The pictures say it all except that it was one of the best times I’ve had during my stay on this planet. So many fantastic people in one amazing setting. Heaven on Earth. Thanks all for being there and missed those who could not make it.
The Wharton Wednesday reading preceded the party.
John Humphrey and Maggie Leonard
Richard III’s Tod Randolph with Shakespeare & Company’s Normi Noel.
Kristin Wold (Sea Marks), Normi Noel (S&C), Tod Randolph (Richard III) and Tom Rindge (S&C)
BMA Audio Producer Jason Brown with WAM’s Kristen van Ginhoven and performer/dancer Karen Lee
Corinna May (Richard III), Jonny Epstien (A Winter’s Tale), Kristin Wold (Sea Marks) Normi Noel (Shake&Co) and Tod Randolph (Richard III)
Alexander
Barrington Stage’s Matt Neely with Margo Passalaqua Neely and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson
My favorite part of production is working with talent. When two of them are brought together its twice the thrill. That would be the case when Ben Hillman (Hillman and Company) and Jim Frangione (Berkshire Playwrights Lab, Recorded Books) recorded a voice over for another insanely brilliant Hillman animated film. With four ears scrutinizing his every syllable, Mr. Frangione delivered quality cooly and quickly.
“In the following essay I shall attempt to show how we can read the myths and legends of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as the collective dreams of the mid-term crisis of the Christian era. As an example of this we will apply C.G. Jung’s method of dream interpretations to the important work to Chretien de Troyes’ version of the Grail legend.” – From the introduction to The Holy Grail: Healing the Sexual Wound in the Western Psyche.
BMA is looking forward to the publication of the audio edition of The Holy Grail: Healing the Sexual Wound in the Western Psyche by renowned Jungian psychologist Roger J. Woolger. This would not be Mr. Woolger’s first foray into audio. He has published several with the Sounds True label who also records and distributes Eckhart Tolle among others. With degrees from Oxford and London Universities as well as the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Roger has developed a practice of spiritual psychotherapy he terms Deep Memory Process which he teaches in Europe and the U.S.
Roger’s eloquent and clear narration is the perfect vehicle for Jungian thought as well as any classical or philosophical text. Comprehensive ideas are rendered accessible and his heartfelt delivery is as enjoyable to listen to as any welcomed guest.
Topics include:
The Troubadors, The Cult of the Lady, The Psychological Significance of Chivalry and Perceval the Hero.
Their verses brought nature into the homes of a nation.
Read by Normi Noel and Tara Franklin.
The Goodale girls inform us how to observe and think as one mind with nature like Zen masters. In this time of environmental disasters their message brings wisdom. The words of fellow New England poet Walt Whitman describe their transcendent vision: “We are nature, long have we been absent but now we return.”
This audio is an attempt to share their words that once brought joy to a nation and in doing so bring awareness of our beautiful natural habitat.
click on image to view the movie
Normi Noel is an actress and director with Shakespeare and Company and other regional theaters. Her current project with BMA Audio is Carol Gilligan’s The Birth of Pleasure.
Tara Franklin performs leading roles regionally and in New York as well as Berkshire Theatre Festival. She can be heard on the BMA Audio label as the voice of Emily Dickinson on Poets of Nature and as Edith Wharton on Edith Wharton on Audio Vol. 1.
Spring is a great time for poetry and BMA is exploring the verses of nature poet John Clare. With the warmer weather its now easier to enjoy sauntering in the woods and fields and join the poets in observing the workings of Nature. Like the nightingale he wrote so passionately about, John Clare thrived in woodland recesses observing and always discovering the deeper mysteries of his muse. There he took pen to paper and from the rural village of Helpston sung out his ecological vision to the world. This video poem, Hymn to Spring, employs the romantic technique of personifying nature – thus the inclusion of the Romantic artists such as William Waterhouse and Sir Frank Dicksee – and by doing so helps us understand her. They tell us Nature is not only a living entity with human qualities but is in fact us and we her.
The numerous biographies, articles and journals about John Clare have well documented his love of trees, shrubs, birds, flowers and forest nooks. Yet it was only as a published botanist that his habit of wandering off into secluded woods was considered socially acceptable by his fellow villagers. His poem Shadows of Taste describes his partiality towards solitary alcoves:
He loves each desolate neglected spot
That seems in labour’s hurry left forgot
Even today this activity might seem strange to neighbors and society due to our favoring more artificial means of experiencing new thoughts and sensations. Yet while we are ensconced online or with a DVD the poet in their woodland haunt maintains that forgotten connection to earth and trees – perhaps for the rest of us. The poem is not only a verbal landscape painting but a how to manual of reestablishing our ties to Earth. With the persistent busyness of our daily thinking we sometimes need an instructor to point the way simply, gracefully and thoughtfully. Clare reminds us that its okay to dwell..
Lost in such extacys in this old spot
I feel that rapture which the world hath not
That joy like health that flushes in my face
Amid the brambles of this ancient place
The rest of peace the sacredness of mind
In such deep solitudes we seek – and find.
(from The Robin’s Nest)
Hymn to Spring is a wooing of Nature’s eternal embrace which is now more essential than ever. We are all effected by the impact of our ever expanding civilization on the environment. Clare was too – watching his woodland hideaways slowly yield to the deforestation of the Enclosure Acts. It has been stated that the state of the world reflects the state of our thoughts. By reviewing the old poets we renew our thinking, looking closely at the arrival of Spring as John Clare would – taking note of her beauty and respectfully yet passionately summoning her to join us again.
John Clare
As an essayist, author, editor and lecturer Christopher Bamford’s reading has the subtle clarity of one who has written extensively on the insights and revelations of the the romantic period. An audio edition of his selected published essays is scheduled for release this summer – (see Keats, Goethe: Romanticism and the Evolution of Consciousness.)
For more about John Clare visit The John Clare Page for links, essays and articles.
For many years now renowned author and lecturer Christopher Bamford has been presenting talks world wide on the esoteric traditions. As editor-in-chief of Lindisfarne Books and Anthroposophic Press and contributing editor for Parabola Magazine, Mr. Bamford was hard to pin down. After a few years of pursuit BMA Studios in collaboration with Anthroposophic press is finally in the studio with the brilliant speaker reading his essay Goethe, Keats, Romanticism and the Evolution of Consciousness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The audio essay, along with several others of Mr. Bamford’s due out this spring, delineates the transformative and alchemical aspects of Romantic writing. Although the writing is not for the light of mind a close attention to the words will deliver an adventure into the deeper dimensions of Nature and healing. This producer found himself transported by the mythical realms of Keats and Goethe’s luminous insights and felt the better for it. It is our wish that the listener experience the same.
John Keats
Look for Goethe, Keats, Romanticism and the Evolution of Consciousness and other Essays this spring from BMA Audio.
Congratulations to Ethan Dufault on his premiere of What I Meant to Tell You, a film about father and acclaimed poet Peter Kane Dufault. The film played to a full audience who weren’t shy with jubilant applause at the end. BMA was proud to be a part of this important and moving work. Both Ethan’s and PKD’s voice overs were recorded at the studio with the additional result of an audiobook of poetry which can be heard on the CD Verses: Civil and Uncivil on BMA Audio.. The poems vary from strong indictments of past administrations to some of the most beautiful descriptions of nature in print.
Three years in the making, the film chronicles the life and work of acclaimed poet Peter Kane Dufault – the director’s father. Poems have appeared in the New Yorker, London Magazine, Poetry and The Norton Anthology of Poetry. The film features Law and Order’s Chris Noth and poets Richard Wilber and Maxine Kumin.
Congratulations to Ethan Dufault on his premiere of What I Meant to Tell You, a film about father and acclaimed poet Peter Kane Dufault, at this Berkshire International Film Festival this past weekend. The film played to a full audience who weren’t shy with jubilant applause at the end. BMA was proud to be a part of this important and moving work. Both Ethan’s and PKD’s voice overs were recorded at the studio with the additional result of an audiobook of poetry which can be heard on the CD Verses: Civil and Uncivil on BMA Audio. The poems vary from strong indictments of past administrations to some of the most beautiful descriptions of nature in print.
Three years in the making, the film chronicles the life and work of acclaimed poet Peter Kane Dufault – the director’s father. With cinematography by BMA’s Rick Sands viewers are mesmerized with breathtaking shots of forest landscapes, fields, beaches, and kestrels gliding through marshes. PKD’s poems have appeared in the New Yorker, London Magazine, Poetry and The Norton Anthology of Poetry. The film features Law and Order’s Chris Noth and poets Richard Wilber and Maxine Kumin.
BMA Audio’s recent projects include restoring and digitizing lectures presented by the APC of New York at the C.G. Jung Center. The APC is the oldest psychology club in the country.
When we first started digitizing some of the tapes fell apart in the player. That was a clue that it could be a challenge. We selected tapes that had the best quality and luckily those were significant and important lectures. There are colorful and intriguing titles as only Jungian psychology could produce such as “Approaching Merlin’s Cave” by Diana Beach, “Wordsworth and the Landscape of Memory” by Beth Darlington and “To the Mythology of Earth Connectedness” by Werner Engel as well the one we are now processing. Working with this material is enlightening as well as meditative. That is the best part.
In this lecture Dr. Ferrell discusses the questions that Nietzsche first identified and predicted would take on critical mass in the 20th century – that of the coming of the age of nihilism. These themes also fascinated C.G. Jung. These lectures will be available for purchase in February.
From the audio:
“With all the interpretations of Nietzsche existing today there does seem to be a scholarly consensus that Nietzche stands as a fountainhead of postmodernism, of new currents in philosophy, religion and spiritualty, the natural and social sciences, psychoanalysis and the arts.”
“Since Jung is more interested in the ways in which the unconscious manifested in Nietzsche work he is much more focused on the mythological and archetypal dimensions in his interpretation of Nietzsche.”
When BMA discovered a few years ago that the charming bookstore at The Mount had no audio we felt it our prerogative to change that. At first we supplied the store with our Henry James audios which to our delight sold well there, the visitors perhaps being inspired by the Henry James room on the top floor and the deep friendship and literary connection between Henry and Edith. It was wonderful seeing the audio shelf empty out so quickly during the summer months but something was nagging at me. Perhaps they were buying the James audio because it was the next best thing to Edith Wharton. I didn’t think that was fair to Ms Edith and wanted to put my theory to the test.
If you haven’t been to The Mount recently it’s open until the end of October and then on weekends in November. It is indeed one of the more breathtaking sights of the Berkshires. Events include poetry festivals, books signings, plays, readings, Petanque games and now “ghostly readings” on Mondays. Halloween weekend features BTF’s Jonathan Epstein and Ariel Bock reading from Edith’s scariest tales. Be sure to check out The Mount. There is also a delightful bookstore stocked with everything Wharton managed by the courteous Ryan MacLaughlin.
Inspired by the mission of putting her spoken words in The Mount bookstore BMA contracted with Blackstone to sell their very best Wharton audio. Soon the bookstore audio shelf accommodated not only The Aspern Papers and The Siege of London but also Summer and The Age of Innocence, The Reef and Ethan Frome and indeed these were also scooped up by visitors.
Jonny Epstein reading The Last Asset
The popular Wharton Wednesdays last summer featured actors from Berkshire Theatre Festival reading various short stories. A light bulb went on in my head and the Wharton Audio Project was created. Thanks in part to the open minded Susan Wissler, the new director of Edith Wharton Restoration, BMA is collaborating with EWR on a series of Wharton short stories most of which were written during her stay at The Mount.
What makes this recording unique is that the talented actors included on the BMA recordings have acted in The Wharton plays presented at The Mount and been involved in readings at The Mount.
They will bring an understanding of Edith Wharton’s work with a grounded sense of place having lived and breathed Edith Wharton’s words in her very own home.
Tara Franklin at BMA Studios
Tod Randolph reading Autre Temps
Edith Newbold Jones 1/24/1862 – 8/11/1937
“Experience, observation, the looks and ways and words of “real people”, all melted and fused in the white heat of the creative fires – such is the mingled stuff which the novelist pours into the firm mould of his narrative.” – Edith Wharton
Wharton Wednesdays at The Mount
The charming and entertaining Wednesday readings during the summer inspired Edith Wharton on Audio Vol.1. Its been standing room only lately.
BTF's Harrison Gibbons reading The Rembrandt
Michael Brahce reading "His Father's Son". First appeared in "Tales of Men and Ghosts" in 1910.
Thanks to everyone for supporting our latest audio release, Death Vows by Richard Stevenson. It was quite a party on Saturday, October 17th at Matt Tannebaum’s, The Bookstore in Lenox. Author Richard Stevenson read from his latest Donald Strachey mystery, The 38Million Dollar Smile published by MLR Press and signed books and the Death Vows audio.
I’ve been a mystery fan from about the age of 8 or 9 when I started reading Nancy Drew, and that’s a lot of mysteries some 50 years later. I’ve gone through the classics–sometimes 3 or 4 times–Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, most of the English Tea Cozies etc. and offbeat ones like the Judge Dee mysteries from writer Robert Van Gulik set in ancient China and Steven Saylor’s Gordianus mysteries set in ancient Rome so I feel fairly confident of my knowledge about the genre.
And here’s my true confession, I only recently discovered Richard Stevenson’s Donald Strachey detective series. I’m so late to the party that I found him at book nine, Death Vows. Richard is a friend of mine and I vaguely knew that he wrote mysteries featuring a gay detective. Several years ago I did make an attempt to track one down at a local bookstore but they claimed they couldn’t get the book and I didn’t think about it again until last year when we went to a reading for Death Vows.
I fell immediately and madly in love with Donald Strachey, P.I. and Richard’s classic style of the hardboiled detective with a twist. Richard’s writing is oh, so smart and absolutely drop dead hilarious and the plot lines are complex enough for us mystery veterans. Stevenson’s stories are also topical but his writing skills are such that you don’t realize the door to your mind has been cracked open and some new thoughts have arrived until you suddenly bump into them later. His characters are quite simply, the best. Beginning with the adorable Timothy Callahan, Strachey’s romantic partner, they appear as if they were conjured up in a modern lab experiment as a cross between Damon Runyon and 1930’s screwball comedies mixed with a little Humphrey Bogart film noir. I was hooked.
I insisted to partner Jason Brown that we record Death Vows. He was a little surprised as we don’t usually record either popular fiction or anything written after the 1920s. However, he agreed that Richard’s writing is so good that it deserves to be a classic. And just to prove me right, NPR voted Death Vows as one of the top 5 Mystery Novels of 2008.
As for the gay detective factor, well he’s gay, just like Margaret Maron’s detective, Deborah Knott, is a southern judge from North Carolina and Robin Paige’s Kate Sheridan is an American writer married to an English lord in Edwardian England and Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn are modern day Navajos. It’s the lens through which we see our detective’s point of view. And Strachey’s lens is a wonderfully odd mix of sarcasm, wit, sharp intelligence, righteous anger and ultimate compassion for the stupidity and sadness encountered. There’s the usual descriptive and colorful language that can be found in any hardboiled detective story but I found it rather tame especially compared to some of the romantic action that goes on in the mystery chick lit genre.
As for the plot of Death Vows, well, let’s just say it has to do with gay marriage in Massachusetts, specifically the Berkshires, and Stevenson’s take on our local institutions is perfect. There’s a Kennedy involved–hey this is Massachusetts–chicanery with real estate transactions and a wisecracking senior citizen, manager of the local movie house who manages to get into trouble with the law. This is one of my favorite scenes, by the way. The plot twists and turns just like our mountain roads and I guarantee you’ll gasp at the surprising view at the top.
Since 3 of Richard’s books have been made into films he was willing to entertain the idea of an audio book edition and with his radio experience we felt he was the best person to read. I think you will find this audio book as enjoyable to listen to as we did–and we listen to each one of our books at least 5-10 times before they make it out into the world. There are also jazzy interludes between chapters including the sax that sounds as if it were lifted from Stan Getz but happens to be played by the talented young Mr. Tyler Gasek, currently appearing as a guest artist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Grab Death Vows wherever you can. Buy it from us, ask for it at your local independent bookstore, purchase from Amazon if you must or download it from Audible. Get a cup of tea or better yet, a martini and cozy up with Donald Strachey, P.I. for a classic new-fashioned audio adventure.
And here’s my true confession, I only recently discovered Richard Stevenson’s Donald Strachey detective series. I’m so late to the party that I found him at book nine, Death Vows
Since 3 of Richard’s books have been made into films he was willing to entertain the idea of an audio book edition and with his radio experience we felt he was the best person to read. I think you will find this audio book as enjoyable to listen to as we did–and we listen to each one of our books at least 5-10 times before they make it out into the world. There are also jazzy interludes between chapters including the sax that sounds as if it were lifted from Stan Getz but happens to be played by the talented young Mr. Tyler Gasek, currently appearing as a guest artist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Grab Death Vows
