RAW presents a series of concerts that examine the harp and its different manifestations both structurally and musically. Each concert features a performance and discussion revolving around the harpist’s craft and the intricacies of their instrument.
The Secret Trio
“…mesmerizing” – Village Voice
The Secret Trio is an instrumental group consisting of Ismail Lumanovski (clarinet), Tamer Pinarbasi (kanun), and Ara Dinkjian (oud). In 2010, these three New York-based musicians, each busy with numerous projects, felt the desire to play music which would satisfy their own creative and emotional needs. They began to meet at Dinkjian’s home where they developed a group philosophy and sound.
This philosophy begins with a mutual respect and admiration. Ismail, Tamer, and Ara individually have extensive education in both eastern and western music and have performed throughout the world. Each is a composer. Music, one of humanity’s most precious gifts, has united their cultural diversity (Ara is Armenian, Tamer is Turkish, and Ismail is Macedonian).
The group blends Middle Eastern and western musical traditions in original and folk compositions.
RAW presents a series of concerts that examine the harp and its different manifestations both structurally and musically. Each concert features a performance and discussion revolving around the harpist’s craft and the intricacies of their instrument.
Tiny Beast
Formed in the summer of 2012, Tiny Beast is composed of Nuiko Wadden (harp) and Dawn Posey (violin). Ms. Wadden is an expressive player with an unconventional approach to the rhythmic possibilities of the orchestral harp. According to the Washington Post, “…Wadden’s superb, dancelike playing on the harp was a joy to hear.”
Listen to an excerpt of Ms. Wadden playing Polvere et Ombra by Suzanne Farrin – the piece will be included in the performance at RAW.
Tiny Beast will play a combination of duets and solo harp pieces, most of which are 21st century compositions. Composers include Mark Fromm, Carlos Salzedo, Suzanne Farrin, Kenji Bunch and Sebastian Currier.
Join us for an afternoon of new music composed by The Hartt School composition faculty members Robert Carl and Ken Steen.
Program: Robert Carl – Infinity Avenue Ken Steen – Assumption
Robert Carl
“Robert Carl’s music, to my ear at least, has always felt like the work of a particularly sensitive sonic observer of the world. Originally a student of history before he refocused his efforts into music, his interest in time, memory, and space are veins running through his compositions, his work more given to conjuring imagery than narrative plot. And whether inspiration is mined in the wake of a seascape or travelers on a speeding bullet train, the resulting music tends to carry a distinct organic beauty and rich, encompassing depth.” ~ Julia Lu, NewMusicBox
~ notes from the composer on Infinity Avenue
Infinity Avenue is an ongoing project now entering its second year. It unites an interest in alternative tuning with open-ended form. It is designed so as to exist in multiple formats. At the core is a patch in MaxMSP that allows for real-time performance and exploration of a world in precise overtone-derived tuning. The materials of this “score” allow for realizations that so far have included the following:
– An installation that may be either directed by a solo performer for any amount of time, or allowed to run semi-automatically.
– A solo performance which can be more precisely structured by a laptop player, allowing for direct choice of pitches, harmonies, and gestures, as well as more automatic fields.
Next up is what will be unveiled at this performance, a version that allows for a small improvising ensemble to interact with the patch.
Watch an interview with Robert Carl with samples of his compositions HERE.
Ken Steen
“Ken Steen is a composer of considerable talent and originality. His music is thoughtful and remarkably well crafted. It has both surface beauty and inner depth.” — Ingram Marshall, composer
Ken Steen’s music and sound art is recognized internationally for its authentic vitality, remarkable range and distinctive personal vision. Whether acoustic, electronic or some multimedia combination, his work is often characterized as being seductively gorgeous, featuring sumptuous textures of gradual yet unpredictable evolution. In the last 5 years Steen’s work in various forms have enjoyed more than 100 performances on 5 continents: from Mumbai to Tripoli, Paris, Reykjavík, Buenos Aires and New York City.
~ notes from the composer on Assumption
Assumption, is a fixed audio piece that is informed by traditional “tape” pieces, sound art, and sonic installations. The primary sound sources, derived from a quartet of 18th c. bells and a decaying antique harmonium, were recorded/collected from the 12c. Eglise de l’Assomption in Marnay-sur-Seine, France. Much of the piece relies on juxtaposition of the beautifully out-of-tune harmonium (noisy, decrepit pedals and all…), with vocal and other sonorities based on spectral analyses of the bells that evolve over extended periods of time.
Led by HSO Music Director Carolyn Kuan, Lies You Can Believe In will be a special performance featuring HSO musicians performing in ensembles throughout the gallery spaces of Real Art Ways. This concert offers a unique blend of visual art and intriguing music, vibrant performers and an intimate and social audience experience, all at one of the coolest venues in Hartford.
Lies You Can Believe In features music by classical and contemporary composers, whose works are threaded by the concept of “observation,” tying back to Real Art Ways’ current exhibits, Reaction Bubble and Nothing to Hide? Art, Surveillance, and Privacy.
Beethoven’s Octet for Winds, Mvt. 1 was written during a time that wealthy noblemen hired small ensembles to watch while they dined and celebrated; this piece was written with that performance setting in mind. Christopher Swist’s Cities at Twilight brings to life the unique aural essences different metropolitan areas have as the day moves to night. Missy Mazzoli’s Lies You Can Believe In tells an improvisatory tale, touching upon the violence, energy, mania and rare moments of calm one finds in a city. And Copland’s jazz and blues-infused Music for the Theatre evokes the lively atmosphere of the theater.
Tickets to this concert are $25. Tickets are $20 for HSO subscribers and Real Art Ways members. Student tickets are $15 (with valid ID).
Program: Beethoven Octet for Winds, Mvt. 1 Swist Cities at Twilight, Mvt. I “Hartford” & Mvt. IV. “New York” Mazzoli Lies You Can Believe In Beethoven String Quartet Op. 59, No. 1 Copland Music for the Theatre
For the 2016 Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS presents COMPULSIVE PRACTICE, a video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as one way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. This hour-long video program will be shown continuously in RAW’s Video Gallery and continued daily through December 31.
From video diaries to civil disobedience, holiday specials and backstage antics, Betamax to YouTube, COMPULSIVE PRACTICE displays a diversity of artistic approaches, experiences, and expectations. The compulsive video practices of these artists serve many purposes—cure, treatment, outlet, lament, documentation, communication—and have many tones—obsessive, driven, poetic, neurotic, celebratory. COMPULSIVE PRACTICE demonstrates the place of technology, self-expression, critique, and community in the many decades and the many experiences of artists and activists living with AIDS.
Mark S. King has written about living with HIV since testing positive when the test became publicly available in 1985. His blog, www.MyFabulousDisease.com, chronicles his life as an HIV positive gay man in recovery from addiction. He is also the author of A Place Like This, his memoir of life in Los Angeles during the dawn of the AIDS epidemic.
Carol Leigh aka Scarlot Harlot has been working as a sex worker/prostitute activist and artist in the Bay Area for more than thirty years. Since the late seventies, she has written and performed political satire as “Scarlot Harlot,” and produced work in a variety of genres on queer and feminist issues including work based on her experience in San Francisco massage parlors. A “Mother” of the sex workers rights movement, she is credited with coining the term sex worker. Her recent work and archives are available at sexworkermedialibrary.org
Juanita Mohammedis a community video artist and activist. She uses inexpensive camcorder video technology to respond to the needs of those who matter to her. In her work at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City, Mohammed makes educational videos for and about the AIDS community. In her personal video work, she looks to her friends and neighbors to find stories that are not typically represented in the media.
Ray Navarro (1964–1990) was an artist, filmmaker and activist. He attended Cal Arts in California and moved to New York in 1988 to go to the Whitney Independent Study Program, and soon joined ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power). He was also a member of DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists), a video-documenting affinity group of ACT UP. DIVA TV documented public testimony, the media, and community activism to motivate the fight against AIDS.
Luna Luis Ortiz was born in New York City in 1972. In 1986, he was infected with HIV at the age of 14 from his first sexual experience. In 1988, he began his journey as an HIV awareness spokesperson for youth living with HIV at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, and has worked at Gay Men’s Health Crisis since 2007. He then studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and has worked with the photographers David LaChapelle, Lisa Ross, Shedrich Williames and Nan Goldin. The Luna Show is a show about the voguing scene and the people involved in the House/Ball community, one of the hardest hit communities by the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Luna Show has been viewed by 2 million people worldwide.
The Southern AIDS Living Quiltis a project that illustrates the growing impact of HIV on women in the southern U.S., particularly women of color. Using video testimonials, the Living Quilt shares the personal stories of women living with HIV, their families and health care providers throughout the region. The stories underscore the critical importance of making HIV screening a routine part of medical care in order to ensure earlier diagnosis and prevent the spread of the disease.
Nelson Sullivan (1948–1989) was a video artist in New York City during the 1980s. Nelson lived in a large townhouse at 5 Ninth Avenue in the Meatpacking District of New York City and his houseguests over the years included Lady Bunny, Michael Alig and the Club Kids, Sylvia Miles, Albert Crudo, and John Sex. Nelson’s friendships with the emerging artists of that day like RuPaul, Deee-lite, Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman give Nelson’s videos an intimacy that allows the viewer an in-crowd look at the past.
Justin B. Terry-Smith, M.P.H., is a noted HIV and gay civil rights activist and the creator of “Justin’s HIV Journal,” a popular blog in which he shares his trials and tribulations of living with HIV. A U.S. Air Force veteran, Justin resides in Laurel, Maryland, with his husband, Dr. Philip Terry-Smith, and their sons, Lundyn and Tavis. Presently, Justin is working toward earning his doctorate in public health. Find him at www.justinbsmith.com
James Wentzy is an AIDS activist and documentary filmmaker associated with ACT UP throughout the 1990s. He has been producer director and editor for the weekly series AIDS Community Television (aka DIVA TV) since 1991, producing over 160 documentary programs, his own feature-length documentary Fight Back, Fight AIDS, and documented over 700 hours of actions and demonstrations, conferences, and the communities’ cultural and artistic responses to AIDS. His footage frequently appears in others’ media documentaries. He worked as video archivist for the Estate Project’sAIDS Activist Video Preservation Project at the New York Public Library.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Jean Carlomusto was an early pioneer in the AIDS Activist video movement. Her most recent works include the Emmy-nominated documentary, Larry Kramer In Love & Anger (Sundance Film Festival and HBO, 2015), Sex In An Epidemic (Showtime, 2011), and Offerings (an interactive altar featured in the traveling international exhibition, “Not Alone”, Stop AIDS / Make Art, 2010). She continues to create critically acclaimed films that explore the unorthodox complexities of LGBTQ history.
Alexandra Juhasz has been making and thinking about AIDS activist video since the mid-80s. She is the author of AIDS TV: Identity, Community and Alternative Video (Duke, 1995), and a large number of AIDS educational videos including Living with AIDS: Women and AIDS (with Jean Carlomusto, 1987), Safer and Sexier: A College Student’s Guide to Safer Sex (1991), and Video Remains (2005). Most recently she’s been engaging in online cross-generational dialogue with AIDS activists and scholars about the recent spate of AIDS imagery after a lengthy period of representational quiet.
Hugh Ryan is a freelance writer and curator whose work explores the intersection of queer identity, history, and culture. His writing has appeared in venues from like The New York Times, Buzzfeed,Out Magazine, and The LA Review of Books, and he has spoken on queer museology at museums and universities around the world, including the Museum of History and Industry, Rutgers University, New York University, the Swedish Exhibition Agency & National Museum, and The Brooklyn Museum. He is the Founding Director of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History and currently sits on the Board of Advisors for QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, and is the New York Public Library’s 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar, where he is researching the queer history of the Brooklyn waterfront for a 2017 exhibition he is curating at the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Lost and Found brings together six artists that embrace material discovery, be it actual found objects or reused/redirected items.
Scott Schuldt presents documentation of a cabin he stumbled upon in the woods that was apparently built in the 1950’s. He meticulously recorded the site with drawings, photos and encased detritus, acting as a detective of sorts trying to decipher the clues he finds.
Anita Balkun also documents a living space – that of her grandfather. Large-scale photographs find discrete areas of his house and stir memories from childhood.
Robert Calafiore’s lush pinhole photographs focus our attention on glass vessels rescued from antique shops and flea markets.
Jeff Ostergren and Liz Atzberger take different approaches to explore everyday objects, i.e. zip ties, pins, plastic shopping bags, billboard ads etc., making art objects that reflect upon the history of painting and sculpture while bringing it directly into current recognizable culture.
Joseph Fucigna also draws upon utilitarian materials, using plastic construction fencing to mold evocative wall sculptures.
All the work in this exhibition surprises through visual dexterity.
For her solo exhibition, Passing Moments, acclaimed photographer Marion Belanger presents images printed from her Instagram feed. The 14 images, all black and white, were curated for their unique sense of light and line. The immediacy of the online platform emphasizes the artist’s keen eye. Each photo is a moment, a blink in the continuum.
Curated by David Borawski
ABOUT THE ARTIST Marion Belanger is interested in the concepts of persistence and change, and in the way that boundaries demarcate difference, particularly in regards to the land. She has been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a John Anson Kittredge Award, an American Scandinavian Fellowship, Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and has been an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony, at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, at the Virginia Center for the Arts and at Everglades National Park.
The artist earned a MFA from the Yale University School of Art where she was the recipient of both the John Ferguson Weir Award and the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, and a BFA from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. Her photographs are included in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Gallery of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography. She was the 2007 Photographer Laureate of Tampa, FL.
Her book of photographs Everglades: Outside and Within, with an essay by Susan Orlean, was released by the Center for American Places at Columbia College and the University of Georgia Press in 2009. Her current work investigates the shifting edges of the North American Continental Plate in Iceland and California. Radius Books will release Rift/Fault, with an essay by Lucy Lippard in 2016.
She is a current nominee for the Prix Pictet Award in Photography and Sustainability and the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography.
Featured image: “Untitled” Archival inkjet print on rice paper, 2016
Into The Blue Again features the work of Ellen Hackl Fagan in a solo exhibition of her large scale watercolor/pigments on rag paper. This series explores the nature of printmaking processes, texture and surface manipulation inspired by the sound of cobalt blue. Her process walks the balance between randomness and intention, like jazz music, revealing limitless possibilities for improvisation.
Curated by David Borawski
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ellen Hackl Fagan is an interdisciplinary abstract painter who believes that synaesthesia can be taught. Through interactive tools and crowd sourcing, Fagan is developing a corresponding language of color to sound.
Ellen Hackl Fagan is the inventor of The Reverse Color Organ and the ColorSoundGrammar Game, two projects that enable viewers to interact aurally with color. In collaboration with cognitive scientist Michael Cole, the Reverse Color Organ is being developed into an app and website to put this synaesthetic tool into peoples’ hands to be used not only to expand the language of color, but also as a crowd-sourced musical instrument.
Fagan earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting and Interdisciplinary Media in 2005 from Hartford Art School in Connecticut. She was awarded a RADIUS artist residency through the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, in 2004, as well as a grant through the Stamford Museum & Nature Center in 2005.
Fagan exhibits her work extensively throughout New England and New York City.
In June of 2014, Ellen Hackl Fagan expanded her independent curatorial practice into a full time business and is now the owner of ODETTA Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. There, she maintains her painting studio and has become an active member of this vibrant arts community.
Featured image: “Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue: Big Blue” (detail), 2016, ink, pigment, acrylic on museum board
Scribing the Void is a monumental sculpture transcribed from a Central Park boulder and initially installed at ODETTA gallery in Brooklyn, New York. At Real Art Ways, it is again suspended in the exact north-south orientation, level line and elevation as it would sit on the boulder. The sculpture moves almost imperceptibly with the air currents in the gallery.
The scribe line was achieved after multiple trips to the Central Park site, methodically tracing and cutting the shape of the boulder’s surface onto chipboard templates, resulting in 82 linear feet of a single contour line. This line was then copied onto the wooden superstructure that was transported and reassembled at the gallery.
The composer RSM was invited to create a score that was composed by placing the scribe line of the boulder onto a musical staff, effectively writing the song of the rock. RSM then took these notes and recorded the composition. The Byzantine-inspired sounds of piano, violin, drum, and voice permeate the empty space.
A recent pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash in western Tibet inspired much of Steger’s conceptual thoughts behind the sculpture: materiality versus immateriality, questions of time and space, and perceptions of memory beyond the familiar senses are addressed in Scribing the Void. The scribe line represents the divide between spirit and matter, the line between birth and death. Void speaks of loss, our severed connection to nature, community and ancestry, separation from our inner lives, and the mystery of existence.
Artist’s Statement I have always been interested in the natural world and its interrelationship with the human psyche. My concern began at a young age, when I saw the “Crying Indian” commercial on TV, which warned against pollution and environmental loss. It touched me deeply, and my creative work is an expression of an ongoing concern for our planet.
My sculptures are constructed using traditional materials such as wood, paper, concrete, and steel. I often incorporate impermanent elements – ice, fire, erosion, and gravity – which leave their mark and allude to the passage of time. The stain left by the fugitive materials refers to the destruction of nature, and the devastating imprint that humans have imposed on the environment.
I was trained as a carpenter and woodworker. I value the beauty of craftsmanship, as well as the importance of ritual, and bring both elements into my work. Beyond the physicality of the object that I create, there are the invisible agents that speak to the heart. Working by hand, I combine knowledge and intuition, bridging the gap between mind and heart. My work addresses our need to reconnect with nature in order to heal the primal wounds of the human psyche.
Prepare for an evening of musical contrasts and creative surprises as eight Connecticut artists play songs by each other, rearranged in their own performance styles!
Each of the eight Rearrange Me artists will be secretly assigned one of the other artists. They will then choose a song and perform it as though it was their own. This means that a folk artist, if assigned a hip-hop artist, will rearrange and perform a song by the hip-hop artist in folk style… and so forth.
Each artist will only know their own Rearrange Me assignment, so the audience and the other performers will hear the pieces for the first time together.
What could a Hardanger fiddle player and a computer programmer possibly have in common? For Dan Trueman, an expert in both areas, it’s all just technology. And whether the eventual expression of his ideas requires old instruments or the invention of new ones, he is more concerned that the tools employed offer musicians the most engaging musical experience possible.
Real Art Ways presents the duo of Sō Percussion member Adam Sliwinski and Trueman in an exploration of some of humanity’s oldest and newest musical ideas.
Trueman, who is a programmer as well as a musician, has invented a fascinating new instrument, called the “bitKlavier,” which reinvigorates the piano for the digital age. His instrument sounds, looks, and is played like a piano, but runs through a laptop so that it can bend, multiply, and stretch the notes.
Trueman says, “Like the prepared piano, the prepared digital piano feels just like a piano under the hands and often sounds like one, but it is full of surprises; instead of bolts and screws stuck between the piano strings, virtual machines of various sorts adorn the virtual strings of the digital piano, transforming it into an instrument that pushes back, sometimes like a metronome, other times like a recording played backwards.”
Many of his compositional ideas come from an ancient instrument from Norway called the “Hardanger” fiddle. Dan will perform some traditional tunes on the fiddle, and Adam will perform Trueman’s set of etudes for the bitKlavier called “Nostalgic Synchronic.”
After the concert, Adam and Dan will be available to speak informally with audience members and answer questions.
This concert will appeal to fans of traditional folk music, cutting edge tech, and the classical piano tradition.
Find lots of interesting info about the duo, the bitKlavier, the etudes and more at their website.
Funding for this concert is provided by the Edward C. & Ann T. Roberts Foundation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Dan Trueman Dan Trueman is a composer, fiddler, and electronic musician. He began studying violin at the age of 4, and decades later, after a chance encounter, fell in love with the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, an instrument and tradition that has deeply affected all of his work, whether as a fiddler, a composer, or musical explorer.
Dan’s current projects include: a double-quartet for So Percussion and the JACK Quartet, commissioned by the Barlow Foundation; Olagón — an evening length work in collaboration with singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, poet Paul Muldoon, and eighth blackbird; the Prepared Digital Piano project; a collaborative dance project with choreographer Rebecca Lazier and scientist Naomi Leonard; ongoing collaborations with Irish fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and guitarist Monica Mugan (Trollstilt). His recent albums with Adam Sliwinski (Nostalgic Synchronic), Ó Raghallaigh (Laghdú) and So Percussion (neither Anvil nor Pulley) have met with wide acclaim.
His explorations have ranged from the oldest to the newest technologies; Dan co-founded the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, the first ensemble of its size and kind that has led to the formation of similarly inspired ensembles across the world, from Oslo to Dublin, to Stanford and Bangkok. Dan’s compositional work reflects this complex and broad range of activities, exploring rhythmic connections between traditional dance music and machines, for instance, or engaging with the unusual phrasing, tuning and ornamentation of the traditional Norwegian music while trying to discover new music that is singularly inspired by, and only possible with, new digital instruments that he designs and constructs. His tools of the trade are the first-of-its-kind Hardanger d’Amore fiddle by Salve Hakedal (played with a beautiful baroque bow by Michel Jamonneau), and the ChucK music programming language by Ge Wang.
Dan’s work has been recognized by fellowships, grants, commissions, and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Fulbright Commission, the American Composers Forum, the American Council of Learned Societies, Meet the Composer, among others. He is Professor of Music and Director of the Princeton Sound Kitchen at Princeton University, where he teaches counterpoint, electronic music, and composition.
Adam Sliwinski Adam Sliwinski has built a dynamic career of creative collaboration as percussionist, pianist, conductor, teacher, and writer. He specializes in bringing composers, performers, and other artists together to create exciting new work. A member of the ensemble So Percussion (proclaimed as “brilliant” and “consistently impressive” by the New York Times) since 2002, Adam has performed at venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, The Bonnaroo Festival, Disney Concert Hall with the LA Philharmonic, and everything in between. So Percussion has also toured extensively around the world, including multiple featured performances at the Barbican Centre in London, and tours to France, Germany, The Netherlands, South America, Australia, and Russia.
Adam has been praised as a soloist by the New York Times for his “shapely, thoughtfully nuanced” playing. He has performed as a percussionist many times with the International Contemporary Ensemble, founded by classmates from Oberlin. Though he trained primarily as a percussionist, Adam’s first major solo album, released in 2015 on New Amsterdam, is a collection of etudes called Nostalgic Synchronic for the bitKlavier, an invention of Princeton colleague Dan Trueman. In recent years, Adam’s collaborations have also grown to include conducting. He has conducted over a dozen world premieres with the International Contemporary Ensemble, including residencies at Harvard, Columbia, and NYU. In 2014, ECM Records released the live recording of the premiere of Vijay Iyer’s Radhe Radhe with Adam conducting.
Adam writes about music on his blog. He has also contributed a series of articles to newmusicbox.org, and the Cambridge Companion to Percussion from Cambridge University Press features his chapter “Lost and Found: Percussion Chamber Music and the Modern Age.”
Adam is co-director of the So Percussion Summer Institute, an annual intensive course on the campus of Princeton University for college-aged percussionists. He is also co-director of the percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and has taught percussion both in masterclass and privately at more than 80 conservatories and universities in the USA and internationally. Along with his colleagues in So Percussion, Adam is Edward T. Cone performer-in-residence at Princeton University. He received his Doctor of Musical Arts and his Masters degrees at Yale with marimba soloist Robert van Sice, and his Bachelors at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Michael Rosen.
Breathing The Everyday is a visual haiku reflecting on the everyday and ordinary. Digital photography mimics vintage style, exploring extraordinary qualities within the subjects.
Take a breath Hold it Breathe out See the everyday
Featured Image: Breathing the Everyday 24 (2016, digital print)
New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice.
Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a ‘formidable new-music force’ by TimeOutNY. Their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today.
Group members are William Lang on trombone, Carlos Cordeiro on bass clarinet, Jeffrey Gavett singing baritone and Andy Kozar on trumpet.
They will perform selections from their “Monodramas,” featuring dramatic works by composers Andy Akiho, Hannah Lash, and loadbang’s trumpeter, Andy Kozar.
-Andy Akiho’s rhythmically intense Six Haikus sets texts by the composer to rhythms inspired by his experience as a virtuoso steel pan player.
-Hannah Lash’s Stoned Prince follows the exploits, real and imagined, of Prince Harry in her romantic avant-garde style.
-Andy Kozar’s uniquely explosive Mass dramatizes the composer’s questioning of faith in a jump-cut sequence of leaps across musical registers and styles.
THREE FREE CONCERTS TO CELEBRATE 40 YEARS OF MUSIC!
Funding for RAW Jazz is provided by The Evelyn W. Preston Memorial Trust Fund, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee; and Edward C. & Ann T. Roberts Foundation.
Steve Swell’s Kende Dreams Friday, September 16 | 7:30 PM *At Asylum Hill Congregational Church, 814 Asylum Ave, Hartford, Connecticut,www.ahcc.org The group will play compositions inspired by the music of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. “Kende” refers to the spiritual leaders of tribes in a region that became modern-day Hungary. According to Steve Swell, “It is never too late for we humans to collectively overcome our more negative inclinations, as I believe we are wired to fulfill the destinies of our best selves. That is my Kende Dream.”
Steve Swell – Trombone; Rob Brown – Alto Saxophone; William Parker – Bass; Gerald Cleaver – Drums
“ …Swell and his cohorts have created a spry and individual take on the improvised language of human interaction, whether drawn from folk musics or rigorous study.”– Clifford Allen, Jazz Right Now
Mario Pavone, Street Songs/The Accordion Project Saturday, September 17 | 7:30 PM At Real Art Ways A suite of earthy tunes recalls music heard in the ethnically diverse neighborhoods of postwar Waterbury. Bassist/composer/bandleader Mario Pavone has a stellar reputation among fans of avant-garde jazz. His inspiration for these pieces was, “going to the drugstore for my aunts and my mother, hearing the various musics, Italian, Portuguese, Polish. I called it front-stoop music, and much of it was based on the accordion.”
Mario Pavone – Bass/Compositions; Dave Ballou – Trumpet/Arrangements; Tony Malaby – Tenor and Soprano Saxophones; Adam Matlock – Accordion; Peter McEachern – Trombone; Ben Stapp – Tuba; Leise Ballou – French Horn; Carl Testa – Bass; Mike Sarin – Drums
“ …Mr. Pavone’s sharp attack and forceful presence, was kinetic.” – Phillip Lutz, New York Times
Trio 3 Sunday, September 18 | 3 PM At Real Art Ways A group where music is the leader. The unconventional collaboration of internationally-recognized jazz masters, formed to centralize the members’ creative energies and promote a single governing principle: organic improvisation. Everyone is a distinct soloist but it’s definitely an unadulterated group-based effort. Deeply rooted in the tradition, these jazz veterans describe their sound as “futuristic music within the idiomatic continuum of jazz.” Like musical alchemists, Trio 3 boldly carries the music forward spinning 3-dimensional jazz, reconfiguring conventions of compositions, harmony, meter and melody.
Trio 3: Reggie Workman – Bass; Oliver Lake – Saxophone, Flute; Andrew Cyrille – Drums
“ …free jazz as rigorous discourse, and a direct response to nothing beyond its own brimming potential.”– Nate Chinen, New York Times
A Collection of Vernacular and Found Photography from Michael Shortell
Michael Shortell has been integral to the Hartford art scene for decades. From his framing shop to his gallery to his personal collections, he has demonstrated his keen taste and committed support of artists. We celebrate his contributions with an exhibition curated from his personal collection of casual and found photography. The exhibit will reflect the progression from rigidly posed tintype portraits to everyday snapshots taken with simple, inexpensive cameras.
Photos will be grouped in deliberate ways – similar poses, subjects or angles – such as one series showing two sisters in repeated identical poses over time as they grow up. Other groups include couples in prom attire and people showing off newly-bought clothing with strikingly similar poses and expressions.
At the end of the exhibit, viewers will be invited to print out and add their own selfies to the wall, contributing to the ongoing history of the snapshot.
Many artists get their most creative ideas while preoccupied with another task – a long drive being one of the best. The three artists in Distracted Driving make work that is idea based; work that is not always what it first appears. Whether contemplation on language, self-representation or morality, each piece takes you on a ride of discovery.
Joe Bun Keo – (Hartford, Connecticut) Cecil Gresham, Sr. – (Bloomfield, Connecticut) Scott Penkava – (Brooklyn, New York)
Curator: David Borawski
About the Artists
Joe Bun Keo lives and works in Hartford, Connecticut. His sculptural, installation and conceptual works utilize semantics to bring forth issues of cultural identity and the evolution of language. He has participated in or assisted with projects in Germany, the United Kingdom and France, and has exhibited all over the United States. He was selected for SLIDE SLAM at Real Art Ways in 2010. Keo received his BFA from the Hartford Art School. He was selected as a candidate for The Mountain School of Arts (2012; Los Angeles, CA), nominated for the Wellesley College Alice C. Cole ’42 Fellowship (2013-2014; Wellesley, MA) and is currently pursuing his MFA. “The kitschy aesthetic of mass-produced novelties and the everyday utility of household items serve as vessels to deliver visual punchlines that touch base on cultural identity, and the complexities of linguistics.”
Cecil Gresham, Sr. currently lives and works in Bloomfield, Connecticut. His abstract work has been described as both “unconventional” and “bold.” His unique style combines digital print work with various techniques and materials in experimental ways. Inspired by such artists as Basquiat, Arbus, Bacon and Driskell, Gresham delves into the marginal aspects of his subject material to enter another conceptual realm. There the viewer is invited to confront all the layers of meaning that underscore the most ordinary of surface representations. “I like to think that my creativity is one big gift box, full of surprises and disappointments. I love those challenges in the creative process. In the end, I blow out the candles with the hope others will find meaning and depth of enjoyment from my work.”
Scott Penkava was born in rural Minnesota at the tail end of the Carter Administration, and headed up to urban Minnesota a few years after Kurt Cobain died. He finished undergrad in Minnesota and moved to Brooklyn before everyone had smart phones and got his Master’s from Hunter as Facebook was becoming a pretty big deal. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He is likely to be found watching “Ironman” and welding on something functionless, or building something highly functional against a backdrop of philosophy podcasts.
Solo exhibition of the fabric-text constructions of Southbury, Connecticut artist Rita Valley. Quilted and sewn “paintings” carry the phrases of a downward spiraling economy, such as “Wage Slave” and “No Future.” The irony is not lost on these declarations juxtaposed upon decorative patterned fabric.
Curator: David Borawski
About the Artist
Rita Valley lives and works in Connecticut. Her works explore issues of inequality, the waging of war and financial disparity, with recent economic trends providing further fodder for her studio investigations.
She studied at Bard College and graduated from Bennington College with a degree in Studio Art and a minor in Literature. She has shown throughout New England and in New York City.
She has received two State of Connecticut Individual Artist Grants and recently was commissioned by a collaboration between Yale University Art Gallery and Artspace (New Haven) to create an original artist’s book, Better Guns and Gardens. Her work has recently been shown at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn.
“Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.” – Joan Mitchell
Surface Work brings together five contemporary women artists working in the tradition of abstraction, each of whom are moving it forward in new directions exploring line, texture and color within as well as on the surface.
Deborah Dancy – (Storrs, Connecticut) Janet Lage – (Old Lyme, Connecticut) Alyse Rosner – (Westport, Connecticut) Rosa Valado – (Brooklyn, New York) Amy Vensel – (Newtown, Connecticut)
Curator: David Borawski
Featured Image: Janet Lage – TRASHED, Stubborn Love (detail)
Join us for the fourth installment of Spectacle at Real Art Ways. Since 2014, we have gathered an intergenerational group – mostly different each time – of improvisors in the spring.
Expect a mix of groupings small and large and, likely, a small orchestra rounding out the afternoon.
“Contemporary creative music often seeks to balance the energy of spontaneous real-time exploratory playing with the design potential of structure and form. Morris and Haynes have brought together a pool of talented musicians and the without-a-net framework and unexpected combinations are likely to inspire exciting playing.” – John Adamian, CTNow Read the complete article here.
Participating Musicians: William Parker /contrabass violin and more Hamid Drake / drums and percussion Mixashawn Rozie / saxophones, flutes Daniel Carter / saxophones, trumpet Fay Victor / voice Jin Hi Kim / komungo Jerome Deupree /drums and percussion Sarah Hughes / alto saxophone Rex Bennett / trombone Gabe Terracciano / violin Jacob Means / mandolin and mandocello Rob Oxoby / contrabass violin Stephen Haynes / cornets, flugelhorn, alto horn Joe Morris / guitar, contrabass violin
Join us for an artist talk and discussion with Mohamad Hafez, followed by a Q & A session with audience members. This is a free event!
Mohamad Hafez was born in Damascus, raised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and educated in the Midwestern United States. A New Haven-based architect, Hafez uses plaster, rigid foam, paint and found objects to create three dimensional architectural streetscapes, installations and wall murals of his native Syria that are deeply personal, photorealistic and surreal. Expressing the juxtaposition of East and West within him, Hafez’s art represents the urban fabric of the Middle East, and serves as a backdrop for his own political and social expression.
