Music-Hall Centennial Starts
With Nine-Hour 101-Year Bash

The 100th anniversary celebration for Randolph’s Chandler Music Hall will open with a nine-hour marathon performance called "101 Premieres—Albert's Big Bash."

It is probable that no production this long or this ambitious has ever before been staged in Vermont.

On the Chandler stage will be 101 short presentations, one for every year of the Music Hall’s existence. Featured will be of works of art that appeared in the U.S. or abroad during each one of those years—1907 through 2007.

"Albert," of course, is Col. Albert B. Chandler, the donor of the building.

The September marathon performance at Chandler was conceived by Chandler board member Anthony Keller, who is directing the project.

"We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate the birth of our cultural center a century ago than to pay tribute to the creative artists whose work is the reason institutions like ours exist all over the world," Keller said.

Many more than 101 performers will appear on the Chandler stage during the marathon to present excerpts from plays, musicals, choreography, novels, poems, operas, symphonic, folk, chamber, jazz and pop music that came to life between 1907 and 2007.

Great photography, paintings, sculpture, movies, and architecture of the past and present will be seen by the audience as digitally projected images.

The show has been divided into ten decades, each of which is being researched, organized and directed by a different central Vermont arts-lover.

Eight of the "Decade Directors" are now at work, casting and preparing their half-hour productions: John Jackson of Randolph, Bob Eddy of Braintree, Maria Lamson of South Royalton, Dorothy Robson of Hancock, Tony Keller of Braintree, Nina Gaby of Brookfield, Charlie McMeekin of Braintree, and Kep Taylor of Bethel. Two more directors are still being recruited.

Betsy Cantlin of Randolph Center is in charge of the demanding technical aspects of the event, which will require tag teams of lighting and sound technicians and stagehands.

The show will start at 3 p.m. and end at midnight.

Keller's idea for the marathon goes back to a production he saw in New York during the late 1980s, Peter Brook's dramatization of the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabarata, the world's longest poem.

"It was thoroughly engaging," he recalls. "The nine hours whizzed by."

Tickets can be purchased for the whole nine hours, or for parts I and II separately.

"We are giving awards to folks who sit through the whole thing—and stay awake," Keller noted, "but those with shorter attention spans can also come in and pay 25 cents a year."

Parade First

A sidewalk parade from Mari Castle, Colonel Chandler's home, to the theater, featuring the whole cast in costume will precede the show.

There will be a one-hour dinner break mid-way, and a party afterward.

At midnight the bell in the Chandler belfry will be rung for the first time in many years.

Tickets went on sale Aug. 1 at 728-6464 between 3-6 p.m. weekdays, or at tickets@chandler-arts.org.

Just the Beginning

"101 Premieres" is just the first performing event in a centennial season that includes 30 music, dance and theater performances. NPR’s "From the Top" will broadcast from Chandler. Arlo Guthrie will be on hand. So will Natalie MacMaster. The Chiara String Quartet, the Hilliard Ensemble and others will play new works by local composers, commissioned for the centennial.

The first centennial event actually will be an Aug. 19 softball game between Chandler Music Hall and Kimball Library, representing the productive friendship between those two benefactors.