Cover of “Leave Dead Enough Alone” provided by the author.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga Springs author David K. Wilson will release “Leave Dead Enough Alone” on April 7. It’s the eighth installment of his Sam Lawson mystery series, and his tenth novel overall.
The new mystery picks up where the award-winning “Murder in Spa City”—set in Saratoga Springs—left off, following private investigator Sam Lawson and his wife Carla as they return home to Texas.
But home isn’t exactly peaceful. What begins as a straightforward missing persons case in rural East Texas quickly unravels into a web of small-town secrets, corruption, and murder. Sam soon realizes he’s stumbled onto secrets someone will kill to protect. Alongside Carla—a razor-sharp medical examiner holding her own in a good ol’ boy’s world—Sam must untangle a mystery before it makes him the next victim.
“Readers who discovered Sam through ‘Murder in Spa City’ will finally get to see his home turf,” Wilson said. “East Texas is a big place with a lot of stories to tell—and Sam’s small-town roots are a far cry from the Saratoga Springs horse racing scene.”
Wilson—who grew up in the small town of Lindale, Texas—has called Saratoga Springs home for years. An advertising creative director, ghostwriter, and produced screenwriter, he has built a regional following via the award-winning Sam Lawson series.
“Leave Dead Enough Alone” will be available at local bookstores, Amazon.com, and other online retailers.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Outlaw Music Festival will return to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) on Aug. 30, bringing Willie Nelson & Family, The Avett Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Stephen Wilson, Jr., Robert Randolph, and Don Was & the Pan-Detroit Ensemble to the Spa City.
Tickets are currently on sale via OutlawMusicFestival.com or Ticketmaster.com.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Tom Rush will bring his distinctive guitar style, wry humor, and expressive voice to Caffe Lena on April 26.
Rush has been credited by Rolling Stone with ushering in the era of the singer-songwriter. In addition to performing his own compositions, he sang songs by Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor, among others, helping them to gain recognition early in their careers.
James Taylor once told Rolling Stone: “Tom was not only one of my early heroes, but also one of my main influences.” Country music star Garth Brooks has credited Rush with being one of his top musical influences, as well.
Rush’s 1968 composition “No Regrets” has become a standard, with numerous cover versions performed by artists such as The Walker Brothers, Emmylou Harris, and Midge Ure.
For more information or tickets, via www.caffelena.org/event/tom-rush-2026-2/.
Installation view, “All These Growing Things,” Tang Teaching Museum, 2025. Photo by Mindy McDaniel.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College recently announced Poets in the Museum, a poetry reading scheduled for Sunday, April 19 at 3 p.m. in the galleries of the Malloy Wing.
Organized and hosted by Saratoga Springs Poet Laureate Jay Rogoff, the program brings together regional poets responding to artwork in the Tang exhibition “All These Growing Things.”
Presenting poets are Nicola Marae Allain, Peg Boyers, Joe Bruchac, Catherine Clarke, David Graham, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, Susan Jefts, Marilyn McCabe, Lucyna Prostko, Krista Rivera, Jay Rogoff, Mary Sanders Shartle, and Melora Wolff.
Together, these writers bring a range of voices and perspectives to the museum, including poets, essayists, editors, teachers, and artists whose work is rooted in the Capital Region and beyond. Their readings will offer audiences new ways of experiencing the ideas, images, and questions raised by “All These Growing Things,” an exhibition that explores questions of becoming and belonging through work from the Tang collection.
Rogoff, whose two-year term as Saratoga Springs Poet Laureate began Jan. 1, has organized the program as an invitation to look closely and respond through language. The event continues the Tang’s spring exploration of poetry. It follows the museum’s Feb. 1 reading with April Bernard, Peg Boyers, and Chase Twichell, as well as the April 2 reading by Jacob Shores-Argüello in “Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest.”
The event is free and open to the public.
For information on planning your visit and accessibility, visit tang.skidmore.edu or call the Tang Visitor Services Desk at 518-580-8080.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Could the quaint city of Saratoga Springs produce a serial killer?
In “Marion,” a forthcoming novel that reimagines the plot of the classic horror film “Psycho,” the protagonist is a Saratoga native cast in the Marion Crane role. But rather than succumb to the knife-wielding, mother-obsessed, shower-stalking Norman Bates, this Marion fights back.
Author Leah Rowan (a pen name) used “Psycho” as the basis for her plot but altered much of the original story. What emerged is an unpredictable, twist-heavy thriller in which Saratoga Springs plays a key role.
“I think it’s an interesting location because it is very far from New York City, but then it’s got its own culture and all these hotels,” Rowan told Saratoga TODAY. “It’s a destination in its own right.”
The book’s Marion character, much like her movie counterpart, steals a large sum of cash and boards an Upstate-bound bus in Manhattan. But the bus breaks down in New Paltz, where the Norman character operates an aging motel that he insists is on the brink of major renovations. When Marion finds that the handsome and seemingly friendly Norman isn’t quite right in the head, her anger towards the abusive men she’s encountered in her life suddenly gushes forth, much like the blood that spills out of certain characters’ bodies.
“Psycho” was set in Arizona, and as Rowan noted in her interview with Saratoga TODAY, the exact location of the story isn’t terribly crucial. But since the author splits her time between Brooklyn and the Catskills, her familiarity with New York State helped inform Marion’s movements and destinations. Although only a relatively small percentage of the novel takes place in Saratoga, the city looms large in the story, right up until the final sentences.
Attentive readers will spot references to the Times Union newspaper, the Saratoga Springs train station, the Children’s Museum at Saratoga, and the Saratoga Casino Hotel. But it may be hard to focus on these details when absorbed in the story, which manically twists in all directions like a killer’s knife plunged into a victim.
“I don’t know what this says about me, but I had so much fun writing this book,” Rowan said. “Literally, more fun than I’ve ever had… I think horror is really having a moment. I think it’s because there are a lot of horrors in the world. I think writing about them in a way that’s fun and almost absurd, at times, helps us process things.”
Of course, the idea of a psychotic killer running amok in Saratoga is absurd. Why, Saratogians wouldn’t even harm a fly.
Soprano Eileen Egan Mack and pianist Michael Clement perform the musical program “A Song of Yaddo: Music of Katrina Trask” at the Canfield Casino on March 19. Photo by Jonathon Norcross.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Katrina Trask is well-known to locals as one of the driving forces behind Yaddo, the artists’ community that helped foster the talents of James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Sylvia Path, and many others.
Less known is that Trask was herself an artist. She was a poet, author, playwright, and songwriter with a handful of titles to her name, perhaps most notably the anti-war play “In the Vanguard,” written on the eve of World War I.
At the Canfield Casino last Thursday evening, Trask’s original music compositions were performed by soprano Eileen Egan Mack and pianist Michael Clement. Songs attributed solely to Trask included “The Pine Tree,” “The Crimson Rose,” “Courage, O Heart,” “Lord of the Heavenly Host,” “Thine Eyes,” and “Darling, Darling.” These poetic ballads tended to sound a bit like religious hymns with perhaps elements of what we would today identify as singer-songwriter or jazz.
The program also included songs with lyrics written by Trask, including “Come Into the Garden,” (music by Bertha Remick); “A Song of Yaddo,” (music by A. Parsons); “Consolation,” (music by Dudley Buck); and “God Understands,” (music by R. Nathaniel Dett). In the early 20th century, Dett was a leading Black composer who incorporated elements of African American music into classical compositions. Trask’s collaboration with him is especially notable, considering Dett was born just 17 years after the end of the Civil War.
Rounding out the evening were a few samples of music created by Trask’s contemporaries, such as “Vocalise” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, a unique composition that has no lyrics and is sung with only one vowel.
The Saratoga Springs History Museum credited the research of Rumara Jewett with making the event possible. Jewett, the museum said, has uncovered a wealth of historical material about Trask’s music.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Inducted into the Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Hall of Fame last year, Dan Berggren is one of a select group of musicians keeping the spirit and traditions of Adirondack music alive.
But what exactly is Adirondack music?
Ahead of his benefit concert scheduled for Friday, March 27 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Saratoga Springs, Saratoga TODAY spoke with Berggren to better understand the unique history and genre of Adirondack-style songwriting. Presented below is that interview in Q&A format, edited for length and clarity.
Saratoga TODAY: How would you describe Adirondack music?
Dan Berggren: The roots are in the days of logging, when, in the 1800s, a lot of Irish immigrants and a lot of French-Canadian immigrants ended up in the Adirondacks because of the demand for cutting trees and getting trees to market. These people brought their music with them, things that they had learned by ear from their parents. Some of the loggers brought songs from other places, and these songs existed over the decades because they just changed the name of the river or the name of the town where the logs were going to. In the case of Adirondack songs, they always mentioned the logs going to Glens Falls. I guess that’s part of the essence of folk music, taking something old and adapting it and making it either new or making it local. That’s the very essence of folk music, to me.
Saratoga TODAY: It seems like you have a history of collaborating with other musicians. Would you say that there’s a healthy community of people who are interested in writing about the Adirondacks, or carrying on the tradition of Adirondack music?
Dan Berggren: It’s a small group, but it’s a vibrant group. One example of this group is something that happens at Great Camp Sagamore in Raquette Lake every June. It’s called Roots & Branches. There’s John Kirk, Trish Miller, Sara Mionovich, Dan Duggan, Peggy Lynn and myself. So, six of us have been leading this Roots & Branches workshop that is open to young people, people in their 20s and 30s, who are interested in this pursuit of carrying on the tradition of folk music, of music that tells stories. Not only the old songs but writing new ones in that tradition. That comes up every June. Actually, it’s free for those who attend. They fill out an online form, and they don’t have to pay for this workshop.
Saratoga TODAY: How did you find yourself becoming someone associated with and interested in this type of music?
Dan Berggren: When I was a little kid, my older brother would bring records home from the public library. They were records like Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Lead Belly, or folk records. My brother went off to college, and when he would come home on vacation, he had a guitar with him, and he knew how to play the guitar. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s magic. Show me a few chords.’ When I was 13 or 14, I started playing the guitar. Jump ahead to after college, I was in the army, and upon arriving back in the Adirondacks in 1975, I discovered that there was this thing called Adirondack music. Marjorie Lansing Porter was a journalist who became the Essex County historian, and she would go door to door (this is in the late 40s, early 50s) looking for old songs, and she would record them on these acetate discs. I discovered this collection at the SUNY Plattsburgh library and wondered ‘How come nobody has ever mentioned Adirondack music to me before? How did I come upon this just by accident?’ I decided if I was going to sing and perform music, why not sing and write about my home? That was 1975 when I started writing songs and collecting songs and sharing them with audiences.
Saratoga TODAY: What is it about the Adirondacks that you think draws people towards them? Obviously, it’s very beautiful and people enjoy hiking, but there also seems to be something about it that inspires a lot of creative types.
Dan Berggren: I think it’s the magic of wilderness. Over 100 years ago, legislators in the state decided it would be a good thing to have 6 million acres, call it the Adirondack Park, and it’d be public and private. We won’t fence it off and have it be separate, but it’ll all be integrated as one park, and that wilderness can exist right next door to a K-12 school. It can exist right next to somebody’s farm. You can drive through little towns like Olmstedville, where I grew up, or bigger towns like Lake Placid, and you’re only minutes from the wilderness… I’ve never been anywhere else where there’s this integration of wilderness and private and commercial and industrial where they can exist in a space, and you can go off on a hike or paddle a canoe and not see another soul, if you want. You can go to Lake George. You can go to a big, populous area downtown, like Lake Placid. But you can also go to a pond and canoe for hours and never see or hear another human being. It’s a balm for the soul that lets you grow in another way.
35 local children (24 cast, with understudies) will take the stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center this summer in New York City Ballet’s production of Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” from July 8 to 11. Photo provided by SPAC.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — On Sunday, March 15 at 10 a.m., New York City Ballet Children’s Repertory Director Dena Abergel auditioned approximately 125 Capital Region children to dance with the New York City Ballet during its Saratoga season from July 8 to 11.
Auditions were for 24 children’s roles in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” George Balanchine’s full-length adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most cherished comedies.
“Presenting four performances of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ — the very ballet that opened the SPAC stage in July 1966 — is a remarkable moment for our community and our young dancers,” said Elizabeth Sobol, CEO of SPAC. “Here in Saratoga, these talented children bring the story to life with joy and wonder, creating a magical experience that is uniquely ours.”
Casting for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” included roles for 24 girls who were 9-13 years old at the time of the audition. At least three years of ballet training was encouraged for all of the roles. Understudies were also cast.
Returning in celebration of SPAC’s 60th anniversary and its historic partnership with New York City Ballet, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was the first performance presented on the SPAC stage at the venue’s grand opening in July 1966. Inspired by the music of Mendelssohn, Balanchine captures the play’s infinite colors: the bumbling comedy of the Rude Mechanicals, the feisty feuding between Titania and Oberon, the romantic confusion of the young lovers chasing each other through the Athenian forest, and of course the mischief-making Puck.
Featuring a large cast of children from the Capital Region, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was the first wholly original full-length ballet Balanchine created in America and is one of the most popular ballets in the New York City Ballet’s repertoire.
The full-length production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be performed at SPAC on July 8, 9, and 10 at 7:30 p.m. and on July 11 at 2 p.m.
Local children selected for the performance included: Arden Gravley (Glens Falls), Edie Kurera (Ballston Lake), Emma Corlew (Queensbury), Leah Smith (Gansevoort), Madeline Del Prete (Gansevoort), Olivia Conklin (Saratoga Springs), Samantha Fowler (Saratoga Springs), Alex Lambie (Ballston Spa), Maeve Tacy (Ballston Spa), and Uma Bharti (Watervliet).
“God of the Woods” book cover via Riverhead Books.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — A critically acclaimed, New York Times-bestselling novel with ties to the Saratoga area will be adapted into a Netflix series starring Maya Hawke of “Stranger Things” fame.
“The God of the Woods,” primarily set in the Adirondacks but containing references to the Spa City, revolves around the mysterious disappearance of 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar. The multi-generational drama explores the wealthy Van Laar family’s past, which could be connected to Barbara’s case.
According to Deadline, Hawke will play investigator Judy Luptack, who attempts to unravel the mystery.
“God of the Woods” author Liz Moore headlined the 2024 Saratoga Book Festival, and has made a number of appearances across the Capital Region. In July 2024, Moore and actress Amanda Seyfried visited the Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs as part of a “God of the Woods” promotional event. Last year, Seyfried starred in the Peacock series “Long Bright River,” which is based on one of Moore’s novels.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — How many poets does it take to screw in a lightbulb? On Wednesday, April 1, at Saratoga’s Whitman Brewing Company, a dozen area poets will celebrate April Fool’s by reading their original comedic poetry.
The event starts at 7 p.m. in the downstairs lounge at Whitman, located in the old Saratogian building at 20 Lake Avenue.
The evening, hosted by Saratoga Poet Laureate Jay Rogoff is billed as “April is the Foolest Month,” a twist on T. S. Eliot’s calling April “the cruelest month.” It will feature stand-up poems from such local wordsmiths as Joe Bruchac, Jackie Craven, David Graham, Carol Graser, Maggie Greaves, Elaine Handley, Susan Kress, Marilyn McCabe, Mary Sanders Shartle, Barbara Ungar, Nancy White, and Dan Wilcox.
“We’re taught about poetry as serious stuff,” Rogoff said, “but it can also be extremely playful. I invited a bunch of poets whose work has sometimes made me laugh out loud. We’re living through stressful times, and poetry and laughter together can help us get through. And how wonderful to hold a reading in an establishment named for Walt Whitman!”
The reading is part of the Laureate Poetry Series and is free and open to the public. Whitman Brewing will have its beverages for sale, in addition to a range of non-alcoholic offerings.
For further information, contact Jay Rogoff at jrogoff@skidmore.edu.
