About the Festival 

Milton Glaser posters boost Festival, celebrate Moosic

Renowned graphic designer Milton Glaser has created more than 300 posters for commercial and nonprofit clients, and they can sell for $100 or more. The 2008 Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival poster features a tuxedo-clad cow gazing out from a thatched background through ten mixed-media snippets representing each of the ten years of the Festival. This is the seventh poster Glaser has created for the festival, each with a different take on the "moosic" theme of cows as musicians.

 

"They're beautiful," says East Springfield resident Melinda Smith of the posters. "I have every year they ever did." Smith, who owns the Auto Stoppe on Route 20 with her husband John, has a festival brochure hanging up in the garage. She says customers often take note. "Everybody loves them. They are works of art besides just being advertising," she says.

 

Festival Artistic Director Linda Chesis was put in contact with Glaser through Carl Fisherman, who has a summer house in Springfield and has been volunteering with the festival for many years. Fisherman and Glaser were classmates in high school. "I'm glad Milton is able to contribute his time, expertise, and talent, and delighted that Linda is continuing all the work she does to make the Festival as wonderful as it is each year," says Fisherman. He calls the posters "inspired."

 

Chesis says to have such a renowned artist associated with the festival is "absolutely thrilling. It ensures the festival will have a visual legacy as well as a musical legacy." It's about the tuxedo clad cow making beautiful "moosic."

 

Pete Bussmann, owner of the Depot Deli in Cooperstown, says that customers often remark on the poster hanging up on the deli's wall, and some even have asked to have it. Bussmann, however, has plans to frame it and give it to his daughter. "The comments on the poster are all excellent. I'm hoping everyone goes to the concerts," says Bussmann.

 

Anne Geddes-Atwell of Fly Creek says she first learned of Glaser in the late 1960s, when she was in graduate school. He was the icon poster designer, she notes. "I'm thrilled that a designer of that caliber" is doing the Festival's posters.

 

An internationally known graphic designer, Glaser created the IYNY logo. His works are represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.

 

"I love the idea of doing things that encourage cultural events," says Glaser of his work for the Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival. "It's continuing a thematic idea I've been working on 20 or 30 years." When asked what he'd like people to think when they see his posters, he replied succinctly, "I'd like them to buy tickets."

 

Posters are sold at the festival's concerts and through the Festival's online store.