Josh Glassman: The name of the festival says it all: Otter Creek Music Festival and Otter Creek is a very long river. We are not limiting ourselves to one town.
James Stewart: That’s the voice of Josh Glassman, the artistic and executive director of the Otter Creek Music Festival.
Josh: Which is now celebrating its 45th season in Addison County.
James: The festival was started by Middlebury College professor Glenn Andres as a celebration of the Salisbury Congregational Church, the festival’s main performance venue for decades.
Josh: The church is very special in Salisbury.
James: The concert series also celebrates the community alongside a long time partnership with Point Counterpoint Camp.
Josh: I actually got my start at Point Counterpoint Camp as a conductor. I was a counselor and choir director at the camp and the church is where I conducted my very first concert.
I took over as director in 2022. And our aim is to promote local musicians – regional musicians, while retaining that small, grassroots feeling that Glenn has worked so hard for four decades to maintain.
James: The Otter Creek Music Festival starts Friday, July 19th and offers a wide variety of performances in multiple locations across the region.
Josh: Last year, we became a fiscally sponsored project under Barn Opera and we had the Barn Opera House in Brandon at our disposal. This season, we are performing at the Clemmons Family Farm in Charlotte and at the Middlebury Community Music Center in downtown Middlebury.
This season, in particular, I am very excited that all but one of our artists or ensembles, they're all Vermont based. So the festival actually opens in Brandon at the Barn Opera House with the Evan Allen Trio. Then the very next night we have Counterpoint, Vermont's professional chamber choir, they're gonna be at the Salisbury Church. And the night after that will be the Champlain Trio doing an all women composer program.
James: And that’s just the first weekend of the festival. The following week will feature the ensemble Castle of Our Skins.
Ashleigh Gordon: My name is Ashleigh Gordon. I am artistic director and violist of Castle of Our Skins, which is a Boston-based concert and education series.
James: Ashleigh co-founded Castle of Our Skins in 2013 with fellow composer, pianist Anthony R. Green.
Ashleigh: Our work is really centered around Blackness; Black culture, Black history, Black music and fostering cultural curiosity in Black culture and African diasporic culture. And our own curiosity led us to a lot of research to build our own resource knowledge of who certainly, historically over the past 500 years have expressed within this vein of classical music their own artistry and are African diasporic or African descended.
In the past 12 years we have certainly explored that and more. Fundamentally, I think our work is wrapped in our name which comes from a poem by Nikki Giovanni, paraphrased to say that, “If we're all imprisoned in the castle of our skins, treat our skin like a palace.” And so that is what we try to do and have done over the past 12 years.
Josh: To bring such a wonderful organization like Castle of Our Skins up to Vermont – internationally acclaimed ensemble – is wonderful for this community
Ashleigh: And this will be a return for us as an organization, the Clemmons Family Farm being a historic Black-owned farm. Very excited to be able to connect both with Clemmons and then also with Point Counterpoint for a master class as well, while we're in town. Everything in terms of the program is in honor of the farm, a historic farm. So honoring its geographic location, the actual land, honoring the people that were on that land, honoring the history and the legacy as well as its future, which is now its own ownership of that land.
James: Castle of Our Skins performs Saturday, July 27th at 7pm at the Clemmons Family Farm. The festival will continue with performances from pianist Michael Arnowitt, singer/songwriter Patrick Fitzsimmons and Vermont Public’s own Helen Lyons, accompanied by Elaine Greenfield. You can find out more about the entire festival by visiting their website…
Josh: …ottercreekmusicfestival.com. We survive because of our wonderful community. And so even just by purchasing a ticket that goes a long way to supporting our artists and ensuring that live local music thrives on the banks of Otter Creek.
