Author: Saratoga TODAY

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College invites the public to its April programs, featuring tours, screenings, family programs, and two special performances How Vowels Endure Winter on April 12 and If Our Hands Could Hold The Weight Of Promise on April 17.

How Vowels Endure Winter will be performed at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 12. It is the world premiere performance of a series of monologues with piano created by David Greenberger and Tyson Rogers in response to work by the artist Joachim Schmid that occupies an entire wall in the Tang exhibition Studio/Archive. The new work features short tales about collecting, creating, organizing, and memory. 

On Wednesday, April 17, at 5 p.m., if our hands could hold the weight of promise features Elevator Music 48: Alone, only in flesh exhibiting artists MIZU, Theresa-Xuan Bui, and Antonius-Tín Bui, as well as dancer Glenna Yu. They will activate the Tang elevator and atrium staircase with cello, improvisational movement, spoken word poetry, and audience interaction with traditional Vietnamese garments (áo dài). 

These performances are in addition to the Framing the Flesh feature film screenings, weekly Tang Guide tours, curator’s tours, family art-making workshops, and a conversation around The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, a groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist in the US.

Additional events:

Saturday, April 13, 2 p.m. – Family Saturday: Rock Animals. A multigenerational art-viewing and art-making workshop inspired by Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves. For children 5 and older with an adult companion. Another Family Saturday will be April 27. 

Wednesday, April 17, 4:30 p.m. – K-Pop Dance Performance! Students in Visiting Artist-in-Residence Chia-Ying Kao’s Dance 317: K-Pop II class will perform as part of their semester’s final work. 

Thursday, April 18, noon – Curator’s Tour of Elevator Music 48: Alone, only in flesh. Curatorial Assistant Ivy Vuong leads a tour of the latest elevator installation. 

Thursday, April 18, 6 p.m. – Framing the Flesh: birth/rebirth (2023). The third and final screening in the Framing the Flesh series, organized by Piper Ingels ’24, explores our fascination with and revulsion to the fantasies of unconventional bodily alterations. 

Friday, April 26, 8 p.m. – Tang Party 2024. The annual Tang Party celebrates student creativity with immersive and interactive installations and performances on the Tang grounds. 

Current exhibitions include – Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour A tour-de-force, ten-screen video installation explores the life of Frederick Douglass.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Tang Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang website at http://tang.skidmore.edu.

When local farmer Frank Vadney went out to inspect his fields at the edge of town in Bethlehem, N.Y. 43 years ago, he could not have expected to find a dead body on the corner of his property – but he did. Was this a murder? The body was so badly decomposed, the cause of death was uncertain. 

In the area that has since been referred to by the Vadney family as Dead Man’s Cove, the discovery of human remains in 1981 would be the start of an intriguing investigation – one that would go cold for decades. In 2013, Sergeant Adam Hornick of Bethlehem PD was tasked with researching the old John Doe computer entry made by his department. The journey to identify the body found on the Vadney Farm in 1981 takes Hornick through a web of unknowns, challenges, and obstacles. But his persistence pays off with the eventual identification of the ‘man without a name’ who had been buried long ago in a pauper’s grave in Albany County. 

Hornick recalls his journey using investigative processes, new technologies and gut instinct as he searches for a missing person who had never been reported missing. The episode, Dead Man’s Cove, is as much a story about the compassion of a police officer to the survivors of Bethlehem’s John Doe, as it is an account of advancements in DNA science, genetic genealogy and evolving state law. Former police chief Mark Spawn interviews Retired-Commander Adam Hornick about the case of Franklin Feldman in this week’s episode of APB Cold Case. 

APB Cold Case is a true crime audio podcast featuring unsolved missing persons and murder cases from across the country.

Episode Link – Dead Man’s Cove: Anatomy of a John Doe Case. Go to: www.APBColdCase.com. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Roots scholar, multi-instrumentalist and Caffè Lena favorite Michael Eck will be staging his 60th Birthday celebration at Caffe Lena on April 19, and he’s bringing a full band AND a brand new album along with him. 

Eck, who first debuted at Caffè Lena in 1990 will be joined by an all-star ensemble featuring Rosanne Raneri, Kevin Maul – who’s flying in from Florida for the show, and Sten Isachsen and Bob Buckley of Jim Gaudet & The Railroad Boys. 

“A nifty little ensemble to accompany me on an evening of original chestnuts, new compositions and classic folk songs at my favorite venue,” Eck says. 

The new album is titled “Fermata,” and will be released in conjunction with the show. 

“A fermata is a musical notation. It looks like a bird’s eye and is sometimes called a hold. It allows the player discretion regarding the value of a note or a rest. To me, it speaks of freedom in music,” says Eck, who will spend the earlier part of the show date getting the design tattooed on his back. 

“Each of the characters singing these songs, whether myself, an addict in Kentucky, an old coin, a bereft wife or a bullet in a revolver, has been thrown an unexpected pause—a hold. And I know from pauses,” he says. 

Eck’s musical legacy in the region is lengthy – breaking in with the Albany punk scene of the early ‘80s with Glaze, to more recent collaborations with Ramblin Jug Stompers and Lost Radio Rounders. The release of Fermata comes 30 years after Eck’s debut, Cowboy Black, and along the way he has served as curator and host of WAMC’s American Roots Series at The Linda; assistant producer of the Music Haven Concert Series, and producer, host of fundraising concerts, and longtime board member at Caffe Lena, alongside among many other accomplishments. 

“It’s a celebration of my 60th birthday, and I hope you’ll join me,” says Eck. “I’m not old, I’m seasoned!”

The special Michael Eck and Friends performance will be staged 8 p.m. Friday, April 19, at Caffe Lena, 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs. For more info, go to: www.caffelena.org.

SARATOGA SPRINGS —The Schick Art Gallery presents “Alchemy of Light,” an exhibition that centers photography as an experimental medium through the work of eight artists who use light as a creative tool. In an age of quickly consumed digital images, these works ask the audience to abandon their preconceptions about photography and slow down. 

“Alchemy of Light” is co-curated by Teaching Professor of Art and Schick Gallery Assistant Director Trish Lyell and Schick Gallery Director Rebecca Shepard. 

The exhibition will run from March 29 through April 26 in Schick Art Gallery, on the second floor of Saisselin Art Building. 

All Schick Gallery exhibits and events are free and open to the public; visit the Schick Art Gallery website to learn more.