This Is the Sound of Your Yard on Music: the Yard

Home , Abigail Washburn, Loudon Wainwright III, Rayna Gellert, Uncle Earl

The Yard | 2016 Yard Arts Summer Season | STORYSOUND LIVE

CONTACT: David R White 508-338-2019 Alison Manning 646-696-1768 Sofia Strempek (press inquiries) 415-572-7465 Information, Tickets & Groups 508-645-9662

FOR IMMEDIATE LISTING and RELEASE September 7, 2016

THIS IS THE SOUND OF YOUR YARD ON MUSIC: THE YARD PRESENTS THE GROUNDBREAKING ARTISTS OF NEW YORK’S STORYSOUND RECORDS, A RISING MOTHER LODE OF RECONSIDERED TRADITIONAL, FOLK, ROOTS, OLD-TIMEY, AND PURE SONGWRITING AND MUSICAL INVENTION, FEATURING: DICK CONNETTE, RAYNA GELLERT, AND CHAIM TANNENBAUM AND A CREW OF SUPERB INSTRUMENTALISTS IN STORYSOUND LIVE: EXCURSIONS INTO AMERICAN SONG

STORYSOUND LIVE: EXCURSIONS INTO AMERICAN SONG

Friday, September 16, 2016 at 7PM at The Yard in Chilmark

Tickets: $10 (General Admission); $5 (Children under 12) Behind the Counter and membership discounts apply

The Yard moves out of its usual producing zone with forward-looking contemporary dance and performance to showcase the artists associated with one of New York’s most progressive recording studios, mining new approaches to song-making in diverse areas of American Song tradition. There is a connection between worlds here, in that producer and songwriter Dick Connette has a history with the New York dance community, as well as with Yard Artistic Director David White. In White’s words:

“I have watched Dick Connette build a stable of terrific songmakers for whom he functions as both producer and mentor, as well as a fellow songwriter and instrumentalist. From Loudon

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Wainwright III and Gabriel Kahane to Margaret Glaspy and Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, Connette and his artists push both forward and back in pursuit of authentic American musics, built on cultural fundamentals and reaching for new formulations.

“The StorySound residency gives The Yard an opportunity to connect these off-island singers and musicians with the potent Vineyard musical community, perhaps opening the door to future collaborations. Come one, come all.”

StorySound Live presents old-timey, folk and traditional music from singer and/or songwriters Dick Connette, Rayna Gellert (of Uncle Earl fame), and Chaim Tannenbaum, with top-notch musicians Kevin Kehrberg, Kevin Kuhn, and Nathaniel Smith. Wide-open instrumentation ranges from fiddle, banjo, mandolin and harmonica to piano, cello, double bass and guitar. Not to mention voices to die for . . .

StorySound Records, www.storysoundrecords.com, founded by songwriter/musician/producer Dick Connette, is a deliberately intimate but highly influential NYC label curatorially focused on exceptional singer-songwriters and rooted in American folk and popular music. Since 2009, StorySound Records has released 15 CD’s, including Loudon Wainwright III’s Grammy- winning High Wide & Handsome. The performance at The Yard will feature songs by Connette, Rayna Gellert, and Chaim Tannenbaum, all StorySound artists who have come together for this one-night-only event.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Dick Connette was born in 1951 in New York City. In 1969 he went to Harvard, intending to major in Mathematics but soon switched his concentration to Music and American and English Literature. After graduating in 1974, cum laude with a degree in General Studies, Connette moved back to New York City, where he studied percussion (snare drum, marimba, tympani) privately with James Preiss. From 1979 to 1990, under the pseudonym A. Leroy, Connette was active on the downtown scene, running his own Soho recording studio and working as a freelance musician/composer, often in collaboration with choreographers, video and filmmakers, and theater artists. Since 1990, Connette has worked under his own name, most notably devoting himself to writing music and songs based on American folk and popular traditions. In New York City, there have been concert performances of Connette’s work at St. Ann's Church, Dance Theater Workshop, the Kitchen, PS 122, the La MaMa Annex, the Knitting Factory, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, and Central Park's SummerStage. Connette has received grants from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Art Matters, and The Beard's Fund, and, in 1990, won a Bessie New York Dance and Performance Award. In 2005, Connette and Tony Award-winner sound designer Scott Lehrer opened a recording studio, 2nd Story Sound, on the lower east side of Manhattan. Rufus Wainwright, Antony Hegarty, yMusic, Linda Thompson, Bob

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Neuwirth, Marc Ribot, Jake Shears, Michael Daves, Nico Muhly, Hazmat Modine, John Scofield, Chris Smither, Suzzy Roche, Duncan Sheik, Geoff Muldaur, Chis Thile, Aoife O'Donovan, and Dave Douglas have all worked and recorded there. In 2009 Connette launched his record company, StorySound, and has released 10 CDs, including albums by Loudon Wainwright III, Gabriel Kahane, Rayna Gellert, Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, and the Joe Boyd-produced Nick Drake tribute, Way to Blue. In addition, Connette has produced CDs by Geoff Muldaur (Private Astronomy), Margaret Glaspy (if & when), Rachelle Garniez (Who's Counting), and won a Grammy for his work on Loudon Wainwright III's High Wide & Handsome.

Rayna Gellert grew up in a musical family and has spent most of her life immersed in the sounds of rural stringband music, heartfelt gospel songs, and old ballads. After honing her fiddle skills playing at jam sessions and square dances, Rayna fell into a life of traveling and performing. Her fiddle albums are widely celebrated in the old- time music community, and she has recorded with a host of musicians in a variety of styles, including: Robyn Hitchcock, Tyler Ramsey, Sara Watkins, Loudon Wainwright III, John Paul Jones, and Abigail Washburn. From 2003 through 2008, Rayna was a member of the acclaimed stringband Uncle Earl, with whom she released two albums on Rounder Records and toured like mad. In 2010, she met songwriter Scott Miller, and they began performing and recording together. In 2012, Rayna released her first vocal album, Old Light: Songs from my Childhood & Other Gone Worlds, on StorySound Records. She lives in Swannanoa, North Carolina.

Chaim Tannenbaum sidelined as a musician for over 50 years, when he wasn’t studying mathematical logic or teaching philosophy. He was featured on The McGarrigle Hour (1998) and Loudon Wainwright III’s Grammy-winning High Wide & Handsome (2009), but he never made a record of his own. Until now. His original songs poignantly depict homesickness, romantic loss, and the perils of rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The covers, which reflect the lifelong enthusiasms of a musical omnivore, make manifest a mixed-up world muddled somewhere between spiritual devotion and material dissolution — in short, our world. As author/producer Joe Boyd has noted, “the purchasers of this recording are in for a treat.”

Driving Directions:

Driving to The Yard from Vineyard Haven Head south on Water Street toward Beach Road. Take the 3rd right onto Beach Road. Continue onto State Road. Turn right onto Middle Road. Take the 2nd left into The Yard.

Driving to The Yard from Edgartown Head southwest on Water Street toward Davis Lane. Take your 2nd right onto Cooke Street. Turn left onto Edgartown West Tisbury Road. Turn left onto State Road. Continue onto South Road. Make a left onto Middle Road. Take the 2nd left into The Yard.

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Bus There is a public bus service on Martha’s Vineyard that connects to all of the towns on the island. There is a bus stop just a short walk from The Yard in front of the Community Center, which runs every hour. Fare is $1 per town, each way.

SEED. GROW. REAP. REPEAT: THE NATURE OF THE ARTIST.

Mission: The Yard supports artists in both their creative processes and social instrumentality through paid research residency, public performance, and long- term educational and community engagement across all ages and diverse cultural populations of Martha’s Vineyard, and in broad application to New England and the nation.

In so doing: The Yard promotes creation, education, and community building through artistic practice—with a special emphasis on contemporary dance and related collaborative forms—in the defining rural/island environment of Martha’s Vineyard.

The Yard acts, on behalf of its core commitments, as an active collaborator, co- commissioner, and touring partner with other leading institutions across a regional/national/international context to raise up a “culture of cultures” ecology that reflects—and benefits—the demographic life and times of the island of Martha’s Vineyard and the country.

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David R. White Artistic Director & Executive Producer

Alison Manning Executive Director & Co-Producer

Jesse Keller Director of Island Programs and Education & Co-Producer

What Makes The Yard Possible: Our many individual members and donors, and: American Express Foundation Anonymous Barr Foundation Cape Air Cronig's Market CrossFit Martha's Vineyard Dr. Marianne Goldberg's Pathways Poss Family Foundation Projects Institute Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Doug Cramer and Hugh Bush Farm Neck Foundation Feldman Family Fund 4 The Yard | 2016 Yard Arts Summer Season | STORYSOUND LIVE

Ford Foundation The Jerome Robbins Foundation The Mansion House Hotel Martha's Vineyard Cultural Council Martha's Vineyard Savings Bank Massachusetts Cultural Council Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund Oma Fund National Endowment for the Arts National Performance Network New England Foundation for the Arts Newman Assistance Fund Permanent Endowment for Martha's Vineyard Sica/McMahon Foundation Tower Family Fund, Inc. Vineyard Bottled Waters The Woolner/Nanon Family

The 2016 YARD ARTS season is lovingly dedicated to Marianne Goldberg, the artistic guiding light and patron of the Pathways Project Institute. Our artists honor, through their creations, her all-embracing spirit that still dances on that ever-tilting horizon line between sea and sky. OceA proudly endures.