The Woodstock Invitational Luthiers’ Show runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, October 26 and 27, with more than 40 exhibitors showing beautiful guitars – classical, archtop, flattop, resonators and more – in both the Bearsville Theater and Utopia Soundstage, both at 291 Tinker Street in Woodstock, as continuous live performances on the subject guitars take place in the lounge area of the theater.
Special exhibits include archtops made by D’Angelico and D’Aquisto from the collection of Rudy Pensa of Rudy’s Music in Manhattan. John Monteleone, considered heir to the D’Angelico tradition, is loaning his Four Seasons archtops, which were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to be used in a 5:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon performance by Steve Greene and Perry Beekman.
Local builders Joe Veillette, Bruce Ackerman (who also creates the event’s poster each year), Harvey Citron, Martin Keith and Peter Head will be exhibiting. Happy Traum will conduct a “Blues and Country Fingerpicking 101” workshop. Paul Beard and his resonator guitars from Maryland, Ivon Schmukler’s fine flattops from Williamstown, Massachusetts, Ken Parker’s astounding archtops…the list goes on.
Performers in the lounge include John Abercrombie and Vic Juris (4:30 p.m. Saturday); Al Petteway (1:55 p.m. Saturday); Kinloch Nelson (3:45 p.m. Saturday); Harvey Citron (3:50 p.m. Sunday); the exquisite Eddie Diehl with Lou Pappas in Concert (12:45 p.m. Saturday); and, topping the shows, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams & Friends at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Saturday night at 8 p.m. at the Woodstock Playhouse brings the annual String Sampler Concert, featuring a Fingerstyle Circle, with Vicki Genfan, Tony McManus, Adam Miller, Kinloch Nelson and Al Petteway, performing individually and collaboratively in a round-robin format, plus a special performance by the acclaimed Secret Trio: Ara Dinkjian on oud, Ismail Lumanovski on clarinet and Tamer Pinarbasi on kanun. For this show, reserved seating tickets cost $40 and $30; see ulsterpub.staging.wpengineplayhouse.org or call (845) 679-6900.
General admission costs $20 per day, or a two-day pass at $30. Purchase advance tickets through the Bearsville Theater box office at www.bearsvilletheater.com or by calling (845) 679-4406.
Real Diehl
You’d hear whispers about Eddie Diehl for years. You have a fine guitar but it needs a fret job: Take it to Eddie Diehl. It’s worse – crack in the face, bridge is pulling up: Eddie Diehl. Pickups are wrong, electronics screwed up: same guy.
But you’d also hear, you want as sublime a player as there is – deep jazz chordal solos, melodies, exquisite sweet sounds of standards, a bottomless be bop catalogue – well, that’s Eddie Diehl, too. But you could never find him. Was it all a rumor?
“I have three gigs a year,” says Eddie Diehl, by phone, last week. “I came from a place where I used to have four gigs a week; now I have three a year.” He blames his reluctance to venture out on “the dumbing-down of the culture…the appreciation of the arts has been dulled down quite a bit. It’s hard to find people who stay in touch with creativity.”
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