The Brattleboro Reformer published the following story about Yellow Barn Music Haul on April 21:
Photo: Yellow Barn Music Haul at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital
Yellow Barn, the internationally renowned chamber music center, is channeling its resources and creative energies in order to contribute to the well-being of the community at this unprecedented time of challenge and social distancing.
Yellow Barn Music Haul is touring the region, uplifting spirits by bringing music to relief workers, volunteers, neighborhoods, and individuals. With a playlist ranging from Beethoven to the Beatles, Music Haul is visiting nursing homes, health care facilities, and each of the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union's school district's food distribution sites, serenading children and families as they come through, as well as thanking the generous volunteers working at each site.
Working with individuals and partners, Music Haul makes scheduled stops throughout the week. Community members are invited to recommend a visit, whether it be a location, an organization, or an individual, via Yellow Barn's website.
The brainchild of Yellow Barn, Music Haul is a traveling stage, with the capacity for live performance as well as recorded music played from speakers on the roof of the truck. It began with the purchase of an old U-Haul in 2015, and an invitation to architect John Rossi, founder of VisibleGood, a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in rapid shelter deployment, to join the project. Yellow Barn's team devised this self-contained, traveling concert venue for as many as six musicians, fully-equipped with interior and exterior performance spaces, a high quality internal/external sound system, video capabilities, and climate-controlled passenger and storage areas, including storage for percussion, string instruments, and a piano.
When not practicing social distancing, Yellow Barn musicians travel and perform on Music Haul, presenting "Music No Boundaries" tours across the country, and throughout southeastern Vermont. Redefining what a concert hall can be, Yellow Barn Music Haul brings music to grammar schools and universities, urban neighborhoods and arts districts, city lots and open fields. It plays for people regardless of their experience with or knowledge of music, their attention captured in the unexpected moment.
While touring at this time, the Music Haul is following guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Vermont Department of Health.
