Free; All ages welcome
RSVP to nfox@aldrichart.org

Take a field trip to The Aldrich from the comfort of your home! Join Noah Fox for an introductory family tour highlighting key works of art from our current exhibitions. If you’ve joined us previously for a virtual tour, everything we explore in this tour will be brand new! Our tour will culminate with a series of suggested art-making activities to further enrich your family’s in-home learning, perfect for a Friday afternoon. Space is limited; please email nfox@aldrichart.org if you are interested in attending.

In this time of social distancing, we can still “meet” new people and get to know others better!  With that idea in mind, we are beginning a series of emails to introduce you in various ways to RSO musicians. 

Meet Kathleen Theisen!

Kathleen is the RSO’s keyboard player (piano, celeste, organ & harpsicord) and has been playing with the RSO for eight years. View videos of her her work below:

Meet Jorge Avila!

Jorge has been the RSO concertmaster since 2009. A recipient of numerous awards and honors, Jorge received his resident status in the United States under the “Extraordinary Talent” category. He was also awarded first prize at the 2001 Mu Phi Epsilon International Music Competition. 

Meet Rachel Handman!

Rachel is the RSO’s assistant concertmaster and has played with the orchestra for 20 years.

Meet Sara Della Posta!

Sara is the RSO’s principal horn player and has played with the orchestra for almost 20 years. Sara is also a professional organist.

Question:  How long have you been playing the French horn?
Sara:  Since the fourth grade.  So many, many moons.
 
Question:  How did you select that instrument?
Sara:  My older brother played horn, so I have pictures of me playing with dolls with a horn case looming in the background.  I just remember loving the sound and the look of it. 
 
Question:  Do you have a favorite piece of music and/or a favorite composer? 
Sara:  Hard question!  To play?  Of course all the usuals –  Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart.  I love Stravinsky, Nielsen, Sibelius, Poulenc, Shostakovich . . . Mendelssohn! There is truly no end to that list. 
To listen? Vocal anything-from chant to Byrd to Pop. Love the 70’s and certainly anything with tambourine. And classical guitar! 
 
Question:  What do you like to do when you are not playing music?
Sara:  I love being a mom!  I also love to swim, dance, bake, color, watch movies, read.  I’m on a John le Carre jag lately. 
 
Question: Are there specific things you are doing during this time of social distancing to stay connected with music and other musicians? 
Sara:  I Zoom, chat, Facetime, and share inspired Youtube performances or video clips that make me laugh. So much creativity going on. I love that people are seeking joy in everyday things, no matter how small. 
 
Question:  What is your favorite food?  
Sara:  I’m an umami junkie. Also, anything that my husband just cooked! 
 
Question:  When quarantining and social distancing are over, where would your dream vacation be? 
Sara:  New Zealand.  Or maybe Istanbul!  Love to see the Hagia Sofia.

Meet Suzanne Corey-Sahlin and Gunnar Sahlin

Suzanne, the RSO’s principal violist, has been with the orchestra for over 30 years. She is the RSO’s longest tenured member! Gunnar, a cellist, began playing with the RSO in 2009. Gunnar and Suzanne are husband and wife and also partners in the string duo Duetto Viello. 

Meet Wendy Kerner

Wendy has played with the RSO since she was a student at The Juilliard School and Beatrice Brown (RSO Music Director from 1970-1995) asked her to play with the orchestra.

Meet Yuga Cohler, Music Director

Yuga was appointed RSO Music Director in January 2018. The upcoming 2020-21 season will be his third full season with the orchestra.

Meet Mialtin ZheZha

Violinist Mialtin ZheZha became the RSO’s principal second violin in August 2018 following auditions for that position.
 

 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center’s Education Department is working hard to provide activities and resources for learning at home. The following units are based on our popular school programs and will be updated weekly through the spring to add new content for at home use.

We are developing three sets of digital learning units:

1. Stories from Our Site uses the history of the historic house museum and the beautiful gardens as a window into three decades of the site’s history. This includes a unit using elements from our popular “Colonial Life” program.
2. National Connections uses local history to illuminate national events—The Battle of Ridgefield, the only inland battle in Connecticut during the American Revolution, is a core story here at the museum and our units will cover grades 4 through 12.
3. Our annual #HandsOnHistory exhibit has been redesigned to offer STEM & STEAM learning digitally.

Our school programs and online learning units support the C3 Frameworks for Social Studies, Connecticut Social Studies Frameworks, and Common Core Learning Standards. If you have any questions, please reach out by emailing education@keelertavernmuseum.org.

Take a look at the History @ Home offerings here!

Ridgefield Streams is a new website dedicated to Ridgefield’s incredible arts and cultural organizations by providing a mutually supported digital landing platform on which to inform the public about their work. Especially in times of social isolation, communities need to stay connected!

The arts are essential and Ridgefield has truly become an arts destination. We intend to keep it that way!

Visit ridgefieldstreams.org.

About the Band

The Prospect Band is a five piece band featuring lead vocalist Thomas D, lead guitarist, and backing vocalist Ryan Carnage , bassist Max Shapiro, organist Rachel Wise and Jeff Bonistalli on the drums.  The Prospect Band plays a wide range of music from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, today’s hits and original music. After the bands success of their first studio album, ‘The Pink Album,’ they set out to record the album ‘Made For Greatness.’ Both albums are now available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms. A third album is now in the works. The Prospect Band is available to play private events, weddings, concerts, and parties at The Prospector Theater or they can travel to you for your event needs! They have a repertoire of over 150 songs but can play other tunes at your request, and can even write custom songs for your musical desires! All proceeds benefit The Prospector Theater and the mission of providing meaningful employment for adults with disabilities. Email events@prospectortheater.org for booking information. 

Watch The Prospector Band:

ACT of Connecticut and Books On The Common have partnered to create a fun new online series focusing on storytelling for our younger friends. Presenting STORY TIME!

Each week, we are (virtually) bringing back an ACT of CT actor who has starred in one of our productions.  They will read a story specially curated by our friends at Books On The Common. This is a great way for kids to be introduced to some special new books while also providing a nice break for parents!

A new STORY TIME! episode will be released weekly and can be found on the ACT of CT Facebook video page!

During this time of extreme health concerns, resulting in restricted gatherings and cancelled performances, the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra invites you to enjoy a series of select past performances as we look forward to bringing you more great live music in the not too distant future!
 
And what better piece to start our series than Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1!  This recording is from the RSO’s October 2018 concert at the Anne S. Richardson Auditorium at Ridgefield High School, under the direction of Maestro Yuga Cohler. Click the button below to listen to the piece and see the program notes for insight into Beethoven’s wonderful First Symphony.  Enjoy the RSO!

LISTEN NOW!

PROGRAM NOTES
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) – Symphony No. 1, in C Major, Op. 21Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
Andante cantabile con moto
Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace – Trio
Finale: Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace

With his First Symphony, Beethoven staked his claim as a rightful heir to the Classical symphonic tradition. After its premiere, at a typically gargantuan benefit concert in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 2 April 1800, the critic of the influential Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung wrote of the work’s ‘considerable art, novelty and wealth of ideas’, adding that its only flaw was ‘the excessive use of wind instruments, so that there was more Harmonie [wind-band] than orchestral music as a whole’. He also complained of the poor quality of performance, especially in the slow movement, where rhythm and ensemble became sloppy. Unconfirmed reports suggest that other listeners were fazed by the off-key opening. But, unlike some of Beethoven’s radical early piano sonatas, the First Symphony, in the ceremonial, trumpet-and-drum key of C major, contained little to alarm an audience who by 1800 had absorbed the challenges of Haydn’s and Mozart’s late symphonies.

The young Beethoven had produced a stream of brilliant compositions for the piano during the 1790s. But he was understandably far more circumspect when it came to the string quartet and the symphony, the two most elevated Classical genres, and the ones in which Haydn, still at the height of his powers, especially excelled. Beethoven began to sketch a symphony in C major in 1795–6, then abandoned it when he struck an impasse with the finale. Some time in the autumn of 1799, while he was grappling with the Op. 18 String Quartets, he re-used part of the jettisoned first movement as the finale of a new symphony, and composed the other three movements from scratch. 

The First Symphony’s notoriously oblique beginning, with wind and pizzicato strings – a novel and striking colouring – proposing first F major, then G major (not the expected ‘home’ key of C major), has in fact even more daring precedents in the music of C. P. E. Bach. But Beethoven sustains the air of expectancy by continually avoiding the chord of C major in its strongest (‘root’) position; and there is an exhilarating sense of release when the introduction propels itself without a pause into the crisp, martial theme of the Allegro con brio. This speaks the language of the Classical comedy of manners as perfected by Haydn and Mozart, albeit slightly roughened by the young composer’s trademark trenchancy and the urgency of his musical argument. It is also more densely scored than anything in Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies, with the winds and strings often used in antiphonal blocks. Throughout the movement Beethoven makes inspired play with the three elements of the main theme: a descending scale flourish, peremptory dotted figures and an upwardly striding arpeggio. Boisterous conviviality is briefly threatened when the second theme – a graceful dialogue between flute and oboe underpinned by the first theme’s rising arpeggio – darkens mysteriously into the minor key in cellos and basses against a plangent oboe descant. The triumphant fortissimo recapitulation of the main theme is a characteristic Beethoven ploy, as is the flamboyant coda that resolves the movement’s harmonic tensions by distilling the main theme into its most elemental form.

For his first symphonic slow movement, Beethoven eschews the ruminative depths he had plumbed in the adagios of several early sonatas and chamber works and writes a graceful, pawky F major Andante cantabile con moto that initially pretends to be a fugue. (The musicologist Donald Francis Tovey and others have pointed out the music’s kinship with the playful, fugally inclined Andante of Beethoven’s contemporary C minor String Quartet, Op. 18 No. 4.) At the start of the recapitulation Beethoven delightfully enriches the fugal weave with a skittish new counter-melody. The solemn pianissimo drum rhythms that underpin the closing theme become more assertive in the development, which slews round into the rich and remote-sounding key of D flat major.

Although Beethoven dubbed the third movement ‘Menuetto’ – either from convention, or with his tongue in his cheek – what he wrote was a scherzo of coursing energy and explosive dynamic contrasts, a natural consequence of Haydn’s rude shake-up of the traditional minuet in his ‘Surprise’ Symphony and the first and last of his Op. 76 String Quartets. In the second half Beethoven wrenches the music into D flat major (shades here of the second movement) before returning to the home key via a hushed, tense sequence of modulations. 

From its tiny, stuttering introduction – the kind of ‘blurt-it-out-then’ joke Haydn liked to reserve for his codas – to the unscheduled last-minute entrance of a march for toy soldiers, the Finale is one of Beethoven’s most teasingly amusing creations. His main agent of comic suspense and subversion is the rising scale which the violins initially have such difficulty completing. In the development this propels the music to the surprise key of B flat for a bout of mock-heroics, before being turned upside down in a jousting match for first and second violins. Then, just as the woodwind are engineering a poised, Mozartian lead back to the recapitulation, the irrepressible agent provocateur scampers in before we realize it, with a gleeful irreverence.
 
Program notes © Richard Wigmore

RPAC Art Center and Academy is offering numerous virtual online workshops, including Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Painting. Our technology allows for real-time interaction and sharing. The class schedules vary, accommodating most schedules and taught by RPAC co-founder and Professor Greg Mursko. Details are available on our website: RPACworkshops.

RPAC Art Gallery features works by the Resident Artists, and all are available for purchase. The online home, RPACgallery.com, offers cutting-edge technology that allows potential buyers to view gallery pieces as they’d appear on your wall. Purchases can be delivered, or curbside pick-up is available.

For more information, please contact RPAC via email at  info@rpacartartcenter.com, or online at rpacgallery.com.

Stories from the Studio

An inside look inside the artists studios during the pandemic. Artists share their stories on how they are inspired and what they are creating through answering a series of questions. Photos and videos are included to complete the story.

Click HERE to step inside the artist’s studio.

If you would like to be a part of our Stories from the Studio, please email us here. All are welcome to participate and share your story.

Follow Instagram and Facebook for up to date details on when the canvases are out and available for pick up.

Keep busy and stay connected with the Library while our building is closed.  Download an activity sheet for lots of fun ideas of things to do.  Complete 10 (or more!) of the activities, and bring your sheet back to the Library when we re-open for a special reward.

For the Kids:

Keep Connected Activity Sheet – Preschool

Keep Connected Activity Sheet – School Age

More ideas – STEAM activities for all ages!

Children’s Video Programs

Access digital materials with TumbleBook!

For Adults:

Online Tax Resources

Access digital movies, eBooks, and audiobooks with Hoopla, Overdrive, and RBdigital.

10th Annual Juried Member Show
ONLINE NOW!
Juror: Adrienne Ruger Conzelman of ARC Fine Art LLC

About Adrienne Ruger Conzelman: Adrienne Ruger Conzelman is the founder and director of ARC Fine Art, a private contemporary art gallery in Fairfield, CT. ARC Fine Art represents over thirty artists who range from the newly emerging to the most established in their field. Since its inception in 2009, the gallery has mounted more than 40 solo and group exhibitions in its Connecticut gallery, as well as in Pop-Up spaces in New York City, Amagansett, NY, Shelter Island, NY and Charleston, SC.  In addition to being a full service gallery, ARC Fine Art offers complete advisory services for both the new and seasoned collector, enriched through educational programming and private tours of museums, galleries, and artist studios. Adrienne holds a BA in Art History from Hamilton College and a Masters in Art History from Williams College, with a concentration in American painting from 1770 to 1970. In addition, she has received a certificate in Appraisal Studies from New York University and has completed coursework in the field of contemporary art at the Museum of Modern Art, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s. Between 1995 and 1997, Conzelman worked as a specialist in the American Paintings Department at Christie’s. From 1998 to 2002, she researched and wrote a private collection catalogue titled, After the Hunt: The Art Collection of William B. Ruger, published by Stackpole Books in 2002. She has also held numerous volunteer positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Emerson Art Gallery, and the Whitney Gallery of Western Art. Conzelman recently served a Trustee of Hamilton College for which she has curated two alumni artist’s exhibitions in 2000 and 2010 in New York City.

View the Juried Member Show Online Now!

Got some time on your hands? Learn an instrument or how to sing! Enchanted Garden is now offering live online music lessons. Email enchantedgrdn@gmail.com or call 203-894-1987 to sign up.

Miss Judy of Enchanted Garden Preschool has been releasing a series of children’s book readings on Youtube. Find them here!

Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra and Ridgefield Guild of Artists are pleased to announce an online exhibit of a collaboration between the RSO and members of Rachel Volpone’s painting class, Abstract 11, of the RGA.  The show, which was set to open on March 15th at Sarah’s Wine Bar, was postponed due to the current health concerns. “This is an outstanding collaboration and we are so happy to know that our customers will be able to enjoy the art work online until the restaurant reopens,” says Sarah Bouissou, owner of Sarah’s Wine Bar. “The paintings will remain on display in this impressive exhibit for a period of time once the Wine Bar reopens and we hope to reschedule the opening reception as well.”
 
Photographs of the paintings are posted on the RSO’s website. To view the artwork click here. Under each painting is the artist’s name, a description, and a price if the particular painting is for sale.  
 
This is a unique and exciting exhibit that blends the worlds of musical composition and abstract painting.  The collaboration was initially inspired by composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s piece “Disquiet”, which the RSO performed at our October concert.  A link to a recording of Sarah’s piece is posted on our website, along with the artwork, and we invite all to listen as you view the paintings.
 
For additional information about the collaboration and exhibit, visit the Ridgefield Guild of Artists website at http://rgoa.org under the Exhibitions tab.
 
Please Note: Customers can still enjoy the delicious food from Bernard’s and Sarah’s Wine Bar by ordering take out. Orders can be placed by calling 203-438-8282 between 11 AM – 5 PM for pick-up between 12 – 6:30 PM Wednesday through Sunday. Bernard’s is also offering special menus for both Passover and Easter.  Link to all take out menus: http://www.bernardsridgefield.com/pickup-only

We provide child centered educational content for children and their grown ups. This is a safe space for young children to practice yoga, make music and to fuel their innate curiosity with content created just for them. We celebrate childhood! Join us.

Watch We Grow Yoga on YouTube!

If you haven’t been to the Garden House for an event, be sure to read about its history at the 8th stop on the Gilberts in the Gardens Self-Guided Walking Tour. The house, designed by Cass Gilbert, has seen more parties than one could attend in a lifetime! Our site is otherwise closed, but you are welcome to take a walk so long as you adhere to all rules of social distancing promulgated by the CDCP, state, and local authorities.

Questions can be submitted by email to info@keelertavernmuseum.org or visit their Instagram at @keelertavernmuseum.

Need creativity and inspiration during these challenging times?  The Ridgefield Guild of Artists is sponsoring a community wide art project.  Canvases available outside the Guild building as long as they last.  (The canvases are 10×10. The RGA is trying to keep the sizing universal, so would prefer that you use the ones provided by them. When you stop by to pick up a canvas, there is a sign-up sheet as well. The Guild would like the names of those participating so that we can let you know when it’s time to drop off the canvases.)  Questions:  rgoa@sbcglobal.net

Recess Playworks is offering “Curbside Pickup Kids Activity Kits”. These kits include art projects and other activities to keep your children entertained. No need to leave your car, we will run the kit out to you! We are also offering free online art instructional videos. For the latest offerings, visit Instagram. Or order kits online!

Call 203-244-5928 to learn more!

$10 to participate, Free for members; Space is limited please register at shop.aldrichart.org

Join exhibiting artist Zoë Sheehan Saldaña and curator Glenn Adamson for a live discussion about the exhibition There Must Be Some Way Out of Here, including objects from hand sanitizer to handmade life preserver jackets, which foretell current concerns of survival and self-reliance. A Q&A will follow the conversation. The Zoom event link will be sent following registration.

RESCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 2020 at 6:30 PM

A fantastic evening of music, dining, and dancing in celebration of the RSO’s 55th season!
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE, FUN FOR ALL!
Classical with Signature Cocktail, Wine & Beer
Jazz with Buffet Dinner catered by Sarah Bouissou Catering
DJ Disco for Dancing and Dessert
Silent Auction & 20/21 Season Reveal
Dress: Smart Casual or Festive

Tickets: $150 per person
To purchase tickets click Add to Cart below OR call 203.438.3889
To be seated with friends, please call.