Collecting area: Performing arts

Jeffrey Drucker was a student and photographer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1966 to 1969, where he majored in production management and was the WMUA station engineer. As a student, Drucker was a photography enthusiast, taking snapshots of events across campus, thoroughly documenting his years as an undergraduate at UMass in the late-sixties.

The Jeffrey Drucker Photograph Collection contains 387 photographs of a diverse array of campus events, including the Dow Chemical protest in 1968, parades, Roister Doisters productions, musicians like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel performing at on-campus concerts, and iconic campus buildings. Many of Drucker’s photographs were printed in the Index yearbook as well as the University of Massachusetts Daily Collegian and give a clearly student perspective to life on campus.

A wife and husband team of photographers based in Provincetown, Mass., Maxine Smith and John Economos, known collectively as Econosmith, are photographers of the folk music scene, social action, and the landscape and people of outer Cape Cod. Social activists themselves, the Econosmiths were photographers for Pete Seeger during the last decade of his life and headed up the photography team at the Clearwater Festival, giving them unusual access to dozens of performers.

With compelling images of musicians in performance, the Economsmith collection is a rich visual record of the contemporary folk scene, with a special focus on Pete Seeger and the Clearwater Festival (also known as the Great Hudson River Revival). Over 90% of the images were born digital, with the remainder split between color negatives and 35mm. slides. The collection also includes photographs of antiwar demonstrations sparked by the Iraq War and images of the scenery and people of Provincetown and outer Cape Cod.

A community arts organization founded by Susan Perlstein in 1979, Elders Share the Arts was a pioneer and national leader in the field of creative aging. Beginning as a single living-history theater workshop in the South Bronx, ESTA grew into a citywide organization with national impact that engaged older adults in participatory arts programing. The performing groups that emerged from ESTA typically drew upon the experiences of its members, with the programs running from storytelling and theater to writing, dance, and the visual arts. With the rapid growth of the field, ESTA ceased operations in June 2018, transferring their programs to other organizations.

The records of Elders Share the Arts offer vital documentation of the origins and development of the field of creative aging and the growth of one of the innovators. The collection includes a full set of board minutes, action plans, and by-laws, marketing materials, photographs and media, and a relatively complete record of grants sought and won. Of particular importance are files for ESTA’s senior programs and intergenerational programs, and a thick series of matierlas relating to the National Center for Creative Aging and the history of creative aging as a field.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

During a long career as Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, James Ellis wrote on the Victorian stage and the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. A founding member of the Valley Light Opera Company, he was also an actor and director of theatricals in the Pioneer Valley.

The Ellis Collection contains approximately 8,000 published works on the Anglo-American stage, 1750-1915, including individual plays and anthologies of English and American playwrights; biographical works on performers; works on the theatre in London, the provinces, and America; periodicals, playbills, prints, broadsides, and ephemera; and works that provide cultural context for interpreting the stage. Although the collection includes some works from the 18th century, it is deepest for the English stage in the period 1850-1900.

Elysian Spring performing on stage, ca. 1969.

Formed by UMass Amherst students in the late 1960s, Elysian Spring proved to be a popular jazz band during their time on campus. The band’s name and member lineup changed over time, but by the time they recorded their first–and only–record in 1969, the band consisted of Rainer Bertrams, Jimmy Bridges, Lenny Ezbicki, Bruce Krasin, and Jerry Mirliani. The group was focused on improvisational, modal jazz compositions reflecting the beauty found in nature, with the band name itself referencing the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology. Elysian Spring played several venues on and off campus and were the highlight of the University Jazz Workshop concerts. The band released Glass Flowers in 1969, which features back cover notes written by Andy Haigh, Music Librarian at UMass at the time. After the album came out, and after graduations and moves, the band went their separate ways. However, their album became a cult favorite, being sought after by collectors and prompting a reissue of Glass Flowers that was released in 2018.

The Elysian Spring Collection includes the 2018 reissue of their 1969 album, Glass Flowers, color photographs, contact sheets, negatives, and a poster from a 1969 concert. There are also typed interviews with Bruce Krasin and Rainer Bertrams, and a DVD with a brief interview with Lenny Ezbicki and Bruce Krasin on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of their album.

After graduating from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1924, George Edward “Red” Emery taught high school briefly and held a handful of other jobs before deciding to fulfill a childhood dream. Born in Marlboro, Mass., in 1904, Emery turned his love for the circus into a life touring the country as a white-face circus clown. After marrying Virginia Link, a Smith College student, in 1932, he settled down to a stable job in the Alumni Office at his alma mater, later filling in as Veterans Coordinator and as a staff member in the Student Placement Office until his retirement in 1972. Emery never left the circus behind entirely. Throughout his years in Amherst he continued to talk and write about the history of the circus and his personal experiences, and from the late 1940s through early 1960s, he used his show business connections to book talent for the Tri-County Fair. Longtime residents of Leverett, Mass., he and his wife died within a year of one another, Virginia in 1974 and George in 1975.

With his passion for the circus, George Emery’s papers contain material not only from his career as a circus clown in the 1920s but also from his later writings about the history of the circus, his work with the Tri-County Fair, and his long association with UMass Amherst. The collection includes correspondence with friends and family; circus toys and games; posters, photographs, and ephemera; and a library of books on circus history. Of special note are some exceptional photographs, a few posters, and a thick sheaf of material from the Tri-County Fair.

Attorney and UMass alumnus Kenneth R. Feinberg, well known as a mediator, special master of compensation funds, and dedicated public servant, is a longtime devotee of opera and classical music. Since his days as a law student in New York in the late 1960s, continuing through his career practicing law in Washington, D.C., Feinberg has regularly attended operas, concerts, musical theater, and other musical performances. He has also served as president of the Washington National Opera and led a private opera appreciation group.
This extensive collection of more than 1,000 items encompasses a wide range of composers, productions, concerts, companies, and venues, mainly in the United States, with some European performances represented. Documenting more than five decades of concert- and opera-going, and arranged in rough chronological order according to Feinberg’s numbering system, many of the programs are searchable by composer in an accompanying card index created by Feinberg (more recent programs are simply filed chronologically). There is also a small amount of related ephemera, including some vintage programs. Additions to the collection are ongoing.

Noted critic of music, literature, and the arts, as well as a writer and an active member of the Communist Party U.S.A. Includes letters to and from Mr. Finkelstein; original manuscripts of reviews, articles, essays, and books; legal documents, educational, military, and personal records, financial papers, contracts, photographs, and lecture and course notes.

2 Holyoke St., Flywheel's original location circa 2000

In the spring of 1998, two western Massachusetts-based musicians/artists, Cindy Bow and Helen Harrison founded the Valley Arts and Music Alliance (VAMA), a grassroots collective of artists who worked collaboratively to produce free, all-ages shows and art happenings that reflected their own creative visions which operated in opposition to those of the established music industry. VAMA attracted like-minded people, most of whom were already doing similar things in their own homes, churches, dorm basements, record stores, VFW halls, and other non-traditional venues. Together, the group produced over two-dozen shows at The Fridge Art Gallery and other spaces in downtown Amherst, MA and elsewhere. In December of 1998, a friend, supporter, artist, and local lawyer, Stevan Bartone, located a space in Easthampton – a long-vacant cabinet store owned by a local Palestinian-born doctor named Shawki Kanazi located at 2 Holyoke St. that would serve as a home for VAMA.

As word of the space spread, several people joined the fledgling group and VAMA morphed into Flywheel. After a flurry of renovations to the space led by local artist and carpenter Bruce Todd and his dog Mashie, Flywheel opened its doors in March of 1999 with a day-long celebration of music, poetry, comedy, and visual art. For the next eight years, a stable of local bookers, volunteers, supporters, musicians, and artists facilitated a wealth of community-building artistic moments in this unassuming storefront in Easthampton, which at the time was a post-industrial city shaping its artistic future. In 2007, at the invitation of local developer and arts supporter, Will Bundy, Flywheel left 2 Holyoke St. for a larger space in Easthampton’s historic Old Town Hall at 43 Main St. Bundy formed a non-profit, City Space, to manage the building in which Flywheel was a tenant. Flywheel reopened in 2010 after three years of major renovations. In December 2020 Flywheel left Old Town Hall and has continued to program events at unconventional spaces around Western Mass.

The Flywheel collection documents its history from its inception as VAMA in 1998, to its transformation into Flywheel in 1999 and through its continued operation in the early to mid 2000s. These records document the construction and operation of Flywheel’s space at 2 Holyoke Street through photographs, correspondence, meeting minutes, digital files, and financial records. In addition, Flywheel and VAMA’s programming is reflected through vast amounts of promotional materials such as show flyers, posters, monthly schedules, correspondence, contracts, signage, artwork, and audiovisual materials. These items illustrate the rise of the do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) music scene in Easthampton and Western Massachusetts as well as the national/international underground music community of the late 20th/early 21st century. Established, or soon to be established, “indie” artists such as Versus, Kim Gordon, Lightning Bolt, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, The Gossip, Pernice Brothers, Dresden Dolls, Pansy Division, High Rise, Bright Eyes, and thousands of experimental artists, filmmakers, and musicians in a variety of genres/mediums from noise, electronic and jazz to hardcore, folk, and punk are represented in printed calendars and flyers. As a volunteer-run, consensus-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization with no paid employees, Flywheel’s success depended on small-scale fundraising efforts, volunteers, and community support. This structure is well documented through meeting minutes, fundraising appeals, a website, internal correspondence, signage, and collaboratively-produced guidebooks. In addition to organizational records, there is a large collection of fanzines and underground publications that constituted Flywheel’s “infoshop”. This collection of over 3,500 publications, which makes up the bulk of the collection, was built over the course of 20 years through donations by volunteers and supporters, show goers, zine makers, and by being listed in Slingshot, the Berkeley, CA anarchist newspaper.

Founded by Betsy Siggins in 2009, Folk New England is an organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and interpreting the cultural legacy of folk music in all its forms, with an emphasis on New England’s contribution.

The Ephemera Collection consists of dozens of posters, fliers, calendars, and other promotional materials for musical acts collected by Folk New England. Concentrated in the years of the folk revival in the late 1950s to late 1960s, many of the posters were sent to Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass.