Hot Times at Old Town

Appearing below are selections from the hard copy Hot Times. The objective is to highlight activities at the School and in the larger community, especially those featuring or of special interest to teachers and staff. Your suggestions are welcome. Enter a comment (under any item); it will come to me rather than automatically appearing.

Bottles go solo!

The School is now taking the next step in recycling — separate bins for bottles. Dawn Patch, one of the all-but-invisible-but-god-knows-what-we’d-do-without-her adminstrators, has found a recycler who will take our bottles. The message: bottles go solo (but please give them soft landings).

This is a followup to the enormous reduction in our paper usage by Todd Lido and the Marketing Department; earlier this year they moved from thick paper catalogs to the attractive single sheet class schedules.

Beyond this, Gail Tyler is working with consultants to explore other ways to reduce our environmental footprint; stay tuned!

Filed under: Interesting at Old Town by Skip | September 27, 2009 | Comments (0)

What ever happened to the good ol’ gals?

Nothing — they’re still with us, their voices ringing out in their music! You can be part of this revival in a class with Peggy Browning, featuring their songs and stories, starting October 29th.

Peggy has started a new class, dedicated to the pivotal women who pioneered traditional folk music. She’s guiding the class through the music and history of greats including Elizabeth Cotton, Sara and Maybelle Carter, Ola Belle Reed and Hazel Dickens. The class will include creating arrangements of their music, focusing on rhythm, melodies and harmonies using both instruments and voices

What fun! The class will meet at 8:30 Thursdays, at the Lincoln Avenue location. It’s open to students who can change basic chords comfortably on any instrument.

Peg’s email is pbrowning@oldtownschool.org.

Filed under: Interesting at Old Town by Skip | September 24, 2009 | Comments (0)

Sorry!

The School has great concerts, and they’re in “the best listening room in Chicago” — that’s what the news media keep saying, and that’s the upside.

The downside is getting tickets: shows often sell out. Beyond that, they often sell out so early that only folks with memberships in the School can get a chance to buy them.

For example, tickets to these popular fall shows are already gone:

Leon Redbone – Friday, October 9th – sold out
Los Lonely Boys – Friday, October 23rd – sold out!
Leo Kottke – Sunday, November 1st – sold out
John Sebastian & David Grisman – Friday, December 11th – sold out

The lesson here? Look at the concert schedule. If you’re interested in any of the shows, call now for tickets: 773 728-6000. And to avoid this in the future, sign up and become a member. It gets you priority for tickets during the “members only” window, and it provides support the School needs to continue it’s great programs.

Filed under: Interesting at Old Town by Skip | September 18, 2009 | Comments (0)