SUSQUEHANNA VALLEY CHORALE

Proudly Presents

The Times They Are A-Changin’

A Dylan Oratorio

Sunday, March 26, 2023

3:00pm at Rusty Rail Brewery, Mifflinburg

This commissioned work by the barrier-breaking, contemporary composer, STEVEN HACKMAN, will leave you knockin’ on heaven’s door. The event will also feature a silent auction, cash bar, and gourmet snacks.

The Man Behind the Music

When Bob Dylan [b. 1941] was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, the choice was controversial, to say the least. One award-winning writer tweeted “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars,” but others, including former poet laureate Billy Collins, defended the Swedish Academy’s choice. Collins was quoted as saying “Most song lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed to. Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry.” Shortly after the Nobel announcement, the Mendelssohn Club of Pittsburgh, Susquehanna Valley Chorale and other choral groups commissioned Steve Hackman to arrange some of Dylan’s songs into an extended work for chorus and orchestra. Bob Moir, a consultant for the Mendelssohn, explained “That award had people all over the world scratching their heads, probably because most people, when they think of Bob Dylan, can’t get past the voice, which is, shall we say, an acquired taste….but Dylan’s genius is in his lyric writing, and that was what the Nobel Prize Committee was acknowledging.
Program notes excerpt, Gary Boerckel – Lycoming College

Silent Auction Items

Doors will open at 2PM for bidding. Bidding will end after intermission and winners will be announced before the performance concludes. Bidding for ONLINE ONLY items will begin on Monday, March 20, at 12 noon and end on Friday, March 24, at 12 noon. Remember, all proceeds to go directly to SVC. So bid high, and take some Dylan home with you!

Dylan Time Magazine

Publisher: Life Books, New York, Publication Date: 2012, Edition: 1st Edition — A life in pictures, including shots from those who know him intimately, and knew him in the reclusive years in Woodstock, like Eliot Landy and Bob Cato. LIFE’s original coverage of Dylan, Joan Baez and the downtown scene of the early 1960s. Excerpts from Dylan interviews through the years that make the story come alive and get to the heart of this enigmatic man.

Rolling Stone Special Collectors Edition Bob Dylan

Publisher: Wenner Media, Publication Date: 2013 — A rare collector’s edition containing 40 years of Rolling Stone interviews and gives an excellent view of Bob Dylan’s music, mind, and art by discussing 100 individual songs with many photographs throughout.

Dylan Framed Poster – playing guitar

Enjoy having this image of a young Bob Dylan in your home. Taken during the early years while just stepping into the folk music scene, this photo captures Dylan in his simplest and purest form; a man and his guitar, singing songs about the people, for the people.

Bob Dylan – 1967 Milton Glaser original folded poster for Greatest Hits album 

Title: Bob Dylan
Poster artist: Milton Glaser
Edition: 1st edition original folded poster from Bob Dylan’s 1967 Greatest Hits album!
Type: Limited edition print
Size: 22×33
Notes: Often considered one of the most iconic rock posters of all time!

Dylan Framed Poster – with sunglasses

Here, we see Dylan a little older, sporting a classic 1960’s look, along with that wild and crazy hair we’ve all come to recognize and associate with this iconic artist. Add a little vintage flare to your interior design with this candid shot that captures Dylan in an uncommon occurrence, seen without his guitar or behind a microphone.

Bob Dylan Chronicles Volume 1

Winner of the Nobel prize in literature and celebrated as the first memoir from one of the most influential singer-songwriters in the country. This remarkable book explores critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan’s eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan’s New York is a magical city of possibilities—smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book’s side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota, and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times. First printing.

 

Dylan Encyclopedia

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia is one of the most wide-ranging, informed, entertaining, provocative, and compulsively readable books ever written about popular music. It’s the culmination of over thirty years of dedicated research and scholarship by Michael Gray. Inside these pages, you’ll find a world of ideas, facts, and opinions. It’s a world in which Baudelaire flows on from the Basement Tapes and A.S. Byatt looks out at the Byrds; in which Far from the Madding Crowd follows Ezekiel and Bob Geldof introduces Jean Genet; and in which Hank and William Carlos Williams stand side by side while J.R.R. Tolkien trails the Titanic. Most of all, of course, it’s a world in which everyone and everything interconnects, in endlessly fascinating ways, with one of our greatest living artists: Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966 – two copies (ONLINE ONLY for opened copy)

The Bob Dylan Scrapbook was created with the collaboration of the singer. It’s a very collectable title and it illustrates Dylan’s life during the 1950’s and the 1960’s. The scrapbook comes in a slipcase and includes rare photographs, facsimiles of handwritten lyrics and rare memorabilia. There are interviews with Dylan and friends as well as other musicians. The result is a very personal project that gives the viewer a unique insight in the singer’s life. A special bonus audio CD contains sixty minutes of early interviews and a rare performance. By Robert Santelli the Executive Director of the GRAMMY Museum® in Los Angeles in 2006.

Bob Dylan in America – 2010 (ONLINE ONLY)

One of America’s finest historians shows us how Bob Dylan, one of the country’s greatest and most enduring artists, still surprises and moves us after all these years. Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov­ered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Drawn in part from Wilentz’s essays as “historian in residence” of Dylan’s official website, Bob Dylan in America is a unique blend of fact, interpretation, and affinity—a book that, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants.

Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vinyl Album
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits is a 1967 compilation album of songs by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Released on March 27, 1967, by Columbia Records. It was Dylan’s first compilation, containing every Top 40 single Dylan had up to 1967, plus additional album tracks which had become popular singles as recorded by other artists. It peaked at No. 10 on the pop album chart in the United States, and went to No. 3 on the album chart in the United Kingdom. Certified five times platinum by the RIAA, it is his best-selling album in the U.S.

Original oil painting – mounted, unframed

This priceless, one-of-a-kind painting is quite the statement piece. Its background is a mystery but was the poster art inspiration for the SVC Dylan Oratorio concert. The fantastic use of color, texture, and movement in this work of art evokes an alluring sense of curiosity and playfulness. It’s a total vibe, that’s…well…totally Dylan.

Please contact the SVC office at 570-547-0455 to inquire on availability for this concert.

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