Displaying items by tag: Caffé Lena

Thursday, 11 March 2021 13:07

Caffè Lena & UPH Setting the Stage for 2021

SARATOGA SPRINGS — One year after battening down the hatches in response to the oncoming 2020 pandemic, area performance venues are starting to piece together their plans for reopening. 

“The one-year anniversary of shuttering the venue, with no clear end in sight - but then came the sudden news that performing arts venues in New York State are allowed to re-open at 33% capacity on April 2,” said Caffè Lena Executive Director Sarah Craig, in a posting on the venue’s website. “It means we can stop treading water and we can start swimming toward a goal.” 

The café plan is to reopen April 2 with safety protocols in place. While guidance would allow 35 people at the venue, the capacity will be limited to an audience of 24. 

“We won’t serve food and drink yet. That means masks can (must) stay on from entry to exit,” Craig said. “We’re getting the air filter systems that we didn’t think we’d need ’til September. Even so, we’ll keep the windows open a little. Wear a sweater.”

 Caffè Lena first opened in May 1960 as a small beatnik coffeehouse, Bob Dylan first visited the club in 1961 and played a full weekend of shows for which he was paid a total of $50. Appearances by Rosalie Sorrels brought admirers like Hunter S. Thompson and William Kennedy to the venue, and in the fall of 1965, Don McLean made his first of his many appearances at the café.

In the 12 months since everything shut down, the café counts 209 livestreams it had broadcast and $100,000 raised for musicians.    

In the meantime, Lenas continues to broadcast a slew of productions via its online platforms. For more information, go to: caffelena.org

“We’re at the beginning of the end,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, during his March 9 presser. “The end is the vaccine. The vaccine is the weapon that wins the war. It’s going to still be an annoying few months, but we’re getting there.”   

Plans are also underway at the 700-seat theater-in-the-round space at Universal Preservation Hall (UPH).

“We will open the hall in July for the School of the Performing Arts for Kids – a rock music camp for middle-schoolers, and our goal is to become an exhibit hall in the summer,” says Teddy Foster, campaign director at UPH. 

“I don’t know what April will bring, so right now we are holding tight, but we will be doing another exhibit this summer – which was our plan all along, to become an exhibit hall in the summer and put on really cool, family-friendly exhibits which will also help draw people downtown.”

Last year’s interactive summerlong exhibition featured music-themed pinball machines and memorabilia from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that featured artifacts used by everyone from Dolly Parton to Alice Cooper.   

“Even in the middle of the pandemic last summer our pinball exhibit brought in 2,000 people,” Foster says. In “normal” times, UPH anticipates it will serve an estimated 65,000 visitors per year, with a $3.5 million annual economic impact as a year-round venue space, according to a statement issued in 2018, 

The building was erected in 1871 and served as a Methodist church for its first 100 years, as well as playing a role in the city’s civic life by providing a venue for visiting statesmen including Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan and Frederick Douglass. But by the 1960s, it had fallen on hard times. Local preservationists organized a nonprofit group and helped save the structure. More recently, Foster oversaw an operating alliance created with Proctors, and a $13.5 million renovation project that followed was celebrated with a fabulous opening night performance featuring Rosanne Cash last Feb. 29 to re-christen the grand hall.

This coming summer’s exhibition, which Foster didn’t identify by name, is currently being negotiated and anticipated to open in late July for a display that will be active for a number of months. When the venue does reopen to the public, everything will be staged in a safe manner, Foster says. “One of the things that makes UPH so safe to be in is we have an extremely high-tech HVAC system and we clean like maniacs, so people will be able to come into our building with confidence because it’s safe.”    

For more information about UPH, go to universalpreservationhall.org

Published in Entertainment

SARATOGA SPRINGS — American Modern Ensemble (AME) emerges from the pandemic silence with a performance about a modern ritual that has confounded millennials and boomers alike: online dating. 

Caffè Lena presents the World Premiere live stream at 7 p.m. on Oct. 29. 

Composer Robert Paterson and librettist David Cote present two song cycles that explore the narratives of those looking to find true love in digital space – a chamber musical for the “Tinderella” in all of us.

The program features the world premiere of In Real Life II, the counterpart to In Real Life. This song cycle explores the humor and heartbreak of online dating through the lens of five different men. In Real Life II was written for Baritone Jorell Williams who portrays each of our eligible bachelors from the prototypical player who exaggerates his attributes to the secret passions of an “everyday guy.” 

To stream this live performance, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRNEpyIlmsc with a suggested donation – tip jar to Caffè Lena.

Published in Entertainment
Thursday, 28 May 2020 15:33

Rolling Down Broadway

Hot Club of Saratoga, one of several bands performing atop a number of flatbed trucks on May 21, 2020, celebrating Caffe Lena’s 60th anniversary. 

Published in Entertainment

SARATOGA SPRINGS — At precisely noon on a May day in 1975, the Rolling Stones emerged atop a flatbed truck instruments in hand and performed live for a group of pedestrians lining Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. 

Fast-forward to 2020: precisely at noon on Thursday, May 21, Caffe Lena will kick-off a celebration of the café’s 60th anniversary. 

Billed as “Thursday, May 21: Caffe Lena Celebrates 60 Years of Song,” flatbed trucks will roll around town starting at noon with live bands playing music on the back. The café will announce the route in advance and say: we'd love to see you parked on the shoulder, waving and bopping in your decorated car.

At 7 p.m., a two-hour online program of stories, songs and photos will be livestreamed to celebrate each of the café’s six decades. The Tip Jar will be open for business and voluntary support for the event is welcome. The anniversary concert had originally been planned as Lena’s major fundraiser for 2020. 

Meanwhile, Caffe Lena’s “Stay Home Sessions” broadcast at 8 p.m. and upcoming performances feature: Dan Berggren Friday, May 15; Chuck Lamb & Jorge Gomes Saturday, May 16; Peter Mulvey Monday, May 18, and Deena Chappell on Tuesday, May 19. For more information, go to caffelena.org. 

Published in Entertainment

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A local performance by Celtic Woman – scheduled to appear at Saratoga Performing Arts Center June 7 – has been cancelled, the band announced this week. Refunds are at Point of Purchase only. Internet and Phone orders will automatically be canceled & refunded, according to SPAC.

Last week, The Zac Brown Band announced it was cancelling all tour dates through mid-September, including a previously announced June 13 date at SPAC. To our knowledge, these are, thus far, cancellations of the Live Nation summer pop concert series at the venue. 

Meanwhile, in lieu of the ability to continue its staging of live performances, Caffe Lena is taking a different approach. The long-running Phila Street café plans to broadcast previously filmed performances. 

“Every night we gather for music and conversation on Caffe Lena's rapidly growing YouTube channel. After a few days of flailing, (apologies for all the schedule changes!!) we've decided to not even try doing anything live on stage for the foreseeable future. Instead, we're mining our private archive of recorded concerts, bringing the musicians into the "chat room" with us, and re-living a great performance together,” the venue announced on its web site. “Please come! We'd love to welcome you to the party. You can chat if you want, or just watch quietly from the sidelines. Either way, it's good company and the sound and video production will put you right back in the best seat in the house. 

This past week shows featured the likes of The Lustre Kings, Jim Gaudet, and Spa City native and Figgs’ co-founder Pete Donnelly, and upcoming performances include the Gibson Brothers.  The “Stay At Home” Sessions broadcast at 8 p.m.  and the stream may be accessed via caffelena.org. 

This month, Northshire Bookstore launched a virtual events program. Anchored around a standing Thursday 5 p.m. Northshire Live virtual event, it will feature weekly authors and guests via Zoom. 

Northshire event managers Rachel Person and Dafydd Wood will host a wide-ranging conversation about books from their respective homes. Each week will feature one or more author guest stars who will read from and discuss a recent or forthcoming book. 

Next up: the weekly virtual community gatherings for book lovers will feature Janice Shade, author of Moving Mountains: The Power of Main Street Americans to Change Our Economy 

And, if you haven’t heard. Bob Dylan – who performed at Caffe Lena in a time when John F. Kennedy was President of the United States, has just released a 17-minute song about the assassination of JFK. 

“Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years,” reads the brief introductory statement posted on Dylan’s website. “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you…”

The song may be heard at: bobdylan.com.

 

Published in Entertainment

 SARATOGA SPRINGS – Singer-songwriter Bob Warren celebrates his 50th anniversary year of music-making at Caffe Lena Saturday and Sunday.

At 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, Warren will begin with the first song he wrote in the spring of 1969 and proceed chronologically through the set. A second show will take place 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 3,and as the chronology continues, Warren anticipates flipping through his songbook to conclude with his most recent song, written this past June. Tickets are $22 general admission, $20 cafe members and $11 students and kids.

Published in Entertainment

SARATOGA SPRINGS – A rollicking piano, nicely harnessed by a sturdy rhythm section, channels alongside the vocal sass of Annie Rosen and launches into Tommy Johnson’s 1928 “Big Road Blues,” introducing the sixth album by Capital/Saratoga region favorites Annie and the Hedonists.

Produced by Grammy award winner, Joel Moss and recorded at the legendary Dreamland Studio in Woodstock, the new album - “Bring it On Home” – features 12 vintage blues and jazz tracks from the 1920s through the 1950s, as well as a trio of original contemporary blues songs.    

On Friday May 31, the band will stage a record release party at Caffe Lena.

The Hedonists - comprised of core members Annie and Jonny Rosen, Donald Young and Peter Davis - are accompanied by drummer Jerry Marotta,  who spent two decades Jerry dividing his time between recording and touring with Peter Gabriel, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Tears for Fears, Joan Armatrading, Paul McCartney, and countless others. With “Bring it On Home,” the band is amiably assisted by guest musicians John Sebastian (yes, that one), Dave Davies (no, not that one), and Randy Reinhart. 

“This record differs from the other five,” says guitarist Jonny Rosen, “in that we decided to focus on two related genres of music, as opposed to our previous albums which were an eclectic mix of folk, country, bluegrass, blues and jazz.”  

The 12-song release features tasty renditions of a mid-20th century Parisian waltz (“Under Paris Skies”), a cornet and trombone mating that weaves through the sultry 1924 tune “Prescription for the Blues,” and a musical re-make of the Depression-Era protest song “The Panic Is Own,” whose updated lyrics include themes of the plight of the immigrant, the (lack of) gun control, rising oceans, Russian hackings and the ever-widening gap of economic inequality in a new world.

“Bring it On Home” also features a smattering of original tunes – from the Davis and Moss co-penned 12-bar blues femme homage “Bring It On Home To Mama,” to the love lost sorrow-cholic “Long Distance Call,” and “Who’d be knocking (Knocking on my door/ so late at night)” penned by Davies about one particularly strange pre-dawn awakening when the songwriter was startled from his slumber to find a stranger standing over his bed.  

Annie & the Hedonists album release concert will stake place 8 p.m. Friday May 31 at Caffé Lena, 47 Phila St. Special guests: Randy Reinhart and Dave Davies.  For reservations or more information, call 518-583-0022 or visit Caffe Lena. org. 

Published in Entertainment
At Caffè Lena, Sarah Craig strives to take audiences
'Below the Surface of Life.'

“When I was a kid growing up, I never thought that I would have a career. I somehow thought I'd be able to get away with not working. I thought maybe I'd be the Queen of England. So, I never really had any interest in making money or having a career, but I did have a very big bundle of energy for trying to make good things happen in the world.”

Thus began my interview with Sarah Craig, our local ringleader for the arts. Meeting in a cozy little café in downtown Saratoga Springs, just a block or two up from her usual haunt and handiwork, the eminent Caffè Lena, we sat down over two cups of tea to spin the yarn. 

Caffè Lena is the oldest continuously operating folk music venue in the nation, having housed such mythology as Bob Dylan and Arlo Guthrie. Since its beginnings in 1960, the Caffè has been a home for music, magic, and ghosts, operating out of a 19th century boarding house in Saratoga’s historic downtown. In 2016, the aging establishment underwent a $2 million renovation, creating the much healthier, 100 percent handicap-accessible performance venue music lovers delight in today. 

Following the passing of founder Lena Spencer in 1989, the organization had found itself in an administrative kerfuffle, seeking a life without its heart for the first time in its 30-year history. After several years of part-time managers and volunteers, the Caffè was in need of fresh impetus. In 1995, Craig became the organization’s first executive director, putting the Caffè back on its feet, and running too. 

Craig had never wished to work in the art world, at least not at first. Of course, having spent her childhood years noodling around on various instruments, she had a deep love for music, but she considered it no more than a hobby. Craig gravitated instead toward something more tangible

She earned her B.A. in psychology and women’s studies from the University of Vermont, leaving her, in her words “basically unemployable.” She moved to Boston, entering into the world of grassroots activism. Here she began working for VISTA, more commonly known as the domestic Peace Corps, as well as for the Massachusetts branch of Peace Action, a nationwide, grassroots citizens lobby. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the organization known for its advocacy of nuclear disarmament had found itself shrinking, and in the process Craig become the Executive Director.

A freshly married Craig left the state of Massachusetts after several years of service and fled a little closer to her Manchester, VT hometown, right over the border in the heart ofupstate New York. Enter a consequential day: amidst job searching in her new locale, Craig picked up a copy of the daily paper, the Saratogian

“I was sitting at a local diner in Salem, looking through the classified ads,” she told me, “and here was this little ad that said “Nonprofit Arts Organization Seeks Full or Part-Time Executive Director.’” And with the flip of a page, Craig had stumbled upon the community that would envelop her for the next 25 years of her life. 

She told me stories from the next decades, things that just floated to her mind, one of these being how she observed the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie start her music career in the Caffè, then her marriage, and then her family. 

“Just to be able to see someone's life evolve like that meant a lot to me,” she said. “I remember one day where I brought out a basket of toys for her kids to play with in the dressing room while their parents were up on stage, and I go back to check on them, and everything is spread out all over the floor, just toys everywhere. I thought, ‘These are Woody Guthrie's grandchildren.’ That's amazing to me. That's such a piece of American history.” 

She told me of the songwriting duo Lowen and Navarro who frequented the Caffè in the 1990s and 2000s. She told me how after years of playing the Caffè, Eric Lowen took her aside before the sound check and confided to her that he’d been diagnosed with ALS. She was the first person he told. As his disease progressed, she watched Lowen come back using crutches, and then a wheelchair, carried up the Caffe’s narrow stairway. She watched him lose his ability to play. And then one day, he couldn’t come back. He passed away in 2009. 

“You do get close to people,” she told me, "Art is all about being unguarded and opening up your inner emotional life to people. It's one of the most demanding things that you can expect of a human being.” 

It is that very concept that defines the importance of the Caffè. It is why the venue feels so current despite its almost 60-year life span. It is why so many, including Craig, are dedicated to its maintenance and growth. 

“I see music as the tool that we use rather than the end-product,” she said, “The end product that I’m trying to create is new friendships, harmony between people, getting people to see below the surface of life, getting people to wake up their emotions. On the surface it looks like I’m running an entertainment venue, but I’m actually trying to accomplish much more than that. And I think that people feel that. I think that the Caffe has always been that.”

In a time where political divisions have put humanity on hold, the necessity for art has risen through the roof. In the coming year, the Caffè is focusing on accessibility and community service. 

“We're trying to get outside of our four walls and get the music out to people who would not otherwise be able to experience live music,” she says. Creating a live streaming option, varying genres and the prices of performances, and staging 60 shows out in the community, including schools, soup kitchens, and nursing homes, are all means to this end. Her work continues, as does its magic.

In the coming months, you can expect to see the same quality of performances, but with the expanded house size comes even more intriguing acts. If you’re inkling for something more rootsy, duo Degroot and Hargreaveswill be exploring the boundaries of Appalachian stringband music in early May. Or perhaps you’re looking for something more traditionally at home in the Caffe: this May, Caffe Lena is holding a Pete Seeger Centennial Celebration, hosted by music writer Jesse Jarnow. The event will feature live music by banjoist Richie Stearns, who performed with Seegeron multiple occasions, and folk fiddler Rosie Newton. The event is free, but reservations are highly suggested.

As I watched Craig head back up Phila Street, back towards the Caffè, her final words to me banged around in my head.

“I think that in order to be a whole human being, you need to be intellectual, you need to be emotional, you need to be open and curious, and I think that the very fact that art has just always been a part of the human experience tells me that it's one of those essential elements. It's just everything that we've talked about. People find understanding through stories. They don't tend to find understanding through pie charts and bar graphs. To my way of thinking, it's just desperately needed in the world right now, because so much of what we're seeing is people just defining everyone who's not like themselves as garbage. Through fear, through ignorance, through whatever. It's part of being a human being. It's hard to express though, isn't it?”

Grace-Alberti 

The SMARTACUS Creative Group is a student-driven creative agency dedicated to supporting the economic development of Upstate New York. A senior in Jill Cowburn's journalism class at Saratoga Springs High School, Grace Alberti is the founder of Ad Astra Theatre Troupe. She'll be attending New York University as a BFA Drama major this fall. 
Published in Lifestyle

SARATOGA SPRINGS – It was shortly before the Summer of Love, just before the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 and around the time Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing world championship for refusing to be inducted into the U.S. Army.

Eric Andersen, by that time, already had a couple of albums to his credit. He’d made an appearance in an Andy Warhol film alongside “Girl of the Year" Edie Sedgwick, and was being recruited by Brian Epstein to be taken under the Beatles’ manager’s wing. Epstein arrived in New York with an advance copy of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and invited Andersen to give it a preview listen.   

“He had just flown over from London and was at the Waldorf Astoria,” Andersen recalls. “We had a little record player and he just played it. We heard ‘A Day In The Life.’ We heard a bunch of tracks, there, in the dark, with only a little light coming from the bathroom that was open just a crack.”   

Three years later, Andersen journeyed alongside Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead atop the rails of their legendary trans-Canadian train tour, and a handful of years after that was on stage harmonizing with Patti Smith in a prequel to Bob Dylan's equally legendary Rolling Thunder Revue. Legendary status finds him resting easily.

“Live long enough and you’ll get to meet everybody,” he says with a laugh.

Fast-forward to the present day where on an early spring afternoon, the singer-songwriter-poet is motoring between a booking in Philadelphia – where he sang about Lou Reed in Anthony DeCurtis' music journalism class – and Montclair, New Jersey, where a 1960s themed concert is being staged. Over the past two weeks, he’s appeared in Greece to give a speech to a psychoanalytic convention – “I know, go figure,” – and celebrated Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 100th birthday on the Lower East Side alongside Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders and Laurie Anderson.

Now, he begins a springtime tour, which visits Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs on Sunday, April 7.  Andersen will be accompanied by percussionist Cheryl Prashker, producer, musician, and audio engineer extraordinaire Steve Addabbo, and violinist Scarlet Rivera - whose majestical bowing is forever sonically imprinted on the Bob Dylan tracks “Hurricane,” and “One More Cup of Coffee,” and on David Johansen’s “Lonely Tenement,” among others. 

Twenty or so years ago, Andersen co-wrote a song titled "You Can't Relive the Past" with Lou Reed. And while maybe you can’t relive the past, he seems mostly OK talking about it, albeit amid all kinds of mayhem going on around him. 

“We just missed an accident. Just got by it. Collision of two cars right on the street. Two firetrucks. Two ambulances. And a freight train going by overhead,” Andersen says. Further complicating matters is he is being navigated in a vehicle with an apparently wonky tire. “The car is vibrating,” he reports. Or, it could be the making of a song.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1943, Andersen received his early schooling in Buffalo, where he taught himself guitar and piano, watched Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers play at his high school gym and saw Elvis Presley perform in a gold suit at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

“What do you remember about Elvis in Buffalo in 1956?”  

“When that first chord hit, the chairs were kicked away within one nanosecond and everyone was standing,” he responds.

In the early 1960s, Andersen hitchhiked west and landed at job at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, where he attended a party following a Haight-Ashbury poetry reading on a memorable November night in 1963.  “I wrote a 26-minute-long tone poem called ‘Beat Avenue,’ about it,” he says.  “The day John Kennedy was killed. I was at a party with Allen Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and (Kerouac’s friend) Neal Cassady – the protagonist of ‘On The Road.’ They were all there. And Allen was walking around with no clothes on. That was funny. Like a naked Buddha.”  The double CD set, “Beat Avenue,” features 14 original compositions in all, and was released in 2003.

At the invitation of Tom Paxton, Andersen headed to New York City where a flourishing Greenwich Village songwriting circle included Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. His first New York gig was opening for John Lee Hooker. He performed at a plethora folk and jazz clubs. And when not performing, was watching others - the Velvet Underground, the Doors, and John Coltrane, among them – stage their own performances.  

“John Coltrane… on stage he could put himself in a trance and play. And eventually he’d put you in a trance,” Andersen says.  

During the 1970’s, Andersen divided his time between California and New York, the latter being where a new scene was unfolding with people like Sam Sheppard and Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. “Patti Smith: she was working at the book store, and we were all living at The Chelsea Hotel.” Manhattan, meanwhile, isn’t what it used to be. “It’s so gentrified and expensive,” he says.

The early ‘70s also delivered the release of “Blue River,” perhaps his best-known and best-selling record. “One crazy (concert) was when my album ‘Blue River’ came out. I did a show with the Jefferson Airplane in front of 400,00 people. They had a band. I had a guitar. I mean, I figured if I didn’t get a heart attack that day… I’ll live forever.”

More recently, Sony/Legacy Recordings issued “The Essential Eric Andersen” last spring. The 42-track retrospective covers 50 years of Andersen’s recorded history. A retrospective documentary, titled “The Songpoet,” is slated for release later this year. (The trailer, which looks awesome, may be viewed HEREHERE

On April 7, Andersen returns to Caffe Lena, where he last performed 12 months ago.

"Saratoga. If I had done better at the track, I could be living in my Range Rover on my small estate in Saratoga Springs, one of those houses with the pillars with a chandelier 100 miles up over the front door," he says with a laugh. Of Sarah Craig, Caffe Lena’s executive director, Andersen says: “she’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. She’s a repository of arcana. She knows all kinds of facts and figures about the world; a reservoir of fascinating information,” he says. “You can print that for everybody to know.”  So, there it is.

Eric Andersen, with Scarlet Rivera and Cheryl Prashker, performs 7 p.m.  Sunday, April 7 at  Caffe Lena, 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs. Tickets are $35 general admission, $32 café members, $17.50 students and kids. More information and tickets, go to: caffelena.org, or call 518-583-0022. 

Published in Entertainment
Monday, 01 April 2019 13:17

Dan Berggren: Songs That Send You Toward Love

With deep roots in the Adirondacks, Dan Berggren is a folk singer whose music tells stories of people, places and mountains. His songs celebrate nature and fundamental themes of caring and love.

Born in Brooklyn, Berggren developed an affinity for the pipe organ, harmony, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach while singing in the boys' choir of Grace Episcopal Church. Each summer, his family would head to the farm in the small Adirondack town of Minerva where his mother was born and raised. When Berggren was 12, his family moved to Minerva to live there year-round, but he maintained his passion for music and performing. 

“I discovered how satisfying it is to practice hard to give a great performance that gives great pleasure to others and to me,” he says.

Among Berggren's favorites in his youth: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, as well as other rock, folk and soul musicians. Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers was a major influence and Berggren says he continues to be inspired by his work to this day. 

Now living in Saratoga Springs, Berggren feels he has become a better musician throughout his career. He credits that to “practice, learning from mistakes, and knowing more ways to approach a musical idea, topic, or story. That’s why my most recent album, This Planet We Call Home, was the most fun to make."

That's usually the case, he finds. "You accumulate more experience and knowledge with each successive accomplishment.”


Keys to Success 

Berggren attributes his success to his discipline and practicing the fundamentals of his craft. Also essential: “Being flexible and knowing when to bend or even break fundamental rules.”

Most musicians have a most memorable concert or favorite point in their careers. Berggren, who has performed in all kinds of venues and all sorts of places from South Africa to Texas, recounts several.

“I've had memorable moments with orchestras in concert halls, with thousands of people singing along on my songs at outdoor folk festivals, with only a few people gathered at weddings and funerals, with strangers in Africa, Europe, the British Isles, and with audiences at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs…” 

"It can be the people in the audience, the acoustics of the room, the purpose of the event, or playing just the right song at just the right time." 


Open Mic at Caffé Lena

A moment that particularly stands out for Berggren is his first open mic in 1985 at Caffé Lena  which, as all Saratogians know, is the oldest continuing coffee house in North America.  In those days, performers auditioned for Lena Spencer, the late owner and founder of the venue. 

"Lena liked my 15 minutes on her stage and so she invited me back to do a show in November. I've been performing there every year since.”  His latest show in early March sold out so quickly another was scheduled. 

What Berggren says he likes most about being a musician is “getting people who have come to my concerts to join in and sing along on the choruses of songs. There is a wonderful energy in the room when that happens, and it lifts the audience's spirit and mine…singing does something to a person that is both physical and emotional.”

Berggren hopes his music will have an impact on others.  

"Some songs may make you laugh, think about people you love, or direct you to questions that need to be asked and answered by each listener. Music and literature can deal with many aspects of love or hate or apathy. I want my music to send you in the direction of love.”
Ethan Kopraski  
A student-driven communications agency, the SMARTACUS Creative Group is dedicated the economic and cultural development of Upstate New York.
A junior in Jill Cowburn's journalism class at Saratoga Springs High School whose interests gravitate toward history and writing,  Ethan Kopraski envisions a career as an elementary school teacher or ecologist.  A varsity football and lacrosse player, he enjoys music and skiing and he runs a history-themed club, Studied History of Conflicts (SHOC).
Published in Lifestyle
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