Becoming a concert venue for the seventh annual Oyster Bay Music Festival (OBMF) is a given for the Ida May Project (IMP). The volunteers truly enjoy seeing their boat shop transformed into a concert venue, and the musicians love the acoustics.
IMP board members take part in the planning: Jamie Deming is the liaison between the board and Lauren Ausubel, OBMF co-director. Dagmar Karppi requests chairs for the audience from Theodore Roosevelt Park supervisor Gary Bergenstock, with thanks to Western Waterfront manager Georgia Filasky and Park Commissioner Joseph Pinto. Deming arranged for the WaterFront Center to lend several benches. If they sold tickets, they would have had to put out a sign, “Standing Room Only.”
Christeen captain Pete McAndrew illuminated the performers with equipment from his jazz appearances. The busy working volunteers, George Lindsay, Bruce Levinson and Jack Hoyt (who also hauled benches to and from the center with Deming), re-configured the work areas around the Ida May to make it accessible and safe for the crowd of about 100 listeners.
Incidentally, a photo of the IMP board was taken by Herb Rott, a lover of classical music, who attended many of the OBMF concerts.
The mix of a boat being entirely fashioned by volunteer carpenters and live performances by students made it a multi-generational event. One group gave a choreographed rendition of “There Is Nothing Like a Dame!” Each act added to the excitement from instrumental and vocal solos, chorus performances, an amazing flute quintet and all in all, the two hours flew by.
On Wednesday at Spinnakers, during United in Harmony: Music By The Sea, a young man sang another song from South Pacific, Lt. Cable’s “Younger Than Springtime” with heartbreaking beauty. That concert, Eine Kleine Nosh-Musik, was concluded by a 13-year-old young lady pianist, to the amazement of IMP board members George Lindsay, Nancy Metz and this reporter, who were all in the audience. Continuing on the concert circuit that afternoon were Paula O’Rourke Bracken and husband Ed, and Charles Gaulkin, clarinetist with grandson Emrys Gaulkin. Bracken recognized Marilyn DeLallio, 91, in the audience to see her grandson perform, and who had worked with her mother Gloria, at the Guardian, many years ago.
