Duck Creek Music Series Opens with Joel Ross's "Parables"

Now that summer is in full swing, social calendars are filling, temperatures are rising, and live music is back in a big way. The Arts Center at Duck Creek in Springs is putting on a robust lineup for its 2021 music series. Thirty musicians are playing over 11 concerts for the third year of the series, all out in Duck Creek’s big, beautiful barn. Although each performance will be different, they share a common throughline.

“The one thing that unites them is that they’re not traditional,” Peter Watrous, Music Director at Duck Creek, said. “In other words, there’s a vanguard element to almost all of it. It’s not Bach and Beethoven.”

Last summer, the staff of Duck Creek was able to host a few live performances, but the pandemic forced them to change up the way they booked talent which has had impacts on their programming for this year as well.

“It meant that the musicians that we hired shifted,” Jess Frost, Executive Director of Duck Creek, said. “We started really talking to them more at length about other musicians that they liked. We cast this net in this incredibly interesting pool of young risk-taking musicians.”

One of those young and risk-taking musicians is Joel Ross, the vibraphonist and composer who played a show last summer at Duck Creek. He’s back this summer, not just to play but also to do some curating. On June 26, he played with his octet Parables, and he selected the musicians for two other shows: Maria Grand, who played on June 27, and Patricia Brennan who will take the stage on September 25.

“I've been in music as long as I can remember,” said Ross, who came out with his album “Who Are You?” last year and plays in various groups in New York City. “I have a twin brother and we were born and raised in the church [on the] South Side of Chicago. That's already such a musical background and upbringing. And so from an early age, like two or three, my parents bought us drum sets because we were beating on stuff. Our godfather was also the drummer at the church, so we'd be going and sitting behind him and watching him.”

In elementary school, he started playing percussion, learning the mallets, the xylophone, and then eventually the vibraphone — a percussion instrument that is a kind of cousin of the xylophone.

“It's a newer instrument, only about 100 years old,” Ross explained. “And it's different from the xylophone in that it has metal or aluminum bars, and they're all on a flat surface on a damper pedal, similar to a piano, so it has a sustain [pedal]. It also has a motor, which gives it its name — when it's working, the motor gives it sort of like a vibrato sound like woo woo woo. With the motor, you can change the speed of that to different tempos.”

For his show with Parables, which also included Immanuel Wilkins (alto sax), Maria Grand (tenor sax), Marquis Hill (trumpet), Kalia Vandever (trombone), Sean Mason (piano), Rick Rosato (bass), and Craig Weinrib (drums), they played music written for a commission by Roulette Intermedium. The octet has been playing together for about three years and is planning on recording an album soon.

All of the concerts in the series are completely free, as is everything at Duck Creek, and first-come, first-served. The musicians play in the barn overlooking a field of grass, where visitors can set up blankets and chairs to take in the tunes.

“The incredible thing about this situation is that the barn acts like a speaker, so you don’t have to play very loud, but the music can be very quiet and it’s incredibly intimate, even though it’s outdoors, it’s really an ideal place to have outdoor shows,” Watrous said.

“There’s a stage, but it’s such an intimate space, even though it’s fairly large,” he continued. “Because there’s no cover charge and there are no wait people who are asking you to buy food or drinks it changes the dynamic of the performance completely. It’s also really clear that the performers are in the same space, they’re not separated from the audience.

“It’s not a high stage and the nice thing is that after the shows people come in and talk to the musicians, the audience comes up and hangs out. It’s great for the musicians because they get to speak to people,” he said. “But it’s also great for the audience because they’re there being treated to something that’s really exceptional and it’s not in any way shape or form off-putting. Once you take money out of the equation, it really changes the whole performance.”

Other musicians playing in the series include the Bill Frisell Trio (July 3), the Samara Joy Quartet (July 25), and three “New Classical” sets which feature musicians innovating the genre of classical music. In the barn, there are currently two shows of visual art on display: “John Little: Home Again” and “Sunsets on Mars Are Blue,” featuring the work of Kylie Manning, Grace Meltzer and Jay Miraim. Also coming up this season? An opera about the life of Jackson Pollock.

“I’m a working musician in New York, I get to see a lot of stuff,” Watrous said. “And I get to see a lot of stuff by younger musicians who haven’t become famous yet, but they will be, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to put them on a stage in front of people who will go home and say, wow, that was really amazing. And then in a year read about it in the New York Times.”

For his part, Joel Ross is excited to be back out at Duck Creek, playing live, interesting music in a beautiful environment with other talented musicians.

“The music for this one, it's very much from a storytelling standpoint,” Ross said. “With the backdrop of Duck Creek, I look forward to presenting the music there because I want the music to really evoke such a mental image.”

The Arts Center at Duck Creek is located at 127 Squaw Road, East Hampton. All concerts are free and run from 5 to 7 p.m. No need to buy a ticket or reserve a space, it’s first come, first served. For more information, visit duckcreekarts.org.

Arts Center at Duck Creek 2021 Music Schedule:
July 3: Bill Frisell Trio featuring Rudy Royston and Thomas Morgan
July 10: New Classical Series: Alex Weston and Ben Brody
July 25: Samara Joy Quartet
August 7: Portrait and a Dream, Jackson Pollock Opera Workshop (6 p.m.)
August 22: New Classical Series: Darian Thomas
August 28: New Classical Series: Kalia Vandever and the Westerlies
September 4: Adam O’Farrill’s Stranger Days
September 25: Patricia Brennan Quartet