Old Fort Johnson

June 22    Refreshment for the Mind: Music in the Johnson Household

The rooms of Fort Johnson echoed with music when Sir William Johnson lived here. Local musicians Liaisons Plaisantes bring colonial times to life with a program of music first developed for the 2011 Western Frontier Symposium. Based on extensive research in the Johnson papers, they will perform some of the songs, instrumental music and dance tunes that Johnson’s family and friends played for amusement.

July 20     Music in the Midst of Madness: Respite from the Turmoil of Civil War*

Wanda Burch read the wartime letters of hundreds of people while writing The Home Voices Speak Louder than the Drums: Dreams & the Imagination in Civil War Letters & Memoirs. Almost all of them mention music, whether written in army camps or from home. Hear their stories with images of the time, while Ron Burch on the field organ and Gisella Montanez Case, vocalist, perform the songs used as a common language in the middle of the 19th century.

August 17   A World in Ragtime*

Actor-singer Byron Nilsson and pianist Malcolm Kogut bring us into the 20th Century with a delightful program of songs and piano solos that capture the spirit of the Ragtime Era, when America’s tunesmiths found a syncopated beat and music changed forever. It all began with Scott Joplin, but once Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” became a hit in 1911, Tin Pan Alley went crazy with imitations. Spirited numbers like “That Shakespearean Rag” (which influenced T.S. Eliot), Eddie Cantor hits and other up-tempo favorites will keep your toes tapping along.

* These performances are underwritten by Individual Artist Grants from Saratoga Arts, 

funded by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support 

of the office of the Governor and the NYS Legislature.