orchestral suite that will be premiered at SPAC on August 8, along with three other contemporary works—Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral, Ottorino Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Mason Bates’ Anthology of Fantastic Zoology—all of which have a shared theme of nature and were handpicked by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s current Music Director and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. (The orchestra kicks off its annual summer residency today, July 31, and Appalachian Spring will be one of 19 SPAC debuts on its summer schedule.) And yes, it seems sort of weird writing this, but the internationally acclaimed orchestra has never performed Appalachian Spring at SPAC before. How is it possible that the piece didn’t get played in 53 years worth of summer residencies by the orchestra? I ask Rothman. “I don’t know,” he says, with a chuckle. “This is, of course, one of the most important and beloved works of the 20th century and is fundamentally Americana, and how that didn’t get into the repertoire [of the orchestra] does seem somewhat surprising.” Better late than never, I guess; SPAC’s open-air amphitheater, in the middle of a wooded state park, with a babbling brook literally just down from the load-in area backstage, makes for a picture-perfect setting to share it with a Saratoga audience for the first time.

Now, whether an audience sees it performed as a ballet or hears it as a straight orchestral piece, Appalachian Spring still stands up—and this duality is what makes the piece timeless, says Boriskin. A good example of this aesthetic would be the John Williams-composed themes from Jaws or Star Wars. Even without the blockbuster movies playing along on a screen nearby, listeners can still enjoy the scores as standalone soundtracks. At least for me, that answers the question of whether Appalachian Spring would’ve won a Pulitzer had it been called Ballet for Martha: I think the answer is, resoundingly, yes. And the critics of the day agreed. “The piece was a triumph, already, at that premier in Washington in 1944,” says Boriskin. “It was received enthusiastically both by the public and by critics. Early on, it was already called the quintessential American dance work, [and] the music itself took on a life of its own very soon thereafter.” It would be performed as an orchestral work by everyone from the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the 1940s to the Philadelphia Orchestra, as early as the ’50s. A quick investigation of Spotify reveals versions of the work by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra. The piece has truly gone global.

In the early ’60s, more than a decade after Appalachian Spring had been woven into the American consciousness, Copland found himself at a Columbia Records recording session, conducting the piece amidst a room full of top classical musicians. With the tape rolling in the minutes before the first notes were played, Copland can be heard saying to the players, “I assume everybody knows this piece.” Think about that for a second, says Boriskin. “How many other new works can you think of where somebody could say that, half jokingly but half seriously, and he was completely right about it?” After its big SPAC premier, I hope that “everybody” includes all Saratogians.

When I was a card-carrying member of the Alternative Nation in the mid-to-late 1990s—buying my skateboard supplies at Jah Skate & Reggae Shop on Caroline Street and picking up my Figgs CDs at Probe on Phila Street in Saratoga Springs—I was bummed when Woodstock ’94 rolled through Saugerties, NY, and I was unable to attend. The lineup included everything in my Discman and on 102.7 WEQX at the time: Blues Traveler, Collective Soul, Candlebox, Blind Melon, The Cranberries, Primus, Spin Doctors, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day. I remember hearing about all the rain and mud and mayhem, and thinking, well, I’m glad I didn’t go.

Five years later, the summer of my freshman year in college, a second Woodstock revival was staged in Rome, NY, and once again, I didn’t attend. (I must’ve been gearing up to ship off to Connecticut College.) That was a weird year, musically; it was the end of the decade, so you had some stragglers who still had that alt-rock sound, while you also had a hefty portion of teeny pop (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera) and super aggressive, I-hate-my-parents nu metal (Korn, Limp Bizkit). It was that aggro side of music that made the biggest splash at Woodstock ’99: The aforementioned Korn and Limp Bizkit performed there, as well as Insane Clown Posse, Rage Against the Machine, Sevendust and Godsmack. The moshers ate it up. This time around, instead of rain and mud, festival-goers got to deal with convection oven heat and water shortages. That, and ultraviolence, à la Alex and his droogs from A Clockwork Orange. The festival ended in fire, looting, violence and multiple sexual assaults. Once again, I was glad I didn’t attend.

One would’ve suspected that following the pair of Woodstock debacles of the ’90s, festival organizers would be a little more careful about the choice of venue or format for the festival. The aborted Fyre Festival in 2017 should’ve driven home the point: Poorly organized music festivals are a recipe for disaster. Especially, when everybody’s tweeting about it in real time.

So when I read that Michael Lang, the co-creator of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair was planning to stage a 50th anniversary of the festival the weekend of August 16-18, 2019, in Upstate New York again, I was skeptical from the outset. Was he really thinking this one through? Didn’t he remember that his original affair had funding and weather problems? Then the lineup was announced, and I got a little less skeptical. “Wow,” I thought to myself. “If Jay-Z, Dead & Company, The Killers and John Fogerty have all bought into this thing, I might as well, too.” When it was announced that the festival would take place at Watkins Glen Speedway, my wife and I immediately reserved an Airbnb nearby, hoping that tickets would be reasonably priced. But I have to admit that my skeptical-o-meter went off the charts when I heard about the venue choice. For one, the previous August, a massive Phish concert had been cancelled there at the last minute due, in part, to drinking water issues. Watkins Glen had also been the site of a music festival in 1973 that had somehow trumped the OG Woodstock in size, with some 600,000 people showing up to hear The Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band and The Band. (Although it wasn’t a violent mess like Woodstock ’99, one man did die skydiving into the festival.)

Then, on April 29, it was revealed that Woodstock 50 had been cancelled. There had been all sorts of rumors swirling in the media and on social media about the festival’s funding—and no one had been able to buy a single ticket to the event yet, so it clearly wasn’t bringing any money in. That was when it all began to unravel. Sure, the Woodstock 50 organizers launched court cases and allegations and ill will against their original financial backer, but nothing ever got the festival off the ground. Watkins Glen didn’t end up giving Woodstock 50 a permit to stage the festival there, and when Woodstock 50’s organizers tried to relocate to Vernon Downs, the town of Vernon, NY, denied their permit not once but twice.

Fast-forward to last week when it was announced that Woodstock 50 had potentially secured a brand-new, permanent venue for its festival: Merriweather Post Pavilion…in Maryland. And that it would be a free concert. The day before, Billboard reported that none of the artists on the original bill would be contractually forced to play at the festival  (Fogerty and Jay-Z had already backed out). Just today, July 30, it was announced that original Woodstock ’69 performers Country Joe McDonald and John Sebastian, who recently played Caffè Lena, had also pulled out. Add Dead & Co. to that list, too. And The Raconteurs. More will certainly follow. Just you wait for it.

All this leads to the seemingly obvious question: If Woodstock 50 doesn’t take place in the same state as the original Woodstock, should it really be called Woodstock? I think you know what the answer is. Look, at the end of the day, this August 16-18 still marks the 50th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival, and there are still some legitimate options for celebrating the big weekend, including shows at the site of the original festival, now called Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, and an in-depth museum exhibit there, too. But I would suggest a much convenient course of action: Fire up your streaming service of choice; purchase the 1970 documentary, Woodstock; and enjoy the weekend with the knowledge that you won’t be taking an unwanted mud bath, sweltering within an inch of your life or listening to a single song by Limp Bizkit.

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Update: Less than 24 hours after I wrote this column, the organizers of Woodstock 50 officially cancelled the event.