devoted to literature and the visual arts, most notably The Wild Hawk and The Plowshare. The Maverick Festivals and Concerts In 1915, White planned the first of the Maverick Festivals, which included music and theatrical performances. Bacchanalian and raucous but with a firmly creative underpinning, the Maverick Festivals were the precursors to the famous Woodstock Music Festival of 1969. Revelers were encouraged to come in costume; period photographs include men and women with flowers in their hair, a historical prototype for the popular cliché of the Woodstock hippie. Intended to offset the tremendous debt White incurred building his colony, the first Maverick Festival represented a great spirit of unity among previously feuding community activists and artists, who in 1919 went on to form the Woodstock Artists Association. The festivals were by the 1920s an annual occurrence, in August on the night of the full moon: they lasted until 1931, when their reputation for wildness (numbers of attendees reached, according to some reports, as many as 6000) pressured White to put an end to his tradition. In 1916 White began sponsoring concerts, primarily classical music; the Maverick concert hall has been home to performances by Paul Robeson and John Cage. Cage's notorious 4'33" premiered there in 1952. The Maverick Concerts music festival continues to this day, with a series of concerts held every weekend from late June through early September. It is the oldest continuous summer music festival in the United States. Hervey White's historical legacy is as an author, utopian, and philosopher. In popular press and local culture, his long hair, beard, baggy white linens and purple silks are celebrated as the hallmarks of Woodstock's cultural identity. References External links Woodstock Artists Association and Museum Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Guide to the Hervey White Papers at the University of Iowa. American libertarians 20th-century American novelists People from Woodstock, New York 1866 births 1944 deaths Harvard University alumni 20th-century American poets American male novelists American male poets 20th-century American male writers