Sklar connects spies, kitties at New Works

Don’t underestimate the power of prose — or poetry. Daniel Sklar sure doesn’t. The 56-year-old Hamilton resident moved to the North Shore from New York, where he painted apartments and drove a cab while studying acting and getting a master’s degree in English from New York University. He met his wife, Denise, in the city. She was a dancer. He started looking for a respectable job, as a teacher, but there was nothing, and the Big Apple started feeling oppressive, and it was no place to raise a family. They wanted out. She had Salem roots, so they ended up on the North Shore. He started painting again, which was depressing. ”I thought I would be painting the rest of my life,” he says. Then one day he found himself outside Endicott College, an institution that he really didn’t know much about. He just walked in and got an interview. Which sounds unlikely and definitely not the best approach to landing a job, but the timing was right, the English department had one retirement, one firing and one guy just walking out the door. They needed someone right away. Sklar showed them his resume and one of his poems — and he landed the job, “So anyone who tells you that poetry will never get you anywhere is out of his mind,” he says. The Beverly liberal arts college offered him a full-time gig teaching creative writing and literature a year later.


That was 23 years ago. Now he’s a full professor and editor of the Endicott Review. His poetry has been published in a variety of publications. In 2001, he published “Hack Writer: Poems, Stories, Plays,” and in late 2008 followed up with ”Bicycles, Canoes, Drums,” a collection of his recent work. And, this weekend, “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” his new short, will make its debut at the New Works Festival, a four-day event that focuses on original plays.

The name refers to a nightly, ritualistic bonding with a furry friend, which may be sweet and loving and therapeutic, but, when it’s all the emotional support you have, is a little sad. The story takes place on New Year’s Eve at the Saugus Iron Works, where two female spooks are nearing the end of their careers, which have lasted from the end of World War II to the Bay of Pigs. They meet for reasons that have not been fully explained to them. It’s all very mysterious. But the 10-minute play is not about espionage or intrigue or Cold War strategies. It’s about two people who have spent their entire adult lives lying about who they are and what they do. The end is nearing and, it appears, they’re crossing the finish line with nothing. They couldn’t have close friends because of their careers and now, save kitty, their lives are empty.

“It’s about relationships,” says Sklar, who will also make his Newburyport acting debut the same night, performing in “Knowing,” a comedy by Gregory Hischak. “It’s about choices. After they learn how to trust each other, no mean feat, coming from the world of cloak and dagger, they let down their defenses and spill their guts to each other.”

The production, which will be staged with six other shorts on Jan. 23, the second day of the festival, stars Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro. Alan Huisman directs.

McLindon returns to New Works

So James McLindon topped the ticket at the New Works Festival this year, taking home the Pestolozzi Award for best full-length play? Big surprise, right? It’s his third win in four years. The guy should probably just find a place in town, right? “I could probably save gas money if I did,” the Northhampton-based playwright says, laughing. But, seriously, after learning he was top dog again, he offered to step aside, “if it felt uncomfortable in any way.” The board demurred, pointing out that he won it clean, after blind readings by a panel that included Joe Antoun, co-founder and artistic director of Centastage in Boston, and John B. Welch, one of the founders of Boston Theatre Association, and that the rules do not exclude playwrights with multiple wins. So, when the four-day play festival opens on Jan. 22, “Dead and Buried,” McLindon’s latest, will join “Faith,” last year’s New Works winner, and “The Garden of Dromore,” which took top honors in the 2007 edition of the festival - completing a literary hat trick and a veritable “wrighting” dynasty.

The play looks at three characters — a teenage boy, a teenage girl and an older woman. The girl is trying to find, or at least learn something about, her birthmother, whom she has never met. But each is “searching for someone or something missing in their lives,” says McLindon. “They’re trying to fill a void.” It’s set in a cemetery on Halloween and weaves themes of life, death, discovery and loss.

And it’s a comedy.

Huh?

“What? A play that takes place in a cemetery doesn’t sound funny?” McLindon says, laughing. “No, it’s a difficult play to categorize. Ultimately, it's very serious, but there’s a lot of comedy along the way.” Or as director Sherry Bonder put it, the playwright tackles heavy material but does it with a light touch. “It’s serious and redemptive,” says Bonder, who has worked with Theater in the Open for more than 15 years and is an adolescent therapist. “There’s a lot of humanity in the play. It’s a very serious, but balanced approach.”

Case closed
Before he was a playwright, he was a lawyer, taking home a law degree from Harvard, graduating magna cum laude and serving as editor of the Harvard Law Review. He practiced law, but resigned his partnership in a Beantown firm to write.
And while it might seem like a pretty dicey move, McLindon points out that “no career choice is especially stable these days.” He was actually a writer before he was a lawyer, scribbling for Yankee Magazine and the Boston Phoenix, as well as serving as speechwriter for presidents of the American Bar Association and for the Harvard Law Review. “I never stopped writing,” he says. And he never stopped lawyering either. He practices civil law part time in western Massachusetts - necessary because, despite his track record on this side of the Merrimack, it’s not easy getting from manuscript to playbill: “Writing is easy enough; getting established as a writer is always slow going.” At any given time, he has two full-length plays and several shorts going.

The premiere production will feature Ashley Risteen, whose last role was in the Actors Studio production of “Picnic,” and Eliot Johnson, last seen in the Michael Wainstein production of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” in the teen roles. They will be working with Astrid Lorentzson, a veteran of many local productions and, like Bonder, a therapist who works with adolescents and teens. The New Works reading will be the first time McLindon has ever seen “Dead and Buried” staged in any manner - and the production is crucial. “It’s very helpful to a writer to see a work in progress,” he says. “Hearing it out loud helps; it gives you a perspective you’ve never had before. I hope it feels like a complete piece. Thing is, you don’t necessarily know until you see it living and breathing on the stage. Every play has its own course.”

The ‘wright’ stuff
It is very different from his previous two New Works offerings, both of which tackled religious themes: “Faith,” last year’s winning production, looks at an adolescent boy’s struggle to find meaning in life and to be “special.” He longs to be given a message from God and won’t give up until he receives it. “The Garden of Dromore,” which was renamed “Dusk,” looks at the aftermath of the Catholic clergy sex scandal - and how those who spoke out were painted as enemies of the church if they dared to speak out. Why the shift in subject matter? “It’s hard to tell why you write something and not something else,” he says.

How long will it take before “Dead and Buried,” which the playwright still very much considers a work in progress, is finally done? McLindon says it’s anybody’s guess. He made changes to “Distant Music,” his first play, complete in 2005, after each of its five productions - some of the changes minor, just tweaks, but changes nonetheless. The play is about to be published this year. It is, he says, done - not necessarily because there are no possible changes that could be made, but because it is in print once and for all, for better or worse.

THE FACTS, THE FOLKS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The first weekend will open with “Dead and Buried,” the new full-length play by James McLindon. The following night will feature half of the 14-shorts accepted into the festival. The second weekend will open with a staged reading of “pudding,” a new full-length play by Michael Tooher, followed, the next day, by the remaining shorts. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. A limited number of four-day passes are available for $35 each. For information, call 978-462-7336 or go online to firehouse.org.

Friday, Jan. 22: "Dead and Buried,” drama by James McLindon, starring Astrid Lorentzson, Ashley Risteen and Eliot Johnson. Directed by Sherry Bonder.

Saturday, Jan. 23: “Soldier Boy,” drama by Leslie Powell, starring Kate Bossi and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Tim Diering. “No Strings Attached,” comedy by Kara Sorenson, starring Jennifer Wilson, Phil Thompson, Eric Lamarche and Steve Sacchetti; directed by Lois Honegger. “Knowing,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Pam Battin-Sacks and Danny Sklar; directed by Cynthia Arsenault. “If You Love,” drama by Marc Clopton, starring John Sheedy and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Anna Smulowitz. “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” drama by Daniel Sklar, starring Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro; directed by Alan Huisman. “Jock Itch,” comedy by George Sauer, starring Sandy Farrier and Brad Ritchie; directed by Jack Rushton; “Touching Elephants,” drama-comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Gloria Papert, Dennis Flynn and Victor Atkins; directed by Diana Kerry.

Friday, Jan. 29: “Pudding,” comedy by Michael Tooher, starring Jennifer Wilson and Terry Blanchard, with Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isabel, Terry Donohue, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo; directed by Maureen Daley


Saturday, Jan. 30: "Egg Whites and Miracles,” comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Missy Chabot, Irene Sanders and Fontaine Dollas Dubus, directed by Kimm Wilkinson. “Free Will and Kat,” drama by Deirdre Girard, starring Kayt Tommasino and Teddy Speck; directed by Stephen Haley. “Last Dance,” comedy by Kerry Zagarella, starring Bruce Anderson, Tracy Bickel, Kari Nickou and Jack Rushton; directed by Suzanne Bryan. “A Simile,” comedy by Robert B. Boulrice; directed by David Frank. “A Crooked Chapatti,” comedy by Priya Tahiliani, directed by Kathy Isabel. “Amenities,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Stephen Faria, Kari Nickou, Irene Sanders and Steve Turner; directed by Anne Easter Smith.

Powell-ful production at New Works

She’s trying to be cool about it, not to rub it in, but it's hard to hold back the gloating: While we're, thankfully, between winter batterings, winds whipping, blowing the snow and our opportunity to truly enjoy a much-deserved long holiday weekend, Leslie Powell’s looking out her window at the Santa Catalina mountains, drenched in sunlight, as the mercury dances around the 70-degree mark. Ah, Tucson, Arizona, the Newburyport playwright Southwest escape destination, where she can spend some time with Sis and, of course, fellow scribblers from the Old Pueblo Playwrights, her literary home-away-from-home. Not that there's anything wrong with escaping New England’s winter treachery. (“I know, I know,” she says in a sotto voce that almost masks the smirk we expect is manifesting itself more than 2,000 miles away on the other end of the receiver, “but I still feel kinda guilty.” Yeah, right. Then it's off to southern California on a business trip, and back to chill Newburyport in time to take in the New Works Festival.


Yup, she’s in the line-up again. With some of the other usual local suspects, locally. Like Steve Faria, who nabbed the festival’s first-ever Peter Honegger Award for his short play “Egg Whites and Miracles,” and Deirdre Girard. And big picture, like James McLindon, the Northampton playwright who is making his third appearance in the anchor position and taking home the Pestolozzi Award for best full-length play.

Powell's latest is a little different from her previous stuff — much darker than, say, “Movie Mogul in his Mama’s Muumuu,” a hilarious collaboration with her husband, Ron Pullins, in which the main character writes breathless homo-erotic sports stories in his splendid, sartorial comfort. No, “Soldier Boy,” despite its name, which conjures up hazy memories of ’50s innocence, is much darker material: A returned, broken veteran picks up a woman in a bar, but it all goes very wrong, turning from a cheap-but-possibly-fun one-nighter to an attempted abduction, with the soldier threatening to kill her — or himself.

The material has its roots in news reports prompted by reports of the miserable medical and psychiatric treatment that have awaited veterans back home. “It just made me so angry,” says Powell, who founded Random Acts, the Newburyport play-in-a-day festival, with Hailey Klein, and the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, which brings original plays to the stage in a readers' format, with Pullins and Actors Studio founder Marc Clopton.

This will be the third production of the piece, but its first local showing. Its first time out was during the 2008 Boston Theatre Marathon, where it was produced by the Metro Stage Company. Second time out was during the 2009 Gloucester Fall Shorts Festival, where it was directed by Holly Little. (New Works rules allow previous festival entries in the lineup.) Both were dramatically different productions, says the playwright: “I want to see it as many times as I can with different actors,” she says. “It's always different. It's like seeing it new and fresh because different actors and directors bring a different perspective." The current production, which will open day two of the festival, will be directed by Tim Diering, who closed out 2009 with two Michael Kimball plays: “Santa Come Home” at the Players Ring and “I Fall for You” at the Firehouse. Jesiah Hammond and Kate Bossi star. As for Diering, he’s keeping mum about what his plans are for the show — even keeping the playwright in the dark — saying only that “it will knock your socks off."


THE FACTS, THE FOLKS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The first weekend will open with “Dead and Buried,” the new full-length play by James McLindon. The following night will feature half of the 14-shorts accepted into the festival. The second weekend will open with a staged reading of “pudding,” a new full-length play by Michael Tooher, followed, the next day, by the remaining shorts. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. A limited number of four-day passes are available for $35 each. For information, call 978-462-7336 or go online to firehouse.org.

Friday, Jan. 22: "Dead and Buried,” drama by James McLindon, starring Astrid Lorentzson, Ashley Risteen and Eliot Johnson. Directed by Sherry Bonder.

Saturday, Jan. 23: “Soldier Boy,” drama by Leslie Powell, starring Kate Bossi and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Tim Diering. “No Strings Attached,” comedy by Kara Sorenson, starring Jennifer Wilson, Phil Thompson, Eric Lamarche and Steve Sacchetti; directed by Lois Honegger. “Knowing,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Pam Battin-Sacks and Danny Sklar; directed by Cynthia Arsenault. “If You Love,” drama by Marc Clopton, starring John Sheedy and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Anna Smulowitz. “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” drama by Daniel Sklar, starring Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro; directed by Alan Huisman. “Jock Itch,” comedy by George Sauer, starring Sandy Farrier and Brad Ritchie; directed by Jack Rushton; “Touching Elephants,” drama-comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Gloria Papert, Dennis Flynn and Victor Atkins; directed by Diana Kerry.

Friday, Jan. 29: “Pudding,” comedy by Michael Tooher, starring Jennifer Wilson and Terry Blanchard, with Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isabel, Terry Donohue, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo; directed by Maureen Daley

Saturday, Jan. 30: "Egg Whites and Miracles,” comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Missy Chabot, Irene Sanders and Fontaine Dollas Dubus, directed by Kimm Wilkinson. “Free Will and Kat,” drama by Deirdre Girard, starring Kayt Tommasino and Teddy Speck; directed by Stephen Haley. “Last Dance,” comedy by Kerry Zagarella, starring Bruce Anderson, Tracy Bickel, Kari Nickou and Jack Rushton; directed by Suzanne Bryan. “A Simile,” comedy by Robert B. Boulrice; directed by David Frank. “A Crooked Chapatti,” comedy by Priya Tahiliani, directed by Kathy Isabel. “Amenities,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Stephen Faria, Kari Nickou, Irene Sanders and Steve Turner; directed by Anne Easter Smith.

Some 'Assembly' required

We were happy to see that “Edge of the Mind,” the debut album from Schumacher Sanford Sound Assembly is comfortably ensconced in the Number 7 position of CD Baby's Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2009, keeping company with new releases by Mark Whitfield and Jeff "Tain" Watts, among others. And we're even happier to see video clips from the 17-piece, New York-based jazz orchestra's decade-ending show at the Bowery Poetry Club, where Newburyport composer (and Pentucket jazz program director) David Schumacher and his New England Conservatory colleague JC Sanford whipped out their latest stuff. Schumacher debuted "Kaleidoscope" and "Opportunity," two pieces based on Einstein's Three Rules of Work: "Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." Fascinating stuff, watching crazy-hot musicians sort through and resolve the seeming chaos that opens the new work. Sanford adapted his three-piece score for the classic film Ben Hur for the performance. The three clips from his score for the 1925 silent film make you wonder if the film is even necessary — and, frustratingly, leave you hungry for more.

We would have like to see more detail about the reasons "Edge of the Mind: made the Top 10. "Blending big band structures with extended forms and heavy improvisation," while an accurate description of the sound, does not begin to explain it. Here's what we had to say, elsewhere, when "Edge of the Mind" it came out last May: Strong compositions with challenging, eye-opening charts and plenty of direction-changing breakaways for crazy-hot musicians. You see it in “Slide Therapy,” a Sanford composition, whose opening musical gambit is an intriguing dialogue between slide guitar and trombone. Or, when five .songs into what has been a tight, all-instrumental album, the band lays down a vocal track, a torchy tone-poem putting the spotlight on 2009 Grammy-nominated vocalist Kate McGarry. Or how, in one of the most unusual and bold explorations, Sanford uses three Buddhist mantras to create a rhythmic figure for “Rhythm of the Mind.”

The work, then and now, is about exploration, not defining a particular sound and nailing it over and over. It’s about a palette of colors, about textures and tones, sometimes wildly divergent. It’s about challenging listeners and the musicians in this increasingly rare behemoth, the jazz orchestra. It’s about movement, though not necessarily forward, but listing to the left, to the right. And while perhaps disorienting at first, it allows the composers to simultaneously disarm and dazzle as they find compositional balance.

Montezinos: Role-ing with the punches

It's Friday afternoon. Adrienne Montezinos is on the phone. The Newburyport actress is getting ready for a weekend trip to Hatchling Studios, the Portsmouth animation studio owned by Marc Dole, to ... well, the details are still a little fuzzy. She won't know what she's going to do, exactly, until the evening, when her group, Team Pineapple, gets the phone call from the folks at the 48 Hour Film Project, which is kind of like Random Acts, the Newburyport play-in-a-day series launched by Leslie Powell and Hailey Klein six years ago, but designed for film rather than stage. The call will give the crew the first clues about what they'll actually be doing, usually revealing a genre, a prop, a character's name and a line of dialogue. Then all the crew have to do is write, cast, costume and film a short movie in two days. There would be about 75 people involved and, yes, the actress says, it's going to be a madhouse.

Montezinos, who has been building up stage, film and commercial credits since she "got the bug" about three years ago, got the nod to work, in some unspecified capacity, in the still-undefined project, in part, because of her performance in "Crooked Lane," the Chase Bailey directed short that won film of the year honors at this year's New Hampshire Film Festival. She plays Dr. Elena Leder, a psychologist treating a woman, played by Ann Cusack, whose daughter begins having visions of her murdered eight-year-old daughter in the paranormal thriller. She is in the trailer and Bailey is planning on turning it into a full-length feature. The film, which also won best New England film honors at the this year's Rhode Island International Film Festival, although it is not, strictly speaking, a horror film, was edited by Dole. His Pineapple Pictures production "Tweet," a short about a crusty, old school cop, played by Bailey, who is getting left in the dust by a desk-bound computer nerd, won best directing honors and was runner-up for best film in last year's 48 Hour Film Project. And when Dole started building a team for tthis year's competition round, Montezinos was a known quantity. She would play a role. What that would be, she doesn't know. No one does. And, for now, it isn't even that important. "I love working in film, creating the inner life of a character on screen," she says. "I love the process of bringing a director or writer's artistic vision to fruition and collaborating with the team of creative people it takes to create a film. It's an endlessly fascinating process."

Originally from New York, Montezinos moved to the city thirteen years ago. She has a background in dance and choreography, training at Alvin Ailey and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and has worked with Exit Dance Theatre. ("Dance will always be a part of who I am," she says. "It's in my blood.") She began teaching pilates locally eight years ago, now running private classes through her own business. She got eyes for the theater about three years ago, and has performed at the New Works Festival and in Stacey Fix's Theater Workshop — including a role as the Sun, performed atop a ladder, in "Into the Act," a retelling of Aesop's Fables. Her most recent stage role was Christine Shoenwalder in last April's Actors Studio production of "Picnic." But increasingly, she has turned to film and commercial work — with increasing success in a variety of media. She's featured in recent commercials for Anton's Cleaners and Midas Muffler — not especially glamorous, but honest work, sort of, real work that pays the bills. On the big screen, in addition to “Crooked Lane,” Montezinos is in “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” and a comedy based on “A Christmas Carol” starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner (“very quickly,” she sasy, “about one second in the wedding scene.”) She plays a flight attendant in “Wichita,” the James Margoles action-comedy film featuring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz set for a summer 2010 release — another short scene for Montezinos, but one she shares with the stars. She’s also in “The Women,” the Diane English remake of the 1939 Joan Crawford film — a long shot in a health club with Montezinos sweating it up, sort of, on an elliptical trainer, right next to Annette Bening. And, no, the Pilates instructor slash actress isn’t all primed from a cardio-vascular workout. “It’s movie magic,” she says. “They gobbed us with glycerine to make us look dewy.” There’s lots of work, enough that the day-to-day grind of nine-to-five has started getting in the way of auditions and rehearsals, and the pace of the work has picked up enough to justify it, so she walked away from her job as assistant to the headmaster at Sparhawk School. "It can be a blur sometimes,” she says. “It takes lots of time, and organization skills. Sometimes there are several audition a week, sometimes not. There's a lot of fits and starts.” She'll be leaving for the mystery New Hampshire film project shortly. “It should be exciting," she says — "nerve-wracking but exciting. I imagine we'll all be pretty stressed out, but in a good way."

They get the call at 7 p.m. The theme is "the end of the world." It can take any form, natural disaster, nuclear annihilation — or the way the crew does it in what will become "The Bureau," a spoof of "The Office." They brainstorm ideas for a while, then the writing teams — there are two — get down to business. The rest of the cast goes home to rest a couple of hours before the real insanity begins. In the morning, everyone finds a copy of the script in his inbox — as well as pleas for wardrobe assistance. Montezinos, who landed the Michael Scott character, brings a black suit and pumps and Alice Cooper-like massacre strategies. Then back to Hatchling for 12 hours on Saturday and another eight on Sunday. "We just mobilized," says Montezinos. "It was amazing, it was intense.” The story looks at one of those bureaucratic shell games that comes back to bite you on the ass: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (that would be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence, for the Biblically challenged) get their assignment from headquarters — plan for the end of the universe. The job gets bogged down in red tape, which is fine, because folks in the office figure it's a gravy train that they'll ride to retirement, because it would ever happen, because, well, because it would be the end of the world and everything in it. Who would be crazy enough to do that? Then the financial crisis bankrupts the universe and the timetable for Armageddon is fast-tracked. The crew and cast won’t hear how Team Pineapple did until January. Either way, a party is planned.

Until then, Montezinos has plenty to do: She’s casting director for a new Web soap in pre-production out of Portsmouth called "Proper Manors." She’s also in a short film called "the Marriage Counselor" directed by Steve Day. She’s also working on a short short with local filmmaker and editor Brian Cassin. The working title is "The Shambling." She will play an undead woman, a role that could be informed by her work in The Bureau’s Department of Death. She's just auditioned as a model for a exercise machine commercial, done a voice-over for a Boston healthcare marketing firm and performed as a guerilla dancer in Boston in a campaign for Memorex and …

Sunchunck emerges ... "L8" again

Not to get all weird and paranoid about it, but sometimes, you know, it seems like people are just messing with me. Like Sunchunck, the Newburyport-based power trio that started turning heads about three years ago when they were named the region's best unsigned band at the Emergenza Festival. The band has been conspicuously missing-in-action lately. The last time we heard from them was a 9/11 gig at the Grog. Rumor had it that the boys — John Cantino, Brett Manoloff and Mike Bertolami — have been safely tucked away in the studio, putting the final touches on a new album, their third, a collection of tunes tentatively titled "Finally Here." Which probably should have been fair warning, given the band's unconsciously ironic — or prescient — album names in the past.

We're talking about "L8," which, of course, was famously late when it was finally released, months after the record release party. Then we see the gig poster at Andyman, our favorite Left Banke pastry purveyor. "Sunchunck," it says, "Finally Here." They're playing a Jan. 8 benefit concert for Amesbury High School Class of 2010 ... With a band suspiciously called The Closers opening. We decided to do some checking — just to be sure, you know? And it turns out "Finally Here" isn't and "won't be 100 percent done" for the show at the high school's fancy new 900-seat performance center, says Bertolami, the Plum Island bassist whose tenuous, maybe even fanciful relationship with chronological reality was the driving lyrical force behind "L8," the song.

The disc, when it's actually finally here, will include four new songs ("Wait," "Finally Here," "No Win Fantasy" and "Voodoo on the Brain," a reggae-flavored tune that has been a part of the band's live shows for over a year) and collects new versions of Sunchunckie faves, like "Living My Life Again," "Butterfly" and, of course, the fist-pumping, patriotic cover of "God Bless America," which put the spotlight on the band in the first place. "Finally Here" has been tentatively and, let's be honest here, ambiguously (re)scheduled for a "spring 2010" release. We'll see. But the show most definitely is on, and the band, which has a Beatles-meet-Weezer vibe, has been on something of a roll over the past couple of months, despite the fact that they've been missing in action, locally: Its recording of "God Bless America" got some serious airtime recently. During the Pats/Dolphins game at Gillette Stadium on Veterans Day. In front of 60,000-plus fans, after the National Anthem, accompanied by an Air Force flyover. They've also been asked to participate in a compilation CD project for the Kevin Youkilis foundation, “Youk’s Hits for Kids,” which will find the local rockers rubbing shoulders with some pretty impressive musical company, like Springsteen, Godsmack and the Dropkick Murphys, to name only a few.

The band, if you've never heard them, plays straight-ahead rock. There’s no hip, intriguing back story to the band. There’s no trend-riding. It’s a power trio playing solid, original rock music because ... well, because they like to, and the concerts have an almost communal feel. There's a real sense of family. Maybe it's a Port thing.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Sunchunck will perform an all-ages show at 8 p.m. Jan. 8 at Amesbury High School. The Closers open. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 the day of the show. Advance tickets are available by emailing sunchunck@gmail.com. Proceeds benefit the Amesbury High School Class of 2010. For tickets, call 978.388.4800 or check out the band online. www. sunchunck.com
We're talking about "L8," which, of course, was famously late when it was finally released, months after the record release party. Then we see the gig poster at Andyman, our favorite Left Banke pastry purveyor. "Sunchunck," it says, "Finally Here." They're playing a Jan. 8 benefit concert for Amesbury High School Class of 2010 ... With a band suspiciously called The Closers opening. We decided to do some checking — just to be sure, you know? And it turns out "Finally Here" isn't and "won't be 100 percent done" for the show at the high school's fancy new 900-seat performance center, says Bertolami, the Plum Island bassist whose tenuous, maybe even fanciful relationship with chronological reality was the driving lyrical force behind "L8," the song.

The disc, when it's actually finally here, will include four new songs ("Wait," "Finally Here," "No Win Fantasy" and "Voodoo on the Brain," a reggae-flavored tune that has been a part of the band's live shows for over a year) and collects new versions of Sunchunckie faves, like "Living My Life Again," "Butterfly" and, of course, the fist-pumping, patriotic cover of "God Bless America," which put the spotlight on the band in the first place. "Finally Here" has been tentatively and, let's be honest here, ambiguously (re)scheduled for a "spring 2010" release. We'll see. But the show most definitely is on, and the band, which has a Beatles-meet-Weezer vibe, has been on something of a roll over the past couple of months, despite the fact that they've been missing in action, locally: Its recording of "God Bless America" got some serious airtime recently. During the Pats/Dolphins game at Gillette Stadium on Veterans Day. In front of 60,000-plus fans, after the National Anthem, accompanied by an Air Force flyover. They've also been asked to participate in a compilation CD project for the Kevin Youkilis foundation, “Youk’s Hits for Kids,” which will find the local rockers rubbing shoulders with some pretty impressive musical company, like Springsteen, Godsmack and the Dropkick Murphys, to name only a few.

The band, if you've never heard them, plays straight-ahead rock. There’s no hip, intriguing back story to the band. There’s no trend-riding. It’s a power trio playing solid, original rock music because ... well, because they like to, and the concerts have an almost communal feel. There's a real sense of family. Maybe it's a Port thing.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Sunchunck will perform an all-ages show at 8 p.m. Jan. 8 at Amesbury High School. The Closers open. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 the day of the show. Advance tickets are available by emailing sunchunck@gmail.com. Proceeds benefit the Amesbury High School Class of 2010. For tickets, call 978.388.4800 or check out the band online.

Winter arrives early in Salisbury

The rap on Johnny Winter has always been "brilliant blues guitarist who lost his way, who, ultimately, turned his back on the true faith, seduced, sadly, by the bright lights and big paydays as a rock gunslinger." Unless, of course, you were one of those rockers who grew up, musically, with the swagger of albums like "Johnny Winter And Live" and who still gets a little shiver up his spine when he hears brother Edgar's now-iconic introduction ("A lot of people keep asking me, uh, 'where's your brother?'") on the "Roadworks" album. Then the Texas-born axeman is a blues-rock shredder of the first order, even if, from the distance of three decades (yikes!) the work, the flash, however cherished, seems just a tad predictable. For Winter, in town for a weekend concert at Tupelo Music Hall in Salisbury, the rock thing is just a speck in the rearview. No hard feelings, mind you. And stories that he has completely abandoned rock are overstated. The 65-year-old guitarist still usually closes shows with his scorching cover of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," for example. But truth is that the thrill is long gone.

"I'm tired of rock," Winter says in a recent telephone interview from Connecticut, where he recently moved after a quarter-century in New York (he hasn’t lived in Texas since the '60s and doesn’t miss it, despite the mean season now enveloping us). He's a true believer, always has been, coming up listening to B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Bobby Blue Bland, and Lightening Hopkins, to name a few. “Anything blues and I wanted in," he says. Of course, we always knew that, deep down in our hearts, and he made it quite plain years ago, not long after “Roadworks,” after dealing with his heroin addiction (“the worst mistake I ever made,” he says), when he collaborated with Muddy Waters, who Winter had long dreamed about working with, producing four albums, including three Grammy-winners, with the legendary bluesman — a partnership that also led Winter to record the self-explanatory “Nothing But the Blues” album, which found the Texas guitarist leading the old Muddy Waters band. Fact is that the rock thing, which began with "Second Winter," his second album (third, if you count “The Progressive Blues Experiment," which came out on a small label before getting picked up by Columbia after signing Winter in 1969, not long before Woodstock).

The move to rock, a style that, for many, still stubbornly defines him, was deliberate, but the choice was not his. His manager at the time thought blues ”was going out of style," and that Winter needed to think more Chuck Berry than Elmore James. Of course, this is the same manager who convinced Winter to distance himself from Woodstock, which, when the papers were being signed, looked like it was going to be a massive bust, the result being Winter did not get a song in the movie and, in fact, until recently, few people even knew he played at the era-defining festival. That particular historic wrong was finally righted early this year with the release of “Johnny Winter: The Woodstock Experience” earlier this year, which includes his complete eight-song performance. And, for the record, he doesn’t remember much about the festival — if you do, you weren’t there — other than being exhausted, waking up at midnight “on a bag of garbage in a press trailer” and stumbling out onto the stage to perform. The Woodstock album is the latest of what has been a virtual avalanche of Winter material over the past couple of years, from the release of a “lost”1968 Live at the Filmore session of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, featuring Winter playing B. B. King’s “It’s My Own Fault,” which became a staple of his shows for years. This was the performance that made the hearts of the Columbia A&R guys in the audience go thumpa-thumpa and set up Winter with a then-staggering $600,000 deal — which was not as impressive as sounds (it was a 10-year deal) and, looking back at it, not necessarily a good thing (“It put a lot of pressure on me,” says Winter. “I just wanted to play the blues.”). Over the past two years, Winter has also released five titles in his Live Bootleg series, which collects rare musical moments from his four-decade career. Volume 6 in the series is scheduled to be released next month. It will include covers of Ray Charles’ “Blackjack,” Freddie King’s “Sen-Sa-Shun,” Texas bluesman Frankie Lee Sims’ “She likes to Boogie Real Low,” and B.B. King’s classic “It’s My Own Fault,” an extended “bonus” track that clocks in at nearly 15 minutes of pure blues ecstasy.The disc will also include two of Winter’s classic originals: the slide guitar-infused “White Line Blues” and the jump blues rocker “Johnny Guitar.”

He’s also the subject of a biography. “Raisin’ Cain: The Wild and Raucous Life of Johnny Winter” by Mary Lou Sullivan will hit the shelves in late spring. Just how wild, just how raucous is it? Winter has read the book and is a fan. “It's got all the stuff,” he says. “All the good stuff and the bad stuff.” He’s put in 40 years on the road, and he has no interest in selling the tour bus and settling down. "I love it,” he says. “I don't ever want to stop.”

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Johnny Winter will perform at 8 p.m. Dec. 18 at Tupelo Music Hall, 4 Ocean Front North, Salisbury. Tickets are $45. For more information, call 603.437.5100 or log onto the venue's web. For more info on the artist, click here. Check out Amazon to reserve a copy of "Raisin Cain," the new Winter biography.

Enter Exit: A new view of holidays past

Nostalgia may be death, culturally, but it is also one of the things that, for better or worse, connects us, and there is probably no better example of this than the predictable, theatrical free-fall during the “holiday season,” when everything comes to a complete standstill and we relive our childhoods, and pass them on to the next generation, with the tiresome, but irresistibly uplifting classics of the season — the seemingly endless productions, for example, of ”A Christmas Carol” (which we read somewhere is being staged by a half-dozen companies within a sleigh ride of Newburyport) and “The Nutcracker,” the irresistible 800-pound gorilla of the season. Complaining only makes you look like a Grinch, an association we have finally come to terms with. And, besides, this is what people really want — something warm, comfortable, familiar. But one company has managed to find a way to, so to speak, eat the fruitcake and have it, too — combining the warm, fuzzy nostalgic core of the holiday zeitgeist with a hip, modern outlook. That would be Exit Dance Theatre, a modern dance company founded more than two decades ago, whose style is deeply rooted in theater techniques, improvisation and collaboration.

This weekend, the troupe doing all that — and more — in its show “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” a monster collaboration that brings together members of Exit and Joppa Jazz Dance Company, as well as unaffiliated dance students who answered an open audition call, as well as local singer-songwriter Kate Redgate, who will emcee the show — a total of over 60 performers in all. The show grew out of Exit's “Nutbuster,” an original, modern and amped-up version of “The Nutcracker,” which played to rave reviews for the past two years. In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the idea is the same, but the choreography by Fontaine Dubus, Erin Foley, Sarah George, Pam Smith, Jen Steeves and Cheryl Schwind is new. Each “day” is told through movement, bringing a new approach to the traditional song. And it’s “a mixed bag of styles,” says Dubus, one of Exit's founding members — and not necessarily your idea of traditional Christmas atmospherics, with music by Rusted Root, which manages to mix Dead-like psychedelia with African and Middle Eastern rhythms, and Gilbert Bacaud, known as “Monsieur 100000 Volts” for his energetic performances (for the French hens a-laying day, natch). But the company, while presenting new approaches to the original song, has connected it to the past — to the nostalgia and the magic of our collective youth with Redgate, who will sing the original song and — be forewarned — lead the audience in a sing-along between dance pieces.

Of course, the philosophical question becomes, what happens if Exit's “Twelve Days” becomes an ingrained part of the holiday fabric in Newburyport? Will future generations of blogging Grinches gripe about it?

Let's call it a question for another generation.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Exit Dance Theatre presents “The Twelve Days of Christmas” through Dec. 6.The show features choreography by Fontaine Dubus, Erin Foley, Sarah George, Pam Smith, Jen Steeves and Cheryl Schwind. Kate Redgate will emcee. Tickets are $16, $15 for members of the Society for the Development of the Arts and Humanities, and $12 for students and seniors. For more information, call 978-462-7336 or log onto the Firehouse web. Photo is courtesy of Brent Mitchell.

Late breaking news from the North Pole

Okay, so we ran into this horizontally challenged guy wearing a red suit with white trim. He pulled this bit of news out of his bag of tricks, saying he would consider us good little boys and girls if we passed it along. To be honest, the guy looked a little sketchy, but you don't want to take chances, not when it comes to the jovial fellow making lists and checking them twice, not around Christmas, no sir, so we'll pass it along: The Players Ring has added a matinee performance of the Michael Kimball comedy “Santa Come Home.” The matinee will be at 4 p.m. Dec. 5. It may be your best chance for getting into the show (although we heard there are still a few seats available for the Dec. 7 closer.) The show tells the story of newly retired children’s celebrity Captain Zeus and his long-suffering wife, whose daughters come home for the holidays with two unexpected, uninvited guests that will test this already, um, complex family to its dysfunctional limits. The story takes place on Christmas Eve, the second most wonderful day of the year, just in time for the family’s annual Christmas performance at the local grange hall — a show that will be simulcast in Taiwan. Tickets are $12, $10 for students and seniors. The Players Ring is located at 105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, N.H. For reservations, call 603.436.8123 To buy tickets online, click log onto http://www.playersring.org.

Adventurous program for Cantemus

The Brahms may well be the centerpiece of Cantemus’ upcoming winter concert in Newburyport, but, despite its rich, Romantic harmonies and dynamic variations, "Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen/ Why then has the light been given?" is not the most interesting or challenging piece on the North Shore choral group's ambitious, stylistically diverse "Winter Lights" program. That would undoubtedly be “Snowforms,” a six-minute piece by contemporary Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer that is as strange as it is magical and alluring in style, structure and presentation. It's a composition that doesn't look or sound like traditional choral, and, it is said, a piece that requires a leap of faith to be successfully performed, requiring singers to trust their own instincts and imaginations as well as those of the composer and conductor. Written in 1982 and inspired by the winter view outside the composer's Ontario farmhouse, the piece is meant to evoke physically and musically the diversity of snowflakes. The music is presented graphically. There is no staff paper, no traditional notation, but unlined paper that is divided vertically at five-second intervals. Letters indicate notes. The curving lines connecting them indicating treatment — thickening lines mark crescendo, thinning lines diminuendo, rising and falling lines indicating pitch. The piece is is written for female voices only. Singers are expected not to "hit" notes, but to glide between them in a continuous portamento, like the bending pitches of a synthesizer.

The text is sparse, consisting of Inuit words for various kinds of snow, like akelrorak, meaning drifting snow, or pokaktok, meaning snow like salt. With the exception of these Inuit interjections, the "vocals" are hummed throughout. The score also provides additional insight from the composer. For example, at 1:35, calling for the chorus to be divided into two or three groups, overlapping gently and continuously, as the word "apingaut/first snowfall" is sung. Or, at 1:55, calling for a "a sudden burst of energy, then tapering away" as the first two syllables word "mauyak/soft snow" are sung. But, in his notes, Schafer indicates that conductors should not feel "enslaved" by his stage direction. Challenges for the singers include imprecisely defined notes, sudden breakaways into unconventional harmonies and non-traditional chord structures. The challenge for the conductor is leading without smothering a piece that, as seemingly precise as it is, leaves room for individual expression. The conductor’s work is as much conjuring a performance as it is shaping it.

"It’s a tough piece," says Cantemus Music Director Gary Wood. "It takes lots of work, many, many rehearsals, before the environment, what you might call the sonic landscape, begins to sound natural."

But, as “out-there” and “non-traditional” as the Schafer seems at first blush, it actually fits in quite snugly in a seasonal — and, here, seasonal means just that, not necessarily a euphemism for Christmas — program that is designed to reveal “the varied moods and energies of winter – the light, the snow, the shorter days, and the human response to it all," says Wood. "This season draws comparisons to light conquering darkness, and so perhaps it makes sense that light became a symbol of hope, redemption and victory in many faiths.” “Winter Light,” which the 31-voice choral group will perform Dec. 5 in Hamilton and Dec. 6 in Newburyport, is a big-tent program of contrasting periods and styles, from the Romantic perspectives of Brahms and Elgar to the modern views of late 20th- century composers like Schafer, Eric Whitacre and Stephen Chatman. Pieces sung in Inuit, German and Latin, taking their textural clues from the Book of Job, Martin Luther, William Shakespeare and even Robert Frost.

Sung in German, the Brahms motet man, is based on Biblical texts (Job, Lamentations and James) with a final musical “chorale” from a Martin Luther text. Elgar is represented by three works from“The Light of Life,” an early extended work that Wood describes as “ highly engaging and beautiful.” The singers will divide for Charles Wood’s harmonic, resonant “Hail, Gladdening Light,” a lush work for double chorus. In “Lux Aurumque/Golden Light,” Whitacre uses Latin words to create a choral soundscape that aims to “shimmer and glow,” Wood says. And “O Nata Lux,” a movement from the often-performed five-movement work “Lux Aeterna” by American composer Morten Lauridsen is an introspective meditation on the one “born light of light.” Canadian composer Stephen Chatman’s “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” is based on the classic and well-known “song” from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”

The men of Cantemus will perform “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” from the larger Frostiana song cycle — an evocative Robert Frost poem set to music by one of America’s most celebrated choral composers, Randall Thompson, who uses a “slow sustained tempo to paint a picture of snow, darkness and duty,” says Wood.

The concert will close out with traditional carols.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN — Cantemus will perform "Winter Light" at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5 at 7:30 p.m. at Christ Church, 149 Asbury St., Hamilton, and at 4 p.m. Dec. 6 at 4:00 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 166 High St., Newburyport. Tickets are $20 for adults, $17 for seniors. Admission is free for students under 21. Save $2 by purchasing advance tickets at at The Newburyport Printmaker, Nazir’s of Wenham, Norris Gallery and Frame Shop in Ipswich, the Book Shop of Beverly Farms, Toad Hall in Rockport and Gloucester Music. For more information, call check out the Cantemus web.

JUST THE FOLKS, MAN — Here’s the Cantemus Who’s Who, by community: Manchester-by-the-Sea: Music Director Gary Wood and singers David McCue and Anne Wood. Haverhill: Accompanist Frances Burmeister. Beverly: Scott Hufford, Richard Salandrea. Bradford: Alison Garner. Byfield: Doug Guy. Essex: Betsy Vicksell. Gloucester: Pat Lowery-Collins. South Hamilton: Donna Gale, Marcy Homer. Ipswich: Bill Effner, Gary Freeman, Hugh McCall, Anne Maguire, Dorothy Monnelly, Nat Pulsifer, Sr. Pat Rollinger, Debby Twining. Lynnfield: Priscilla March. Medford: Bill Dowdall. Newburyport: Gary Lubarsky, Norm Stein. Rockport: Marcia Siegel. Wakefield: Mark Pierce. Wenham: Jamie Cabot, David Geikie, Bill Holloway, Conrad Willeman. West Newbury: Michael Fosburg, Susan Nash. Dover, NH: Sydney van Asselt.