Jay Ungar’s ringtone? Old-time fiddle music, naturally. One of the world’s most renowned folk players, the Saugerties fiddler, along with his wife and musical partner, guitarist and bassist Molly Mason, is revered for “Ashokan Farewell,” the beautifully haunting theme to Ken Burns’s game-changing PBS miniseries “The Civil War.” The song on his cell, however, is not the one he’s best known for. Instead, it’s a version of the folk standard “Rye Whiskey” by a Western swing band. But this afternoon Ungar’s not taking calls. He and Mason are giving us a private tour of the Ashokan Center’s stunning, newly built facilities in Olivebridge, about 10 minutes from Woodstock, where for nearly 35 years the couple has overseen the institution’s famous Music and Dance camps.
“All four of these buildings were created to be as sustainable as possible, and the materials we used are almost entirely local,” says Ungar as he opens the door to the large upstairs sleeping room of the center’s bunkhouse. Lined with rustic, two-tiered beds, the space is centrally dominated by a towering reclaimed tree trunk. All is aglow with golden-warm wood whose freshly cut aroma is, quite simply, olfactory nirvana. “Nearly all of this wood and stone came from the land right here around us. The floors have radiant heating, and the buildings are built along a hillside, which gives us great natural insulation.”
Ungar grew up in the Bronx and began playing when he was seven. After making field trips to the South to learn folk tunes from older players, he joined New York roots rockers Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys as a bass player. Although he left the group to attend college just before its 1969 Jimi Hendrix-produced debut was recorded, Ungar returned in time for the band’s 1970 follow-up and next went on to play with folk-blues guitarist David Bromberg. Mason was raised in Washington and toured with swing trio the Mostly Sisters before moving to Minneapolis to become the house bassist of the embryonic “A Prairie Home Companion.” She and Ungar stayed in touch after meeting at a gig at the Towne Crier in Pawling, and in 1981 she moved East to co-found Fiddle Fever with Ungar and join him at Ashokan, where he’d been teaching for a year. Since then, the two have co-led the celebrated Ashokan Music and Dance (formerly Fiddle and Dance) camps, whose immersive, thematic, multi-day programs for adults and families feature classes, jam sessions, guest performers, dances, workshops, song swaps, band clinics, indigenous food, outdoor events, and more. (Master fiddler Mark O’Connor is among the camps’ esteemed alumni, and many other past participants have gone on to teach or become professional players.) In 1984 Fiddle Fever recorded “Ashokan Farewell,” a waltz Ungar had written earlier in dedication to the beloved spot. Little did anyone know what the plaintive song would lead to.
Ken Burns heard the piece and was so moved by it that he contacted Ungar to use it in his 1985 documentary Huey Long. But the track would reach a much wider audience when the filmmaker used it once again, this time for 1990’s “The Civil War.” The rest, one might say, is history. “It’s just incredible, what’s happened from that song,” says Ungar. “Because of it, people from as far away as Asia, the British Isles, all kinds of places, have sought out the Ashokan Center and come here to visit or enroll in the classes or camps—without knowing anything about the area beforehand.”
Opened in 1967 by the State University of New York as the Ashokan Field Campus, the Ashokan Center is a pioneering outdoor environmental learning and conference complex that hosts young students from across the Northeast, who come for its distinctively experiential classes in natural and man-made history, science, crafts, and the arts. The 374-acre area is a lush, natural wonderland populated with geologic marvels like the 350 million-year-old Cathedral Gorge and with a history traceable to Ice Age wildlife, Native Americans, Dutch homesteaders, and Revolutionary War activity. Its numerous antique structures include an 1885 covered bridge and 18th- and 19th-century buildings and working craft shops, where visiting students learn first-hand about such age-old arts as printing, broom making, and pewter and tin working. Since its inception Ashokan’s core curriculum has expanded to include “place-based” educational programs in community building, social and emotional learning (also called SEL), language arts, and hands-on living history and field-science research. The center also regularly hosts retreats sponsored by outside groups whose activities dovetail with its prevailing back-to-the-land themes; one steady client is the Northeast Blacksmith Association, which meets there twice yearly, taking advantage of Ashokan’s fully operational blacksmith shop.
SUNY’s decision to sell off the site in 2006, however, threatened to bring the institution’s days to a close. But in 2008 the day was saved when the land was acquired by the Open Space Conservancy, which in turn sold a portion of it to the State Environmental Protection Agency and the rest to the newly formed Ashokan Foundation, a nonprofit parent organization. (Ungar and Mason currently serve on the foundation’s board of directors as president and vice president, respectively, and are quick to praise the invaluable collective efforts of Ashokan’s sizeable staff in maintaining its daily operations.) Behind the scenes, everything looked as idyllic as the environment itself. Until the day the center got a call from the New York City Environmental Protection Agency, which manages the adjacent Ashokan Reservoir.
“It turned out our main campus buildings, the ones SUNY built in 1967, were right in the middle of the new Esopus Creek runoff path, which the EPA needs to control the levels of the reservoir,” explains Mason. “At first we thought about trying to move the buildings. But, besides that idea being really costly, the terrain would’ve made it almost impossible. And by that point we’d really begun to outgrow the older buildings and wanted to be able to better accommodate more campers, students, and family groups.” And so after much brainstorming the Ashokan Foundation voted to channel the EPA’s initial monetary compensation for the land into the construction of a new, intelligently designed, eco-friendly campus. The Open Space Institute provided additional funding and technical aid; further grants and loans came from the Catskill Watershed Corporation, and additional cash was raised by the foundation itself through donors.
The new central bunkhouse and its neighbors, which include structures with more communal and private overnight and residential accommodations, classrooms, dining rooms, kitchen facilities, and a giant, cathedral-ceilinged performance hall, were designed by Gardiner architect Matt Bialecki. “The finishing touches are still being put on things, but with the new buildings we can accommodate up to 160 people and feed about 200,” says Ungar. “Part of the plan to help fund the center is to make it available for weddings, parties, and other private functions. We just had a ‘test-run’ with our annual New Year’s Eve Dance Party and Weekend Gala, which went amazingly well. We had a few hundred guests, and everybody was totally blown away by the new buildings. We’re really looking forward to opening up to the local community with more public events.”
One such event is this month’s three-day Winter Hoot festival, which is being organized by Jay’s daughter, singer, guitarist, and fiddler Ruthy Ungar, and her husband, singer-guitarist Mike Merenda—also known as Hudson Valley alt.roots duo Mike and Ruthy. “Mike and I were inspired to put [the festival] together after we played at the Earthwork Harvest Gathering in Lake City, Michigan, which is this incredible event that focuses mainly on local acoustic music and food,” says Ruthy, who grew up playing and working with her father on the Ashokan campus. “When the new buildings went up, we said, ‘We have this amazing place, what can we do here?'”
With all of its profits going to help fund visits by classes from nearby schools, the festival kicks off February 1 with a screening of John Bowermaster’s film Dear Governor Cuomo, about the 2012 New Yorkers Against Fracking concert in Albany, starring Natalie Merchant, Medeski, Martin and Wood, the Felice Brothers, and others. In addition to dinner and a family square dance with live callers, the next day features music by Elizabeth Mitchell and Your Are My Flower, Amy Helm, Spirit Family Reunion, Jeffrey Lewis, and, of course, Mike and Ruthy, along with Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. “It’s very much geared toward people being able to bring their kids,” stresses Ruthy, the mother of two small children. “There’ll be supervised areas with mats for kids to crash out on while their parents enjoy the music, and Christina Brady and Shea Lord-Farmer from [Saugerties craft studio] Fiber Flame will be leading art activities for kids and families. And besides all of the other stuff there is to do here, like hiking and artisan demos, on the Saturday we’re going to turn the new dining hall into an indoor farmers market, with locally grown and baked food.” Day three promises a brunch, a song circle, a puppet show, and a rollicking farewell concert.
“We played [at the center] last fall, and it was a completely magical day,” says Mitchell, who performs in indie band Ida as well as her own group. “You could feel the creative, positive energy everywhere, people were inspired, and community was happening. The Ashokan Center is a national treasure, we are so deeply fortunate to have it in our backyard.”
As Ashokan’s facilities expand, so does its enlightening offerings. Along with returning happenings like March’s Maple Fest, a musical and culinary celebration of the campus-harvested maple syrup, there’s the popular SummerSongs songwriter’s camps, and, adds Ruthy, another Hoot festival slated for August. Mason mentions plans for an upcoming ukulele weekend catering to those wanting to learn more about the recently repopularized instrument. Stewards and residential ambassadors of traditional music, dance, folk art, science, and living and natural history, Ashokan’s staff are not only preserving our cultural riches and the site’s own glorious environment: With every visiting student or camper they’re sowing the seeds that those spirited vessels take home and use to improve their own surroundings.
“We want the dances and other events we do at the new campus to be an engine for community,” says Ungar, who with Mason hosts WAMC’s monthly “Dancing on the Air” broadcasts. “But it’s also incredibly important for people, especially kids, to experience the kind of nature that’s here at Ashokan. I guess it sounds kind of New Agey, but the instant I came here I was changed. And somehow the feeling of that came out as “Ashokan Farewell,” which ended up really affecting people on this incredible level. There’s definitely something really magical about this place.”
The Winter Hoot festival takes place February 1-3 at the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge. For ticket information and a full schedule, visit Homeofthehoot.com or Ashokancenter.org.
This article appears in February 2013.
