A calendar that is updated weekly and focuses on live music happening within 1 hour of Brattleboro, VT.
You should probably call the venues to confirm before you drive anywhere!

NEWS: Miles Orgasmic (my band) @ Weathervane on Saturday w/ Patrick Coman opening

Friday, March 12:

Sunny Lowdown @ Adagios, Brattleboro, VT
Turn It Loose, 9:30pm, Colonels Cabin, Dummerston, VT, $5
Green Hornet, 9:30pm @ Nezbitts, Vernon, VT
Campfires with Clay & Aaron, 8pm @ Pleasant Valley Brewing, Saxtons River, VT
Northern Stone @ EF Lane, Keene, NH, $5

Oh, how I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in McConnell's underground lair when he got this missive:

"March 11, 2009

The Honorable Mitch McConnell
Republican Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Leader McConnell:

I have a friend who needs a new place by the end of the month.

He's looking for a one person efficiency type apartment, low cost, close to downtown.

He's tried the Housing Trust and they have a 3 year waiting list for 1 and 2 person apartments.

Any ideas?

Live music by Mo Ambesa at the 4th annual Mudslide Madness Silent Auction and dessert cafe to benefit Green Valley School.

Friday, March 26, 6:00 - 9:30 PM. Putney Community Center, Christian Square, Downtown Putney.

Bid on treasures from surrounding communities, best area restaurants, unique crafts, body work, and more. All you can eat desserts, café, wine and mudslides.

Josh Werner, of Brattleboro, died on Tuesday, March 9.

When people die, sometimes people make an effort to only say good things about them, about what is like to be in their company.

For, Josh, no effort to select good memories needs to be made in this regard. Josh worked in Natalie Blakes' studio, where my wife Cynthia works. I used to hang around the studio longer than I would have somedays, when Cynthia wasn't there, just to laugh with Josh. Josh always offered good cheer and friendship.

The Brattleboro Selectboard will have a special meeting on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 4:00pm in the Hanna Cosman Room at the Municipal Center, 230 Main Street. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the FY11 Utility Budget.

The Brattleboro Selectboard will hold a regular meeting on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 6:15pm in the Selectboard Meeting Room at the Municipal Center, 230 Main Street. The agenda will be sent out under separate email.

Town Manager's Office
802.251.8100
802.257.2322, fax

Here's how I understand it. A line item in the Brattleboro town budget has been entered stating that the town of Brattleboro will adopt the pay as you throw system. For those of you not paying attention that would mean that for every bag of garbage you put by the curbside you would pay $2.00 per bag – which of course you’ll need to buy ahead of time in lots of 10 or 20. As opposed the "free/included in your astronomical property taxes" curbside pick-up you receive now. You would need to purchase these bags at some predetermined pickup point and use only those bags.

This system has been examined and actually voted down once. But our town select board (well, to be fair only three of them) have decided that they want it in the budget and they want it passed. If the budget passes, then pay as you throw passes. I have to say I'm not a fan. I pay what I consider to be an exorbitant tax rate and one of the things I enjoy for my money is dragging my stinky garbage to the curb ever Sunday night then taking my empty trash can back to it's rightful spot on my property. And I enjoy because don’t have to seek out a special trash bag and I don't have to pay $2.00 for that bag.

Plans for Friends of Music at Guilford's (FOMAG) March 28 concert at downtown Brattleboro's First Baptist Church began in 2008, when FOMAG's administrator, Joy Wallens-Penford, attended a concert in Gordon Chapel at Boston's Old South Church. The program of rarely performed liturgical chant was performed by Cappella Clausura, a women's vocal ensemble dedicated to presenting "new" music, both sacred and secular, by women composers from the past 12 centuries. Clausura, which also performed some of its repertoire with a variety of period instruments, had been receiving rave reviews on the region's Early Music scene since its first concert in 2004.

On Sunday, March 28, 3 pm at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro, the Windham Orchestra, under the direction of Hugh Keelan, will celebrate the poignant and powerful spirituals created by enslaved African people in America, and the music they have inspired.

The work of Harry Burleigh, the grandson of a slave, born in Erie, Pennsylvania, and one of a tiny number of black musicians of his time trained in a European Classical tradition, provided the inspiration for two of the compositions to be performed during the Windham Orchestra’s African-American Spirituals Concert.

BRATTLEBORO UNION HIGH SCHOOL BOARD
53 Green Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
www.wssu.k12.vt.us

NOTICE OF COMMITTEE MEETINGS

The 2009-2010 BUHS #6 Teacher Curriculum Committee will meet at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, March 15 in the WRCC Cusick Conference Room.

In addition to revisiting Pay As You Throw, Representative Town Meeting members will be asked to save the Chestnut Hill reservoir from the Selectboard by voting no when asked to sell it on March 20.

As readers may recall. the Selectboard asked for an engineering report to find out what options were available to meet state safety requirements. Option #2, a $219,000 fix that keeps the reservoir pretty much as is, was endorsed by Public Works Director Steve Barrett and a number of residents, but the Selectboard curiously decided to put it up for sale instead with a vote of 3-2.

On Friday March 26, 7:30 pm, at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, members of the Brattleboro Music Center’s Music School faculty will perform a benefit concert to aid ongoing relief efforts in Haiti.

Faculty chamber concerts have long been a treasured opportunity for musicians to collaborate and share their talent and musical journeys with our community. However, recent events, such as the massively destructive earthquake in Haiti, serve as valuable reminders that our community, though small and intimate, can also play an important role in the human community at large.

Music School faculty members have chosen to answer the call by donating their services and performing this special benefit concert on Friday. “Partners in Music, Partners in Health,” as the concert is aptly named, reflects the nature of the program to be performed, Duos, and the organization, Partners in Health, whose work in Haiti is being supported.

A quick note to highlight a few things going on in the Brain Trust, your local Brattleboro wiki.

Dan Axtell has been busy filling in key dates in the Vermont Yankee timeline . He's been going through online archives of news stories and piecing it all together.

S.A. Smith IV, whose relatives made toys and other goods in Brattleboro, has added some pictures of the Latchis Theater under construction. Here are a couple. And a couple more.

Ensemble Featuring the Music of Jimmy Giuffre to perform at the Vermont Jazz Center on March 13th

On Saturday, March 13th at 8:00 PM, the Vermont Jazz Center will present the Joel Harrison/George Schuller Sextet featuring Marty Ehrlich and Cameron Brown in “Whirrr, the Music of Jimmy Giuffre.” This group will focus on the music of the legendary composer/multi-instrumentalist who passed-away in 2008. Giuffre, is perhaps best known for his composition, “Four Brothers,” which he wrote for Woody Herman’s “second herd.” It featured three famed tenor saxophonists Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, and Al Cohn who performed its first incarnation with the baritone sax of Serge Challof. In later years many other great saxophonists have played “Four Brothers” in Woody Herman’s orchestra including local legend, Scott Mullett.