The final session of the 2024 Second-Saturday Synthfest celebrating synthesizer performance, circuit-bending, and sound manipulation is on Saturday, February 10.It opens with a meet-and-greet at 6:00 PM — get up close to the gear, talk with the performers, meet the other cool people who come to these things, settle into the space. Five 20-minute performances follow, starting at 7:00. Performers include Repairer of Reputations from Rhode Island, Acacia Bridge from New York, and from right here in Vermont there's Uku Meri, Thorny, and Malcolm McShinsky.Players will be in the center of the room, with the audience in the round and encouraged to roam throughout the show. The performances are expected to range from cinematic and lush to computeresque and urgent. It may get loud. There will be pixelly projection art.Suggested $10 donation in advance or at the door, all proceeds benefit the performers. No one will be turned away for lack of money. Advance donations through stage33live.com guarantee entry if the session sells out.Seating is limited. All performances will be recorded and filmed.There most likely won't be a keytar, but your inner hair band can hope.

Then on Sunday, February 18, The Becker Sisters. Classy. If you missed them at their recent Epsilon Spires appearance, you can catch them here.

The Becker Sisters are soprano Alyssa Becker and pianist/composer Kirsten Becker. Their debut album, Love and Thought (2022), fuses neo-classical, contemporary art song, folk, opera, and jazz featuring Alyssa's soaring soprano and Kirsten's emotive piano accompaniment. They will perform on Sunday, February 18, in a 3:00 matinee. Tickets are $5 in advance through stage33live.com (an absolute bargain) or $10 at the door; all proceeds go to the artists. Limited seating; the event will be recorded and filmed.

The big shoe with Grammy nominee Reed Foehl got canceled, because weather — travel was treacherous for both performers between where they were and here, and where they had to go afterward. But it's been rescheduled, a second chance! It'll be Saturday, April 20 at 7:00 PM — we don't do many Saturdays — and acclaimed session drummer Jeff Berlin will be sitting in with Reed. Tommy Crawford will open. The Rutland Herald and the Burlington Free Press both had the January show in their picks of goodies.

Our YouTube channel's 100% organic aggregate view count quietly ticked up past 90,000 while we weren't paying attention. Retention is almost four minutes, practically unheard of. This is pleasing. We'd have to do 2,250 sold-out shows to have that many people in the room... and it would take more than 100 years to do that based on the number of shows we do annually. Not viral, but darned decent.You can join the fun at youtube.com/Stage33Live/videos 

This was an interesting exercise. We're working on a grant to help push-start the broadcast media part of the plan, and they want examples of the skill and art of the production process. So we excised bits from a spoken word clip and a music performance clip and toggled them between the produced result, the original audio and video, and the unused camera angles. Not to toot our own horn (too much), but big difference! The audio is captured in a completely uncontrolled environment, and the entire camera suite costs less than one midlevel-pro cinema camera. 

For reference, here's the rest of our schedule through the end of the year as it currently stands in case you want to make notations in your social calendar (the fancy one with the embossed black leatherette cover).

Remember that time we were doing a fundraiser to upgrade the in-room and capture audio handling? That was awesome. As of late last week, we have all the needful bits in hand and have started getting things racked up and wired. Excited. 

Good grief. Job Lot is selling Cuisinart Classic-Style Popcorn Makers (factory refurbished, 10 cup) for $130. Should we get a popcorn machine? We hear these oil poppers can be a pain to clean. Same ones are on evil Amazon for $120, apparently not refurbished. Crate & Barrel has a bigger one, 16 cups, in black instead of red for $100 (plus shipping). Oh hey, Cuisinart has the bigger 16-cup one in red on their website for a hundred bucks and free shipping.How long would it take us to cover the cost of the machine and corn and oil and toppings and containers if people donate a buck for a bowl or bag? Long time probably. If we do get a popcorn machine — which, honestly, we're not gonna do unless there's an outpouring of popcorn lust from youse crowd (and we all know there's only a couple of you still reading) — we'll undoubtedly buy off-brand popcorn and you'll have to make do with sketchy room-temperature fake spray butter. This probably isn't a very good idea, and increasingly unappetizing. This is probably the last you'll ever hear of it.

Meet our new A.I. Overlord.

We thought we were done with this one too. But y'know what? A quick shout-out to Main Street Arts up in Saxtons River. The pandemic lockdown and events leading up to it almost did them in — they posted on social media in those dark days about how calling it quits seemed likely. That was pretty sad... decades of legacy lost.But they've regrouped with a new board, appear to have overcome the inevitable bumps along the path of reinvention, and seem to be coming back strong as a true community organization serving a wide range of ages and interests... the very things that made MSA such a vital institution in the first place. This pleases us.Their new program director, Ashley Storrow, came to visit us yesterday and we had a great sit-down.Check their website, mainstreetarts.org, for classes and events like writers studios, creative aging classes, swing and waltz classes and dances, children's chorus, family music time, Qigong / Tai Chi, teen nights, a sewing circle, string band sessions, and yes, a monthly open mic.