Saturday’s 10th-annual Halloween ‘Spectacle’ unlike any other
‘We’re going all out with music’
Coincident with nature’s spectacle of autumn foliage is the man-made “Spectacle” at John Henry’s Stone Hill Theater in Flint Hill. Open to all, it’s happening this Saturday, Oct. 26, 3-9 p.m., at 40 Springwish Lane. Now in its 10th year, this unique Rappahannock event calls for an interview with the event’s creator together with a jazz musician from New York who will be participating.
Rappahannock News: Your Spectacles are known for their visual pageantry against the background of the stone walls and amphitheatre that you built. Anything new this year?
John Henry: We’re going all out with music. I’m a very visual person, so in the early years I focused on getting the elements of stone, costume and fire right. While music played a role in our Spectacles, it wasn’t near the level of our visuals. It was a game changer when I met the jazz musician Ricky Gordon in New York City.
RN: Ricky, we hear you go by the name “Dirty Red.” How did you get that nickname?
Ricky Gordon: My grandmother was Cherokee. I have a red complexion. So my father called me Dirty Red. When my best friend Wynton Marsalis heard that, the name stuck.
RN: Dirty Red, your New York City jazz band was a big hit at the 2018 Spectacle. Was the Spectacle what you expected?
RG: We had seen Ray Bloc’s photography books and Robert Peak’s drone videos. But nothing could prepare us for the performance art John creates.
RN: Dirty Red’s brass and wind is quite a contrast to the Alexandria Pipe & Drum, who played the five preceding years.
RG: The pipe and drum was a natural default for my Celtic DNA. But after 10 minutes the music sounds the same. It’s militaristic, which is off-message for my efforts to shut down Presidential wars. Jazz is improvisation. The better the music, the less you know where it’s going.
RN: And the source of that creativity?
RG: Slavery. African-Americans used music to be free of our bondage.
RN: Spectacles are said to bring people together, like jazz in improvisational communal bonds. So, John, is that indeed your motivation?
JH: I grew up in nearby Orange County in the early 1950s. My father was an Episcopal minister. One of his carpetbagger parishioners decided to build a swimming pool for the town of Gordonsville. He asked dad to solve the race problem. Dad said the whites swim between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and the blacks 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Dad was President of the Rotary Club but everyone stopped talking to him. Dad moved our family to West Virginia. He refused to live in a community unless we engaged with each part of it. Our Spectacles are a celebration of Dad’s Christian philosophy.