Author Archives: Leonard Nevarez

Basilica Soundscape

Leave a reply

Photo Sep 13, 3 52 33 PMOn Friday the 13th, I attended the first night of the second annual music festival held at the Basilica Hudson in Hudson, New York.  Last year this event had the functional title of “Basilica Music Fest.”  This year, they called it Basilica Soundscape.  Hudson, New York — a city of just over 6,000 people in Columbia County — is becoming known a music destination in the Hudson Valley (as mentioned by Mary Kay Vrba from Hudson Valley Tourism).  The programming at Basilica Hudson, and especially this annual event, are some of the main reasons for this reputation.

IMG_0096

Basilica is a 19th-century factory located on the city’s waterfront, just a two-minute walk from the city’s train station. It was purchased a couple of years ago by independent filmmaker Tony Stone (a Bard College graduate) and musician Melissa Auf der Maur (formerly of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins), who thought its unique grounds, vast interiors and industrial grit would make an ideal space for art, performance, production and events. IMG_0072 IMG_0049Perhaps unlike most owners of music venues or art galleries in the Hudson Valley, Stone and Auf der Maur had the creative-industry credentials and personal contacts to put the new Basilica Hudson on the map right away.IMG_0073 IMG_0074With capacity for about 1,000 people, Basilica Soundscape doesn’t try to be an all-purpose music festival.  The musicians, artists, and writers who contributed to the event tended toward the extreme, avant-garde and “ethereal doom” (as the New York Times put it). Yet they brought out a remarkable variety of attendees in terms of age and lifestyle, from college students and Brooklyn hipsters to an older art audience.

IMG_3365

Evian Christ

IMG_3368

A four-way musical collaboration conducted by Jonathan Bepler, featuring (clockwise from left) Julianna Barwick, Evian Christ and Pig Destroyer. Not featured: Pharmakon.

IMG_3366

sculpture by Matthew Barney

The event also hosted food trucks, pop-up stores, and other new trends in urbanism not usually associated — at least for now — with a small, upstate city like Hudson.

IMG_3351 IMG_3350For more on Basilica Soundscape, click here.

For more photos from the first night, click here.

For an urban analysis of the Basilica Hudson and last year’s music festival, click here.

Share

Storm King Art Center

IMG_3231On a fantastic late summer day, I took my family to the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville (Orange County). The museum is a sprawling, 500-acre estate showcasing massive outdoor works of sculpture and environmental art. IMG_3245 Storm King Art Center is nestled in a foothill of the western face of Storm King Mountain. A lot of people were visiting on this day, but aside from the museum building, the parking lots, and the cafe, you can have a real solitary experience wandering the grounds.  On the other side of this outdoor is the New York Thruway; the distant sound of cars whizzing by is the only thing that interrupts a total immersion into art and land.

IMG_3282First opened in 1960, the museum is perhaps one of the primary ways that the high art worlds of New York City and the world have come to know the Hudson Valley’s landscape. Some of the very top names in art have huge works on display here: Roy Liechtenstein, Richard Serra, Maya Lin, and so on.  One indication that the museum’s patrons come largely from the New York City area is the fact that a Storm King Art Center membership includes a discount on renting a Zip Car; NYC residents often don’t own cars, and this place is really only accessible via auto or bus.

IMG_3257The highlight of our visit was Maya Lin’s work, Storm King Wavefield. Whereas most of the works are metal sculptures that visitors are asked not to touch, this “piece” is made of the earth itself. Visitors can walk (or run, as my kids did) up and down, lie down, hide behid, and otherwise traverse the slopes that Lin designed.

IMG_3292Click here to learn more about Storm King Art Center.

Share