April 2019 Calendar
Wednesday, April 3
Poetry Lunch, Noon
Nobel Prize Laureate, the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney was a Taverner while serving as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard. Peter Fallon, distinguished poet and translator, founder of The Gallery Press (1970), the premier publisher of Irish poets and playwrights, as well as Seamus’ closest friend, will be here Wednesday, April 3 for a Tavern Club Poetry Lunch. Peter will chat with us about his professional and personal times with Seamus and will allow us a sampling of his own work.
Please reserve with Mr. Fay.
Monday, April 8
Gallery Opening with Brigid Williams: En Plein Air
Reception in the Gallery 5:30-7, guests welcome. Monday Dinner for members at 7:00.
“A few years ago, I spent a week in the sun and the rain, surrounded by trees, rocks, water and sky and encountered the delights of plein-air painting. These are relatively small oil paintings on carton using a pochade box – in the woods, on the beach, balancing on a rock. I still love figure painting but I’m getting used to bugs and sand in the paint.”
Wednesday, April 10
Arts Roundtable Lunch: Winslow Homer
Taverner Bill Cross will offer us a preview of Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter’s Journey, 1869-1880, an exhibition he is co-curating with Henry Adams, to open August 3rd at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester. The Cape Ann Museum will be the sole venue for this large and comprehensive exhibit.
In 1869 Winslow Homer, then a professional New York illustrator freshly back from France, painted his first marine subject. Over the next eleven years, Homer explored seaside destinations, from New Jersey to Maine, but especially — and repeatedly — Gloucester and other parts of Cape Ann. In these journeys, he discovered a calling. The show and Bill’s preview of it, will closely examine Homer’s development as a marine painter. 12:15 Guests welcome. Reserve with Mr. Fay.
Thursday, April 11
Shakespeare Night at the Tavern
“If music be the food of love play on” and come to the Tavern for a reading of the bard’s romantic comedy Twelfth Night. Who loves whom? Who is male–who is female? Who does the tricking–and who gets tricked? The show around the dinner table will be directed John Rabinowitz and Martha Eddison. Readers will have been notified in advance, but all others are encouraged to bring a copy. Drinks at 6 pm. Dinner at 6:30.
Twelfth Night begins after dessert.
Tuesday, April 16
Play-reading Lunch at 12:15
At our last session this “season,” we swing into Tales of The Jazz Age: two intriguing one-act plays by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Debutante, and Mr. Icky. The Great Gatsby they are not, but they are surely better at lunch: witty, fantastical, light-hearted, sarcastic romps (though with that sadness lurking underneath). Come enjoy another side of Fitzgerald, by reserving with Mr. Fay. 12:15 in the library for the first very short play, then lunch and a longer second. As always, enthusiasm and humor are the only preparation.
Thursdays, April 4 and 18
MeistUrsingers at 12:20
Welcome to all Taverners who like to sing! Downbeat at 12.20, Reserve with Mr. Fay if you can stay for lunch. MeistUrsingers are “working” on music for their annual Concert on April 25.
Wednesday, April 17
History Lunch at 12:15
Noted historian Robert Gross will speak on “The Universal Mind at the Masonic Temple: Emerson’s 1836-37 Lectures on ‘The Philosophy of Modern History.” In his lectures, Emerson celebrated the individual in every sphere of life, from politics and religion to art, literature, and science, as he sought to make sense of a world in rapid change – a timely topic for us today. Bob is the author of the Bancroft Prize winning The Minutemen and Their World. Reserve with Mr. Fay. Guests are welcome.
Wednesday, April 24
Book Club Lunch
Suzannah Lessard – veteran New Yorker writer, author of the acclaimed Architect of Desire – will talk about The Absent Hand, her astonishing new book, a meditation on American landscapes, urban and rural. We often experience this world as a dissonant place without quite knowing why. Suzannah Lessard has made deep explorations into mall culture, gentrification, pastoral conservation,
and computer space. She has traveled the land. She will describe how these on-the-ground investigations helped her to understand what turned our comfortable sense of place upside down. Guests are welcome. Reserve with Mr. Fay.
Monday, April 22
Committee on Elections at 5:30 p.m. in Library
The Committee asks members to check the Book in the Library, where a new name has been entered.
Thursday, April 25
MeistUrsingers Concert
The MeistUrsingers invite Taverners, family, and friends to join us for some cutting-edge music of 200 years ago—William Billings’ Modern Musick, along with favorites from the Renaissance to the barbershop. As a reward for your indulgence, we shall gather at dinner to bellow old favorites from Rodgers and Hammerstein, with the inimitable stylings of the Tavern’s own Mike Scott. Please join us. Drinks at 6, concert at 6:30 and dinner after. Reserve early with Mr. Fay.
In Case You Missed It:
March 7: Prospective Evening: Words + Music = Song
A new and entertaining match to our traditional Retrospective evening, the first Prospective proved to be utterly astonishing and inventive. With too many Tavern participants even to name here, original lyrics and music were abundant. The songs were sung, the poetry recited, and instruments played. Humor and feeling were supplied. The full program will be available on the Tavern website. All praise and credit go to Albert LaFarge and Elaine Woo, the evening’s creators. We anticipate the next one.
March 13: Violin Duo
The fiddles were in fine form on March 13 when the husband-wife Violin Duo of Christina Day Martinson and Haldan Martinson regaled a large crowd in the theatre, with Baroque, Romantic and Modern duets. Over dessert, discussion of music, orchestras, the evolution of styles and the personal lives of artists capped a delightful evening. Bravi Tutti!
March 28: Narrenabend
The Tavern Players presented a Narrenabend musical “Madame! Emperor! In the Staël of the Night.” Warmly received by assembled Taverners, the book and the lyrics were by Abbie Trafford, dramatizing the stormy relationship of Madame de Staël (Nancy Maull), the most influential woman of her day, and the Emperor Napoleon (Andy Calkins). Jim Terry wrote the delicious music. Nick Clark was director.
The all-star cast, veteran actors and tyros, included the lesser and the greater satellites to de Staël’s sun. Among them were Benjamin Constant (John Henderson), August Wilhelm Schlegel (Joel Ives), the well-known Tallyrand (Bill Strong), and Joseph “Top Cop” Fouché (Andy Miller); also a trio of Parisian Gossip Girls (Tina Rathborne, Alice Cornwell, Margery Kennelly). Swirling around in her solar system, were Napoleon’s wives, Josephine (Frinde Maher) and Marie Louise (Anne Hawley); Napoleon’s brother Joseph (David Eckel); and court hangers-on like Narbonne (Sam Dennis), Juliette Recamier (Bobo Devens), and Rocca the sporty guy (John Finley). And of course there were some soldiers (Jane Shaw and Ben Taylor) and the not-to-be-forgotten assassin (Frinde Maher, again).
Costumes (Martha Eddison) glorified the stage; lighting (David Lawrence and Gabrielle Wolohojian) clarified the action; prompting (Anne Carter) was imperceptible; sets were stunningly French in red, white, and blue (David Amory, Warren Ross, and painted by Mary Rhinelander). Jim Terry’s artful piano was supported by a mellifluous violin (Gabrielle Wolohojian). The poster was by Chris Whitlock, and the program by Anne Carter with set notes by David Amory.
New Members
Judith Ogden Thomson
Art historian, non-profit trustee, and observer of foreign affairs
Anthony Pangaro
Interests include music, Italy, city planning
— Nancy Maull, Secretary
