Westbeth Celebrates
Black History Month

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou.

Lorraine O’Grady Concept Artist

Lorraine O’Grady has lived at Westbeth for decades. One of the most significant figures in contemporary performance, conceptual, and feminist art. O’Grady is widely known for her radical persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, and has a complex practice that also encompasses video, photomontage, concrete poetry, cultural criticism, and public art. The artist has consistently been ahead of her time, anticipating contemporary art world conversations about racism, sexism, institutional inequities, and cultural oversights by decades, and her prescience has inspired younger generations of artists.

These parallel threads—of outward critique and inward reflection—are some of the many binaries that O’Grady’s work addresses. By putting seemingly contradictory ideas together, O’Grady questions the power attached to such oppositions as Black and White, museum and individual, self and other, West and non-West, and past and present.

NY Times Interview
Brooklyn Museum exhibit

Nasheet Waits Drummer

Nasheet grew up at Westbeth with his brother Shareef, and continues to live here with his own family. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist, Freddie Waits.

Receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Music, Waits studied privately with renowned percussionist, Michael Carvin. Carvin’s tutelage provided a vast foundation upon which Waits added influences from his father, as well as mentor Max Roach. It was Max that first gave Nasheet’s formidable talent international spotlight, hiring him as a member of the famed percussion ensemble M’BOOM.

Waits has been heralded for his musicality and creativity by such virtuosos as Ed Thigpen, Max Roach, Andrew Hill, and Stanley Cowell. True to his personal philosophy of the necessity to balance Tradition and Modernism, Waits collaborates and performs regularly with a wide range of artists.

Profiles in Art Interview
Drum Compilation

Patti Bown Musician

Patti Bown (1931-2008)
A resident of Westbeth for almost two decades, and raising her son, Anthony, here, Patti Bown was American jazz pianist, singer, and composer. Born in Seattle, Washington, Bown studied classical piano from a young age. As a teenager, she began performing in Seattle’s Jackson Street jazz scene. She attended the University of Seattle on a music scholarship.

During 1958, she recorded an album, Patti Bown Plays Big Piano. In 1959, Quincy Jones invited her to join a big band he was assembling for a European tour of Harold Arlen’s musical, Free and Easy. . Bown recorded with Quincy Jones several times from 1959 to 1961.

Bown also recorded with artists such as Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, and Benny Golson. Many of the artists Bown recorded with also recorded some of her compositions. She collaborated with lyricists such as Maya Angelou and Buddy Bernier. From 1962 to 1964, she was Dinah Washington’s musical director.

In 1972, Bown was musical director for Joseph Papp’s production, Ti-Jean and His Brothers, which debuted Off-Broadway. She was also active in the theater in other capacities, playing piano and acting in productions such as Woodie King, Jr.’s Christchild (1992).

In 1996, she received a lifetime achievement award from International Women in Jazz, and in 2006 she received the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award.

Bold Face article
Big Piano

Hugh Hurd Activist/Actor

Hugh Hurd joined with Maya Angelou and Godfrey Cambridge in organizing one of the the first benefits in NYC in support of Dr Martin Luther King, jr. Later he co-founded and let the Committee for the Employment of Negro Performers.

His most notable acting roles were the 1959 film Shadows directed by John Cassavetes and a major role in the Japanese film The Catch (1961), as a prisoner of war.e also had roles in The Winner (1963), For Love of Ivy (1968), The Hot Rock (1972), Blade (1973), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The First Deadly Sin (1980), Liebestraum (1991), Jumpin’ at the Boneyard (1992), and Who’s the Man?

n 1964, Hurd was the subject of a portrait painted by the noted artist Alice Neel.[6] The painting is titled “Hugh Hurd” and is currently held by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Hugh and his wife Merlyn raised three daughters at Westbeth, Michelle Hurd, Adrienne Hurd, and Denise Hurd. Because of his involvement in the community, Hugh was affectionally known as the “Mayor of Westbeth.”

Shadows film clip
Interview