Leonard Bernstein Takes an Adirondack Road Trip
Leonard Bernstein, one of America’s most beloved composers. Library of Congress.
Late summer in the Adirondacks usually comes with a soundtrack: loons, boat motors, the occasional screen door slamming somewhere across the lake. This year, Leonard Bernstein joins the mix. Life is Happiness Indeed – The Music of Leonard Bernstein, a touring concert from Seagle Festival, travels from Schroon Lake to Blue Mountain Lake, Keene Valley, Saranac Lake, and Glens Falls from August 29 through September 18, bringing music from West Side Story, Candide, On the Town, Trouble in Tahiti, and more to stages across the region.
The music is reason enough to pay attention. But the more interesting Adirondack story may be where Seagle Festival is taking it.
Instead of asking audiences to travel to one theater, the company is taking Bernstein on the road—into an arts center beside an Adirondack lake, a community church in the High Peaks, an intimate regional theater and a downtown Glens Falls performing arts venue.
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Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Carol Lawrence, and cast around piano in rehearsal for the Broadway production of West Side Story. Photo courtesy: Friedman-Abeles Studio
Bernstein leaves the concert hall behind.
Leonard Bernstein's music has never stayed neatly in one category. He moved between Broadway, classical music, opera, and jazz with an ease that still makes much of his work sound remarkably modern.
That range gives Life is Happiness Indeed considerably more texture than a greatest-hits Broadway revue.
On the Town can practically bounce off the walls; Candide brings wit and musical fireworks; Trouble in Tahiti reveals Bernstein's more complicated side; and West Side Story remains capable of changing the temperature of a room within a few notes.
Seagle Festival's Fall Artists take on that repertoire, giving audiences the chance to hear emerging professional singers perform music that demands considerably more than a good voice. Bernstein requires theatrical instinct, rhythmic precision, and personality.
In other words, there is nowhere to hide.
One concert, five very different Adirondack settings.
The tour begins at Seagle Festival's home, the Oscar Seagle Memorial Theater in Schroon Lake, with performances on August 29 at 7:30 pm and September 4 at 2 pm.
On September 3 at 7:30 pm, the company heads west to the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts in Blue Mountain Lake, placing Bernstein deep in the central Adirondacks.
Poster promoting West Side Story, conceived by Jerome Robbins, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents.
Then comes perhaps the most intriguing juxtaposition: a September 6 performance at 4 pm at Keene Valley Community Church. In a community better known as a jumping-off point for High Peaks adventures, an afternoon of Bernstein offers another way to experience the place—no trail register required.
The tour moves north to Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake on September 17 at 7 pm before finishing September 18 at 7:30 pm at the Charles R. Wood Theater in Glens Falls.
The venues are not interchangeable, and that's precisely the point. Each changes the relationship between performers, music and audience.
This is how culture travels in the Adirondacks.
Large metropolitan areas can support long theatrical runs and permanent audiences within a few subway stops. The Adirondacks work differently.
Communities are separated by mountains, lakes and long stretches of two-lane road. Cultural organizations that want to reach a regional audience often have to travel to it.
That makes this Bernstein tour a telling example of how the arts thrive here. Seagle Festival, based in Schroon Lake since 1915, isn't merely exporting a performance. It is connecting a series of communities that each support the arts on a distinctly Adirondack scale.
And the timing matters.
On The Town, music by Leonard Bernstein and Roger Eden, book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, an adaptation of the Jerome Robbins ballet, Fancy Free.
Late August and September occupy one of the most interesting stretches of the Adirondack calendar. Summer hasn't quite left, fall hasn't fully arrived, and travelers increasingly discover that the weeks between the two offer fewer crowds and a different rhythm.
A concert can become the anchor for an overnight trip to Blue Mountain Lake, an early dinner in Saranac Lake, an afternoon in Keene Valley or an evening in downtown Glens Falls.
ADK Taste insight.
The tour also offers a reminder that Seagle Festival is more than a summer opera company.
Its artist-training mission puts emerging singers in front of live audiences while exposing Adirondack communities to ambitious professional performances. Taking those artists beyond Schroon Lake expands both sides of that equation: performers encounter different rooms and audiences, while more Adirondack residents get access to the work.
Bernstein is particularly well suited to the assignment. His music is sophisticated without being forbidding, familiar without being predictable and theatrical enough to work in rooms far removed from a grand concert hall.
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Choose the venue as deliberately as the concert.
For a classic Seagle experience, see the program at the Oscar Seagle Memorial Theater in Schroon Lake. Blue Mountain Lake makes the strongest case for turning the performance into a central Adirondack getaway, while the 4 pm Keene Valley concert lends itself particularly well to a leisurely Sunday in the High Peaks.
Saranac Lake and Glens Falls offer another advantage: both performances can easily become full evenings, with time for dinner and a walk around town before the curtain.
Whichever venue wins, check Seagle Festival and the host venue for current ticket information and performance details before you go. Adirondack drives have a way of looking shorter on a map than they feel from behind the wheel.
ADK Taste perspective.
Something is fitting about Leonard Bernstein traveling the Adirondacks.
His music resisted boundaries, and this tour does much the same geographically. Life is Happiness Indeed – The Music of Leonard Bernstein connects Schroon Lake, Blue Mountain Lake, Keene Valley, Saranac Lake and Glens Falls through a shared cultural experience without pretending those places are alike.
That is part of the larger Adirondack story worth watching. The region's appeal increasingly extends beyond hiking trails, lakefronts and leaf-peeping overlooks. Theater, music, museums and local arts organizations give travelers reasons to stay another night—and residents reasons to rediscover the towns around them.
Sometimes the best Adirondack road trip comes with a score.
The first American-born conductor to achieve global renown, Leonard Bernstein redefined the sound and spirit of 20th-century music. Credit: Paul de Hueck/Courtesy of The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc.
Life is Happiness Indeed – The Music of Leonard Bernstein: At a Glance.
Schroon Lake — September 4 at 2 pm, Oscar Seagle Memorial Theater
Blue Mountain Lake — September 3, 7:30 pm, Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts
Keene Valley — September 6, 4:00 pm, Keene Valley Community Church
Saranac Lake — September 17, 7:00 pm, Pendragon Theater
Glens Falls — September 18, 7:30 pm, Charles R. Wood Theater
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