Up close and personal

NACL’s Salon Sessions provide an intimate venue for getting to know local artists and thinkers

HIGHLAND LAKE, NY — As autumn returns, it brings with it Salon Sessions, NACL’s eclectic monthly series featuring artists and thinkers of our community in the intimate setting of the lounge at the NACL theatre at 110 Highland Lake Road. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and admission costs $5.

The first evening of the series, sponsored in part by Sullivan County Arts and Heritage, will be Sea Songs, a sexy and surreal cabaret of spoken word, voice and vibraphone created by poet-actress Laylage Courie and jazz great Matt Moran.

Twisting the intellectual eroticism of early Parisian salons, Courie (writer/vocalist) and Matt Moran (composer/vibraphonist) pose as “diseuse” and accompanist. Strange art songs tossed with traditional sea shanties, a blue glass clock and a huge bass drum, create a dark, sexy, extravagant reverie on lonely shores, impossible love, wayward birds and drowned men.

The style of the diseuse was particular to Yvette Guilbert at the turn of the last century. The diseuse does not concentrate on pretty melodic singing but on dramatically communicating a text to her audience. Though the traditional diseuse would have been accompanied by piano, “Sea Songs” opts for the eerie, watery steel sound of the vibraphone. “Sea Songs” is a tour de force for Moran, who plays vibes with two mallets in each hand, as well as cymbal and drums.