Maverick Sunday Concerts

Maverick Sunday Concerts

Sundays from July to early September

Hervey White, a novelist, poet and architect, purchased a piece of farmland he named "Maverick" just outside of Woodstock, New York, around the turn of the century. Within a few years, White had built a "music chapel" there and organized a Sunday afternoon concert series designed to give professional orchestral musicians an opportunity to play chamber music during the off-season. The series was under way by 1916, making the Maverick Sunday Concerts the oldest continuous chamber music series in the United States.
The concerts, which take place on Sunday afternoons from July to early September, are held in an unusual rustic concert hall made of locally cut and milled oak, pine, and chestnut. There are 56 paned windows in the front gable, a huge porch along one side, and seating for an audience of 400. The programming runs the gamut from traditional music for quintets, quartets, trios, and duos to the very latest contemporary compositions. Many of the works performed there in the past were composed by Alexander Semmier, who directed the Maverick concerts from 1954 to 1969. There have also been world premieres by noted Hudson Valley composers and performances by the Tokyo String Quartet, the Dorian Woodwind Quintet, the Beaux Arts Quartet, the Manhattan String Quartet, and the Cremona Arts Trio.

CONTACTS:
Maverick Concerts
P.O. Box 9
Woodstock, NY 12498
845-679-8217
www.maverickconcerts.org

SOURCES:
MusFestAmer-1990, p. 103