On the first and third Sunday of every month, join us for Voices from the Catskills, a one-set Catskills live music & spoken word performance beginning at 4 pm, rolling into our famous Soup Salons.
In Voices of the Catskills, we are celebrating traditional American and Catskills music and stories. This series is co-produced by Spillian and music industry expert, Chris Hensley, and co-sponsored by the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice.
Catskills Sacred Harp Singers
Sunday, November 2
Music at 4 PM
Dinner at 5:30 PM
Performance & Meal: $25
Please call 800-811-3351 for Reservations.
Community singing used to be common place in rural America. There were literally hundreds of tunebooks published in the states between 1780 and 1850. Tunesmiths (not composers) would write tunes, publish books, and travel the country selling books and teaching singing school, and there were several in the Catkills. Although set to religious text, the “acceptable” vernacular for social singing, none of these books were ever adopted by any one Christian denomination One of the last surviving tunebooks in common use is The Sacred Harp. The presentation will include a history of tunebook culture in the US, as well as an introduction to a unique way to read music. And then we’ll all do some singing before supper!
About the Catskills Sacred Harp Singers
This extraordinary group has been meeting and singing weekly for over a year, hosted by Fleischmanns’ River Run Bed and Breakfast owner, Ben Fenton; with musical direction by ethnomusicologist, Ben Bath. From The Watershed Post:
"The American tradition of shape note singing was born in the 1800s, and lives on today mainly through singing groups that draw material from an 1844 tunebook called The Sacred Harp. The first shape note tunebook was published Albany in 1801, a book entitled The Easy Instructor that offered a simplified notation system using basic shapes and syllables — fa, sol, la, mi — that regular folks without much music instruction could use to quickly master tunes. Over the years, shape note has gone into obscurity but never disappeared, persisting through the generations in churches and communities in the rural South.
Lately, this rural American musical movement has been experiencing a revival — and returning to its Northeastern roots. Large shape note communities have sprung up in Western Massachusetts and New Jersey in recent years, drawing participants young and old.
Ben Fenton, owner of River Run Bed & Breakfast in Fleischmanns, discovered shape note via the Civil War movie Cold Mountain, whose soundtrack features the Liberty Church Sacred Harp Singers from Henagar, Alabama. 'I got a rush: ‘Oh my God, what is this? It’s just so cool!’' Fenton said. 'I went online and found a monthly group in Kingston. It changed my life. I’ve always sung, but not like this — I had to unlearn everything. Shape note isn’t a performance art; it’s not sweet choral stuff. It’s straight from the gut and heart. Your whole body’s involved.'
The American tradition of shape note singing was born in the 1800s, and lives on today mainly through singing groups that draw material from an 1844 tunebook called The Sacred Harp. The first shape note tunebook was published Albany in 1801, a book entitled The Easy Instructor that offered a simplified notation system using basic shapes and syllables — fa, sol, la, mi — that regular folks without much music instruction could use to quickly master tunes. Over the years, shape note has gone into obscurity but never disappeared, persisting through the generations in churches and communities in the rural South.
November 16: Carver Blanchard, featuring Sam Friedman on blues harp
December 7: Pine HIll Playboys
December 21: Phoenicia & Woodstock Community Chorale singing carols
Soup Salon
Please stay to join us for a marvelous Soup Salon dinner afterwards. We serve a bottomless bowl of made-from-scratch, hearty soup, salad, bread, a sweet treat, and coffee or tea, all for $20. And our cash bar is open as well…
We began Spillian Soup Salons last year and are delighted to that they are becoming a beloved tradition in the Catskills. Here’s a little more about how they work…
In honor of the Fleischmann inspired bread lines (where they would give out loaves of bread to men waiting from their Vienna Style Model Bakery in NYC), we have a ‘soup line…’ We invite everyone to go into the kitchen and grab a bowl and get soup and garnishes. We serve the salad and bread family style, so you’re welcome to have as much as you’d like.
We also encourage you to have as many bowls of soup as you’d like…most people go back for at least one more round and I think our record to date is five. We serve the little sweet dessert either family style or on a plate, depending on what’s being served. (And whether we think it will look cool on our little dessert plates…) We serve iced tea throughout the meal from our antique silver pitchers and hot coffee, regular and decaf, out of our antique silver tea service at the table.
You’re also welcome to get drinks at the bar — we have a couple of wines, several beer selections, and a changing selection of drink specials — these have been a big hit every week. These are becoming neighborhood salons — you can meet old friends or make new ones around our big table. Join us!
And don’t forget to ask us about staying with us…we offer some of the most spiffy Catskills lodging you’ll find…Click here to find out more…
Call 800-811-3351 or visit our website to make your reservations.