Maverick Concert Hall

Maverick Concert Hall
Maverick Concert Hall, Summer 2006
Maverick Concert Hall is located in New York
Maverick Concert Hall
Location within New York
Maverick Concert Hall is located in the United States
Maverick Concert Hall
Location within the United States
LocationOff Maverick Rd., Hurley, New York
Coordinates42°0′51″N 74°7′6″W / 42.01417°N 74.11833°W / 42.01417; -74.11833
Area29.5 acres (11.9 ha)
Built1916
ArchitectWhite, Hervey
NRHP reference No.99001492[1]
Added to NRHPDecember 9, 1999

Maverick Concert Hall was built in 1916 and was part of the Maverick Artist Colony in Hurley, New York. The Maverick developed out of the Maverick Festival, an early 20th-century communal arts gathering near Woodstock that combined music, theater, and outdoor performance in a rustic woodland setting. Contemporary newspaper accounts described the Maverick Festival as a rustic outdoor arts community near Woodstock where music, theater, and dance were staged in converted woodland performance spaces. [2]

The concert hall hosts the Maverick Concerts, a summer chamber music festival. Alexander Platt is the current music director.[3] The mainstay of the series, which runs from the end of June through early September, is to be found in the chamber music concerts performed by distinguished soloists and ensembles on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons.

The Maverick Festival, a precursor to the Maverick Concerts, was founded in 1915 by Hervey White, and by 1931 the festival suspended.[4][5] Maverick’s early years portrayed the colony as an experiment in independent artistic living that drew prominent artists, musicians, and literary figures to Woodstock. [6]

Maverick Artist Colony history

“Maverick” is the name given to the collaborative colony for artists that Hervey White, a “freethinker, socialist, writer, and printer with a genius for friendship,”[7] established on the outskirts of the town of Woodstock, on 102 acres he had bought in 1905.[8] White's intention was to offer “young talent a chance to earn its living until its recognition.”[7]

Hervey White had been an early founder and worker at the nearby Byrdcliffe Colony and he was one of the first to leave and start a new colony independently.[9] The Byrdcliffe Colony had been "well-financed and run somewhat autocratically" with a strong sense of designing and planning a legacy and Maverick was "scruffier, more truly communal and anarchic".[10]

Maverick Festival (1915–1931)

Costume design by Russel Wright for "Cubist Circus" at the 1923 Maverick Festival

The Maverick Festival's opening concert was in August 1915 to raise funds in order to build a well for the colony, and was patterned after the European fairs.[11][4] The following year in July 1916, a substantial article about the event was published in The New York Times, under the headline “Music Goes Back to Nature.”[12][13] The program consisted of Haydn's String Quartet Op. 77, No. 1, Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei for cello and piano, and Robert Schumann's piano quintet.[13]

By the early 1920s, the Maverick Festival had become a major cultural event in the Catskills, drawing large crowds and elaborate costumed pageants involving artists, actors, and visitors from New York and beyond. [14] The festival was popular and as the audience grew larger, they introduced concert camping, and became harder to control.[15][16] There was a lot of drinking and hard partying happened at the festival, even during the Prohibition banning alcohol.[9] After 1931, the Maverick Festival was suspended indefinitely due to unsavory crowds and financial pressures.[4]

The Maverick Festival is often named as being one of the precursors to the 1969 Woodstock festival.[4][9]

Maverick Concert Hall

The historic concert hall is located in Hurley, New York, on the outskirts of Woodstock, in Ulster County. The barn-like, rectangular building with its gambrel roof was built in 1916 with a roof of asphalt and wood shingles and a frame of heavy timber, to which the walls—sheaths of wide planks—are nailed directly. The hall was constructed without the services of an architect and with volunteer labor, as part of the arts community known as the Maverick Colony.

The wooden construction and acoustics create an environment well suited to the intimacy of live chamber music, and the Maverick has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999.[17][18]

Maverick Horse

In the summer of 1924, Mr. White commissioned John Flannagan, a gifted but penniless[19] sculptor, to create a symbol for the colony. Flannagan, one of the first direct carvers to work in the United States, was paid the prevailing wage of fifty cents an hour. Using an ax as his major tool, in a few days he had carved a monumental piece from the trunk of a chestnut tree.

The statue depicts the horse emerging from the outstretched hands of a man, who appears, in turn, to be emerging from the earth. The iconic 18-foot sculpture stood, for 36 years, at the entrance of the road to the concert hall and the now-vanished theater. After the horse began to weather alarmingly, it was moved to a nearby studio until 1979, when it was moved to the stage of the Maverick Concert Hall. A plaque at its base indicates that it was restored in 2006. It stands there still.[20]

John Cage and 4’33"

On August 29, 1952, the young pianist and composer David Tudor premiered at the Maverick a well-known and controversial work by the American exponent of experimental music John Cage, one of the leading post-war avant-garde composers. Arguably Cage's most famous piece, 4′33″ (which was originally scored for piano) has commonly been referred to as “four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.” Cage demonstrated, however, that the absence of notes was not the same thing as silence. The composer's stated intention[21] was for the audience to listen to the “accidental” sounds around them: the birdsong, the wind in the trees, the rain on the roof, the sounds of the audience members themselves.

Recent history and Maverick Concerts

The concert hall hosts the Maverick Concerts, a summer chamber music festival. Alexander Platt is the current music director. The mainstay of the series, which runs from the end of June through early September, is to be found in the chamber music concerts performed by distinguished soloists and ensembles on Sunday afternoons. Jazz and contemporary music have been given more prominence in recent seasons, and Saturday morning Maverick Family Concerts are popular with music lovers of all ages.

References

  1. ↑ National Park Service, Department of the Interior. "National Register of Historic Places". National Register of Historic Places Database. National Park Service. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  2. ↑ "Quarry Turned Into a Theater". The Daily Freeman. Kingston, New York. August 18, 1915. p. 6. The scene of the Maverick Festival is a huge stone quarry near Woodstock, now converted into a theater. New York society has discovered the place and for every performance hundreds flock to witness one of the most unusual entertainments ever presented. The quarry has been transformed into an amphitheater. Seats have been arranged upon the rocky terraces and the stage occupies a natural recess in the stone. Pine trees and the wooded hills surrounding the theater form a picturesque background for the productions.
  3. ↑ "Alexander Platt, Music Director". Maverick Concerts website. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "The Maverick Festival". New Paltz. 2007. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Quarry Turned Into a Theater". The Daily Freeman. Kingston, New York. August 18, 1917. p. 6. Hervey White, founder of the colony, has sought to make the Maverick a center for artistic experiment where creative work may be pursued outside ordinary commercial conditions.
  6. ↑ "Maverick Theater Opening a Success". The Daily Freeman. Kingston, New York. August 28, 1915. p. 5. The Maverick colony under the direction of Hervey White was said to represent a reaction against commercialized artistic life and an effort to foster creative expression in a more natural and independent setting. A number of well known artists, musicians and literary figures associated with Woodstock and New York participated in the festivities. The opening was regarded by attendees as both socially and artistically successful.
  7. 1 2 Flanagan, Nina. "Hervey White: Brief life of a maverick impresario,1866-1944". Harvard Magazine. Harvard University. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  8. ↑ State University of New York at New Paltz. "Hervey White and the Maverick Art Colony". The Maverick Festival, Woodstock, 1915-1931. SUNY New Paltz. Archived from the original on May 31, 2012. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  9. 1 2 3 Genocchio, Benjamin (August 14, 2003). "100 Years Ago, When the Arts Found Woodstock". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  10. ↑ Burdick, John. "How Woodstock got to be an arts colony". Hudson Valley One. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  11. ↑ "THEATRE IN STONE QUARRY.; Maverick Artists to Hold a Festival Near Woodstock, N.Y." The New York Times. August 25, 1915. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  12. ↑ Updegraff, Allan (July 30, 1916). "MUSIC GOES BACK TO NATURE; Masterpieces of World's Great Composers Played in Poetic Surroundings at Woodstock". The New York Times. p. Section F, Page 10. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  13. 1 2 Updegraff, Allan (July 30, 1916). "MUSIC GOES BACK TO NATURE; Masterpieces of World's Great Composers Played in Poetic Surroundings at Woodstock". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  14. ↑ "Maverick Artists Give Their Pageant". The New York Times. August 27, 1920. p. 11. Never has there been a greater variety of costumes at a pageant in the Catskills, fully 1,000 people, including natives of the section, visitors from other places, authors, artists, sculptors, actors and actresses, appeared in costumes ranging from beggar and beggar maid to the king and queen.
  15. ↑ "The Maverick Festival: A Brief History". Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz. 2007. Retrieved May 18, 2026. More unfortunate however was the growing presence of outside bootleggers in this age of Prohibition, gamblers, and other unsavory characters. Audiences grew larger and more difficult to control every year, and in 1929 the New York Herald Tribune reported that there had been over 6000 people in attendance. That year the Festival was marred by ugly scenes of drunken brawls, robberies, and even rapes, which necessitated intervention by the State Patrol. By 1930 local censure and protest had grown to such a degree over what was perceived by many to be a sinful and immoral event that White was compelled to dampen the spirit of the Festival for that year. Under the weight of outside pressure and financial difficulties White suspended the Maverick Festival definitively in 1931.
  16. ↑ "Last Events Draw Near in Vacationists' Haunts". The New York Times. August 30, 1931. p. S9. Retrieved January 9, 2020. WOODSTOCK, N. Y. - The annual Maverick Festival will be held on Friday afternoon and evening under the management of Hervey White, founder of the Maverick colony in Woodstock. As in the past, this famous festival is being held at the close of the season. There will be outdoor camping around blazing fires and a camp-fire supper. A grand promenade and display of carnival and peasant costumes of all colors, styles and periods; competitive games and trick horseback riding will be the amusement of the afternoon, while a theatrical performance will be given in the evening, directed by Don Oscar Becque and Dorothy Nicoll.
  17. ↑ John A. Bonafide (July 1999). National Register of Historic Places Registration: New York SP Maverick Concert Hall. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved December 2, 2025. (Downloading may be slow.)
  18. ↑ Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Images. "Four Images of Maverick Concert Hall". Accompanying photos. New York State. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  19. ↑ Craven, Wayne (1968). Sculpture in America. New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. pp. 580.
  20. ↑ Rosenblum, Cornelia Hartmann. "The Maverick Horse". Maverick Concerts History. Maverick Concerts, Inc. Archived from the original on August 27, 2010. Retrieved April 30, 2020.
  21. ↑ Kostelanetz, Richard (2003). Conversing With John Cage. New York, N.Y.`: Routledge. pp. 69–70. ISBN 0-415-93792-2.
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