summer chamber music festival in the country, still held annually as of 2019. Composers such as Henry Cowell, John Cage, Robert Starrer and Peter Schickele created works that were premiered there. Today, this hand-built concert hall with perfect acoustics is a multi-starred attraction on the National Register of Historic Places with world-class musicians playing there from June to September. Hervey White also hosted numerous young artists at the Maverick colony, including Lucile Blanch, Arnold Blanch, John Bernard Flannagan, Eugene Ludins, and Hannah Small. The town is home to the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM), founded in 1919 by John F. Carlson, Frank Swift Chase, Andrew Dasburg, Carl Eric Lindin, and Henry Lee McFee. The WAAM Permanent Collection features work by important American artists associated with the region, including Milton Avery, George Bellows, Edward Leigh Chase, Frank Swift Chase, Florence Ballin Cramer, Arnold Blanch, Doris Lee, Marion Greenwood, Philip Guston, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Paul Meltsner, and many others. The Art Students League of New York's summer school was in Woodstock from 1906 until 1922, and again after World War II, from 1947 until 1979. The Woodstock School of Art has been operating since 1980. The Woodstock Guild, founded by Byrdcliffe artists in 1939, is now the steward of the Byrdcliffe Colony. It is a multicultural organization which sponsors exhibitions, classes, concerts, dance and theatre events and runs the oldest craft shop in Woodstock, the Fleur de Lis Gallery, which features over 60 artists. Voice Theatre currently has permanent residency at the Byrdcliffe Theater, which they renovated in 2015. Byrdcliffe is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a haven for today's artists. In 1981, the town hosted the Woodstock Jazz Festival, a celebration of the Creative Music Studio, an organization founded in 1971 by Karl Berger and Ornette Coleman. The show featured Jack Dejohnette, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Anthony Braxton, Lee Konitz, and Miroslav Vitouš, among others. On April 19–22, 2012, Woodstock hosted the Woodstock Writers Festival. Ann Hood, Augusten Burroughs, Shalom Auslander, Kurt Andersen and Ned Leavitt spoke and offered workshops on a variety of topics related to literature. Notable people The town has long been a mecca for artists, musicians, actors, and writers, even before the music festival made the name "Woodstock" famous. The town has a separate "Artist's Cemetery". Film and art festivals attract big names, and hundreds of musicians have come to Woodstock to record.