88 piano keys, 252 places: Why this Vermonter is hitting the high notes from Alburgh to Vernon

University of Vermont music professor David Feurzeig once prided himself on such worldly feats as attending the premiere of his “Songs of Love and Protest” in Dresden, Germany, and serving as a two-time featured guest at the International Composers Festival in Bangkok, Thailand.

“For academic musicians,” he notes on his website , “there are incentives to fly, fly, fly. The farther the gig, the more prestige and promotion/tenure brownie points.”

Then Feurzeig thought about how such jet-setting travel contributes to the climate crisis.

“Like so much of our everyday fossil-fuel-intensive culture,” he said, “touring needs to change rapidly and radically if we are to maintain a livable world.”

That’s why the 58-year-old has given up globetrotting and instead relies on his solar-powered electric vehicle and public transit for his current “Play Every Town Project. ”

Feurzeig is aiming to perform a free concert in every one of Vermont’s 252 municipalities, all while promoting local and state environmental causes through onstage banter and a blog .

“When I decided to stop flying, at first I kept quiet,” he wrote in one post, “because who wants to be a scold, making people feel bad about going to see Grandma? Then I realized that the only thing more laughably insignificant than me not taking a flight here and there would be me not taking those flights and not telling anyone.”

Starting in May 2022 in the state’s largest city of Burlington, the pianist has shared his story at more than 50 engagements and counting — with his 56th and most recent this month in Weston, population 623, and his upcoming 57th set for June 2 in Westford, population 2,062.

“I am not the first person to think of this,” Feurzeig said in an interview. The late Arthur Peach established Vermont’s 251 Club in 1954 to encourage people to visit each of the state’s 251 cities and towns. (The 2022 carveout of the city of Essex Junction has revised the number of municipalities, if not the club’s name). The Vermont Symphony Orchestra, for its part, marked its 50th anniversary in 1984 with a similar “251 Project.”

That said, Feurzeig believes he’s the first individual performer to embark on an effort that, two years in, may take until the end of the decade to complete.

The Huntington pianist and his roadie/recorder/stage manager (wife Annelies McVoy) travel to events in most any weather. Consider the one in Warren, population 1,977, just after last July’s historic statewide flooding.

“On the recording of the concert, you can hear the brook racing by,” he said. “I’ve played on the smokiest day in Vermont history, the wettest day in Vermont history, the hottest November day in Vermont history. All these things are becoming more and more frequent.”

This March, Feurzeig’s booking in Vershire, population 672, slid into an early mud season that spurred the town to ask residents on dirt roads to stay put.

“To make matters worse,” he wrote on his blog, “the road foreman just quit because he was fed up with the constant complaints of townspeople who misdirected their frustration with the new climate at the crew.”

The programs, which so far have raised more than $17,000 in donations for local and state environmental groups, also spotlight their individual settings.

“The sense of community and place is threatened here as everywhere,” Feurzeig said. “I want to support the vibrancy of village centers and downtowns by performing in places where live music isn’t often heard anymore.”

Each concert is individually tailored, offering selections from ancient to avant-garde, classical to contemporary.

Settle in and you’ll begin with basics from such composers as Domenico Scarlatti, who wrote 555 sonatas in a life that spanned from 1685 to 1757. Feurzeig is presenting a different one in each city and town.

Then comes the local color. In Guilford, the pianist shared the keyboard with twin students Chloe and Daphne Banas. In Brownington, Charlotte, Dorset, Essex Junction and Jericho, he accompanied a church choir. In Randolph, he was joined by area singer Jennifer Grout, an American whose surprising success performing traditional Arab music on Middle East television has been reported by the New York Times .

“I’m very adamant about playing a real acoustic piano whenever possible,” Feurzeig said, “even if it’s got some issues.”

That wasn’t a problem at Manchester’s Southern Vermont Arts Center, which has a Steinway concert grand; or at Salisbury’s Congregational Church, with a Yamaha that made its way from Japan to France to a nearby music camp in Addison County; or even at Berlin’s Capital City Grange, whose Ivers & Pond upright “has tone,” Feurzeig said, “which is the piano equivalent of soul.”

But it was more of a challenge in Brunswick, population 88, where Feurzeig had to bring his own electronic keyboard to the only public gathering place, the visitor center of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Nulhegan Basin Refuge.

“At first I thought I would be looking for the best piano in town,” he said. “Now I’ve learned it’s better to have the community energy than the absolute perfect instrument.”

Feurzeig is set to appear Sept. 15 at the late President Calvin Coolidge’s homestead in Plymouth, population 641. There he’ll play former First Lady Grace Coolidge’s century-old Baldwin piano, gifted by its makers in 1924 when she was living in the White House.

“The company says it was the first piano ever to be flown on an airplane,” he said.

Feurzeig also is trying to determine a date to perform in the unincorporated Northeast Kingdom town of Lewis, population 0, whose land is also part of the Nulhegan Basin Refuge, alongside neighboring Brunswick, Bloomfield and Ferdinand.

“It has to be as late as possible in the fall so that we’ll have some color in the leaves, but it has to be before the first Saturday of duck season or else all the other park users will be mad that we’re dominating the parking lot,” he said. “Not the kind of thing you have to think about when you’re playing Carnegie Hall.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: 88 piano keys, 252 places: Why this Vermonter is hitting the high notes from Alburgh to Vernon .