Word: chautauquas
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Tall and blond, he looks like a beach boy in his cutoffs and tennis shirt. He is Peter de Vries, 25, with two years toward a doctorate in violin performance at the University of Indiana, and just now the first violinist of the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra. He says something, laughing, to Evan Wilson, 20, the principal violist, and then puts his violin under his chin,and plays an A. A's of various textures rise up from the instruments played by his colleagues, and De Vries sits down...
Such feelings of anticipation scent the air here at the Chautauqua Institution. This extraordinary cultural encampment, now part arts festival and part religious and philosophical retreat, has convened every summer since 1874 on the shaded shores of Lake Chautauqua, 60 miles southwest of Buffalo in western New York State. Some 6,000 lovers of fresh air and philharmony gather here for classes, lectures and performances in the arts, sciences and humanities. But music is the big draw. Three full orchestras are in residence: the Chautauqua Symphony, composed of professionals and conducted by Varujan Kojian; a youth orchestra conducted by Anthony...
...rear of the amphitheater, beyond the shade of the roof, a man with an unbuttoned, flowered shirt suns his ample midriff, his eyes serenely shut. He could be an orthodontist or a hardware-store owner, but he is probably the minister of a prosperous Protestant suburban church. Chautauqua was founded by Methodists as a boot camp for Sunday-school teachers, and even today an empty bottle of sarsaparilla (alcohol is not sold on the grounds) flung into the night is likely to bean an aestivating pastor. To one side of the amphitheater is the stately United Presbyterian House, red brick...
...philosopher William James expressed a similar reaction after a visit to Chautauqua in 1896: "I stayed for a week, held spellbound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear. And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself . . . saying 'Ouf, what a relief! Now for something primordial and savage . . . to set the balance straight...
...history have such unusual political alliances been formed as those now taking to the barricades against Ronald Reagan's budget cuts. From church basements and corporate boardrooms, tens of thousands of special pleaders, lobbyists and their experts have marshaled to do battle for their special causes. It is Chautauqua, the circus, a Greek drama of a thousand acts, running from dawn to midnight, from Capitol hideaways to the Pentagon...