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“There are decisive moments in life and faith when we learn to be brave and we know we must go and walk toward our destiny,” said the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde at the 9:15 a.m. Monday, June 27, ecumenical worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “Deciding to Go,” and the scripture texts were Genesis 12:1-4 and Mark 1:16-20.

There are many coming-of-age stories. Some of them are responses to situations beyond the control of the protagonist, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

Sometimes they are stories of liberation, like the Harry Potter series when Harry is liberated from 4 Privet Drive and finds his true self and powers at Hogwarts.

“We see ourselves in stories like these, what Joseph Campbell called the hero’s journey,” Budde said. “The experience marks us, and there is so much at stake. Like fledgling birds, often we don’t know we have wings until we are pushed out of the nest.”

Budde shared part of her life story; she was 17 when her family life fell apart. They were living in Colorado when her father told her he was leaving her stepmother. He said Budde could go with him, but she did not want to go with him alone. 

Her stepmother thought Budde would stay with her, but when she said no, her stepmother told her to immediately move out. 

“I knew where I had to go: to my mother in New Jersey,” Budde said. 

The custody battle between her parents had been messy, and Budde was a part of the mess. 

“I wanted a normal family, and I thought I would get that with my father, stepmother and new baby brother,” she said.

Budde had created an alternative family in Colorado with her friends. They were Christians and attended Young Life at their music teacher’s home. She got into a Christian touring choir, and, in school, she joined the choirs and had a role in the school musical.

Her mother had stayed in touch, and when her actual family collapsed, “I would have given anything to stay, but I felt the weight to go,” she said. “Yet, it felt more like obedience, not to an ordinary authority.”  

The pastor of the fundamentalist church she attended — and whose family she temporarily lived with after her stepmother turned her out — told her she would backslide into sin because her mother was an Episcopalian.

“I heard or sensed the voice of God speaking to my heart. Refusing that inner voice was not an option,” she said. “I learned what Eleanor Roosevelt called courage — doing what you think you cannot do.”

“I went to New Jersey, and who I am is because I was given or found the courage to go. I found a loving parent, grace, and a generous Christianity, knowing, trusting the voice of God,” Budde said. “It took years for the wounds to heal. Every decision has consequences, and my life depended on steps to a future I could not see.”

Every tradition has these stories, and human history changes when those who are called to walk toward the unknown go. In Genesis, God called Abram to go, and he went. 

“Abram did not argue with God. God promised this old man children, and Sarai laughed,” Budde said. “As author Bruce Feiler says, Abram not only believes in God, he believes God. Both Abram and Sarai make dreadful decisions, but their failings never negate God’s promise.”

The story in Mark of Jesus calling the disciples has been called the first miracle story by theologian Barbara Brown Taylor. 

“Jesus approached the fisherman and said, ‘Come, follow me,’ and they said, ‘OK.’ Jesus needed disciples, and God provided them,” Budde said. “This is a template for the first step to go. Heroes have 1,000 faces, and one of them is yours.”

Many people choose not to go. For them it is too hard to leave and become the person on the other side of the journey. 

“There are many times in our lives when we say yes,” Budde said. “In adolescence or young adulthood, the experience becomes our personal template, and when the time comes around again, we recognize it.”

When she was a young priest, Budde had a conversation with the diocesan camp director who was leaving his position to become a counselor for adolescent felons. He said to Budde, “I feel like I have been preparing my whole life for this job.”

Budde’s heart leapt.

“I knew I could not leapfrog over the hard years,” Budde said, “but by grace, integration and preparation, I could.”

Theologian Howard Thurman answered an invitation to San Francisco in 1943 to found a new, interracial, Christian community. He felt that this was the opportunity toward which his life was leading. Thurman was frustrated with the inability of American Christianity to confront racism.

“He understood the difference between the genius of Jesus and American Christianity, and this was a chance for him to create the church he envisioned that was worthy of Jesus,” Budde said.

Thurman wrote Jesus and the Disinherited from his experience. In 1953, he moved to Boston University, where he encountered Martin Luther King Jr. and became a spiritual inspiration to King. 

Whether you feel the call to go for the first or the thousandth time, fear has to give way to courage; excitement comes in the preparation, and the cost of the call confirms its validity. 

“Clarity comes as a gift. Thanks to the psychic imprint of the template, scripture and life, when the heroic journey presents itself, we recognize it,” Budde told the congregation. “If it is your time, feel blessed and protected in your going, and give your blessing to those who are wanting to go.”

The Rev. Natalie Hanson, interim senior pastor for Chautauqua, presided. The Rev. George Wirth, retired senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, read the scripture. The prelude was “Folk Tune,” by Percy Whitlock, played by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and holder of the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organ. The Motet Choir sang “Dear Lord and Father,” to the tune “Galilee,” by C. Hubert Parry, with words by John Greenleaf Whittier. The choir was directed by Stafford and accompanied by Nicholas Stigall, organ scholar. Stafford played “Paean,” by Percy Whitlock, for the postlude. This week’s services are supported by the Samuel M. and Mary E. Hazlett Memorial Fund.

Doug Berky readily admits that he has a short attention span.

The physical theater artist has a dizzying array of skills — from mask-making to unicycle-riding — and influences, from famous mime Marcel Marceau to his resilient mother. Berky will give two Family Entertainment Series performances at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 28, in Smith Wilkes Hall. When he was learning the tricks of the trade at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, he was exposed to a wide range of intriguing practices, such as juggling and clowning, and he was inspired to learn a variety of skills rather than zeroing in on one specialty.

“I’ve found sort of a toolbox that I can use to entertain people, and I draw from the different tools to interest them,” Berky said.

The piece he is bringing to Chautauqua, titled “No Show,” displays many of those tools. It’s just one of the shows that he has personally devised from the ground up. Berky was originally following the variety show format, but he decided he ought to develop a show with a story.

The premise of Berky’s “No Show” is that an audience gathers to see a show, with props and costumes ready and waiting, but the performers don’t show up. Berky, masquerading as an audience member, goes up on stage and begins exploring the onstage elements, like unicycles and a sousaphone. False starts and pratfalls abound. The piece relies on Berky’s improvisation skills and invites the audience to participate, resulting in different outcomes every time.

“The show is improvisational in the sense that with each audience, how it develops and how long it goes really depends on how involved the audience gets,” Berky said. “So it’s really a show of discovery for me, and for them.”

Berky has traveled the country and the world with his act, performing and teaching in Oregon, South Carolina, Cuba and Denmark, to name a few. He appreciates that audiences connect with certain aspects of his repertoire regardless of geographical location.

“Because my work is so visual, I can go to places that I don’t have language for, and the humor transcends our cultures,” Berky said. “There’s some humor that is cultural, but there’s a good core of physical humor that is universal.”  

Although some of Berky’s acts are geared toward adults, like the Leo Tolstoy short story-inspired show he created during the pandemic, he has a special place in his heart for family audiences.

“There are different levels of humor, where the kids see things that the
parents don’t, and the parents see things that the kids don’t,” Berky said. “That is something that families share together, and they’re able to discover things differently.” 

Chautauquans enjoy their music and are dedicated to those who create it.

They proved this in 2021 when around a dozen people stood outside Fletcher Music Hall just to catch snippets of the School of Music’s Voice Program Sing-In. At the time, it was only open to faculty members and students.

In 2022, the Sing-In will be open to public audiences  — masks required — at 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 28, in Fletcher.

Having Chautauquans return to Fletcher is a cause for joy, but above all, the event remains about the students, who now comprise the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory under the supervision of Director Marlena Malas.

“The Sing-In is where each singer introduces themselves, not just to Chautauqua but to the faculty, to each other,” said Sarah Malinoski-Umberger, manager of the Chautauqua Schools of Performing and Visual Arts.

In past years, the School of Music held in-person auditions in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco as some of the music faculty reside in those cities. Auditions for the 2022 season took place virtually. The Sing-In allows some of the faculty to hear the students in person, perhaps for the first time.

Around 200 students auditioned for the Opera Conservatory in October 2021, with 41 selected to join for the 2022 season. Donna Gill, head coach and scheduling coordinator for the Opera Conservatory, said they have not heard some of the singers since the auditions.

This afternoon provides students with the opportunity for a fresh first impression, which will have an impact on their season.

“This one’s very serious,” Malinoski-Umberger said, due to the fact the Opera Conservatory assigns the smaller roles in their productions based on how the singers perform.

The Sing-In kicks off the Opera Conservatory’s season, which includes recitals and performances of Don Giovanni, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Secret Garden. On July 30, to wrap up Week Five’s theme “The Vote and Democracy,” as well as the 2022 opera festival, the Chautauqua Opera Company & Conservatory are collaborating to perform The Mother of Us All, which follows Susan B. Anthony’s activity in the suffrage movement.

The move to combining resources between Chautauqua Opera Company and the Voice Program was heavily discussed before it finally came to fruition this season.

“Now that they’re all one,” Malinoski-Umberger said, “it just feels like
it’s stronger.”

Dance Theatre of Harlem will close its 2021-2022 season with its debut to Chautauqua audiences, though the company is no stranger to the Institution, where it spent four weeks in residence during the spring of 2021. 

“It was really a beautiful, beautiful experience,” said Derek Brockington, company artist and social media coordinator. “It was great to be in the middle of these arts and to be a real part of it. I’m glad we are going back because it will be more familiar to us now.”

At 8:15 p.m. Monday, June 27, in the Amphitheater, DTH takes the stage. Its performance will showcase “Higher Ground” by DTH resident choreographer Robert Garland, set to music by Stevie Wonder, as well as Garland’s “Return,” set to music by James Brown and Aretha Franklin. “Passage,” by choreographer Claudia Schreier, will also be featured. 

Brockington described “Higher Ground” as very upbeat, with a combination of classical steps and vernacular, or more informal, movement. 

“Passage” provides a change in mood and tone.

“It’s a more neoclassical piece with just the formations, the lights and the costumes. It’s just a really, really beautiful ballet,” Brockington said.

“Return” mirrors the upbeat tone of the first dance. 

“You’re having a good time. You’re very engaged,” Brockington said. “It’s kind of like a crowd favorite for DTH.” 

Under their founder, Arthur Mitchell, DTH aims to provide everyone with access to ballet. One of the ways the company approaches this work is through international travel, bringing ballet to new audiences.

“We do our masterclasses and educational lectures because we want to be able to go into these towns where they’ve not seen ballet before,” Brockington said.

DTH’s mission closely aligns with that of Chautauqua Institution, said Laura Savia, vice president of performing and visual arts.

“We revel in the fact that on any given day someone on our grounds is having their very first experience with live dance, or live music, or at an art gallery,” Savia said. “The idea behind this programming, and part of the reason we are so aligned with a company like Dance Theatre of Harlem, is because of the core belief that great art belongs to everyone and should be enjoyed by everyone.” 

Ballet’s universality is shown through DTH’s 18-member, multi-ethnic company. DTH pushes a message of empowerment through the arts.

“For (the audience), seeing dancers who are different or who look like them really allows them to see themselves up on the stage and drives home the point that ballet is for everybody,” Brockington said.

The Chautauqua Dance Circle will offer a dance preview prior to DTH taking the stage at 7 p.m. at Smith Wilkes Hall. This preview event will feature Virginia Johnson, DTH artistic director. Johnson, a founding member and former principal ballerina, was appointed in 2010.

“It’s important for people to come to this performance because the artistry and innovation of the Dance Theatre of Harlem has put them at the top of their field,” Savia said “They have been at the vanguard of diversity and representation in dance.”

DTH will return to Chautauqua at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday on Bestor Plaza for a program titled “Dancing in The Streets.”

Everyone needs a little bit of fun.

And that is exactly what string quartet Cuarteto Latinoamericano with classical guitarist JiJi will reflect with their music at 4 p.m. Monday, June 27, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. These musicians will be the first to perform in the 2022 Chautauqua Chamber Music Guest Artist Series.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano  — a group composed of brothers Álvaro, Arón and Saúl Bitrán, and violist Javier Montiel — have created music together for almost 40 years. In those 40 years, the band has created over 50 albums and won two Latin Grammys, both in the Best Classical Album category. They collaborated with Manuel Barrueco to win a Latin Grammy in the category Best Classical Contemporary Composition. The string quartet’s story begins in Mexico City where the Bitrán brothers met Montiel at the National Conservatory of Music.

“We were still teenagers, and we became very good friends,” said cellist Álvaro Bitrán.

Their friendship, mutual talents and love for music led them to create Cuarteto Latinoamericano in 1982. When the group first formed, they spent “a lot of time discussing styles,” Álvaro Bitrán said. “Now, we are very efficient with our time.”

After four decades of playing together, the band has an established musical style. This established style helped classical guitarist JiJi in her own musical journey, most notably when she arranged Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 for guitar and string quartet.

“It was hard for me because it was my first time actually arranging for a string quartet,” JiJi said.

But Cuarteto Latinoamericano did not abandon JiJi to figure it out herself.

“(The members of Cuarteto Latinoamericano) were like, ‘Oh, we want to do this ricochet thing … why don’t we try that?’ ” JiJi said. “So it was a really creative and collaborative effort to do this arrangement.”

In addition to the piece JiJi arranged, they picked music — such as pieces by Antonio Vivaldi and Luigi Boccherini — to create a sense of lightness in the performance.

“It’s just really fun, and it happened to be all Italian,” JiJi said. “We find this energetic vibrancy in these pieces, and that’s what we really like.”

While all of the pieces JiJi and Cuarteto Latinoamericano will play together today are from Italian composers, their solo performances are more diversified. JiJi will open with Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz’s “Asturias” (Leyenda) for guitar. Later in the program, Cuarteto Latinoamericano will play Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’s String Quartet No. 5 and Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” for tango and strings. Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s selections from Latin American composers are consistent with their mission. Not only do the Latin American composers reflect a part of this string quartet’s culture, but by performing them, it exposes audiences to the composers’ music.

“We try to have a very, very Spanish label,” Álvaro Bitrán said.

Cuarteto Latinoamericano and JiJi’s program is designed to evoke a celebratory mood.

“(The pieces are) really all just very festive,” JIJI said. “I think it’s perfect for the summer and the solstice.”

Good morning. It has been much too long since we’ve gathered as a full community in this space and in this sacred place. I offer our returning Chautauquans a hearty welcome home. It is definitely not Chautauqua without you. And it’s absolutely wonderful to see you again.

To those with us visiting Chautauqua for the first time this morning, we want to offer you an extra special greeting. You are now part of a community that cherishes lifelong learning as a key to perpetuating and enhancing our democratic society. Our mission calls us to constantly widen our circle, and your presence here affirms we are fulfilling that commitment. We hope your experience with us is the beginning of a long and enriching friendship, and we are so very glad that you are here.

On a personal note, I’d like to welcome two very special guests to the Amphitheater this morning. Many of you know I have served as a trustee of my alma mater, St. Bonaventure University, having concluded my term just a few weeks ago. Today, perhaps as my last official act as a trustee, I want to welcome St. Bonaventure’s 22nd President, Dr. Jeff Gingerich, who took office just this week to Chautauqua for the first time. Dr. Gingerich, it’s a joy to have you and Betsy join Peter and me today. May this be the first of many visits to Chautauqua, and I look forward to your leadership in our region.

Chautauquans have gathered like this — on the first Sunday of the Summer Assembly — for more than a century. The opening message delivered by the Institution’s president is a tradition that dates to our founding in 1874. This is our opportunity to set the stage for the Summer Assembly; to establish the context in which we will convene the forthcoming conversations and experiences; and to create a space of belonging for every person here — and not yet here — each summer. It is one of our most important rituals in a place that reveres both its traditions and pushes constantly to innovate.

I want to thank the Board of Trustees, many of whom are seated here on the stage to my right, our executive team also seated here to my left, the Board of Directors of the Chautauqua Foundation, and our year-round and seasonal staff. Without the collective efforts of these teams, none of this would be possible. Please join me in thanking them.

Earthquakes and Aftershocks

I’m struck today that it has taken Chautauqua three long years to return to our 2019 levels of activity. In 2020, we conducted our programming entirely online. Last year, we opened our Assembly in a hybrid mode and did not open up the grounds completely. And here we are, in year three, finally reopening Norton Hall and Bratton Theater, operating our schools at full capacity and at the same time, and countless other examples of programs and activities that were last fully present in 2019.

Trauma is a complicated thing. Sometimes an initial incident is not the most damaging. As we gather today, we acknowledge the seismic shifts that have occurred in our families, our communities, our economy and our nation as a whole. The normal culprit of seismic shifts is an earthquake. Of course, for most of us, the shifts we have experienced over the past three years are only metaphorically seismic – yet the consequences are nonetheless tragic.

Anyone who has worked with earthquake victims will tell you that it’s the aftershocks that are most difficult to manage. Aftershocks create continuing uncertainty following a natural disaster – they spawn waves of terror as we mere humans are reminded time and time again how little control we have over the course of things. The core of the earth is wielding its power. Charles Darwin explained it this way:

“An earthquake … at once destroys the oldest associations; the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, moves beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time conveys to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never create.”

When we truly sit with this “strange idea of insecurity,” we can gain dimensional insight into the state of our world today and of ourselves — and our resulting disheveled, impatient, or even impetuous dispositions. The COVID-19 pandemic was the earthquake; death and grave illness followed, creating multitudes of aftershocks across families, communities, and nations. Mix in political rancor; a historic transfer of presidential power in the United States; vaccines offering promise, only to be followed by yet more shocks: new strains of the virus; war in Ukraine; economic uncertainty; the housing crisis; inflation; historic Supreme Court decisions; and racially motivated mass shootings, as nearby as our neighbors in Buffalo.

The impact of any one of these tragedies would, understandably, cause decades-long, even generational, reverberations. Seen as a collective — they call this community of seekers and learners to take a breath, to pause to regain some perspective, but only for a moment, recognizing that our work is not to ponder for pondering’s sake but to recenter ourselves to make a difference in the world. 

This summer, we will do just that: pause for a moment to take stock, with the help of a familiar, uniquely Chautauquan device: our weekly themes. We’ll convene critical conversations about America’s role in the world; reconnecting with the natural world; the future of human rights; the future of history; the vote and democracy, and more.

And, amid this environment of uncertainty, we’ll also explore that which feeds the human spirit in good times and otherwise. Our foundation of faith is the awesome core of Chautauqua’s being. It is ever expanding to encompass the growing, increasingly diverse communities that celebrate the goodness of God and creation across traditions — including those that align with no faith tradition. This core can be shaken and rattled, for sure, but is not broken. 

We’ll ask questions on our interfaith platform that explore America’s global conscience; the spirituality of human rights; and that never-ending question of the future of being. We will examine courage; and celebrate the power of creativity, culture and faith.

And, of course, we’ll again leverage the arts as the great convener of the most difficult and complex conversations. Literature, the visual arts, musical offerings, the power of opera and theater all draw us in and illuminate as no other experience can. Sometimes the reality of a situation is just too difficult to take in through a lecture or a conversation; once again our artists will call us to an intentional discomfort or a reflective balm we need to even take our first steps toward processing. 

We will also create spaces for relaxation and recreation — often the most important keys to unlock our minds and remove mental barriers.

This interdisciplinary approach, practiced and pursued by a multigenerational audience, is the magic of Chautauqua. How lucky are we to have the time and space to immerse ourselves in this pursuit?

Aftershocks and Gratitude

But what do we do when our summer concludes each year? We know it’s not enough to seek perspective for a finite period of time when the world’s aftershocks seem bent on knocking us down repeatedly.

The even greater context in which this work takes place is Chautauqua’s vision for the future, as articulated in our strategic plan, 150 Forward. When this plan was conceived and confirmed in the spring of 2019 — which feels like a decade ago — we had no idea how prescient its principles would be. Our plan calls for us to lean into this work we do each summer as a springboard to bringing our calling and mission to the world 12 months of the year. 150 Forward is more than a roadmap for organizational health: it seeks to provide anchors to guard against the aftershocks themselves. Think about what it asks us: 

1) How does our Summer Assembly become a model against the polarization that infects our body politic? How does it harness goodness and joy as antidotes to fear and loathing of the other?

2) How do we take the very idea of a “retreat,” of this magical place and its founding mission, out into our own communities? How do we think about working across our disciplines and across our generations to celebrate that no one group has the answer?

3) What does it look like to harness science — which at one point was not a political issue but a genuine pursuit of facts and trends and data — to clean up a lake that is central to Chautauqua’s existence? And if we can do it here, why can’t we transport our learnings to help other freshwater bodies heal not only what’s inside the water but perhaps heal our increasingly inhospitable climate?

4) And can we be bold enough, as our founders were, to reinvent the very way we convene and create a model that ensures that the reasons you and I gather here today are sustainable and replicable and generate a new spirit of hope for generations to come? 

These questions that undergird our strategic approach to Chautauqua’s future are coupled with our imperatives to mobilize technology across all operations; to create strategic partnerships that add value and diversity to Chautauqua’s programming; to conceive and implement creative labor and talent solutions; and to create the conditions in which everyone feels that they can engage as full and valued participants in the Chautauqua experience, through investments of time and other resources into a comprehensive plan for inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility.

I hope you’ll see this larger vision coming to life this summer in countless ways. The gift of the past two years for Chautauqua is this: the multiple, intertwined struggles and challenges only served to reinforce the importance of our plan – which was conceived to assure the vibrancy and relevance of this community for current and future generations – regardless of the forces and aftershocks of our bruised and battered world. As we look toward our 150th birthday in 2024:

• 150 Forward has helped us to see our role in creating year-round conversations on climate change.

• It has clarified our calling to be a key leader in this region on the development of science to inform Chautauqua Lake conservation plans and strategy, and has us dreaming about how restoring our lake might allow us to help others.

• It has reinforced the importance of the Summer Assembly — our mission to convene in community to explore the challenging issues of the day so we can empower every person here and not yet here to be positive forces for change through the democratic process.

• It has reminded us that our founders — Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent, a businessman and a bishop — knew that Chautauqua could not and should not be contained to these sacred grounds and this summer season. The world needed Chautauqua in 1874 and it needs it now more than ever, 12 months of the year. Embracing this part of our calling has also illuminated the need to establish facilities and attractions that fuel our 12-month vision; bringing to life a master plan that imagines our presence along Route 394 as a corridor for commerce and engagement, and in the process, declares that we have a role to play in rebuilding our regional economy.

The first step toward this vision is coming to life as we speak, with the construction of a new Buildings and Grounds facility underway at the back of the “green” parking lot along Route 33. While out of sight from the main gates of our grounds, this facility will not only finally create a professional and fitting workspace for those who care for, build and re-build our beloved grounds, but it also frees up space and facilities along Route 394 that we will leverage for programming, hospitality and commerce. In this way, Chautauqua has the opportunity to play an increasingly transformational role in Chautauqua County’s economic vision for the future, elevating education and tourism as economic drivers in this part of the county all year-round. This Institution has doubled down on its commitment to turn our gates into gateways of promise and opportunity, and we’re on the road toward doing just that!

150 Forward also reminds us that we have deep, meaningful and difficult work to do in shifting our own core to become a place where every person truly belongs here — and wherever Chautauqua is. As one writer reminded us over the past year, we need to stop asking ourselves what we are doing to achieve a more diverse and inclusive community. The more important question is this: What are we doing that keeps us where we are; that makes this place and this movement inaccessible or unwelcoming to those who have yet to discover it? Amit Taneja, our Chief Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility Officer, is leading us through the important process of raising and answering this question and carving solutions that will create that necessary shift. These are difficult but absolutely existential conversations. We are asking you to be part of this work here and in your home communities. You will find our plan at IDEA.chq.org, and Amit will be hosting listening sessions and conversations across the grounds this season. Please attend and engage with him on ways you can support these efforts.

A group of Chautauquans are also helping us to model a different path toward dialogue — to show that it is possible for us to stay in conversation with those we agree with and those we do not agree with. You will notice an enhanced focus on our Chautauqua Dialogues program this season, and I encourage you to participate in those conversations when possible. It is programs like Chautauqua Dialogues that add to our sense of community, and much of it would not be possible without the partnership of our staff and committed volunteers who make these dialogues happen. 

Our plan also nudged us into the digital space — to create a digital grounds, so to speak, that has become a new foundation onto which we can build out our vision for the future. CHQ Assembly is a central and exciting innovation space, where we will continue to morph and evolve as the digital world evolves. It will help us to continue to build muscles of agility and experimentation — not to replace this extraordinary physical space and face-to-face engagement experience — but to sustain it and enhance its reach and relevance.

While CHQ Assembly does this very “front-facing” work, we are also building a new technological foundation and infrastructure that will finally enable us to overcome challenges we’ve endured for decades; challenges that have impaired your experiences at ticketing, gates, class and youth registration; that have hobbled our human resources, communication and marketing efforts and effectiveness, despite the very good and committed efforts of professionals who have somehow worked miracles to “make do.” 150 Forward calls us to acknowledge and address our technology deficit as a critical capacity builder for the future, and reminds us that technology need not be just a piece of overhead, but rather can and must be an amplifier of our mission in ways our founders never dreamed.

You are also seeing Chautauqua lead through dramatically shifting expectations of how and where work is done. We know that what has always made Chautauqua special is the people that animate it with their own unique gifts and talents. We continue to seek ways to bring the very best minds to our team so we can deliver the very best for you. Our presence in Washington, D.C., our renewed commitment to attract and recruit talent to Western New York, and our own openness to what a new generation is telling us about the nature of work has one common goal: The best minds should be put to work for Chautauqua’s mission. It demands nothing less.

And, so, I hope you can see: Amid the shocks and tremors of the day, we find extraordinary grace and gratitude in Chautauqua’s mission — that which transcends while transforming fear into action; hate into empathy; loss into meaning. At Chautauqua we ask questions not for the sake of questions, but because we know that to have the courage to seek the answers gives meaning to life. And when we discover new meaning, anything is possible.

So what is our charge to you, dear Chautauquans, as we begin this summer together? Perhaps it can be best summed up by two of our country’s leading minds today — one an avowed conservative and the other an unabashed liberal. Robert George and Cornell West remind us:

“We need the honesty and courage to consider with an open mind and heart points of view that challenge our own beliefs — even our deepest, most cherished identity-forming beliefs. We need the intellectual humility to recognize our own fallibility — and that, too requires honesty and courage. We need the honesty and courage to treat decent and honest people with whom we disagree — even on the most consequential questions — as partners in truth-seeking and fellow citizens, not as enemies to be destroyed.”

I would suggest that we cannot wait until Week Eight, when we explore “New Profiles in Courage,” to marshal the honesty and courage to do this work. May we bring an open mind and heart to this shared conversation. May we bring the best of ourselves to this work. We do this, as we always have at Chautauqua, together in community; and we will and must persist.

For those who are new to Chautauqua, there is a tradition that declares that the Summer Assembly is not officially convened until the three taps from this historic gavel. It certainly adds to the Brigadoon-like spirit of the place. Chautauqua doesn’t begin until the taps happen. Or perhaps it is better framed this way: Our summer of asking questions and seeking meaning, our summer of honesty, courage, open hearts and minds, begins after the echo of the third tap and reverberates, if we’re lucky, for generations to come.

I tap the gavel three times. 

Chautauqua 2022 has begun.

“My theme this week is exploring how we learn to be brave,” said the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday, June 26, Service of Worship and Sermon in the Amphitheater. “We want to be decisive, we want to be brave and do the right thing. We want to speak with clarity and conviction. I love thinking about those things.” 

Budde’s sermon was titled “Stepping Up to the Plate,” and the scripture was Esther 4:10-17 and Luke 4:14-21.

She told the story of Fr. Gregory Boyle and the start of Homeboy Industries. Boyle, a Jesuit priest and preacher for Week Four this season, was assigned to the Dolores Mission in a part of Los Angeles where gang violence was highest. Boyle was looking for a way to address the violence and decided that an alternative middle school was a solution. The only logical site for the school was a convent that housed six Belgian nuns. Boyle asked them if they would mind moving out so he could turn the building into a school. They said, “Sure.”

“Homeboy began with one word,” Budde said. “Like the nuns, we often make decisions on the spot. We bypass thought and respond with instinct. Immediacy is the defining characteristic.”

Baseball is a team sport, she said, but stepping up to the plate is a solitary experience. 

“How did this action become a metaphor for doing what needs to be done?” she asked the congregation. “It became my mantra at the beginning of the pandemic. I received an inordinate number of requests for help, small and large.” 

It was not just the quantity of requests, but the intensity and desperation in the asking, that had changed. 

“Personal fatigue was not the most important data point. It was time to step up and do what needed to be done,” she said. 

Budde’s ministry is bilingual, in English and Spanish. To step up to the plate does not translate well into Spanish. “Step up to the plate” in Spanish sounds more like “step on the plate.” “Toma al toro por los cuernos” means take the bull by the horns, and “poner campana el gato” means to bell the cat. These phrases explain the metaphor better.

“From the outside, a person seems to be acting decisively,” Budde said. “But internally, it is more like muscle memory. This happens especially when we are asked to do what we are equipped to do, what falls into our skill set.” 

There are times when people with the right skill set can do with ease what might be more difficult for others. It might be costly in terms of time and energy, but it rarely causes exhaustion. 

“They are functioning from strength,” Budde said. 

She recalled scientists at the National Institutes of Health who were close to a breakthrough for a treatment for a lethal form of leukemia. 

“They gave up being with families and worked around the clock so others could live,” she said. “The epidemiologists who developed the COVID vaccine had the same tenacity.”

Another way of stepping up is having a sense that you are the person who must act. Martin Luther King Jr. knew he had to go to Memphis, Tennessee, to support sanitation workers fighting for safe working conditions and living wages. 

“He knew it was his to do. It may not necessarily be what we want to do, but we can, so we must,” Budde said.

In Luke 4:14-21, Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah 61:1-3, that the spirit of God was upon him to preach the good news to the poor, to preach the acceptable word of the Lord. 

“Jesus told his hometown congregation, ‘I am that person.’ He did not say it with arrogance but with clarity,” Budde said. “At first, his community was proud of him, but then they were furious. They tried to throw him off a cliff. Neither reaction really mattered to Jesus; he knew what he was here to do.”

A more common reaction for people when called to step up to the plate is to feel the call, but also feel anything but ready — they think they can’t do it but are asked anyway. 

“Read the Bible. There are countless stories in the Hebrew and Christian texts about people who tell God why they are the wrong person for the task,” Budde said. 

Moses had a stutter, Jeremiah was too young, Isaiah was not good enough, Peter was sinful. 

“In each case, God responded ‘I know your shortcomings. Step up anyway,’ ” Budde said. 

In the story of Esther, her uncle Mordecai asked her to speak to the king about the plot against the Jews in the kingdom. Esther told him she could not go to the king without being called to his presence because she would be killed. Mordecai responded that she may be queen for such a time as this. Esther tells him to fast and pray for three days, that she would do the same, and then she would go to the king. 

“When God calls or life summons us, it is normal to feel unprepared,” Budde said. “We simply have to do what needs to be done, and God will fill in and make up for our inadequacy.” Yet, there are times when there is no miracle. 

“This is when we feel the grief of our incompetence,” she said. “If we face our failure with humility and accept it as growth, it can become part of our larger narrative, and we can move on so the next time we can step up with more confidence.”

She told the congregation that when we are mired in our contradictions, the way out of the quagmire of self is to do something for someone else. This action can give our lives new meaning. She cited the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel before having to face his brother, Esau.

“Jacob was a liar and a thief. He wrestles with God and asks for a blessing, and the blessing sustained him throughout his life,” Budde said. “He did not change, but he answered God’s call to take his place in the lineage of God’s people. God will take whatever we have to give.”

Budde shared a time in her life when she was rescued by a call to do something for someone else. She was feeling end-of-summer sadness and did not want to go back to work. Then, she remembered a neighbor was organizing a yard-give-away for immigrant families. She packed up her car with donations and went to the site in a basketball court surrounded by high-rise buildings.

“When the gates were opened, it was like Christmas morning. I helped an elderly lady, carrying her bag for her. Maybe what I gave away was of some help, but what I got was priceless,” she said. “My spirit was lifted to a space of gratitude, and for a moment, I was set free. It was a grace-filled reminder that God sees us as we are. We step up, step out and do something, and thankfully, God is willing to work through us.”

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Budde was called to speak out against President Donald Trump. St. John’s Episcopal Church, near Lafayette Square, had opened its doors to the protesters in the park. On June 1, 2020, Trump ordered the police and National Guard to remove people from the park; they used tear gas and billy clubs on the mostly peaceful protesters.

Trump then walked to the front of the church, surrounded by military men, and stood with a Bible in his hand. 

“I did not have time to think. I got in front of as many microphones as I could to say that our sacred mantle was not his to use. He could not use our church and our sacred text,” Budde said. “I felt like I had been summoned to speak for others who were standing up for racial equality. I was riding a wave that was all-consuming, and then it was gone. If I thought there was anything more, I could be confused.”

“I wanted to step up like that, to be working for change,” Budde said. “I felt a new way to pray for grace and perseverance when passion ebbs and flows. We want to be brave, but we miss more balls than we hit.”

When called to act, trust in the power of the Spirit and accept the imperfect, she said to the congregation. 

“When the call to be brave comes, we should trust more in the Spirit than in ourselves,” Budde said. “We don’t have to take on the whole world, just our corner of it.”

It is wonderful to meet God in the moment of change. 

“I hope this will be encouragement for you,” Budde said. “When you are called to step up, there is more than you can see or feel. There is satisfaction when you take your turn, step up, take the bull by the horns, bell the cat — know you are not alone. You are part of the community of faith, the communion of saints, and the Spirit of the Lord called you for such a time as this.”

Michael E. Hill, president of Chautauqua Institution, opened the 2022 season with the traditional Three Taps of the Gavel.

The Rev. Natalie Hanson presided. Candace Littell Maxwell, chair of the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees, read the scripture. Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and holder of the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, played Carillon de Westminster, Op. 54, No. 6 by Louis Vierne as the prelude. The fanfare was “Solemn Entry, TrV 224” by Richard Strauss, performed by an ensemble from the Music School Festival Orchestra and Nicholas Stigall, organist. It was directed by Stafford. The Chautauqua Choir, under the direction of Stafford and accompanied by Stigall, sang “O, for a Closer Walk with God,” music by Charles Villiers Stanford and lyrics by William Cowper. Nathan Coffman, an MFSO member from Knoxville, Tennessee, played “Taps” for the Chautauqua Milestones memorial. The offertory anthem, sung by the Chautauqua Choir, was “The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me,” with music by Philip W.J. Stopford, words from Isaiah 61:1-3,11. The postlude was “Grand Chœur Dialogué,” by Eugène Gigout, arranged by Daniel J. Leavitt. The MSFO ensemble and Stigall at the organ were conducted by Stafford. This week’s services are supported by the Samuel M. and Mary E. Hazlett Memorial Fund.

Geoffrey Kemp joins Nikolas Gvosdev for the 2022 Summer Assembly’s Middle East Update. Kemp has hosted Chautauqua’s Middle East Update since 1993. Kemp and Gvosdev last presented the update together in 2018 when they first touched on Russia’s relations in the Middle East.

This year’s conversation, earlier than previous years in the season, is at 3:30 p.m. Monday, June 27, in the Hall of Philosophy and takes a renewed focus of Russia’s role in the Middle East, as well as what the Russia-Ukraine war has meant, and will mean, for politics in the Middle East. 

“The primary focus is going to be on how the Ukraine war has affected Russia’s policy in the Middle East, and how that affects Middle East politics,” said Kemp, senior director of Regional Security Programs at the Center for the National Interest.

The ongoing war in Ukraine called for a change of topics for this year’s Middle East Update.

“The invasion of Ukraine was right out of the blue, but the reason we chose to do the Middle East Update in Week One was because the theme of Week One is international relations,” Kemp said. 

The conversation will touch on other topics, such as the shift to green energy, the Abraham Accords, the Israeli-Palenstinian conflict, and demographic changes in the region. 

“We’re going to really try to get our hands around these major disruptions — COVID-19 and war in Ukraine — that have occurred since we were last in Chautauqua,” said Gvosdev, professor of national security affairs at U.S. Naval War College. “The world of 2022 is fundamentally changed from the world of 2018. We’re entering into uncharted waters.”

In 2018, Gvosdev discussed the importance of oil and other fossil fuels in both Russia and the Middle East, and how it relates to the rest of the world. The United States continues to call for sanctions on Russia as the war in Ukraine continues, and on Iran, regarding the Iran Nuclear Deal, Gvosdev said.

“(The) tradition has been, the United States can really insist on strong sanctions on Iran, or strong sanctions on Russia, (but) it really can’t sanction both simultaneously because Europe and other regions of the world need energy,” Gvosdev said. “If they’re asked not to get it from Russia, then Iran becomes one of the alternative suppliers.”

The question of energy sits in the center of everything, Gvosdev said, as it impacts the Iran Nuclear Deal, human rights, and Middle East relations with the United States and Russia. 

With the war in Ukraine, economies need energy now, especially in oil and natural gas. Russia will likely take the less lucrative energy markets, while Middle Eastern producers will take the majority of the more profitable markets in the west, Gvosdev said.

“You have these pressures of economies, particularly in Europe, that are going to be squeezed for energy over the upcoming years, depending on how things turn out in Ukraine,” he said. “That energy is going to have to come from the Middle East.”

As more of the world embraces the green energy movement, demand for fossil fuels has decreased. The U.S. and others have used moving toward greener energy to distance themselves from Middle Eastern resources. But due to the war in Ukraine and worldwide shortages, that movement has been hampered.

“Europeans are going to start burning more coal to make up for shortages in natural gas,” Gvosdev said. “We’re probably going to see a reversion away from some of the climate targets, which is going to wipe out any of the advantages we made during the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

Because the situation in the Middle East, war in Ukraine, and a pathway to cleaner energy are all continuously changing, Gvosdev believes there isn’t a clear solution. Within the Middle East itself, and in the greater sense of the world, “it very much is in flux,” he said.

Joshua Bell and Larisa Martínez share an undying passion for music. 

Bell, a Grammy Award-winning violinist, and Martínez, an Emmy-nominated, internationally acclaimed soprano, also share a love for something else: each other. 

At 8:15 p.m. Saturday, June 25, on the Amphitheater stage, the married duo will share an outpouring of passion and love to Chautauquans with their performance of “Voice and the Violin.” Bell and Martínez’s collaboration of soprano and violin repertoire will open the 2022 season.

“Making music with a loved one, it’s the greatest way to spend time. It’s a significant bond to share and it is really a gift for us,” Martínez told Akron Beacon Journal in February 2022. The pair have also described previous Voice and the Violin performances as “intimate” and “romantic.” 

Opening a season marks a new chapter every year, but this particular season carries more weight than most — this is the first full season of programming since 2019. 

“Joshua Bell and Larisa Martínez really typify everything that we value in the arts at Chautauqua Institution, namely excellence and exploration,” said February 2022 hire Laura Savia, vice president of performing and visual arts. 

Savia described Bell as “one of the great living musicians” and Martínez as “a rising star and one of the most acclaimed sopranos of her generation.” 

“I have been a fan of (Bell) since I was a little girl,” Savia said. “I got to hear him play live when I was in middle school before he was the superstar that he is now, and I have followed his career ever since,” Savia said.

This isn’t Bell’s first time on Chautauqua grounds, as he performed on the Amp stage with trumpet player Chris Botti in 2016 and as a soloist with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra in 2018. 

Bell and Martínez first met in 2011 backstage in the Blue Note jazz club in New York after Botti, who is their mutual friend, performed. On their seven-year anniversary, Bell proposed to Martínez in Botti’s dressing room at the Blue Note, according to The New York Times.

Bell and Martínez first performed as a pair for Chautauqua audiences via CHQ Assembly in August 2020 from their Westchester home. This Saturday’s program will be Martínez’s first performance in the Amp. 

Their returning performance in-person will showcase the exploration and discovery of combining voice and violin repertoire during the pandemic. 

“The fact that they could start to engage in this kind of repertoire together in their home in Westchester in 2020 and bring it to CHQ Assembly, and now, they are bringing it to its fullest flowering on our Amphitheater stage for a robust audience on opening night symbolizes how the institution can feed and nourish artists at various moments in their careers,” Savia said.

The 2020 virtual performance opened with Felix Mendelssohn’s “Ah, ritorna, età dell’oro,” and Saturday’s performance will follow in the same fashion. This 1834 aria is “beautiful, yet not often played,” Bell told the Daily in 2020.

Bell often plays Mendelssohn’s work, as his poetic and powerful rhythmic notes are a favorite of his. According to a review published by Bachtrack in 2017, Bell performs Mendelssohn pieces “with huge tenderness, rendering the audience to jelly and craving for more.”

“They are bringing favorites like Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’ and ‘Quando m’en vo’’ and pairing them with interesting canonical works of Wieniawski and Mendelssohn. There will be crowd favorites and also the potential for new discoveries for our audience members,” Savia said.

With the exception of the closing piece, the rest of the program, a West Side Story medley arranged by William David Brohn and Charles Czarnecki, will be new to the Chautauquan audience. 

“I’m really looking forward to (their performance of) ‘West Side Story Suite.’ West Side Story by the great Leonard Bernstein is an American masterpiece, and it’s meaningful that Larisa was born and raised in Puerto Rico,” Savia said. 

Savia said Chautauquans have been patiently waiting for this performance to hit the Amp stage, “when I mention this concert, people’s eyes light up.”

“This is the kickoff for all of our programming under the core pillar of the arts,” Savia said. “This is the ringing of the bell that signals a start to a jam-packed, diverse, vibrant
season of the arts.”

Joshua Stafford, Chautauqua Institution director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, is seizing the opportunity of Chautauquans returning for an in-person assembly by choosing to reflect on the in-person communication that was lost amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year is the return to having a service with the full Chautauqua Choir since 2019, Stafford said. It’s also his first Sacred Song Service with the full choir since he was hired as interim director of sacred music before becoming full-time in 2020.

Stafford is kicking off the Chautauqua Summer Assembly with the Sacred Song Service theme “Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether” for the service at 8 p.m. Sunday, June 26, in the Amphitheater.

“This theme of ‘Draws Us in the Spirit’s Tether’ comes from a really lovely anthem by Harold Friedell, which has a lovely line ‘So knit Thou our friendship up,’” Stafford said. “I think it’s a nice way to think of coming back together and getting our friendship up to the surface.”

Stafford grew up enjoying summers in Chautauqua and said being officially hired in his position was a relief because he “always dreamed of having the chance to be here and be the Chautauqua organist.”

Stafford took over as confirmed organist Nov. 25, 2020, and served as interim organist for the 2020 Summer Assembly season. He succeeds the late Jared Jacobsen, whose work Staffford included in the selection for Sunday’s service.

“The service combines elements of coming back together so we’re starting with ‘Day is Dying in the West’ (and) the Litany for the Beginning of a Chautauqua Season, which was written by Jared Jacobsen in 2003,” Stafford said.

Following Stafford’s theme of coming back together, he and the choir will play “Open Now Thy Gates of Beauty.”

Each program will come with a set of audience instructions depending on the piece: applauding, remaining silent, singing along or exiting silently.

  Stafford said his selections balance the week’s theme, life in Chautauqua and other various iterations of Sacred Song Service throughout the years.

“In coming up with a theme, for me, I often draw it from an anthem text or a hymn text or a reading, something that we’ll end up using during the service,” Stafford said. “Going from that, I start to build a service around it … a service that makes sense, that isn’t too long.”

The responsive reading comes from Psalm 36, followed by an anthem from The Temple by George Herbert, then Luke 24.

Other selections for Sunday’s service include anthems by Philip Stopford, Harold Friedell and Grayston Ives, the hymns “Break Thou the Bread of Life” and “Now the Day is Over,” the Prayer of Thomas à. Kempis, and “Merrial” as the concluding prayer.

The responsory is adapted from the Chautauqua Hymnal and Liturgy, composed in 1903, with “Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song” by Carl P. Daw Jr. on deck. 

“(The service) leans into this idea of being drawn in the Spirit, so it’s about the Holy Spirit (and) about Pentecost,” Stafford said. “There’s a great William Blake — or at least attributed to William Blake — reading (titled) ‘Pentecost’.”

The evening ends with “Largo” from the opera Xerxes by George Frederick Handel. Using this piece to close the service has been a Chautauqua tradition since the dedication of the Massey Memorial Organ on Aug. 6, 1907.

On the last Sunday of the 2021 summer season, the United States Army Field Band and Soldiers’ Chorus closed the season with one last note on the Amphitheater stage. This year, they return at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, June 26, to ring in the 2022 season. 

“Opening the Sunday Afternoon Entertainment series with a concert representing the strength and fortitude of our nation while thanking our veterans for their service and sacrifice is an honor,” Staff Sergeant Kaci Lewandowski said.  

More than a traditional concert, the band prides itself on providing an immersive experience for all generations with their message of hope and resilience. Sunday’s performance will be the 38th time the U.S. Army Field Band and Soldiers’ Chorus have performed at Chautauqua. 

“All of the soldiers treasure the opportunity to perform at such a marvelous place with fantastic audience members,” Lewandowski said. “The energy at Chautauqua is invigorating. Regardless of how many days we have been on the road or how many concerts we have played, the performance at Chautauqua always feels the most cohesive and alive. It is truly magical.”

This will be Lewandowski’s second time performing on the grounds with her fellow soldiers. She has been a part of the Field Band for four years and has been playing the French horn for 16 years. 

To become a member of the Army Field Band or Soldiers’ Chorus, prospective soldiers must go through a rigorous all-day audition process, “at the same level of orchestral or other professional choral auditions,” Lewandowski said. Many soldiers have at least one or several performance degrees. 

When soldiers are selected to join the band or chorus, they must attend basic training. Once these steps are taken, soldiers begin preparing for their next mission with the Army Field Band.

The Field Band’s mission is to, “connect the American people to their Army through music,” Lewandowski said. The band and chorus’ vision aligns with what Chautauqua represents and with the Institution’s rich history and appreciation for the arts. 

“We share commonalities of aiming to enrich the lives of others around us and promoting creativity,”
Lewandowski said. 

The Field Army Band and Soldiers’ Chorus have chosen specific pieces to perform with the goal of telling a larger story that represents the soldiers’ service, inclusion, innovation and patriotism. 

“We have combined traditional military music, exciting commercial themes and beautiful lyrical pieces to bring a program that captures the beauty and diversity of America itself,” Lewandowski said. 

To keep each performance fresh and invigorating, the military band commander Colonel Jim R. Keene uses a visionary approach to honor tradition while modernizing their sound. 

“Keene and an outstanding team of soldiers ensure our programs are always fresh and bring something audiences have not seen before on any other stage,” Lewandowski said. 

Sunday’s performance will use musical storytelling to connect listeners through vocal and instrumental solos, she said, “as well as lots of large band writing sure to fill the entire Amphitheater.”

If there is a theme for her Week One sermons, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, feels it is perseverance. 

“I will elevate and consider the sacred worth of daily life and small decisions,” she said. “Wherever we find ourselves in relation to the most public of decisive moments, perseverance is what enables us to keep going when we’re stumbling in the dark, unsure where the path will lead.”

The title for her sermon series is “How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.” She will preach at 10:45 a.m. Sunday, June 26, at the Ecumenical Service of Worship in the Amphitheater following President Michael E. Hill’s opening Three Taps of the Gavel. 

is “Stepping Up to the Plate.” She will also preach at 9:15 a.m weekdays at the morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her other sermon titles include “Deciding to Go,” “Deciding to Stay,” “Deciding to Start,” “Accepting What We Do Not Choose” and “The Hidden Virtue of Perseverance.”

“We make some of our most consequential decisions seemingly on the spot, bypassing conscious thought on account of our feelings,” Budde said. “A situation presents itself and we respond with something more akin to instinct or intuition. Immediacy is the defining characteristic, although in retrospect, we sometimes see how long we had been preparing for that moment.”

Budde spent ample time preparing herself for the work she would do within the Catholic church. From the University of Rochester she graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in history. She went on to earn a Master of Divinity in 1989, followed by a Doctor of Ministry in 2008, both from Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS). While studying at VTS, she served 18 years as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. In November 2011 Budde was consecrated as the ninth bishop and first female Diocese of the District of Columbia. 

Budde now presides as spiritual leader over 86 Episcopal congregations, along with the ministries of the Washington National Cathedral. She aids in supervising Cathedral schools throughout the District of Columbia, acting as both the chair and president of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation. As of 2022, she is the author of two books, Receiving Jesus: The Way of Love (2019) and Gathering Up the Fragments: Preaching as Spiritual Practice (2007). Budde’s sermons have been published in a variety of books and journals. 

The Department of Religion had personnel changes since the close of the 2021 Summer Assembly. With the retirement of the Rt. Reverend V. Gene Robinson, his former position as vice president for religion and senior pastor was split. Melissa Spas is the new vice president for religion, and she will be first introduced to the community in her new role when she presides over Sunday’s service. In September 2022, the Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, will become Chautauqua’s senior pastor.

For the 2022 Summer Assembly season, the Rev. Natalie Hanson will serve as interim senior pastor and guide the worship experiences. An elder in the United Methodist denomination, Hanson has served small and large congregations for 40 years and as a district superintendent in western New York for eight years. She has taught preaching and worship to local pastors studying to enter the ministry through a program of Wesley Theological Seminary. She and her husband, the Rev. Paul Womack, have served as the hosts of the United Methodist Missionary House for the past seven years. 

“I am excited to be working with Josh Stafford and Nicholas Stigall as the worship team. I am grateful for the support of Maureen Rovegno and Carolyn Snider in the office, the staff at the Amphitheater, and to get to know Melissa Spas, the vice president of religion,” Hanson said. “We are mutually supportive and we are thinking about the future.” 

Hanson is also excited about trying to combine more themes, words and music in worship so the experience is “integrated, authentic and joyful.”

“I am looking forward to hearing such good preachers,” Hanson said. “I think we have a level of preaching that is engaging, energetic and insightful.”

Joshua Stafford is returning for his third season as Director of Sacred Music and holder of the Jared Jacobsen Chair for Organ. 

“I am excited to have the Chautauqua Choir back this season,” Stafford said. “We will have a full Motet Choir, 32 people. These singers are on a three-year cycle so we can keep the Motet a carefully balanced ensemble. They are the core of the Chautauqua Choir and section leaders in the choir.”

Stafford is reaching out to the Chautauqua School of Music to include more instrumentalists and vocalists in worship. The Ecumenical Worship Service on Sunday will include a brass quintet, flute, violin and tympany. 

“We want to elevate and diversify our music,” Stafford said. “We have also invited some local choirs to sing with us.”

This season Stafford is joined by Nicholas Stigall as the organi scholar. A Knoxville, Tennessee native, he began organ lessons at 15 under Edie Johnson. Now a rising senior, he studies with Janette Fishell and is  majoring in organ performance at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Stigall is a recipient of the Barbara and David Jacobs Scholarship. 

“I am thrilled to be here. As I explored the grounds, the place felt surreal,” Stigall said.

Stigall will provide the accompaniment while Stafford directs the choral anthems and will share other musical parts of the worship services. He will also play at the Wednesday organ recitals on the Massey Memorial Organ and the two recitals on the Tallman Tracker Organ. 

“I am excited to be fully involved with a wonderful choir director but terrified is the word of the day. I grew up learning at Chautauqua,” Stafford said, “and I am excited to share Chautauqua with a new generation.”

Christopher Williams’ artistry will open a gateway to another world on the Amphitheater stage this weekend. This other world is a glimpse into Western Greek Mythology, as well as a world where people are not bound by societal norms.

“​​I think of theater as a portal to this other world. My interest in creating choreography and live theatrical experiences is to give an audience a sense of entering that world,” said Williams, an award-winning choreographer, dancer and puppeteer. “I’m interested in how a contemporary concept of queerness can be infused into our mythmaking.”

“Christopher Williams Dance Showing featuring Taylor Stanley” begins the Chautauqua summer season at noon Saturday in the Amp with an open rehearsal of Williams’ newest choreography.

The noon performance is unusually early for a Chautauqua opening weekend and caps a two-week long residency of Christopher Williams Dance. Stanley, a New York City Ballet principal dancer, is among the cast of contemporary dancers. The open rehearsal will feature a Q-and-A with Williams and members of his team.

This will be the dancers’ first opportuinity to run through Williams’ original queer reimaginings of Ballet Russes classic works The Afternoon of a Faun and Les Sylphides. Williams will officially debut these two ballets Tuesday, June 28, through Sunday, July 3, at The Joyce Theater in New York. 

These classic ballets feature Greek mythological creatures, such as animal-human hybrids, nymphs, naiads and sylphs.

“I’m taking the original scores to these incredible ballets and reimagining their scenarios in a contemporary queer context, or in my own contemporary queer idiom with regards to the choreography,” Williams said. 

Williams connects the idea of queerness and mythology through the works he chose and his choreography style, which he describes as a classical base with a Cunningham twist, and a focal point of the head and neck in spiral.

“I’m deeply invested in allowing the male body to bleed past traditional concepts of masculinity in dance. You will probably see the men dancing in a very lyrical way, what I like to call a fay way,” Williams said. “I’m just one of many that is opening up the possibility for particularly gay and homoerotic elements to enter the ballet as a more acceptable and standard element.”

Williams has created over 35 original and collaborative works in New York and abroad. The works performed at Chautauqua are a part of Williams’ long-term project “ ‘Queering’ the Canon: Reimagining the Ballets Russes.”  

While preparing for these performances, Williams struggled to find studio space, but he found an opportunity at Chautauqua Institution.

“I believe that putting the dancers in a tranquil setting where we can have a focused environment, a studio to ourselves and a kind of fellowship among ourselves is incredibly valuable and meaningful,” Williams said. “I was just so delighted to hear of Chautauqua, because here was a perfect idyllic opportunity to get the conditions that I need to create the artwork I do.”

Williams finds great importance in his open rehearsal performance Saturday largely due to the similar dimensions of the Amp and The Joyce Theater.

“It’s a joy to get to perform and share my work in such a way that enables this new renovation to be used at the very beginning of the season,” Williams said. “The wealth of artistry that goes through here is mind-boggling and I hope that locals take advantage of it. This little open rehearsal is just a bonus to those who are going to come see the debut.”

Community members gathered at the Chautauqua Lake Water Quality Conference on June 18 at the Chautauqua Golf Club to learn about the issues threatening Chautauqua Lake, as well as various stakeholders’ plans to mitigate these problems. 

Last Saturday’s conference served as a public forum for concerned Chautauquans to learn more about their environment and what they can do to lessen lake stressors. As lecturers spoke, attendees were able to submit questions, which were answered at the end of each presentation. 

The event featured six presentations from several experts in lake ecology, covering topics such as algae blooms, the chemical makeup of lakes and geography that affects lake health. 

Speakers from SUNY Oneonta and Fredonia, the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy, Syracuse University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shared their expertise in lake ecology through a series of presentations.

At the conference, Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill reflected on the 150 Forward strategic plan passed in 2019 by the board of trustees. The plan details the goals the Institution has for the next 10 years. As the Institution nears its 150th anniversary, Hill stressed the importance of communal responsibility in responding to the third pillar of the strategic plan: “Drive the implementation of a comprehensive, science-based approach to improving the health and sustainability of Chautauqua Lake and elevate its conservation as the centerpiece of the region’s economic prosperity.” 

“These types of conferences help scientists join everyday citizens in creating a fountain of literacy about what the issues are and how we might think about solving them together,” Hill said. “I think the outcome of this conference is helping people understand what causes those things, and what role we play as humans — as humans that enjoy this lake for any number of purposes.”

Courtney Wigdahl-Perry, a biology professor at SUNY Fredonia, who was among the speakers, discussed the detrimental effects of harmful algal blooms (HABs). 

HABs are large masses of microscopic algae containing cyanobacteria — which produces toxins poisonous to aquatic life and pets. In rare instances, HABs can cause acute flu-like symptoms, fever and skin irritation in humans. While HABs are active during the summer season, the lake is safe for recreational activities. 

“Harmful algal blooms are one of those things that’s going to affect so many aspects of human activity around the system,” Wigdahl-Perry said. “That is really concerning. We’re learning a lot more, but they’re complicated.” 

While HAB clusters vary from year to year, Wigdahl-Perry noted an improvement in overall understanding of the lake among her fellow researchers since the Institution hosted the first lake conference in 2019. 

“To think of all the stuff we’ve learned just in the last few years since the last conference — we’ve come a very long way,” Wigdahl-Perry said. “We’ve taken different sets of expertise, different tools, different sorts of skills, and really brought new patterns out, which I think is really going to be helpful for us as we’re trying to understand what’s going on with the algae.”

Other strides have been made since the first Lake Water Quality Conference, including the CWC’s acquisition of a grant totalling over $50,000 from the New York State Conservation Partnership Program in April 2022. 

Twan Leenders, CWC ecological restoration manager, hopes to use this grant to create a stakeholders group designed to develop a Geographic Information System tool. The tool will be used to combine national datasets, pinpoint specific locations that need help in the lake’s basins, and narrow research questions. Most important, Leenders said, are the opportunities GIS holds for the community as a whole. 

“I firmly believe that everybody would like to help,” Leenders said. “I think that a lot of people just don’t even know where to begin. I think the most important part of this tool is to … make sure that it becomes implementable, usable and accessible.”

Leenders predicts the GIS tool, and its related committee, will take two years to fully develop. Other projects, such as Wigdahl-Perry’s Drone Imaging System and The Jefferson Project at Lake George’s ongoing work, will begin or continue this summer season to immediately further research the depths of the lake. 

The conference was the first of many conversations in the summer of 2022 regarding lake health, with work spearheaded by both Climate Change Initiative Director Mark Wenzler and new Lake Project Manager Tobias Shepherd. The Climate Change Initiative, funded by philanthropic gifts from Julie Veitch, Peter Nosler and Jane Batten, aims to address climate change through education and service. 

While many aspects of 2022 season programming were made with the Climate Change Initiative in mind, the work focused on environmentally-conscious decisions and education is year-round. 

“We care deeply about what is happening in the lake; that is a big part of our home here at Chautauqua,” Hill said. “I’m excited that we’re more and more discovering the ingredients that will help us create solutions to safeguard this incredible national treasure that is here right in our backyard.”

In her upcoming weeklong class — the first Chautauqua Writers’ Center workshop of the 2022 season — novelist and educator Jimin Han wants to shake things up a bit for attendees.

“If you offer different ways to look at writing, you can change up some of these habits that you might’ve formed — it’s really (going) to help people to look at their writing in a different way,” said Han, the Week One prose writer-in-residence. 

Han, who teaches at both The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and Pace University, will give a reading from her unpublished novel, The Apology, at 3:30 p.m. June 26, in the Hall of Philosophy. Her workshop this week, titled “Five Days, Five Approaches to Prose,” will utilize prompts and pieces of writing that are not common in a creative writing workshop setting. Maggie Anderson, who was originally scheduled as the poet-in-residence, will not be in attendance during Week One.

Part of Han’s approach to leading workshops comes from her belief that questions about and critiques of a piece of writing need to be more direct.

“I really want people to ask specific questions about where a writer is coming from and about the writing they admire,” she said. “My go-to as a Korean-American writer is to know where everyone’s coming from.”

Han’s teaching is, in part, informed by author Matthew Salesses’ book, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping, which emphasizes taking writers’ personal backgrounds and identities into consideration when reviewing their work.

“Years ago, when (Salesses) was an editor at Pleiades Magazine, he had a whole series on craft, and I wrote a piece about what I use with my classes,” Han said. “So we’ve talked a lot about context when it comes to fiction and nonfiction. I love that he has a book now about all these different things.”

Han said her novel, The Apology, which is scheduled to be published in May 2023, partially owes its genesis to the pain of losing her mother and friend.

“It feels a little corny to say ‘story is healing,’ but in this case, it really was,” she said. “The Apology is a book about a 105-year-old Korean woman who comes to the United States in order to stop this tragedy that’s going to happen in her family.”

Han, whose mother died in 2016, said that writing about her novel’s protagonist helped her to write some of her mother’s stories.

“Writing The Apology felt a bit like looking death in the face while I was writing,” she said. 

Han also said that through her Week One class, she hopes to impart the idea of good literary citizenship to workshop attendees and young writers in general.

“My advice for writers is: Get to know everyone you can,” she said. “There are so many people who, while they were in school, started a reading series, or started magazines. Do whatever you can to be a good literary citizen.”

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram kicked off the 2022 Chautauqua Writers’ Festival Wednesday, June 22, by reciting a simple dictionary definition to their audience: “Resilience,” Bertram said, “is the power or ability of a material to return to its original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed or stretched.”

“Writing Resilience,” the festival theme, encapsulates the difficulties and dysfunction of the last two years, Bertram said. 

“While we had to live with the fear of the early days of the pandemic, some of us experienced this in relative comfort and privilege, while others became the target of zealous demagoguery, such as anti-Asian violence and anti-Black violence,” they said. “Personally, I’m not sure how resilient I’ve been.”

For some people, writing through the pandemic was crucial, and the only way to process what was happening to their friends, family and loved ones, Betram said.

“For others, writing was impossible — there was no time, no space, no energy,” they said. “Our resilience, then, is still in progress as we strategize to survive every day.”

The past few days, for the first time since 2019, an in-person Writers’ Festival convened on the grounds. Bertram, the festival director, and Sony Ton-Aime, Michael I. Rudell Director of Literary Arts, kicked off the week with a welcome to attendees Wednesday in the lobby of the Athenaeum Hotel. 

While the events of panels, workshops and readings conclude Saturday, the festival reached its zenith with a keynote Thursday in the Hall of Philosophy from 2021 PEN/Faulkner award-winning author Deesha Philyaw, a 2022 festival faculty member.

“I’m going to be honest with you: I chafe a little bit at the word ‘resilience,’ ” Philyaw told her audience. 

Though she understands how resilience is often essential for overcoming adversity — like when Philyaw initially struggled to publish her collection of short stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which went on to win the Story Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award — Philyaw said that, in her mind, when people mention the word “resilience,” what they actually mean is “endurance.”

“I think about how, in the larger culture, we talk about the resilience of, say, children,” she said. “But we don’t talk as much about how many of us, as children, were far more resilient than we ever should have had to be growing up.”

Philyaw said she wanted people to keep sight of the fact that “someone, some institution or some system, or all three at once, are complicit in this harm, injustice, oppression or terror.”

She said that resilience is not necessitated without outside influence. 

“People are not resilient in a vacuum,” she said. “I know that’s the feel-good story about resilience, but that’s not the true story; that’s not the whole story.”

True stories often make us uncomfortable, Philyaw said, and sitting with that discomfort can also require resilience. 

Philyaw encouraged the audience to write and speak in an active voice when it comes to resiliency. She pointed out that passive voice can actually be exonerative.

“More specifically, as writers, I want us to consider those times when what those so-called resilient people have had to endure is us and our writing,” she said. “I want to invite you to consider different perspectives today on resilience.”

It’s possible for us to be both “the oppressed and the oppressor,” Philyaw said, as well as “the harmed and those committing the harm.”

“I believe being a good literary citizen requires us to consider the harm we might do, even unintentionally,” she said. “It requires our resilience. What’s best for us might be to reconsider, or even start over. Our stories, and who tells them, matter.”