The fifth annual
Huntington Folk Festival
SATURDAY
August 7, 2010
— starting at 1 p.m. — FREE — open to all —
Our fifth annual SUMMER Festival, the Huntington Folk Festival in Heckscher Park, Huntington, NY
Performances on the Chapin Rainbow Stage
Featured performers:
SUSAN WERNER
and
VANCE GILBERT
- FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
1:00pm to 6:30pm
-
AREA 1: Unplugged song swaps and solo showcases featuring metro area and international artists — hosted by AcousticMusicScene.com
-
1:00 East End Folk:
- Robert Bruey, Shannon & Natalie
- Joe Iadanza, Angelo M, Spuyten Duyvil
- Dave Anthony, Susan Cohen, Tim Dillon, Sonny Meadows, Walt Sargent, Hank Stone
- Joe Iadanza, Josh Joffen, Denise Romas, Gretchen Witt
- Mark Allen Berube, Adam Levy, Rebecca Pronsky, Carolann Solebello, Allison Tartalia
- Andrew V. Craig, David Goldman, Susan Kane, Spuyten Duyvil, The YaYas
- Anthony John Clarke (on tour from the UK)
-
1:00 Marci Geller
1:20 Cathy Kreger
1:40 Stuart Markus
2:00 Anthony John Clarke
2:20 Susan Kane
2:40 Annie Dinerman
3:00 Mark Allen Berube
3:20 Carolann Solebello
3:40 Spuyten Duyvil
4:00 The YaYas
4:20 Angelo M
4:40 David Goldman
5:00 Joe Iadanza
5:20 Robin Greenstein
5:40 Greg Klyma
6:00 My Dad’s Truck
6:30 pm — Break
1:00 to 2:00 pm and 3:00 to 4:30 pm
- (sign up at the park)
- — or walk/drive into Huntington Village and enjoy dinner at one of its many fine restaurants before returning to the park for the evening concert.
8:30pm — Featured co-billed performers:
PHOTO by JAKE JACOBSON
VANCE GILBERT
—
SUSAN WERNER
see performer bios below
FREE
Parking info and map below, or
GET GOOGLE MAP
Stretch out on your blanket on the lawn
or bring your own camp chairs for seating behind the white line
and the Huntington Arts Council as part of the Huntington Summer Arts Festival.
The Huntington Folk Festival is produced by the Folk Music Society of Huntington and the Huntington Arts Council as part of the 45th Annual Huntington Summer Arts Festival which is presented by the Town of Huntington and produced by the Huntington Arts Council www.huntingtonarts.org and sponsored in part by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Suffolk County Office of Cultural Affairs.
 | Thanks to Whole Foods Market in Jericho for graciously providing water and refreshments for our daytime performers. |
a sassy wit ... outspoken songs
S.usan Werner is an artist that defies being pidgeon-holed into a single music category. She writes, plays, and arranges songs and music that range from traditional folk to contemporary folk-rock to anthems to American songbook to the Classics.
Susan's new release Classics leverages ALL of her many talents, and adds "arranger" to her long list of musical accomplishments. It features:
• Ten pop songs by Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Marvin Gaye, Paul Simon and others from a classic era of Songwriting (1960's-70's)
• All new arrangements for string quartet and classical instruments, with melodic quotations from well known classical compositions
• Standout vocals from Susan Werner
• World class performances by Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops instrumentalists
Ever eclectic and controversial, in 2007 she released her "agnostic gospel" album The Gospel Truth, 11 new original modern day Gospel compositions, some irreverent and controversial. The songs from this socially conscious, contemporary gospel album balance the faithful and the agnostic in one collection of originals, both heartfelt and incisive, biting yet optimistic, that draw from Werner’s own personal spiritual questions to engage the Christian community at large. Addressing those universal doubts that even fundamentalists surely have but wish to God they could verbalize, Werner seeks common ground with her traditional religious counterparts in finding solutions to the issues that divide America. The infectious joy of gospel music with lyrics anybody - or, almost anybody - can agree with - and sing along to ...
We can expect Susan to feature a wider range of her songs, some new, some older — all mesmerizing. Susan is renowned for her stirring "alternative national anthem" My Strange Nation that reflected on the results of the 2004 election, a battle hymn with added lyrics that encompass both the poetry and hypocrisy innate to the United States.
S.usan Werner maintains an active touring career throughout the U.S. and has received a string of accolades from the likes of The Washington Post, The Village Voice and The New Yorker. She has become one of the defining artists of the folk music genre. Her songs effortlessly slide between folk, jazz and pop, and are delivered with a sassy wit and classic midwestern charm on piano or acoustic guitar.
Farm girl Susan Werner was raised in rural Iowa but began her professional music career in Philadelphia, after studying classical voice at Temple University. Inspired by a Nanci Griffith concert, Werner left behind her opera training and began performing as a singer-songwriter at coffeehouses throughout the northeast. She self-released her first album Midwestern Saturday Night in 1992 and then went on to put out Live at Tin Angel the following year. In 1995 came her breakout album Last of the Good Straight Girls. Werner next recorded two albums even better than her previous work, adding some country and soul sounds to her signature vocal stylings, Time Between Trains, and in 2001 New Non-Fiction.
Always ready to reinvent herself, in 2004 Susan Werner released her album of her American Songbook gems I Can't Be New. For years she had incorporated cabaret-style numbers in her live performances, exchanging her guitar for the piano, and she'd been asked by her audience to put all those songs in one recording. Fans and critics alike sang her praises: the All Music Guide calling it "a brilliantly constructed, soulful, and cleverly tender effort by a songwriter and musician who is in such complete command of her gifts that it's almost scary."
Her sassy wit combined with her classic midwestern charm and her outspoken song lyrics make Susan's shows as exciting as folk was in the classic folk era of the 60's and 70's. ... We're very pleased to present Susan for a rousing evening!
A few years ago Susan Werner graced our FMSH stage with a thrilling concert, and we described it then as:
"The air was electric tonight in anticipation of Susan Werner's concert ... and she supercharged our audience with a mix of dynamic keyboard ballads and gospel variations, and guitar based solos on love and life. Her clever repartee on Chicago etal kept us in stitches. This was an evening that will not be forgotten."
Praises by others for her performances:
- "Susan Werner, a clever songwriter and an engaging performer, brings literacy and wit back to popular song."
- The New Yorker
- "... a triply blessed artist who sings adroitly, plays the piano smartly and, best of all, writes songs of genuine distinction and high craft ..."
- Chicago Tribune
- "a songwriter and musician who is in such complete command of her gifts that it's almost scary."
- All Music Guide
or visit her web site: 
We will always need each other...
Vance will enthrall you with his moving lyrics and his strong tenor that can morph into a falsetto when needed ... and bring you to histerical laughter with his stand-up riffs on contemporary moires and his beloved poodle Louise and her 3 a.m. ball tricks.
Vance burst onto the Boston singer/songwriter scene in the early 90's with a buzz about an ex-multicultural arts teacher and jazz singer who was knocking 'em dead at open mikes. Shawn Colvin invited Vance Gilbert to be special guest on her Fat City tour. Gilbert took audiences across the country by storm, with the voice of an angel, the wit of a devil, and the guitar playing of a god. With the warmth and charm of his buttery tenor, he thrills us with his literate, heartfelt, rippling, emotionally resonant songs.
Whether playing for thousands at Summer folk festivals or in intimate surroundings at house concerts, Vance builds a warm relationship with his audience, maintaining a clever sassy dialogue and eliciting smiles and guffaws all around. His repetoire includes standard chestnuts, but shines with his own compositions that span a range with deep humanism and bravery, stunning artistry and soul, and unbridled joy. And there's Gilbert's wizardry on acoustic guitar — he pounds, claws, scratches, caresses, and the resulting sounds frame his voice in some natural, elemental way that couldn't result from simple chords or even complex finger-picking.
His most recent CD release, Up On Rockfield, like his previous CD Angels, Castles, Covers, brings a heaping handful of new tunes, that fit a clever concept. The concept goes like this: all the tunes are written by him but sound like they were penned by someone else. Brazen, maybe, but a fun and inspiring way to get new material to happen. Tonight he might share with us ones that could have been written by Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and even a hilarious one in the style and voice of Tom Waits.
An earlier CD, Unfamiliar Moon was recognized as one of Vance Gilbert's most mature and realized recordings. It is jam-packed with songs that fall into "that" 
category of songwriting — the zenith for any writer — songs that elicit the response "You wrote that?". Consider Ten Thousand Skies, the opening cut, with it’s "Roy Orbison looking for Sam Cooke" feel. Follow that with the gentle heartaching in You Can Go Now, the hurt and hope of the medium rocker Leaving Avon, and the soulwrenching title cut, Unfamiliar Moon, Gilbert’s most requested song. Unforgivable is a jazz vocal tour-de-force that still maintains it acoustic roots with a great surprise soloist. There’s a lot of hope and redemption on this album too, in songs like the solo Your Brighter Day and the rollicking fun of the unedited I’ve Got A Plane. To round out this partial list, Gilbert closed with a haunting revisitation of his acoustic standard Alone Down Here. A perfect mix of lyrical eloquence and musical accessibility, this is less a recording and more like great performances captured on disc.
At a very live show on the FMSH stage, we experienced Vance’s biting humor and saw some of what's happening in his head (Lord help us all) ... all the way down to his sassy red and white wing-tip shoes. That was an evening we haven't forgotten.
Praises by others for his performances:
- "It's possible, even probable that any time you see Gilbert in person his songs will make you laugh and cry simultaneously. "
- Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
- " ... lively, eclectic, electrifying and transcending. "
- New York Town and Village
- "His catchy, pop-friendly melodies support keenly crafted, hard-hitting lyrics. His guitar is supple, his milk-warm tenor honest and gently acrobatic... He does not duck hard truths and never succumbs to the temptation to tie his points up in neat platitudes or truisms."
- The Boston Globe
Link to his songs on Vance's MySpace page
or go to his web site:
Additional bio from Richard Skelly, All Music Guide:
Vance Gilbert was born and raised in Willingboro, N.J.; he moved to Connecticut to attend Connecticut College and relocated to Boston after graduating in 1979. Gilbert's brother had brought him a bass to keep him studying in the dorms, but he later switched to acoustic guitar and singing, because it satisfied his need to be up front, doing his own thing. Before he began performing his own songs in concert, Gilbert worked in cocktail lounges, performing a wide repertoire of songs that ranged from Gershwin to Top 40, Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind and Fire. After the lounge work dried up, Gilbert began teaching in Boston-area public schools.
Later, as a singer/songwriter, all his training as a lounge singer paid off, as he's blessed with an uncanny ability to read the moods of his audiences, and he's learned to trust his intuition in his song selection on stage.
—
The Heckscher Museum is on the park grounds, and a small lot adjacent to it is reserved for Handicapped parking.
Parking is permitted along the neighboring streets; do not block driveways.
Immediately north of the park is a nose-in parking "lot" along Madison St., adjacent to the park.
The Huntington Town Hall is across Rte. 25A from the park on the south side. There is a large parking lot behind Town Hall.
There are 3 Municipal Parking Lots in the Village of Huntington.
The lot closest to Heckscher Park is located south of Rte 25A (Main St.) and is entered a half block east of the intersection of 25A and New York Ave. (Rte 110). It can also be entered on Elm Street.
A second large lot is south of Main St. between Green and New Streets. It is entered by turning south off Rte 25A (Main St.) onto New St.; - the lot is on the right.
The third large lot is located north of Main St. on Gerard St. (also named Lt. General Frank Libuti Way) It can be accessed from Gerard St. or by turning north off Rte 25A (Main St.) onto Clinton Ave., — after the corner buildings there are lot entries to the left and the right.
Also note that meters on the village streets are in effect weekdays until 7 pm only, and that bank lots that are not chained off are available for parking when the bank is closed at night.
