Catskills Brigadoon -- The North American Jewish Choral Festival, Part I

Last month I went to my first North American Jewish Choral Festival, carpooling and bunking with a fellow alto in my choir and her 7-year-old daughter.  I'm catching up gradually to this annual reunion/conference/love-fest; we only stayed one night out of the four, in the refurbished, partly remodeled Hudson Valley Resort and Spa, known by previous generations as the Granite Hotel.  A very multi-layered experience, making all kinds of connections between past and present.

Spontaneous sing-along in the lobby of the Hudson Valley Resort --
 Two guys wheeled out the piano and Dave Schlossberg,
our wonderful accompanist, sat down to play. 

First, it was a Brigadoon-like return to the Jewish Catskills.  The Catskills were long over their peak, so to speak, by the time I ever stayed at one of the big resorts.  That would have been over thirty years ago with my future husband's family at Brown's, when the comedians still slipped in a good shpritz of Yiddish, or a dozen years later at the Raleigh or Fallsview or Concord, on now-treasured winter weekends as an adult with my husband, kids, their grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins.  Maybe I was catching the tail end of the peak when, at five years old, I spent a week with my parents and baby sister at the much smaller Jockey Country Club, in Ellenville, the town with my name.None of those places are still in business; the relatively obscure Jockey Country Club never made it into Catskill legend but today Googles up a few picture postcards on ebay and New York Post advertisements in an online retrospective. My folks made lifelong friends there.

But here, in Kerhonkson in 2014 for the five days in July, was a living, breathing, Jewish gathering of 600 in a  hotel that hadn't gone ultra-orthodox or been left to molder in the woods.  People of all ages, cities, headwear and possibly even politics -- but one love for singing Jewish music and by extension, creative community.

After getting over the initial geshtalt of welcome banner, familiar and unfamiliar faces, I recognized the general layout of your old Borsht Belt hotel. Here was your grandly spacious arrival hall;  the long reservation desk, the grand staircase, the paneling installed by long-gone-and-buried contractors.  The double-height doors to the vast dining room. Off the back of the lobby, the sprawling, unchartable wings of guest rooms,  built in different stages and styles over the generations. The tower, where elevators took you to the most centralized, modernized rooms. Also the theater, where our mothers and grandmothers had once come in cocktail dresses, drinking whiskey sours and leaving children to pooled babyitters.

Of course some things had been remodeled or at least refreshed.   The carpeting must have dated to  this millennium.  The dark oversized couches, arranged into four or five separate conversational squares with  coffee table in the middle, were probably brought in within the past decade, from some closing hotel or furniture outlet.  The conference wing might have been altogether new, added in the property's reincarnation as a meeting place for all kinds of groups that required, or at least wouldn't mind, kosher cuisine. The spa may have been new -- I don't think anyone went there from our crowd. The theater had been partially outfitted with row-long tables, lecture-hall style, and a modern sound board and mikes.  

And of course, there was wi-fi. While some of the couch corrals were filled with schmoozing choir members from far away, sharing snacks and drinks, others were occupied by lone email and Web junkies, or presenters making last-minute changes to their workshop materials. Or cantorial colleagues planning joint programs back home, or just comparing notes.

from the Hudson Valley Resort's site..

Filling the hallways, stage, stairs and conference rooms, was a special subset of Jewish clientele; people who'd come to make and hear music, meet the composers whose names are on the sheet music they practice all year. Also to get to know each other better, to share meals and evenings and workshops instead of just weekly rehearsals, with their own members and with singers and players from all over North America. To perform before an audience of peers.  To celebrate the 25th year of this event, its founders and each other.

We could hear the great sound of the most professional groups -- the Zamir Chorales of New York and Boston -- rehearsing as we made our way to registration.