April 27, 2025 – The Carnival of the Animals

TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE BEGINNING JANUARY 27, 2025.

Generously supported by A Friend of Essex Winter Series

Where and When:

VALLEY REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
256 Kelsey Hill Road, Deep River, CT
Click here to view in Google maps.

Sunday, April 27, 2025 • FREE to all

Reservations highly recommended and all attendees MUST have a ticket. PLEASE reserve seats for young children, even though you may anticipate that they will sit on an adult’s lap.

Concert begins at 2:00 pm; outer doors open at 1:30 pm; auditorium doors open at 1:45 pm.

Accessible parking, entry and seating are available.

Concert Program:

EWS presents a joyous performance of Saint-Saëns’ perennial favorite The Carnival of the Animals for audience members of all ages! Under the direction of James Sinclair, Orchestra New England performs this timeless piece with narration of Ogden Nash’s witty verses by Jacqueline Hubbard, Executive Director of the Ivoryton Playhouse. FREE!

Artist Biographies:

Orchestra New England

Orchestra New England (ONE) is one of the most versatile and exciting orchestras in America. The Orchestra is committed to quality and innovation, a commitment that has made its artistic achievements possible by generating and nurturing an unusual workplace and a remarkable orchestra.

ONE was founded in March 1974 as the Yale Theater Orchestra, adopting the name Chamber Orchestra of New England in 1975 and the name Orchestra New England in 1985. Early in its history, ONE began to establish itself as one of the most innovative and critically-acclaimed orchestras in the Northeast. Immediately following its premiere concert, the Orchestra and its founding Music Director, James Sinclair, recorded an album of premieres for CBS Masterworks.

That was the beginning of a tradition. Today, ONE is unsurpassed among musical ensembles between New York and Boston in the number of commercial recordings it has created. These include CBS Masterworks’s world premiere recording of the Villa-Lobos folk opera, Magdalena, New World Records’s release of Cole Porter’s first Broadway hit, 50 Million Frenchmenand both Naxos’s and Koch International Classics’s world premiere recording of orchestral music by Charles Ives. These recordings have met with extraordinary and unanimous critical praise. In June 2023 Naxos released ONE’s new recording of Charles Ives’s complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra.

Each year, the Orchestra performs a subscription series of concerts in its hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. In past seasons ONE has seen as many as 50 performances annually throughout New England and the northeastern U.S. The Orchestra’s subscription concerts are presented at Yale’s acoustically-superb Battell Chapel, the United Church on the Green, and the Unitarian Society of New Haven, and were frequently broadcast on Connecticut public radio stations. ONE also has been heard featured over the Voice of America and National Public Television.

The Orchestra may be contacted at P.O. Box 200123, New Haven, CT 06520-0123, 203-777-4690, or info@orchestranewengland.org. Our website is www.orchestranewengland.org.

 

James Sinclair, Music Director, ONE

James Sinclair has been the music director of Orchestra New England since its founding in 1974. His versatility in delivering superb performances in styles ranging from Baroque to pops literature has driven the remarkable success of Orchestra New England.

Sinclair is currently recording for the Naxos label the complete orchestral music of Charles Ives, an eight-CD project. The first six discs have been released. Naxos is the leading repertoire provider in the recording world; their catalogue comprises more than 150,000 releases. In June 2023 Naxos released his already-acclaimed new recording with Orchestra New England of Ives’s complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra.

James Sinclair is among the world’s pre-eminent scholars and champions of the music of Charles Ives. He is the Executive Editor for the Charles Ives Society, supervising the work of Ives scholars throughout the United States. Maestro Sinclair has served as music director for four PBS television documentaries including the Peabody Award-winning film about Ives, A Good Dissonance Like a Man.

In 1999, Yale University Press published Sinclair’s 800-page A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives; the Association of American Publishers cited the catalogue as the best publication of 1999 in arts scholarship.

A native of Washington, D. C., James Sinclair earned his bachelor’s degree in music at Indiana University and taught at the University of Hawaii where he earned his master’s degree. He relocated to New Haven in 1972 where he has served as an Assistant Professor and a Visiting Lecturer in Music at Yale University. Sinclair is an Associate Fellow of Berkeley College (Yale) and is married to Sylvia Van Sinderen.

In 1999, Maestro Sinclair was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of New Haven. Recently he was honored with The American Prize National Arts Award for 2023. During 2024, Sinclair is teaching an Ives course at Yale University.

 

Jacqueline Hubbard, Executive Director, Ivoryton Playhouse

The Ivoryton Playhouse has a lot to celebrate. More than 100 years as an historic theater where a dazzling array of stars have performed over the years, including Marlon Brando, Betty Grable, Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn and Art Carney.

Jaqueline Hubbard, the Ivoryton’s executive/artistic director, has a lot to celebrate, too … more than 20 years at the beloved theater, which she’s played a significant role in keeping alive — and even thriving — in what are far from the best of economic times for the performing arts.

Pushing back her tresses and flashing a broad smile, Hubbard is straightforward and deeply thoughtful as she talks about her experiences in an English accent that’s only slightly subdued by her many years on this side of the pond. “I never thought I’d be here this long,” she muses. “I thought I’d be back in England years ago, let alone still in Essex.”

Hubbard describes the path with its unexpected twists and turns that led her to not only become an actor, director and arts administrator — but from the poor industrial town of Billingham in northeast England to the comfortable Connecticut River town she now calls home. “There were huge economic hardships in my growing up years (in the ’60s-’70s),” Hubbard recalls. “One of the few things that was a saving grace was my mother. She was a storyteller and did these wonderful little shows with us in the kitchen.”

Hubbard’s mother spurred her interest in performing early on, and then when Jacqueline was 13 she attended an arts center in town that offered free theater classes for kids. She also got a spot reviewing the “Top 10” record albums on a local radio station. “I went to University of Leeds thinking I would do radio journalism,” she says. “But then I wandered into a black box theater. I was sunk. You just know when you’re in a place you’re supposed to be. She became a drama major and began acting in local productions.

Soon after graduating, Hubbard came to the U.S. with her husband-to-be (they’re since divorced). A bridge designer and engineer, his job constructing the Seven Mile Bridge took them to the Florida Keys. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” Hubbard says. “Growing up on the North Sea, I didn’t know water could be warm.”

Hubbard spent the next decade wherever the next bridge project took them until she crossed her final bridge — the Baldwin Bridge — that was being built between Old Lyme and Old Saybrook in the early 1990s. At this point, Hubbard had two young daughters. Her oldest, Kate, had no interest in sports, but loved theater. And so, she conceived the Madhatter’s Children’s Theatre Workshop where kids could both write and perform plays.

At the time, the Ivoryton Playhouse operated only three months a year as a summer theater. “It seemed a shame the theater was sitting empty the rest of the year, and so I began producing children’s and community theater there during the other months,” Hubbard explains. There was no staff, she recalls, only a part-time secretary and an all-volunteer board; plus, the building was in a terrible state of disrepair. Hubbard worked her way up from board member to board president to executive director.

During her tenure at the theater, the Ivoryton Playhouse Foundation completed a total renovation of the building, and in 2006 it became a year-round professional theater. “If anyone told me I’d end up as executive director of a theater, I’d say, ‘Absolutely not,’” Hubbard insists. “I liked the creative side, but never saw myself running a theater. And yet here I am. Sometimes I think life prepares you for what you’re supposed to be doing in different ways. Being the oldest of five kids, I ended up as organizer of everything.”

Although she’s doing more directing these days, Hubbard says every few years she gets a hankering for acting, and as a director, she feels it’s important to stay connected to that side of the curtain. “When you direct, you carry all the stress and responsibility for the whole big picture,” she says. “Acting is a totally different creative outlet. The focus is all on you. It’s an incredible Zen-like experience when you totally connect with a part.”

“Acting also reveals things to you about yourself if you’re willing to learn,” she continues. “When I was younger, I wanted to hide in a role, behind that persona. But as I get older, acting has helped me know who I am … you get more comfortable with being yourself on stage.”

As she stands at the helm of the 100+-year-old theater, looking forward to her role in its next century, Hubbard says, “There’s value in preserving history in our communities. And this place has such a remarkable place in the history of American Theater.”

For more information about the Ivoryton Playhouse and its Centennial birthday celebrations, visit www.ivorytonplayhouse.org.