Liz Thomson, founder of The Village Trip, recalls Peter's encouragement
and enduring contribution to the Festival
In June 2015, six months into my active quest to set up a festival celebrating Greenwich Village, I found myself at the Museum of the City of New York for the launch of Folk City, the exhibition which chronicled the New York folk revival. Doug Yeager, who would become a great buddy, invited me having heard from Janis Ian about this weird British obsessive who wanted to be there. It was a terrific exhibit, curated by Stephen Petrus (who co-wrote the accompanying book with Ronald Cohen) and its opening was celebrated with a concert. It seemed as if the entire folk scene joined hands for the finale: Oscar Brand and Fred Hellerman, Izzy Young, Tom Paxton, David Amram, Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow. Oscar and Fred died the following year, Izzy in 2019. And now Peter too is gone, a loss that will touch many hearts, for he touched so many lives.
A day or two after our uptown encounter, Peter called me. My idea was great, he said, but any celebration of that era, and of the Village must include activism, which he saw as inseparable from music. He was warm and encouraging and gave freely of his time. Over the next few years, as what would become The Village Trip: A Festival of Arts & Activism acquired form, I sent Peter occasional updates. Then in September 2022, our fifth festival, he wrote asking if he might join the audience at the Bitter End to watch Reggie Harris, Our Band, Magpie, David Amram and MC Danny Goldberg for Chords of Fame: A Salute to Phil Ochs. He slipped in and out almost unseen, his body frail but his spirit undimmed. Cliff Pearson and I were thrilled. He wrote:
โCongratulations on all you have done. Iโm thrilled that some of my words resonatedย andย ultimately made sense, regarding the festival that you created. Kudosย andย congratulations in the extreme!โ
The following year, Peter joined the audience one more, this time at the Salmagundi Club, for a concert of new music that included the world premiere of A Village Triptych by his old friend Carman Moore. He was, as always, charming and engaged, and Cliff and I told him about the climactic festival event: Let Freedom Ring: Music and Voices of the March for Civil Rights, Then and Now. Peter said heโd try to come. A couple of days later, he emailed to ask if he might bring his guitar and join the finale โ would that be all right? Just to have him be present was an honour, a benediction! At the event, he didnโt simply join the finale โ he and daughter Bethany went on to lead the cast and audience in a rousing chorus of โIf I Had a Hammer.โ It was profoundly moving.
The next day Peter emailed us again:
โIt was an extraordinary eveningโฆ It was as if we were not just remembering the feelingsย andย the spirit of the marches but actually participating in one in the present time. It recalled the outrageย andย the pain, but also it was filled with loveย andย determination, as was the case in the โ60s. Sending loveย andย congratulations.โ
Thank you, Peter, for all your wonderful music, with Peter, Paul & Mary, and in the years afterwards, solo and with Noel, and for showing the healing power of music. And of course, for your encouragement and support of The Village Trip.
We wonโt let the light go out.
Watch Peter Yarrow and his daughter Bethany singing a rousing chorus of โIf I Had a Hammerโ (30 second clip)
The Village Trip ended its sixth annual run at the close of September, having entertained, elevated and energized Greenwich Village and the East Village/Lower East Side for twoย thrillingย weeks.
Fifteen days, 43 events โ it was quite a ride, from which the tiny band of festival organizers has now just about recovered! Looking through the scores of photos that captured almost every aspect of TVT24 reminded us of just how far weโve come since 2018, when The Village Trip was little more than a long weekend of events, featuring a truly unique jazz concert which people still talk about and Suzanne Vega headlining our signature free concert in Washington Square Park.
Weโve made lots of friends since then, on-stage and off, and the festival is now a fixture on New York Cityโs late-summer calendar. This year we asked audience members to fill out a short survey and weโre gratified by the responses. Wrote one respondent:
โKeep up the great work! You are keeping alive and enlarging the true spirit of the Village!โ
And that is indeed our goal โ
to honor the past, celebrate the present, and inspire the future,
as Deana Stafford McCloud, esteemed curator at the Museum Collective succinctly puts it.
Hopefully, at The Village Trip 2024 we managed all three.
For a slide show with captions, click on the images
Thereโs not space to mention all the highlights and in some ways itโs invidious to mention just a few โ but here we go: Framing the Village, the festivalโs fourth art show, opened to wait lines on Eighth Street. Gail Merrifield Papp and a stellar cast of musicians and two brilliant young actors joined David Amram for a concert presentation of highlights from the music he wrote for the first 12 years of Shakespeare in the Park.
Janis Siegel, with Yaron Gershovsky and John di Martino and a host of other superlative musicians, celebrated the songbooks of Cy Coleman, and Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The NYC premiere of Lead Belly: The Man Who Invented Rock & Roll moved many in the audience to tears and it was followed by a fascinating conversation between Alvin Singh II, Lead Bellyโs great-nephew, and Anna Canoni, Woody Guthrieโs granddaughter.
Over two evenings we honored the legacies of the great Laura Nyro, whose music Bette Midler thought โthe very essence of New York City,โ and of Mick Moloney and Dan Milner, musicians, and scholars whose influence is heard wherever Irish music is played. The gender-bending theatrics of The Cockettes were recalled in words and photos by co-founder Fayette Hauser. And the timeless brilliance of James Baldwin, โthe poet of the revolution,โ was honored in his centennial year with an event which won high praise from another survey respondent, who wrote:
โWell written and imaginative production. The actor portraying James Baldwin was his incarnation!โ
The festivalโs Classical and New Music program celebrated the Village as a magnet to many innovators who pushed the boundaries of arts and ideas and changed โ sometimes directed โ the musical conversation. Among them Jonn Cage, whose piano music was performed by Eliza Garth in a concert described as โexquisite,โ and โextremely beautiful.โ Cage featured alongside Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives in a concert exploring โGenius and Invention.โ Georgia OโKeeffe believed music could be โtranslated into something for the eye.โ At the Salmagundi Club, art was translated into something for the ear, with musical interpretations of paintings by three of the Villageโs most iconic artists โ Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, and OโKeeffe.
Guitarist John Schneider took listeners on a journey into โthe American Primitiveโ with works by Harry Partch and Lou Harrison played on microtonal adapted guitars. An innovative program explored the musical melting pot of the East Village tenement courtyard and its influence on later generations of composers in a concert featuring talented young students from the Third Street Music School alongside the trio Raices Negras. And GuitarFest24 โ The Village Tripโs celebration of the guitar in all its glorious diversity โ brought to an expansive conclusion the festivalโs American Primitive and Inventors of Genius Weekend, which included a Microtonal Village Conference and drew delegates from around the world.
As always, The Village Trip was bookended by free outdoor events. The Village Trip on West 4th Street, co-hosted by the West Village BID, was a glorious sun-drenched, sound-enriched afternoon centered around the festivalโs Artist Emeritus, David Amram and friends, among them bouzouki maestro Avram Pengas and versatile folk and roots musicians Our Band. The closing concert in Washington Square Park celebrated girl power โ Jamie Barnett, Tish and Snooky, and BETTY, all of them singing in the rain to a crowd that happily danced among the puddles. In between, there were walks led by our entertaining and erudite trio of guides Marc Kehoe, Ann McDermott, and Marc Catapano, each exploring aspects of Downtownโs fabled history. And there was a very special tour of the Roy Lichtenstein Studio and Home, now home to the Whitneyโs Independent Study Program and rarely open to the public. What a trip that was!
Thank you to everyone who made it all happen. Our civic and business partners, our board, our small creative team, our donors, and volunteers โ and all our wonderful performers and artists and tour guides. It wouldnโt be the same without you!
And, thanks to all those who came to Village Trip events โ it was wonderful to meet and chat with so many of you. Thereโs still time to fill out our short survey.
If you believe in our mission of shining a light in the darkness and having some fun, please support The Village Trip. We are now a 501c3 non-profit organization so your donations are tax-deductible. However modest (or immodest!) they are, please know that your dollars pay our artists and production costs โ everyone else is a volunteer. Your support is essential for us to continue creating and presenting a festival that captures the spirit of Greenwich Village. We look forward to welcoming you around the same time next year.
Thank you and stay tuned!
Liz & Cliff
The Village Trip Festival thanks its sponsors, partners and supporters.
