Play Every Town Concert

PLAY EVERY TOWN: 252 Community Concerts for a Cooler Climate
as featured in the Wall St Journal and NBC Nightly News

CONCERT #98: Sunday, April 26, 3 pm
Waterbury Congregational Church

8 North Main St, Waterbury VT

featuring pianist David Feurzeig
with David Goodman, clarinet and Matt LaRocca, viola

FREE admission; voluntary donations benefit Waterbury LEAP (Local Energy Action Partnership) & CReW (Community Resilience for the Waterbury Area)

Contact: PlayEveryTown@gmail.com 802-760-9944

www.PlayEveryTown.com Facebook, Instagram: playeverytownVT

“Like so much of our everyday life, routine jet travel is unsustainable—which means something it’s literally not possible to keep doing. I want to model a performance culture that doesn’t require hopping on a plane and flying all over the world.”

In 2022 composer-pianist David Feurzeig embarked on Play Every Town: 252 free concerts in each of Vermont’s 252 towns to confront climate change through the power of community and music. With this project David will become the first musician to perform in every Vermont municipality. Traveling in his solar-charged electric vehicle throughout the state, he offers free concerts to bring attention to the interrelated issues of climate and community, and to call into question the normality of long-distance touring and travel, while bringing the joy of music to his audiences.

“I want to support Vermont’s local communities with live performance in village centers and downtowns, while fulfilling UVM’s mission to serve as a re`source for the whole state.”

Feurzeig, a professor of music at UVM, specializes in genre-defying recitals that bring together music of an astonishing variety of musical styles, from ancient and classical to jazz, avant-garde, and popular traditions. These striking juxtapositions, peppered with informative and humorous commentary, create eye- and ear-opening programs that will change how you hear all kinds of music.

Programs are tailored to each town. Music by the 7-year-old Mozart was written the year the town was chartered, while Beethoven’s Sonatina in F dates from the year of the first town meeting and Schubert’s Moment Musical no. 6 in A-flat was composed while the hosting Congregational Church was being built. Waterbury residents David Goodman and Matt LaRocca join David for Mozart’s beloved Kegelstatt trio, original music by Matt, and more. Several pieces relate to Waterbury’s famous catastrophic floodi history, including Debussy’s prelude “The Sunken Cathedral”, and tunes from the Great American Songbook from 1935, when the Waterbury Dam was approved, and 1938, when it was completed. Debussy’s Arabesque no. 1 was published as the Vermont State Asylum for the Insane opened its doors; the program also includes the Fantasy op. 94 no. 1, written by Robert Schumann, who suffered from profound mental illness.

Other solo pieces will round out the program, including (as with every concert in the project) a once-only performance of a sonata by Scarlatti, in this case Sonata no. 98 for this 98th concert of the series. Admission is free, with voluntary donations split between Waterbury LEAP (Local Energy Action Partnership) & CreW (Community Resilience for the Waterbury Area).

Feurzeig’s eclectic programming attracts new audiences to so-called “classical” concerts and brings new insight to existing fans. “Classical music culture puts the ‘Great Composers’ on an almost religious pedestal. Once this was an indication of the audience’s love and respect, but now it just distances people from the music. It turns away new listeners, who feel like they’re in a stuffy museum instead of a live concert. If I don’t get a laugh from the audience in the first two minutes, I get worried!”