Though the path of bluegrass and folk-rock is well-worn, it gained new life in 2004 when Trampled by Turtles made slow but steady progress to the inner circle of indie rock. Since then, the Duluth, Minnesota, band turned out one fast-pickin’ chart climber after another, and played in all 50 states and around the globe, until Dave Simonett became the first to say “uncle” and step away from full-time touring to seek creative space. After a two-year hiatus, the band returns with an ironically titled new album, Life Is Good on the Open Road, and offers the same barn-burner live shows that blazed the group’s trail in the beginning.
Month: September 2018
In the spirit of a barn-raising, friends from around the country gathered to help at a vineyard planting party. It was April of this year, and the crowd came armed with s’mores, guitars, babies, potato salad, and sunscreen. Once tents were pitched in a neighboring field, I trekked through a patch of woods to get to the planting site. This was also high morel season, and in the forest my eyes routinely scanned for mushroom treasure (none found), but as the ground transformed from a dry leafy carpet to a verdant sun-splashed lawn, I looked up. We had arrived at Beacon Tree Vineyard. Perched at the crest of a series of gently sloping hills, to the left, the vineyard disappeared into the same forest from which we had just emerged.
Underfoot, silty loam laid a solid foundation for something special. In geology-speak, this kind of semi-permeable and well-draining soil is called Manteo. Once used primarily for corn and hay production in Virginia, Manteo soils have proven to be superior sites for cabernet franc. As with other regional farms, the Beacon Tree vineyard land has a history of hay production and in the early 1900s, was a dairy farm.
Local musician Mariana Bell grew up on this farm, and when her family purchased it in the late 20th century, it functioned as “a working horse farm and steeplechase breeding operation in addition to cattle production,” says Bell.
She has fond memories of the old cedar tree that “stands in the middle of the field as a beacon,” says Jonathan Baird, Bell’s husband, as he explains the significance of the vineyard’s namesake tree.
Though this is the first time they’ve planted a vineyard, Baird comes from a solid wine background in retail and restaurants. With Bell’s close ties to this land, and Baird’s love of all things wine, the Beacon Tree vineyard, seems destined. But getting to this point was anything but a clear-cut journey.
Baird studied art history at UVA and cooked at local Charlottesville restaurants before moving to Los Angeles and diving deep into wine at Greenblatt’s Deli-Restaurant & Fine Wine Shop, a historic restaurant and retail shop in Hollywood. After three years at Greenblatt’s, he joined the sommelier team at Hatfield’s, a now-closed restaurant in L.A. known for its unique wine program. Baird worked for sommelier Peter Birmingham before taking the helm of the wine program in 2011. During his four year tenure at Hatfield’s, the program ranked as a semi-finalist for the James Beard Best Wine Program award, and Wine Enthusiast featured the establishment as one of America’s 100 Best Wine Restaurants.
Baird describes his approach to wine list creation as “familiar yet different. Many of the wines were obscure, but I’d make sure you’d get what you wanted flavor-wise.” His first foray into agriculture on Keswick land follows a similar ethos. In addition to the newly planted Beacon Tree Vineyard (which will not produce commercial fruit until at least 2020), there’s an organic garden of diversified crops that echoes the description “familiar yet different”: heirloom tomatoes the size of golf balls that glow half green and half purple, watermelons with pale snowy flesh, okra that bleeds the color of a fire engine, and fist-sized yellow squashes the shape of acorns and concentrated with earthy flavor.
When Baird and Bell decided to plant a vineyard, Baird signed up for viticulture classes with Jake Busching at PVCC, and took a crash course in practical grape farming. Acclaimed local vineyard consultant Chris Hill stopped by the site as well, and “talked me out of growing syrah,” says Baird with a smile. After digging soil pits with geologist Ernest “Bubba” Beasley, they came up with a plan.
With seven acres dedicated to the vineyard, four are planted with cabernet franc, one is planted with chardonnay; the remaining two will likely become chenin blanc. Chenin blanc?
“In my brain, if franc does well, we should be able to do chenin as a Loire-like counterpart,” says Baird. “Cabernet franc and chenin blanc grow together in France’s Loire Valley, and though Virginia has imported and committed to the cabernet franc part of the equation, there is almost no local chenin blanc.”
Poking around through Bell and Baird’s wine cellar, you’ll discover the dedication to chenin blanc, chardonnay, and cabernet franc is a pretty serious thing. They have the benchmark bottlings from around the world, and plan to have their fruit stand up next to the best. They’ll experiment with the first 2019 harvest, then sell grapes to Jake Busching beginning with the 2020 vintage.
A newly planted vineyard is not a pretty site; it’s certainly not the bucolic wedding backdrop you might imagine. Baby grape vines look like thick twigs sticking up from the ground, gnarly little things rising up from mounds of clumped topsoil. Soon after planting a new vineyard, the landscape is temporarily interrupted as each vine is enshrouded with a ‘grow tube’ to protect it through the early months as the roots stretch deeper toward the Manteo. But despite the early aesthetics, the Beacon Tree site has some sort of indescribable X-factor going for it. When you step onto the vineyard, there is a palpable sacredness to the place. You get the same feeling when you first put your feet on a site like Corton in Burgundy, Falling Man in New York, or Bloom’s Field in Santa Barbara—you know instinctively that, no matter what, special wine will come from here.
ARTS Pick: Trae Pierce & the T-Stones
Florida outfit Trae Pierce & the T-Stones arrives to funk things up with some hard-edged hip-hop mixed with rock and blues. Pierce is an accomplished bassist and four-time Grammy Award-winner (with Blind Boys of Alabama) who made his name as a member of The Ohio Players. The musical “monster” has joined forces with an ensemble of high-energy young musicians to tear up the Southeast with their non-stop stage party.
Saturday, September 8. Free, 5pm. IX Arts Park, 522 Second St. SE. 970-3260.
First Fridays: September 7
Tim O’Kane has made a career as a figurative painter, an artist capturing people napping on couches, teacups sitting on countertops, and bowls brimming with eggplants, all in a hyperrealistic style.
But viewers of “One Intention in a Troubled World,” O’Kane’s September show at Chroma Projects will see a different facet of the artist’s work. The series features objects wrapped in paper and sitting in boxes, variously concealed and revealed; it explores in O’Kane’s signature style the abstract subject matter of dreams and dreaming.
O’Kane says the series developed intuitively between 2008 and now, and while it’s hard for him to discern exactly when he had the idea, he says it could have started in New York, with the purchase of an assortment of objects in a Chinese store. O’Kane noticed how the cashier carefully wrapped each individual object in newspaper covered in Chinese characters that reminded him of the lines on some stones he found in Sicily.
Back in his studio, he arranged objects in paper (some is printed with Japanese translations of his own poetry) and in boxes. He says that as the series of enigmatic still lifes progressed over the decade, the concept became more abstracted, more surreal, an exercise in discerning “significant meaning that’s outside the idea of figurative work.”
In “Night Yields,” a box floats above a sheet of creased, dark blue paper that’s been folded and unfolded, like the night. The box, which O’Kane calls “a tangle of things” presents to the viewer a mystery: What’s inside? But, because the box is a painting, there’s no way to open it.
For O’Kane, wondering what’s inside the box is a mystery akin to waking up knowing that you’ve dreamed. Perhaps parts of the dream linger and you try to make sense of it as it sticks with you throughout the day, in good ways or in bad. The dream is both real and not real, it means something and yet nothing at all. It’s a significance that, even when we think we can see it clearly, we can never truly possess.
Next Week
There’ll be lots to see when C-VILLE looks at art from inside the gallery. What do curators consider when filling local walls? Who decided to place that sculpture in that corner? What are we not seeing in local art?
FF Angelo Jewelry 220 E. Main St. “Out of Season,” featuring Mae Read’s oil painting meditations on permanence/impermanence, perceptions of beauty, and solitude. 5:30-7:30pm.
Annie Gould Gallery 121B S. Main St., Gordonsville. An exhibition of works by William Van Doren and Erica Lohan, focusing on distant and intimate points of nature. Opens Sept. 8.
Art on the Trax 5784 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. A show of Frederick Nichols’ four decades of work, all concerned with beauty and picturesque landscape. Opens Sept. 8.
Batten Institute at the Darden School of Business. “Luna Moth,” a mural by Christy Baker; and “Small Graces,” an exhibition of photography by Bill Mauzy. Opens Sept. 12.
FF The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. Artists Jum Jirapan, Karina Monroy, and Aidyn Mills have put down the ocular lens and taken up the heart, the mind, and the body to create and celebrate art in this joint exhibition of the work that they’ve developed in The Bridge’s collaborative residency. 5:30pm.
Buck Mountain Episcopal Church 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. “Buddha Cat and More: Mixed-Media Drawings and Book” by Susan McCulley.
FF Chroma Projects 103 W. Water St. “One Intention in a Troubled World,” featuring a collection of paintings by Tim O’Kane that centers on around the wrapping of things. 5-7pm.
FF CitySpace Art Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. An exhibition featuring work from VSA Art artists. 5:30-7:30pm.
Create Gallery at Indoor Biotechnologies, 700 Harris St. “The Livestock Marker Show Continues,” an exhibition of Kathy Kuhlman’s work made from phototransfer and livestock markers on paper or clayboard.
Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Crystals, Textures, and Flowing Gazes,” featuring pottery by Leah Olivier. Opens Sept. 8.
FF C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “A Passion for Purpose,” an exhibition of pottery by Nan Rothwell. 6-8pm.
FF Dovetail Design + Cabinetry 309 E. Water St. Featuring Brian Geiger’s resin-poured works exploring the boundaries between fluid and solid. 5-7pm.
The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “In My Room: Artists Paint the Interior 1950-Now”; “Reflections: Native Art Across Generations”; “Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu”; and “Oriforme” by Jean Arp.
FF The Garage 100 W. Jefferson St. “Hole in the Wall,” a one-night-only popup exhibition featuring large-scale abstract works from Chattanooga, Tennessee, artist Addie Chapin. 5:30-7:30pm.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States,” revealing the ways in which, since 1988, Indigenous Australian artists have forged one of the most globally significant art movements of our time; and “Experimental Beds,” in which Judy Watson removes the whitewash from concealed histories.
Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Out of the Light Into the Light,” an exhibition of still-life paintings by art historian, critic, philosopher, and painter David Summers.
FF McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. “Verisimilitude,” a selection of abstract works on canvas by J.M. Henry that echo ghosts, flags, and shields, in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery; and the 27th consecutive Central Virginia Watercolor Guild annual juried exhibition. 5:30-7:30pm.
FF Milli Coffee Roasters 400 Preston Ave. Ste. 150. “Braveheart,” featuring acrylic paintings on canvas by Kaitlin Jungles. 7-10pm.
FF New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. An exhibition of paintings by Uzo Njoku. 5-7pm.
Northside Library 705 Rio Rd. W. “Fragile Eden,” a photography show by Gary Powell.
FF Roy Wheeler Realty Co. 404 Eighth St. NE. An exhibition of work by Sara Gondwe, who uses melted crayons and metallic fabric paint to create abstracts, trees, florals, fish, and more. 5-7:30pm.
FF The Salad Maker 300 E. Market St. A show of digital art by J. Perry Fitzhugh, an artist making full use of current technology without succumbing to it. 6-7:30pm.
FF Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the main gallery, “water. poison. drink. dive.,” an exhibition of paintings, works on paper, and puppets by Lana Guerra; in the Dové Gallery, the “Teeny Tiny Trifecta” group show featuring small-scale works in a variety of media by more than 70 artists. 5:30-7:30pm.
Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital 500 Martha Jefferson Dr. An exhibition of five landscape paintings by impressionist artist Lee Nixon.
Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. Featuring work from the BozART collective. Opens Sept. 8.
FF Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. Original acrylic paintings and giclée on canvas prints by Jack Graves III. 6-8pm.
FF Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Don’ttalk to strangers,” a series of portraits of artist Richard Needham’s fellow humans, captured with a Pentax 67 medium-format camera. 5-8pm.
The Great Frame Up 1860 Rio Hill Ctr. Entries in a photography contest to benefit the Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist 717 Rugby Rd. “Abstract Meditation on Geology,” featuring paintings by Shirley Paul. Opens Sept. 9.
FF VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “Main Street: Two Artists’ Viewpoints,” a show of photography by Vicenzo Lupinetti and Steve Wilcox. 5:30-7:30pm.
FF Top Knot Studio 103 Fifth St. SE. “An Artist’s Process,” a show of mixed media work by Sri Kodakalla. 5:30-7:30.
The Wayne Theatre 521 W. Main St., Waynesboro. “13 Perspectives,” an exhibition of contemporary fibert art by members of the Washington, D.C.-area group New Image.
FF Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “She Said, He Said,” featuring Valencia Robin’s vibrant, lyrical paintings and Matt Smithson’s bold, surreal illustrations. 5-7:30pm.
FF WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. “Abstract by Intuition,” acrylic and multi-media works by Philip Martin. 5-7pm.
Woodberry Forest School, 898 Woodberry Forest Rd., Woodberry. “Coming Together,” a show of large oil paintings by Richard Wyvill and a composite piece of unique canvases by the Firnew Farm Artists’ Circle.
FF First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions.
Though beloved by some, chamber music enjoyed its heyday in the 18th century but is less popular today, with the average person possibly knowing little about the classical style beyond its name.
Tim Summers has devoted his career to changing that. Co-founding the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival in 2000 alongside Raphael Bell, (when they were both young musicians fresh out of Juilliard), Summers now has nearly two decades of experience under his belt—and that’s crucial to the innovative concepts of 2018’s program.
“While there is never really a theme to the festival, there is always a trajectory,” says Summers. 2018’s trajectory? Asian influences on chamber music. Many attribute solely European influences to the genre, but Summers wants to highlight Eastern contributions to “present some of the contacts that classical music has made with Asia over the past century.”
Summers first became aware of these contacts when he realized how often he was traveling to Asian cities and countries to play music—Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. On one trip, he met with Keith Lipson, a clarinet player for the Beijing Symphony Orchestra and one of the performers in this year’s festival. “His wife is a pipa player…and he was learning traditional [Asian] instruments,” Summers says. “There was an element of exchange which was not merely casual.”
Last October’s meeting with Lipson inspired Summers to pursue what he dubs the “European/Asian/American exchange.” He spent the ensuing months studying the intersection of chamber music from all three cultures and the media in which it appeared—including world-famous movies with Asian roots like Akira Kurosawa’s Ran and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Japanese legend Toru Takemitsu and the more contemporary Chinese composer Tan Dun created music for the respective films, and works from both musicians will be featured in the festival, alongside European selections from household-name composers like Bach and Brahms.
Summers attributes big themes to the pieces, describing the music as being about “harmony, voice and nature, and materials and structure.” Though tying together three separate world forces, he wants the experience to transcend geography. “Towards the end of the festival, the idea of location disappears somewhat,” he says.
Location may vanish, but confusion about certain terminology may persist. Lipson’s wife’s pipa, for example. Though it’s an instrument central to Chinese music and has been for centuries, it’s unlikely to appear in a Western ensemble. As one of its masters, Lin Ma is among the most qualified people alive to talk about the pipa—and she also happens to be one of the festival’s featured musicians.
Ma, who grew up in China, has multiple names for her instrument of choice, including “Chinese lute” and “king of the plucked string,” describing it as a “half-pear-shaped instrument” with four strings. Her love affair with the pipa began when she was just three-and-a-half years old, and although she was dwarfed by the instrument’s size, she began playing the pipa as soon as she was physically able, practicing “six to eight hours a day,” even as a child. “I didn’t have time to play with other children, because I had to practice my instrument,” Ma says.
The enormous amount of practice paid off when Ma attended the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the “top music school in China,” and got her master’s in pipa performing. It was a formative time, she says, not in the least because she studied under pipa master Guanghua Li. “He gave me more space to form my individual performing style, which is essential to my playing,” Ma says.
Ma will perform three times total at CCMF, but she said she’s most excited for what she’ll play on September 16 at PVCC’s Dickinson Theatre: a contemporary piece by Tan Dun. “It’s called Ghost Opera,” Ma says, adding that it evokes “water, stone, paper, and metal” imagery. “This is a very interesting and creative piece, not like the traditional music style of the pipa.”
Summers explains that the decision to bring Ma onboard, like many decisions made for this year’s festival, resulted from that first meeting with Lipson in Beijing. The original plan was to bring Lipson and his wife, but due to visa issues, it became clear that both could not attend. Lipson’s wife recommended Ma, who was already in New York at the time. “She is a wonderful musician, and we look forward to working with her,” says Summers.
The festival, among other things, is a way to see “what we can find between us,” says Summers. He expects the cultural exchange to be a valuable one. “I think the idea was not to give the impression that we had something to teach about Asia,” Summers says. “Only something to present and explore.”
Lin Ma appears at the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival
September 10 at Live Arts
September 13 at Old Cabell Hall
September 16 at Dickinson Theatre
ARTS Pick: The Jellyman’s Daughter
The Jellyman’s Daughter has gone from busking in the streets of Edinburgh eight years ago to making an album in 2018 that BBC Radio’s Ricky Ross calls “One of my favourite records of the year.” Known for soulful harmonies accompanied by cello, guitar, and mandolin, the duo’s music transcends go-to folk and bluegrass to become exceptional acoustic rock. $10-12, 7:30pm. The Front Porch, 221 E. Water St. 806-7062.