Winter is coming for concert barge
Floating venue needs buyer before winter if it’s to come to the city this year, group leader says
A group seeking to bring a floating concert hall to Kingston is hoping to find funding to purchase it before winter, a group leader said Thursday.
Peter Wetzler, a Kingston composer who’s been leading the push to bring the Point Counterpoint II to Kingston, said that the concert barge will not be able to come to Kingston this year once winter sets in.
“It is crucial (to find funders before the winter),” Wetzler said. “It’s time sensitive.”
Wetzler added that if the funding can be found soon the floating classical music venue can be brought to dock at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in the Rondout.
There, Wetzler said, the heated barge could open for events such has art exhibits during the winter months.
The Point Counterpoint II currently is docked on the Illinois River in Ottawa, Ill.
Wetzler said it will need to be dry docked before colder weather arrives.
Wetzler has said that the group found a potential investor from a New York City foundation but has not provided any more information.
The barge-like Point Counterpoint II, which is 195 feet long and opens like a clamshell to reveal a concert stage, is expected to fetch as much as $4 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Kingston Mayor Steve Noble is among those who want the vessel to end up in Kingston but has said the city does not have the money to buy it.
The sale price initially was expected to be $2 million, but Noble said even that was too much for the city to pay.
Wetzler said the effort has the support of the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, the Beacon-based Clearwater organization and the Poughkeepsie-based environmental advocacy group Scenic Hudson.
Also on board, he said, are Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson and music director and conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra; and Nathaniel Kahn, son of Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn, who designed the Point Counterpoint II in the 1970s.
Robert Bourdeau, the owner of the Point Counterpoint II and the founder of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, said there have been inquiries from France, England and other American cities, including Buffalo, about buying the vessel. But Bourdeau told The Wall Street Journal the craft probably will stay in the United States because relocating it is difficult.
Bourdeau visited Kingston in early August, and Wetzler said afterward that the owner was extremely impressed with the community and wanted the Point Counterpoint II docked on the Hudson River.
Separately, Bourdeau has been quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying Kingston “is a perfect place” for the Point Counterpoint II because the community is “going through a very creative time.”