On Saturday, September 10, The Village Trip 2022 will kick off on Eighth Street with David Amram and a host of friends sounding a fanfare that heralds two weeks of celebration across Greenwich Village—both East and West. We even have a musical procession – Tilted Axes, a twenty-piece guitar orchestra that will strike out from St John’s in the Village and head through Washington Square Park to Astor Place and then back down Eighth Street where they will jam with David. You might call it a Jamram! Sponsored by Village Alliance, which calls this event The Eighth Street Experience, it will be a family-friendly afternoon of music and more – live painting, children’s games, animal adoption, food and fun.

From then on, the beat will never stop. The first weekend alone features walking tours celebrating Mrs Maisel, Downtown movie locations and Village architecture. John Strausbaugh and Clayton Patterson will be talking about their new book, Offbeats: Lower East Side Portraits, and of course Framing the Village, the inaugural Village Trip art show, curated by artist and tour guide Marc Kehoe, which runs from September 6 – 30 at our festival hub, St John’s in the Village. Marc has designed our wonderful new poster (below, click on the image to download it).

The afternoon and evening of September 10 also features The Village Trip GuitarFest: Ah… Let’s Go Back to the Village, its title taken from a new piece by David Amram, one of several works to be premiered at TVT22. It’s also the first concert in our Classical and New Music Program, curated by William Anderson, guitarist and composer. He is forging relationships between The Village Trip and a diverse group of outstanding performers and well-established new music organizations in the US and around the world, crafting events that fit The Village Trip’s mission. To William, the Village is an artistic meeting place that encourages a “One-Music” approach, a holographic way of programming that is possible in few other places anywhere in the world.

For example, last year, “Frank Zappa Calls Varese,” a concert at the Bitter End, celebrated one of the more surprising resonances between American psychedelia and French Symbolisme and Modernisme This year, Hilliard Greene and the Jazz Expressions will share a program with the Momenta String Quartet celebrating the friendship of Charlie Parker and German Jewish refugee Stefan Wolpe. Bebop and Wolpe both have an energy in their work that is akin to the energy of abstract expressionist painting and the artists Wolpe made a point of befriending.

This year, Composers Concordance, Cygnus, The League/ISCM, Cutting Edge Concerts, and Marsyas Productions are collaborating to form an extensive offering of Greenwich Village composers and musicians. Performers and composers from the US, Spain, Italy, Austria will be participating.  And The Village Trip will soon go international, with events abroad. Masha Kaléko, who lived on Minetta Street in Greenwich Village, was twice a refugee. The Village Trip’s Kaléko Project will travel to Kaleko’s home countries, Poland and Germany. Gamel Woolsey who lived on Patchin Place in the 1920s but spent most of her life in Spain, will be remembered through a concert at the Gerald Brenan House in Churriana, near Malaga.

Global Greenwich Village indeed! Manhattan Borough Historian Robert Snyder will address this topic in his inaugural Village Trip Lecture on September 15 at the Jefferson Market Library.

The Village Trip strives for “hi jinks and high ideals,” as public historian Kathleen Hulser puts it. Kathleen will lead two walks celebrating Downtown’s rabble-rousing women – makers of “good trouble” as the late John Lewis used to say. Among them was Eleanor Roosevelt whose legacy, sixty years after her death, will be assessed by the distinguished panel Kathleen will convene on September 21 at the LGBTQ Center to discuss “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights”.

This is our fifth year and the fourth Festival, and we feel very privileged to be presenting so many distinguished figures across its fifteen days. Privileged too, to have been able to draw on the advice of William, Kathleen and Robert. Their contributions are immeasurable.

And The Village Trip would never have become reality were it not for the friendship, wisdom and generosity of the inimitable David Amram, Artist Emeritus and the heart and soul of the Festival; and of Doug Yeager, who has shared the knowledge and contacts acquired during his own long and esteemed career in music management.

If we build it, they will come…. That belief has always spurred us onward. We have built a community of Trippers and we are already planning TVT23 and beyond. Please support us, because it really does take a Village.

See you soon – enjoy the summer meantime.

LIZ & CLIFF

Get a taste of the vibe in our new video, the splendid work of Michael Jacobsohn, assiduous chronicler of the Downtown scene. The Village Trip at Café Figaro