Community

Concert series, arts festival planned at Jamesport Meeting House


A new concert series and an arts festival will take place this fall at the Jamesport Meeting House through the help of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.

The meeting house, built in 1731, has been awarded a grant of $11,280, which will be used to support its fall offerings. The Gardiner foundation supports the study of New York State history and culture.

Board president Richard Wines said in a press release, “This will allow us to extend our programming in ways that would not be possible without this assistance.”

Peter Susser, a meeting house board member, is organizing a 1731 Concert Series, which will feature, but not be limited to, music written around the year the Jamesport Meeting House was built. The concerts will be performed by New York-based ensembles.

The Black Marble Violin Duo —Karen Marie Marmer and Jörg-Michael Schwarz — will perform the first program of the series at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 22. They will play music by Leclair, Telemann, Boccherini, Shield, Locatelli and Mozart.

The Harvest Arts Festival, planned by board member Cliff Baldwin, will begin Saturday, Sept. 29, with a still life drawing class, “Autumnal Light from 1731,” led by New York Times illustrator Rob Shepperson. Subsequent sessions include a bookmaking and calligraphy workshop with Marta Baumiller and Alan Scott on Oct. 13 and a cyanotype workshop focusing on the light coming in through the building’s windows, both in October.

A newly commissioned work by Mr. Baldwin, “Jamesport Meeting House: A Cinematic Exploration of the Building in Pictures and Sound,” will be the arts festival’s final program and will take place in November. It will be projected onto the building’s tin walls.

The meeting house, which was once a church, is the oldest public building on the East End and the oldest building in Riverhead.