PUTNEY — If it's December, it's time for a capella legend Sean Altman to come to Putney.
Altman will be visiting Next Stage Arts Project to present the two musical projects that dominate his time these days.
On Friday, Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m., Altman brings his group, the GrooveBarbers, with special guests, the Putney Central School Chorus, in their fourth annual holiday concert.
The GrooveBarbers' annual show has become a staple of the holiday season in Putney and returns by popular demand, with a mellifluous vocal blend, close harmonies, and warm arrangements of holiday classics from the secular to the sublime.
Kids 6 and under are free when accompanied by an adult (limit of 1 free kid per adult ticket) at this family-friendly show. There will be popcorn and other refreshments in the lobby.
The Village Voice has called The GrooveBarbers “a capella rock and soul royalty.” Each member of this all-vocal powerhouse quartet is a bona fide star in his own right.
Sean Altman, Charlie Evett, and Steve Keyes are former members of the pioneering modern a capella group Rockapella of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? TV fame, and Kevin Weist is a renowned bald vocal guru.
Collectively, they have established themselves as the go-to vocal group for rock, doo-wop, jazz, barbershop and - with the help of guest soprano Inna Dukach - a new hybrid genre they call “doowopera”
While the GrooveBarbers show is family-friendly, Altman's other project, Jewmongous, is anything but. His bawdy and quite unkosher comedy song concert will be at Next Stage on Friday, Dec. 22, at 7:30 p.m.
Altman loves to play with the stereotypes people have about Jews, and admits that his comedy style is more Lenny Bruce than Alan Sherman, with songs such as his Passover song, “They Tried to Kill Us (We Survived, Let's Eat),” his dysfunctional Bar Mitzvah anthem, “Today I'm A Man,” and his lament over mixed marriage, “Just Too Jew for You.”
“I write these songs to make myself laugh and to explore - from my own ignorant secular perspective - the mystifying customs and rituals of my tribe,” he told The Commons in 2014. “I don't think there's anything inherent in Judaism that breeds humor, but surely the oppression that we've suffered for thousands of years has engendered humor as a survival mechanism.”
Southern Vermont is usually a regular stop for Altman this time of year because of his longtime friend and collaborator Billy Straus, who produced several of Rockapella's allbums and one of Altman's solo recordings.
Straus now lives in Putney, is an EMT, and is one of the founders of Next Stage.