Author Archives: Christina

Louna Dekker Vargas
France & Japan
Works for Flute

Westbeth Community Room
October 28, 2021 at 7PM

This performance, in collaboration with trumpet player Adam O’Farrill and guitarist Tal Yahalom

The program is a meditation on wind – how it moves, feels on the skin, rises and falls, puffs and billows in a dances, glides through a sigh. The program will feature several classical masterworks for solo flute and two contemporary duos by Franco-Japanese composers (Fujikura and Takemitsu).

PROGRAM
Debussy- ‘Syrinx’
Honegger- ‘Danse de la chèvre’
Marin Marais- ‘Les Folies d’Espagne’ -selected variations
Dai Fujikura- ‘Glacier’ arr. bass flute and flugelhorn (featuring Adam O’Farrill) Toru Takemitsu- ‘Towards the Sea’ (featuring Tal Yahalom)

French-American flutist Louna Dekker Vargas has been described as “promising young artist” (Citizen Jazz). She began to tour the U.S. as a founding member of several award-winning chamber groups before completing her Bachelor in Flute at Peabody Conservatory and subsequently earning the Grace Claggett Raney award for excellence in chamber music. She further developed her training in the French flute school by doing postgraduate studies under Vincent Lucas, principal flute of the Orchestre de Paris. Her curiosity and musicality have led her collaborations and investigations into free jazz, contemporary classical, Indian Hindustani, and improvised hip hop traditions. She is a founding member of Nick Dunston’s quintet Atlantic Extraction, has played numerous times as solo flute with the Wicked Broadway orchestra, and has performed as a guest artist in collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Brooklyn-bred Adam O’Farrill, 26, has emerged as a “rising star as a player and composer” (PopMatters) and “a blazing young trumpet talent” (The New York Times). Beginning his career in his teenage years performing with his father, the pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill, Adam has gone on to work with a wide range of artists such as Mary Halvorson, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mulatu Astatke, Brasstracks, Kambui Olujimi, Samora Pinderhughes, Sarah Kay, and Anna Webber. His most recent album, 2018’s El Maquech (Biophilia Records) received critical acclaim, including the Wall Street Journal, who wrote that “the band presents rambunctious music that is equally rustic and modern,” as well as receiving Best of the Year mentions from The Boston Globe and the NPR Jazz Critics Poll. In both 2019 and 2021, O’Farrill won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Trumpeter. Adam has been recognized and awarded for his composing as well, receiving commissions and grants from The Jazz Gallery, The Shifting Foundation, Metropolis Ensemble, and ASCAP.

Tal Yahalom is an Israeli guitarist, composer and bandleader based in Brooklyn, New York. In his music he seeks to create engaging storytelling, attentive interplay and distinct sonic environments, weaving together influences and elements of hard-bop, alternative-rock,
impressionistic classical music and improvised music. Tal has toured internationally and across the US with the collective-trio ‘KADAWA’ and various collaborative projects, while releasing 3 solo guitar records to date. Yahalom performed as a semifinalist at the 2019 Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Guitar Competition, earned 1st prize at the 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival National Guitar Competition, 3rd prize at the 2016 Montreux Jazz Festival International Guitar Competition, and is a recipient of the AICF scholarship award of excellence in 2014-2015.

The concert will last 1 hr and 10 minutes including a brief intermission. Admission is free contingent on reservation. The concert space will follow strict COVID 19 safety protocol and seating will be limited to 35 seats. The venue is wheelchair accessible. Guests must reserve in advance by emailing the following email address:

FREE. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
Contact: lounadekker@gmail.com”/>

LOCATION
Westbeth Community Room
55 Bethune Street, New York NY 10014

This free performance has been made possible by the City Artist Corps Grants program, presented by The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theatre.

Michelle Weinberg
Geo Grid Lamp Posts Installation

This fall, the public-artspace nonprofit ArtBridge is turning 65 lamp posts in Lower Manhattan into temporary art installations with an exhibition that explores resiliency.

The work — guided by the notion of “resiliency,” the ability to demonstrate adaptability and the capacity to thrive in changing or challenging environments — includes “Dances of New York City” by Frances Smith and “Geo Grid” by Michelle Weinberg.

Weinberg, a painter who’s served residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the MacDowell Colony, made use of the lamp post’s cylinder-like shape for her “Geo Grid” piece. “I will design patterned art that will show movement as it swirls upward,” Weinberg explained. “Geometric and plant forms in vivid colors will ‘grow’ from bottom to top, and they have a sense of motion ingrained in them.”

The art was selected through a public-design competition held over the summer that drew more than 100 artist applications. The review panel of esteemed judges included Gary Carrion-Murayari, Curator, New Museum; Lili Chopra, Executive Director, Artistic Programs, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; and Claire Gilman, Curator, Drawing Center.

Veronica Ryan
Unveils New Permanent Work

Image courtesy of the artist and Pangolin Editions

Net, Orange Peels, Black Thread
by Veronica Ryan
Unveiling 2 October 2021
Hackney Town Hall
Hackney, England

Thomas J Price and Veronica Ryan have been commissioned by Hackney Council to create two new individual public artworks celebrating and honouring Hackney’s Windrush Generation, the first permanent public sculptures to do so in the UK.

The artworks will be unveiled on 2 October 2021 (Veronica Ryan) and 22 June 2022 (Thomas J Price), and will be installed in two different locations at the heart of civic and community life in the borough, including outside Hackney Town Hall. The works will serve as a permanent expression of solidarity with the Windrush Generation, a recognition of the hugely significant contribution they have made to life in Hackney and the UK, and will symbolise the ongoing commitment from the borough to provide refuge and welcome to worldwide migrants.

Net, Orange Peels, Black Thread. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery New York. Photo: Max McClure

Veronica Ryan will create a series of large marble and bronze sculptures representing Caribbean fruit and vegetables. Speaking of her inspiration, Veronica Ryan said: “I have memories of going to Ridley Road Market with my mother as a child to buy fruit and vegetables, fabrics, and sewing materials. Little did I know, those early experiences would become essential material for my practice as an artist. I remember as a toddler during the 1950s the difficulties my young hopeful parents from Montserrat dealt with, navigating a new country and often inhospitable circumstances.”

History of the Hackney Windrush Commission

In August 2018, Hackney became the first local authority in the UK to pass a comprehensive motion regarding the Windrush Generation, pledging to oppose the criminalisation of Windrush families, calling for an end to the ‘hostile environment’ policies and for support for those who have been affected by them. This announcement follows the Council’s decision to review the role of statues and the naming of landmarks, street names, parks and other public spaces to ensure they best reflect Hackney’s diversity and history of fighting racism.

The announcement was made on Windrush Day 2020, and follows an extensive consultation process that began in 2018. Following an initial shortlisting process, the final decision to commission Thomas J Price and Veronica Ryan was made by a panel including Hackney residents, Windrush campaigners, artists, architects and local councillors including Cllr Carole Williams – Hackney’s Windrush lead. The panel was chaired by Mark Sealy, Director of Hackney-based gallery Autograph ABP, with approval from Mayor Phillip Glanville.

The project, produced in partnership with Create, is part of the Council’s wider Windrush Engagement Programme which started in 2018. Working directly with over 3,000 Windrush elders and their descendants on intergenerational activities in areas of arts, heritage, sport, health and education, the programme has given African Caribbean elders a voice and reconnected younger generations with their heritage.

More information: Hackney Windrush Commission

Barbara Hammer
Tell Me There Is a Lesbian Forever

Barbara Hammer Available Space #2 1978

Curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden
October 2 – November 6, 2021
Opening Reception: October 2, 4 – 8pm
COMPANY Gallery
145 Elizabeth Street NYC

More info: www.companygallery.us

1968/1969 is the beginning I’ve chosen. Barbara’s marriage to her husband Clay has ended after a joint trip around the world, building a home together – she realized that that is not the life that she wanted. Barbara buys her own motorcycle, a 1972 BWM R75/5, and proceeds on a trip of her own across the country, into her identity as a lesbian. She goes toward her desires, her sexuality, and the development of her artistic practice. She decides to make herself. She studies herself. She writes herself. She never turns back.

In 2018, curator Vivian Crockett and I were about to go on stage for a Museum of Modern Art film screening. Vivian walked over with Barbara––tiny, somewhat frail, but smiling widely and vibrating. Barbara pulled me close and said, “I’m dying, but I just want to tell you that I love your work, and this is where things should go. It’s hard for me to sit for long periods of time, and I don’t know if I can sit through the entire screening, but I just want you to know that I think your work is badass.” Teary, I gave her a deep hug. When she passed the following year, I thought, “Did I hug her too hard?”

I looked up at the seats after the presentation ended, and Barbara was still there. I looked up again and she was gone.

In 2019, shortly before her passing, Barbara was in conversation with Sophie about her next solo exhibition for Company. Unbeknownst to me, my name was on the list of possible curators. Barbara chose me, and I accepted.

Barbara Hammer practiced what I would call faith-based filmmaking, of a kind that is now rare. Her work is deliberate, rigorous, and exacting in production and in post. In today’s field, there is too much control of the image, while at the same time too much error is allowed, since it can be corrected later.

I have centered Hammer’s relationship and work with Terry Sendgraff, an aerial dancer and choreographer and an icon of her own, who also passed in 2019. Their work together appears at the core of Double Strength (1978). I’m attracted to the film’s display of immense strength, as well as the way the women’s bodies slip into each other, mirroring one another.

—

I have been wrestling with the mirror for the past five years, in relationship to a larger work that I’ve produced for the orisha Oshun. The mirror, her primary attribute, has carried over into the conceptual framework for this exhibition. Hammer’s mirror is time-based and must be placed in motion.

A mirror that moves when you do… This is what it means to love another woman, a friend, a sister, a lesbian.

-from my notes

Barbara’s widow Florrie has a selection of Barbara’s notebooks that are being prepared for art storage, and invited me to view them. For this exhibition, Florrie has provided photographs of Barbara, including one with them alongside her motorcycle in San Francisco. In one of her public talks given in 2017 for NYFF55 at the Lincoln Center, Barbara refers to Florrie, her greatest love, as her life support.

—

It is 2021. I find a motorcycle that is the same model Barbara purchased all those years ago. It is driven across the country to my studio. Florrie tells me that when it came time to sell her bike, Barbara did not want to let anyone test drive it. I decide this bike will be retired. It sits in my studio as an object of desire and reference. I have it drained of all fluids and taken fully apart. The bike is cleaned, rebuilt, and refinished using a mirrored chrome that reflects everything around it. I wash it in a white spiritual bath made of honey, white flowers, and efun. The only movement present, as the bike sits quietly, is what the viewer’s eye catches when the body circles the form.

In this show, I situate Barbara’s 1985 copy of the Daughters of Bilitis FBI report as a work of art. The work is in her redactions, which read the report as a prompt for producing what is hidden.

The pandemic keeps me from viewing the Barbara Hammer Papers at the Beinecke Library, which has restricted visits to Yale affiliates only. My greatest love, Mia, is a Yale PhD candidate, and she arranges to view the archive for me. We drive to New Haven. She comes back daily and recounts what she has seen. Through her eyes, I become able to envision Barbara. In our conversations, I encounter who Barbara is becoming to Mia first, before I am able to figure her myself.

In looking at Barbara’s work during this time, I feel the privilege of being able to re-assess, to arrange and reposition her work through and alongside my own subjectivity. Too often, lesbian identity has been treated as a nostalgic or archaic proposition. As a Black dyke, I refute this stasis. Lesbian identity has always been in flux, changing over time within itself. Barbara’s archive reveals a portrait of a lesbian constantly challenging herself in real time, constantly seeking a way to exist as her full self, unbridled, in a society which has tried to erase her and others many times over.

A letter from a lover reveals a note in the margins, perhaps an afterthought penned just before sending:

Write me that you love me dearly and that you always will.

Tell me there is a lesbian forever.

-Corky Wick

In 2019, while teaching my course “Curating Within Obscurity,” I screened Black Nations/Queer Nations (1995). Prior to class, I reviewed the film on my own. Ten minutes in, as the camera panned across a crowd of faces, I jumped to pause the video. Barbara Hammer was in the audience.
With love and immense care and consideration for you, Barbara, and for all of us.

xTiona Nekkia McClodden

David Del Tredici
In Black and White
Village Trip Festival

Fri Sept 24, 2021
8PM – 10PM
St Johns in the Village
Tickets $10 for Live Stream
and $20 in person

Performers
David Del Tredici
Marc Peloquin

This event will also be livestreamed on Youtube. See below for tickets. You will be able to watch this event live, or at any time after broadcast.
Tickets Live : EVENTBRITE LIVE
Tickets live stream EVENT BRITE LVESTREAM

Aaron Copland proclaimed David Del Tredici “that rare find among composers – a creator with a truly original gift. I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene. I know of no other composer of his generation who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality.”

Del Tredici forged a new compositional path, neo-romanticism, a response to the atonality of the 1960s in which he came of age. Speaking for himself, he has said: “Music is not a religion, nor is it a duty. It is an entertainment. All that a composer really does is realize his own particular musical fantasy with a certain selection of notes, rhythms and timbres.”

The composer credits Marc Peloquin with reviving his interest in the piano and the two men have worked closely these past twenty years. Peloquin, whose career is focused on living composers, is in the process of recording Del Tredici’s complete works for solo piano, some of which, including S/M Ballade, have been composed specially for him.

This concert is supported by Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music.

From: David Del Tredici event

Village Trip Festival

HAPPENING NOW!
More than 30 events and over 50 performers at venues across the Village. A nine-day festival– Saturday, September 18 through Sunday, September 26, 2021 –celebrating the glorious community of Greenwich Village and all it has given the world.Come be part of it – join the fun, support local businesses.Because, as we know, it takes a village.

More info: The Village Trip

FLU SHOTS
FREE

WED SEPT 22, 2021
1:00P:M – 3:30PM
WESTBETH COMMUNITY ROOM

Just stop by
We’ll get you in as soon as possible.

The waiting area is outside of the Community Room.(Maybe bring a sweater)
One person at a time will be allowed in.

Masks are mandatory
Bring a pen
Bring your glasses

Vaccine and staffing provided by Lenox Hill Greenwich Village
Northwell Health.