Guest Artist Dennis James

What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in art. - Odilon Redon, peculiar French artist

Since first visiting Alfred University in 2016 as a guest MostArts summer festival chamber music performer, Dennis James has emerged as an internationally touring Professional Dilettante described in the Wall Street Journal as “...the tall human cousin of a sassy chipmunk.” James’ popular Musica Curiosa Informance programs celebrate his eclectic interests in the endless variety of nearly forgotten and always unheralded instrument obscurities from throughout the history of music by including authentic historical revival performances of their equally peculiar repertoires.

This year’s MostArts Dennis James Informance debut is inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dictum "Every artist was first an amateur” to showcase James’ newly re-emergent interest in his first childhood instrument: the accordion. He abandoned the stomach piano at age 12 and is now seized by a late-career return to concentrate on the French Accordion traditions that emerged in the late 19th c. Bal Musette, thrived during the Tango craze of the 1910-20’s and is now firmly established by the Gypsy Swing revels developed in the 1930’s and still popular today nearly 100 years later.

Accompaniment

Dave Richman

Dave Richman is a guitarist based in Ithaca, New York, who studied Classical and Jazz Guitar at SUNY Oneonta with Dennis Turchek. Dave is an active player in various Rock bands, Dixieland bands, Blues bands, Bluegrass bands, and currently plays Thursday nights at the Stonecat Cafe in Hector, New York (classical and jazz solo) and with Richman and the Poorboys (rock, blues, soul, and country) Grassanova (bluegrass quartet) and Zingology (Gypsy Jazz combo).

MostArts "Storm Trio"

Performing "Storm Echoes Suite" by Lloyd Smith

• Yurie Mitsuhashi, 1st Violin
• Ian Jessee, Viola
• Sibora Miloradovic, Cello