“Nancy Atlas: The Howl,” set for Saturday at 8 p.m. at Bay Street Theater, will bring together some of the East End’s most notable musicians for a celebration of live music and the artists who make it happen.
Among Atlas’s musical guests will be Winston Irie, Mamalee Rose, Joe Lauro, the Barroom Girls (Erin Doherty and Jessie Haynes), Telly Karoussos of Hopefully Forgiven, Faith Mullaly, and others to be announced. Not to mention Atlas’s band members: Johnny Blood, lead guitar and vocals, Brett King, bass, Joe Delia, stacked keys and accordion, Denny McDermott, drums, and Greg McMullen, pedal steel, electric guitar, and vocals.
Tickets are still available at $65, and where the money is destined opens a window on a not widely known initiative, Atlas for the Arts, which over the past three years has raised more than $90,000 to help fund music education on the East End.
“I’m doing this ‘Howl’ to start the conversation with Sag Harbor,” Atlas said during a phone conversation. “If everything goes well on Saturday and we sell out, there will be $10,000 that will go toward the music programming at Pierson Middle/High School.”
While Atlas for the Arts secured its nonprofit status in November, Atlas began “unofficially” raising money three years ago. “I was doing it like a Robin Hood thing, where I was getting donors to write checks directly to the Montauk School or East Hampton High School. Last summer Jayma Cardoso of the Surf Lodge, one of the donors, looked at me and said, ‘You have to make this official.’ So that’s what I did.”
While donations can be made on atlas4arts.com, money comes from the “Howl” programs, the third of which will happen Nov. 14 at the Bridgehampton School. “I get sponsorships to pay the musicians, then the door take goes to the school.”
In addition to helping support music programming, Atlas for the Arts has funded several off-site events. For the past three years, it has sponsored trips of the Montauk School’s jazz band and chorus to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania to participate in the nationwide Music in the Parks program.
Atlas also approached Chris Mandato, the leader of East Hampton High School’s jazz band, with a proposal to pick a night when a national act is performing here and not only enlist them to work with the students for a day, but also ask them to share the stage with the students that night. In April 2024, the jazz band was mentored during the day by the Huntertones, a band from Brooklyn, and performed with them at the Clubhouse that night.
“Not every kid wants to be a musician,” Atlas said, “but my thing is to get them off their phones. Get them to understand that if they practice their instrument there is a little bit of a reward. Since the first Hershey Park trip, we’ve seen triple the number of kids trying out for the Montauk School’s jazz band.”
