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Tompkins Corners Family Music Festival Jazz & Folk Concert Takes Place July 1
The Historic Tompkins Corners United Methodist Church is presenting a special concert, in the sanctuary, featuring some of Putnam Valley's best-known musicians.
Jazz vocalist Michelle LeBlanc is a popular bandleader bringing great jazz musicians together for performances at clubs, libraries, museums, concert halls and festivals. She has also performed in New York City at The Friars Club, The Riverside Chapel, Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room with the Cab Calloway Tribute Orchestra and at Town Hall at the annual Mabel Mercer Cabaret Foundation Showcase.
Michelle has incorporated her love of history into her performances by producing a repertoire of shows that celebrate jazz, a uniquely American art form, as a way of telling the story of America. The series, Jazz: The American Story, features songs and stories tracing the development of jazz through historical events.
John Cohen is best known as a performer of old-time music with his group The New Lost City Ramblers. His original field recordings from Kentucky and Peru are in the collection of the Library of Congress. His recording of a Peruvian wedding song is on the Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. John has lived in Putnam Valley for 42 years. He is a songwriter, photographer and filmmaker of note. His photographs have been exhibited in many nationally-known museums and galleries here and in Europe. Many of his works, including a film about the Tompkins Corners Church, are at the Smithsonian. A recent PBS documentary on Bob Dylan featured long interviews with John and Bob and many photos he had taken of Dylan over the years. The Smithsonian is starting their own cable station in the fall and are currently filming a documentary about John and his music and includes David Amram and Pete Seeger.
Lora Lee Ecobelli and Leo Burmester are both singer, musicians, songwriters and actors. Lora Lee is a talented vocalist and has recorded many of her original songs which touch on many aspects of the human condition. Leo has performed in Hamlet for the New York Shakespeare Festival, as well as the Broadway hits, Big River and the original cast of Les Miserables. He appeared in the films Passion Fish and The Last Temptation of Christ.
Stephen Andersen, musician, teacher and Town Historian was recently honored by the Putnam Valley Historical Society for his many years of volunteering as the curator of the town's historical records. Stephen plays many instruments, piano, pipe organ, string bass and guitar. He doesn't just play, his curiosity has led him to learn to tune pianos and repair pipe organs. He has played at many concerts, landmark anniversaries, etc.' at Tompkins Corners going back to 1987 and is now the church organist.
The Peekskill Hollow String Band is a Putnam County favorite. Regulars are Drew Howland, Jan and Kate Hoekstra, Maaika Hoekstra, Dennis Klubnick, Patrick Cummings, Leo Burmester and Lora Lee Ecobelli. They have performed their home-style brand of music at local festivals and coffeehouses for many years. Always a crowd pleaser, this unique string band and sincere vocals will have your feet tapping.
Admission is $12, $10 for seniors Refreshments will be available
The church is located at 729 Peekskill Hollow Road, one mile West of the Taconic Parkway, Putnam Valley. For information, call 845-528-5076
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