The sea has defined human history since the beginning of our consciousness, and it is a central figure in the arts that have sprung from our attempts to understand the world.
This year’s Rites of Spring Music Festival on the North Fork embraces the ocean as a muse in its theme, “Sea, Soil and Soul,” and this coming weekend’s Rites of Spring programs at Poquatuck Hall in Orient are a concentrated experience of all there is to love, fear and admire about the waters that surround us.
Titled “Poquatuck Hall for All: A Weekend of Music, Film and Literature from the Sea,” the weekend is organized by Owen Dodds, a pianist and composer finishing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Stony Brook University. It includes concerts of folk, traditional and classical music, guided sound meditation, poetry readings with sea shanties, an improvised score to a silent film and an evening of square dancing.
Mr. Dodds is one of three Ambassadors for Change fellows working this summer on the Rites of Spring festival, which was founded by North Fork-based pianist and artistic project coordinator Paolo Bartolani 11 years ago.
“This historical building is a little jewel,” said Mr. Bartolani of Poquatuck Hall. “Our mission as a festival is to build social connection. We want to have a little cultural hub. The main character of Orient is as a maritime village, with a lot of maritime traditions.”
Mr. Bartolani said he met Mr. Dodds two years ago when he was a performer at the Rites of Spring piano marathon by Stony Brook students at the Jamesport Meeting House, and thought he had potential to be “not just a performer, but also a cultural manager,” along with two other students in the festival’s new Ambassadors for Change program this year.
Mr. Dodds ran with the concept of celebrating the sea in this inaugural weekend of Poquatuck Hall for All.
“There’s a sense of endlessness in it, the oceanic feeling, the feeling that you can never really reach the bottom of it,” said Mr. Dodds of his love of the sea. “You’re surrounded by something so vast and you don’t really have any comprehension of how big it is. That’s what I find inspiring and terrifying about the sea, and in certain music, you can find it.”
Mr. Dodds will play a central role in the musical programming of the weekend, which kicks of Friday evening, July 24 at 6 p.m. with his duo, Early Gray the Band, with guitarist and mandolinist Drake Duffer. They’ll be opening for The Mudflats, the North Fork’s superstar Americana band with a deep repertoire steeped in seafaring. Tickets are $45 for general admission, or $30 for friends of the festival.
“There’s so much maritime folk music that it made sense to have a more folk-oriented concert, and I’m inspired by the way folk music inspires classical music,” said Mr. Dodds.
On Saturday morning at 10 a.m., pianists Giuseppe Modugno and Francesca Rinzullo will lead a free guided sound meditation followed by a community coffee hour.
The afternoon on Saturday will continue with Nautical Tales at 3 p.m. — poetry and literature readings with musical interludes. Readers include poet Miranda Beeson, East End Beacon editor Beth Young (yours truly) and New York Times writer Bruce Weber, with musical interludes by Ethel’s Mermen (our favorite!) and improvised music at the piano by a young North Fork musician, Asen Roussan.
Saturday evening is the classical portion of the program, New Sounds and Souls with the Mozze Trio — Mr. Dodds on piano, Hudson Y. Chung on violin and Gustavo Antoniacomi on cello. All three have had intertwined musical careers and have been playing together for two years during their graduate studies at Stony Brook. Tickets are $45 for general admission, or $30 for friends of the festival.
“Mozze is a Hebrew word that means ‘to discover,’ and that embodies our approach to music,” said Mr. Dodds. “We’re always trying to discover the music anew, every time we play it.”
Their program opens with a movement from Maurice Ravel’s solo piano suite Miroirs, “Une barque sur l’océan,” or “A Little Boat on the Ocean.”
“It couldn’t be a more perfect musical picture of a lonely boat on the ocean, with a stormy sea,” said Mr. Dodds.
The program continues with a work by Mr. Dodds for solo cello, “There are No Tunes Left,” and “Circe” by Shelter Island-based composer Bruce Wolosoff, followed by Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor, M.67.
“The piano trio doesn’t have an explicit sea reference, but if you listen to the first Ravel piece and then listen to the trio, you can see that they’re connected. They’re in the same world,” said Mr. Dodds. “It has ties to Basque folk music, which ties in with the previous evening’s concert.”
On Sunday, the Early Gray duo return to Poquatuck Hall at 2 p.m. for a free screening of John Grierson’s “Drifters,” a 1920s documentary made for the Empire Marketing Board about the men of the British herring fleets.
“It’s a very visually striking documentary, in black and white, and when it becomes nighttime it has an amazing green filter on the lens, which is a cool visual effect,” said Mr. Dodds. “I hope it’s a fun experience for people — it’s a 45-minute film.”
The weekend comes full circle to its folk roots on Sunday evening at 5 p.m., when the Americana band Fiddlers Green joins square dancing caller Chart Guthrie for an evening of dancing in the hall. Tickets are $30 for general admission, or $20 for friends of the festival.
“Paolo wanted it to be a community-centered event, where everyone can come and participate, and the idea is to have a social dance at the end to wrap it up,” said Mr. Dodds. “It was very kind of him to get me involved in curating this weekend. It’s an interesting opportunity that you don’t get very often. A lot of times you’re hired either as an administrator or as an artist, but in this case, it’s very real world.”
More information on the performances, reservations and ticketing for the weekend’s events is available on the Rites of Spring Music Festival website. A three-day pass to the entire weekend is also available for $100.
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