Real Art Ways | Independent Cinema | Contemporary Art | Live Art

Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, and Marilyn Crispell in Concert

Real Art Ways presents a free summer concert on Friday, 7/7 at 7:30pm featuring Mark Dresser on bass, Gerry Hemmingway on percussion, and Marilyn Crispell on piano. Admission is free. Funding for this performance is provided by the Evelyn Preston Fund.

Mark Dresser – bass

“Calling contrabassist Mark Dresser a virtuoso is like saying Albert Einstein was good at math.” San Diego City Times.

“Mr. Dresser, a bassist who is one of the great instrumental forces in recent American jazz outside of the mainstream.” – New York Times

Mark Dresser is a Grammy nominated, internationally renowned bass player, improviser, composer, and interdisciplinary collaborator. He has recorded over one hundred forty CDs including three solo CDs and a DVD. From 1985 to 1994, he was a member of Anthony Braxton’s Quartet, which recorded nine CDs and was the subject of Graham Locke’s book Forces in Motion (Da Capo). He has also performed and recorded music of Ray Anderson, Jane Ira Bloom, Tim Berne, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Osvaldo Golijov, Gerry Hemingway, Bob Ostertag, Joe Lovano, Roger Reynolds, Henry Threadgill, Dawn Upshaw, John Zorn. Dresser most recent and internationally acclaimed new music for jazz quintet, Nourishments (2013) his latest CD (Clean Feed) marks his re-immersion as a bandleader. Since 2007 he has been deeply involved in telematic music performance and education. He was awarded a 2015 Shifting Foundation Award and 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award. He is Professor of Music at University of California, San Diego. More information can be found here.

Gerry Hemingway – Drums/Percussion

Gerry Hemingway is an American drummer and composer. Hemingway was a member of the Anthony Braxton quartet from 1983 to 1994. He has also performed with Ernst Reijseger, Anthony Davis, Earl Howard, Leo Smith, George E. Lewis, Ray Anderson, Mark Helias, Reggie Workman, Michael Moore, Oliver Lake, Marilyn Crispell, Christy Doran, John Wolf Brennan, Don Byron, Cecil Taylor, and Cuong Vu.

Hemingway received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work in music composition in 2000, and was a student of Alan Dawson. He is a graduate of Foote School in New Haven. He has recorded on over one hundred albums for the labels Clean Feed, Enja, hatArt, Palmetto, Random Acoustics, and Tzadik. He owns his own label, Auricle. More information can be found here.

Marilyn Crispell – Piano

“Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz.” – New York Times

“Marilyn Crispell….has been one of the most deliciously unpredictable and distinctive piano improvisers in jazz for more than four decades.” – The Chicago Reader

Marilyn Crispell has been a composer and performer of contemporary improvised music since 1978. For ten years, she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble, and she has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and with players on the American and international jazz scene, also working with dancers, poets, film-makers and visual artists, and teaching workshops in improvisation. She has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission. For more information, click here.

Photo by: Claire Stefani

Creative Cocktail Hour

Live music, art exhibitions, DJ, and you. Come as you are.

A monthly experience of art, community, and connection in Hartford.

Everybody is welcome, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Featuring:

Live Music: Nelson Bello & Friends: funk, soul, rhythm and blues with Nelson Bello on percussion, Dexter Pettaway on drums, Simone Moñe on vocals, Will Price on saxophone, Asa Livingston on bass, and Jeremiah Fuller on piano.

A Performance from The Dance Collective: The Dance Collective aims to empower women to have a voice and an equal opportunity in dance by providing choreographic and leadership opportunities. By sharing professional contemporary dance with new audiences and providing performances in diverse locations, they work to bridge the gap between the arts and our community. Their studio space in Hartford, CT provides creatives with a home to hone in on their movement vocabulary and we hold the belief that everyone can dance and everyone should.

Music from DJ Mr. Realistic

Art Exhibitions from:

Paloma Izquierdo, Miguel Gaydosh, Matthew Schreiber, Laura Henriksen, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Dylan Hausthor

Food Truck: Mama Nena

Hands-on Art Making Activities

& You!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about community and expression.

Buy your tickets online and skip the line at the door!

Governor Ned Lamont in Conversation with Mark Pazniokas

On Wednesday, 5/3 at 7pm, join us for an in-person conversation with Governor Ned Lamont and Mark Pazniokas of CT Mirror. This event is free! Registration required.

In person: Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford

Live streaming option available via Zoom.

Gov. Ned Lamont won a convincing reelection last year as a defender of the fiscal guardrails that have capped spending and pushed the state to use its historic run of budget surpluses to fill the rainy day fund and begin paying down Connecticut’s considerable pension debt.

Is that what the governor sees as his mandate and mission for the next four years, imposing fiscal discipline on a state that has the second-highest per-capita debt in the U.S. and has struggled through much of the past three decades to grow jobs in the economy?

Join us for a public conversation with Lamont, a Democratic governor who has positioned himself between a Republican legislative minority that insists the state can afford broader tax cuts and a Democratic majority intent on addressing unmet needs and income inequality.

Register to attend in-person!

Register to attend via Zoom!

Riverwood Poetry Series

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2022 through May 2023. Each night begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally- or nationally-known poets, followed by an open mic – one poem, one page.

Join us for this in-person reading! Audience mask wearing is strongly encouraged, but not required.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

May’s Poets:

Christie Max Williams is a writer and award winning actor. His debut poetry collection, The Wages of Love, won the 2022 William Meredith Poetry Prize. Originally from California and then New York City, he now lives in Mystic, Connecticut where he and his wife raise their daughter and son. He has worked as an actor and director in California, New York, and Connecticut. He has also worked as a fruit vendor in Paris, a salmon fisherman in Alaska, a consultant on Wall Street, a writer for the National Audubon Society, and in leadership posts for non-profit organizations. He co-founded, and for many years directed, the Arts Cafe Mystic, which is in its 29th year of presenting programs featuring readings by America’s best poets, complemented by music of New England’s finest musicians. His poetry has been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, and has won the Grolier Prize, placed second in the Connecticut River Review Contest, and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

Doug Anderson is widely published in peer reviewed journals and has written books of poems, plays, short stories, a memoir, book reviews, and essays. He has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Counsel, and Poets & Writers. His book, The Moon Reflected Fire, won the Kate Tufts Discovering Award and Blues for Unemployed Secret Police a grant from the Eric Matthieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets. He has a new poetry in Nine Mile, The Massachusetts Review, and The San Pedro River Review. His poetry book, Horse Medicine, was published by Barrow Street Books in 2015. He will read from his most recent book of poems, Undress, She Said, published by Four Way Books in 2022.

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”

Knuckleball

Stephen Haynes returns to Real Art Ways to share his latest project – delayed for three years by the pandemic – a pocket brass band called Knuckleball. Expect the unexpected!

“A knuckleball is like trying to hit a butterfly in a typhoon. It shakes side to side; it may go straight left on one pitch. It might go straight down to a right-hander on another pitch. It may stay on the very same plane on one pitch. The thing that makes a knuckleball effective is that you cannot predict which way the ball is going to move, which makes it an extremely hard pitch to hit.” – RA Dickey (Interviewed by Terry Gross).

The performance will feature Stephen Haynes on cornet, flugelhorn; Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, flugelhorn; Herb Robertson on cornet, flugelhorn; Sam Newsome on soprano saxophone; Josh Roseman on tenor trombone; Ben Stapp on tuba, sousaphone; and Eric Rosenthal on drums / percussion.

Stephen Haynes is an improviser, arts organizer and recording artist. His practice ranges from small groups to large orchestras with a focus on working directly with composers in the development of new music. His work is featured on Pillars, Tyshawn Sorey’s groundbreaking work for octet released on Firehouse 12 Records. He is also a founding member of Adam Rudolph’s East Coast version of Go: Organic Orchestra. Over the past 40 years, he has worked with a range of vanguard composers including Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, George Russell, Butch Morris, Rhys Chatham, LaMonte Young and Earle Brown.

Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

Creative Cocktail Hour

Live music, art exhibitions, food and drinks, and you. Come as you are!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about the people. Everybody is welcome, conversations abound, people connect.

Live Music:

Fabian Almazan – Piano

Fabian Almazan is a Cuban-American pianist/composer. During the completion of his jazz piano bachelor’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music, Almazan immersed himself in the realm of orchestral composition studying instrumentation and orchestration with Mr. Giampaolo Bracali. He is the founder and director of Biophilia Records and has worked diligently towards ensuring a continued dialogue of awareness concerning music and environmental justice. He has toured his music extensively as well as accompanied artists such as Linda May Han Oh, Terence Blanchard, Gretchen Parlato, John Hollenbeck, Mark Guiliana, Dave Douglass, Avishai Cohen and Ambrose Akinmusire among others.

Awards include 2 Grammy nominations, the SWR New Jazz Meeting commission, the Copland Fund, the Jerome Fund for Emerging Composers Award, the Jazz Gallery Residency, Rockerfeller Brothers Residency, Cintas Foundation Award in Composition and the Sundance Composers’ Lab.

For more information on Fabian Almazan, please visit their website.

Linda May Han Oh – Bass

“Her innovative range and stellar improvisations have made [her] one of the most dynamic rising stars in jazz today.” – The Wall Street Journal

“Engrossing, shapeshifting… [her] vibrant tone, close control and confident attack immediately established why she is such an in-demand performer.” The Financial Times

Linda May Han Oh is a Grammy award-winning bassist and composer and recorded with artists such as Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas, Terri Lyne Carrington, Steve Wilson, Geri Allen and Vijay Iyer. She was voted the 2018-2021 Bassist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist’s Association, as well 2022 Bassist of the Year in Jazztimes. Linda also was voted 2019 Bassist of the Year in Hothouse Magazine and was the 2020 recipient APRA award for Best New Jazz Work. In 2023 she received the prestigious Herb Albert Award for music.

Linda is currently Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music in the bass department and is also part of the Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice led by Terri Lyne Carrington. Linda was featured on bass in the 2020 Pixar movie “Soul” under the musical direction of Jon Batiste (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) alongside drummer Roy Haynes and was the model for the character in the film – bassist “Miho.”

For more information, please visit her website.

Troy Roberts – Tenor Saxophone

“He amply demonstrates that it’s possible to pay homage to the great tenor players of jazz and still create a fresh approach that leaves the listener always in anticipation of what he’ll come up with next.” – James Morrison

Troy Roberts is a two-time Grammy nominated Australian saxophonist & composer. He is based in New York City, maintaining a busy performance & recording schedule around the globe with some of the greatest jazz artists of today, and is currently celebrating his 14th release, ‘Nu-Jive: Nations United’ (Toy Robot Music).

Roberts has received numerous accolades including three DownBeat SM Jazz Soloist Awards, 2 Grammy Nominations, and was semi-finalist in the 2008 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. Graduating with a Bachelor of Music at the young age of 19, he has performed around Europe and the US extensively with artists such as Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, Joey DeFrancesco, James Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Christian McBride, Sammy Figueroa, Billy Hart, Dave Douglas, Orrin Evans and Kurt Elling to name a few, and also completed a Masters Degree at The University of Miami. As an educator, Roberts has presented numerous masterclasses and clinics at prestigious colleges, conservatoriums and universities around the world.

In 2012, he shared the stage in an international septet comprised of jazz giants Wayne Shorter, Richard Bona, Vinnie Colaiuta and Zakir Hussein for Herbie Hancock’s launch of International Jazz Day at The UN, NYC. He was also part of Hancock’s 2014 International Jazz Day held in Osaka, Japan performing with jazz luminaries such as Gregory Porter, Marcus Miller, Roy Hargrove, Esperanza Spaulding and John Scofield. As a long-time New York City resident, Troy maintains a busy performance and recording schedule around the globe with some of the greatest jazz artists of today, and is currently celebrating his fourteenth release as a leader, ‘NU-JIVE: Nations United’ (Toy Robot Music).

For more information, please visit his website.

Zack O’Farrill – Drums

Zack O’Farrill is a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-musical artist. He has studied with musicians such as Dave Meade, Vince Cherico, Victor Jones, Kendrick Scott, Justin Dicioccio, John Riley, Miles Okazaki, Roy Nathanson, Arturo O’Farrill, Joe Gonzalez, and many more. He received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the CUNY Macaulay Honors College at City College. He is currently working on his Master’s Degree in Jazz Percussion from the Manhattan School of Music.

O’Farrill is also a dedicated educator who has taught in after-school music programs in New York City since 2010. He is the director of the Fat Afro Latin Jazz Cats youth big band, which offers free instruction to talented and deserving high school students from all boroughs. He has been a faculty member of the Flynn Center Latin Jazz for Teens camp in Burlington Vermont for 7 years. He also teaches privately at his home in Brooklyn. If you’re interested in studying with Zack, click here.

As a composer Zack has had compositions featured on recordings with the Marquès Stinson O’Farrill Trio, the Eco-Music Big Band, and his composition “There’s a Statue of José Martí in Central Park” closes the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra’s Grammy-winning record Cuba: The Conversation Continues (listen here). Zack currently leads his own quartet, performing his original music, and is in the process of planning his first record as a leader.

For more information, please visit his website.

DJ Mr. Realistic

Art Exhibitions:

Alan Neider: ‘Round About Midnight

Karl Goulet: Real Wall

Three new gallery exhibition openings in our far, middle, and main galleries!

Main/Video Gallery: Speaking Sentences Backwards; featuring works from Paloma Izquierdo, Miguel Gaydosh, Matthew Schreiber, Laura Henriksen, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, and Dylan Hausthor
Middle Gallery: Parir los pétalos by 2022 Real Art Award Recipient Romina Chuls
Far Gallery: A Temporary Weight by Roni Aviv

Food Truck

Rolling Roti: an authentic Guyanese food truck serving the downtown Hartford area

Hands-on Art Making Activities led by Real Art Ways Staff

& You!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about community and expression.

Buy your tickets online!

Aidan Levy and Tom Reney in Conversation on Sonny Rollins

On Friday, April 7 2023, Aidan Levy will be joined with Tom Reney in a conversation about Levy’s book Saxophone Colossus, the Life and Music of Sonny Rollins. This is a free community event. In collaboration with the Hartford Jazz Society.

“A revealing, comprehensive biography… [and] a brimming and organized compendium, something to keep returning to like Rollins’s records…” ― New York Times

“[Author Aidan Levy] distills essential truths… and ties strands of Mr. Rollins’s history together in poignant ways.”―Wall Street Journal

“An incredibly deep, well-researched and thoughtfully written biography.” ―DownBeat

Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the “Saxophone Colossus,” he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. A bridge from bebop to the avant-garde, he is a lasting link to the golden age of jazz, pictured in the iconic “Great Day in Harlem” portrait. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called “the only jazz recluse” has gone largely untold—until now.

About Aidan Levy

Aidan Levy is the author of Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins and Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed, and editor of Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters. A former Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, JazzTimes, The Nation, and elsewhere. He is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, where he has served as co-convener of the African American Studies Colloquium and works with the Center for Jazz Studies. For ten years, he was the baritone saxophonist in the Stan Rubin Orchestra. He lives with his family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

About Tom Reney

Tom Reney is the producer/host of Jazz à la Mode on New England Public Media. Tom was honored by the Jazz Journalists Association with the Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Career Excellence in Broadcasting in 2019. In addition to hosting Jazz à la Mode since 1984, Tom writes the jazz blog and produces the Jazz Beat podcast at NEPM. He began working in jazz radio in 1977 at WCUW, a community-licensed radio station in Worcester, Massachusetts. Tom holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he majored in English and African American Studies.

Artist Talk: Kate Bae

Thursday, March 30, 6:00 PM. Free admission, no RSVP required.

You’re invited to a gallery talk with artist Kate Bae, who will discuss the current exhibition A Rite of Passage at Real Art Ways. Bae is a recipient of a 2021 Real Art Award.

Born in Busan, Korea, Kate Bae is a New York-based independent curator and artist working through painting and site-specific installations. Bae’s practice is concerned with multiple identities, memory, neuroses, and psychological borders. Bae holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in painting. Bae is a founder of Women’s Cactus for the Arts and has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo shows at the Sunroom Project Space at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY and the Deiglan Gallery in Akureyri, Iceland. She is a grant recipient of a Real Art Award, MVP Chapter Lead Grant from Malikah Gender Justice Institute, Ora Lerman Trust, Creative Capital Professional Development Program and the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. She has attended many residencies including the Golden Foundation, the Studios at Mass MoCA, Trestle Gallery, Wassaic Project, Chashama and Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, among others.

Artist Talk: Howard el-Yasin

Thursday, March 9, 6:00 PM. Free admission, no RSVP required.

You’re invited to a gallery talk with artist Howard el-Yasin, in conversation with writer and curator Sarah Fritchey. el-Yasin and Fritchey will discuss the process and concepts behind the current exhibition Specific Matter at Real Art Ways.

Howard el-Yasin is a New Haven, CT-based interdisciplinary artist, curator and educator holding degrees from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA ’16), Wesleyan University, and New England College. They have exhibited their artwork nationally, and have work in several private collections. They are currently an adjunct faculty member at MICA, and the co-founder/curator of SomethingProjects, an artist-run curatorial initiative. They were a recipient of MICA’s Leslie King-Hammond Award (2016) and the Faculty and Staff Queer Alliance Award (2015). They are a trustee of the Vermont Studio Center and a former VSC residency fellowship recipient (2012). el-Yasin has also served as a volunteer leader with numerous Connecticut-based non-profit organizations, including as Director/Curator of Arts Literature Laboratory (2002-2009).

Photo Credit: Steven Laschever

Sarah Fritchey is an independent Curator and Writer who works at the intersections of art, justice, civic engagement, memory and belonging. Fritchey served as the Curator at Artspace New Haven from 2014 to 2020, organizing group exhibitions, solo projects, and public programs that mobilized partnerships between long term and transient residents, local organizations, and major institutions. She has curated exhibitions across the country, including the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Lyman Allyn Art Museum (New London, CT), the Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), Sideshow Gallery (NYC), Franklin Street Works (Stamford, CT), and Real Art Ways with the exhibition Statues Also Die. She has contributed writing to Artforum.com, Hyperallergic, Art New England Magazine, Big, Red & Shiny, Artscope Magazine, and the Hartford Courant. She serves as an organizer and advisor to Nasty Women Connecticut, and holds an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Studio Practice from Hamilton College, and is an alum of No Longer Empty’s Curatorial Lab.

Artist Talk: Rashmi Talpade

Friday, March 3, 6:00 PM. Free admission, no RSVP required.

You’re invited to a gallery talk with artist Rashmi Talpade, who will discuss her photo collage practice and the current exhibition Every Little Thing at Real Art Ways.

Rashmi Talpade is a professional artist with a Fine Arts degree from Mumbai, India, specializing in painting and photography. Since immigrating to Connecticut in 1991, she has been involved in the local arts community and has exhibited her work statewide, in New York, New Mexico and India. She is a recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts and she has received numerous grants from the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Arts to support her public art projects. These projects include works at the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, the five branches of the New Haven Public Library, the Wallingford Public Library, the Essex and Southington Elementary Schools, and the Bandra Municipal School in Mumbai, India. She also has upcoming projects at the New Britain Public Library and with the Spanish Community of Wallingford. Her photo collages are in the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of Art and the Roopankar Museum of Modern Art, India.

Photo Credit: Steven Laschever

George Balanchine Book Event: Mr. B by Jennifer Homans

On Sunday, March 26 2023, join us for a reading and discussion with Jennifer Homans about her new book Mr B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century. 2:30 discussion immediately followed by a book signing. This is a free community event.

RSVP HERE TO ATTEND.

“An intricate, meticulously researched biography of the revered and controversial dance icon…engrossing, vivid…the definitive account.” – Kirkus Reviews

Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—The New York Times called him “the Shakespeare of dancing.” His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine’s tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances.

About Jennifer Homans

Jennifer Homans is the dance critic for The New Yorker and the bestselling author of Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022) and Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (2010). She is the editor of When the Facts Change, a collection of writings by her late husband, Tony Judt. Homans was a professional dancer and performed with the Pacific Northwest Ballet before earning a BA at Columbia University and a PhD in Modern European History at New York University, where she is now a Distinguished Scholar in Residence and the Founding Director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts.

RSVP HERE TO ATTEND

Creative Cocktail Hour

Live music, art exhibitions, food and drinks, and you. Come as you are!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about the people. Everybody is welcome, conversations abound, people connect.

Live Music:

La Banda Chuska:

La Banda Chuska are re-imagining the vintage sounds of Peruvian cumbia and surf through the lens of their New York City home and diverse musical and cultural backgrounds (Peru, PR, Argentina, USA). They take inspiration from the twangy 1960s surf bands of Lima (Los Belkings, Los Siderals) as well as the psychedelic flavors of 1970s chicha (Los Destellos, Los Orientales de Paramonga). Their post-punk energy and subversive playfulness have also evoked comparisons to a tropical version of the B-52s.

The band has been playing their dance-y and experimental tunes around NYC for three years, building up a loyal local following through a monthly residency at Brooklyn’s Barbès and opening for touring groups including Meridian Brothers and Son Rompe Pera. An NYC fixture, they’ve performed at the Brooklyn Museum to celebrate Latinx history month, as well as venues like the Sultan Room, TV Eye, and the SoundWaves Festival at White Feather Farm, among others. Internationally, they’ve toured in Mexico including an appearance at the popular international festival, Carnaval de Bahidorá.

They have self-released their debut EP vía streaming services and cassette and are finishing work on their debut LP. With Adele Fournet on keys/vocals, Felipe Wurst and Sam Day Harmet on guitars, Erica Mancini on accordion/vocals, Abe Pollack on bass, and Joel Mateo on drums.

For more information, check out their Instagram!

DJ Mr. Realistic

Art Exhibitions:

Alan Neider: Exhibition opening and reception at CCH

Karl Goulet: Exhibition opening and reception at CCH

Kate Bae: A Rite of Passage

Howard el-Yasin: Specific Matter

Food Truck

Munchers International: A Taste of Jamaica!

Hands-on Art Making Activities led by Real Art Ways Staff

& You!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about community and expression.

Buy your tickets online!

Riverwood Poetry Series

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2022 through May 2023. Each night begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally- or nationally-known poets, followed by an open mic – one poem, one page.

Join us for this in-person reading! Audience mask wearing is strongly encouraged, but not required.

Bring a poetry book–gently used, or new–to the book swap. If you bring a book, you may take a book. Start the new year with new reading!

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

April’s Poet:

January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Glitter Road (forthcoming, 2024) Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009). From 2012-2018, she was the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Sierra magazine, among others. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She currently serves as the 2022-2023 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writers Programs (AWP).

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”

Improvisations Now

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. A journey with preconditions through waves of sonic discovery.

Check out the entire series here.

Tony Malaby – Tenor and Soprano Saxophone

“One of the best saxophone players of their generation.” – The New York Times

“One of the most riveting saxophone players in Jazz.” – NPR

Tony Malaby (b. 1964) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He has played with several notable jazz groups, including Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Paul Motian’s Electric Bepop Band, Mark Helia’s Open Loose, Fred Hersch’s Trio +2, and Walt Whitman project. He has also played with bands led by Mario Pavone, Chris Lightcap, Bobby Previte, Tom Varner, Marty Ehlrich, Angelica Sanchez, Mark Dresser, and Kenny Wheeler. Other collaborators included Tom Rainey, Christian Lillinger, Ben Monder, Elvind Opsvik, Nasheet Waits, and Michael Formanek. His first album as a co-leader was Cosas with Joey Sellers.

Nasheet Waits – Drums

Nasheet Waits (b. 1971) is an American jazz drummer. Waits’s longstanding projects include Jason Moran & The Bandwagon, a trio with Moran, Waits, and Tarus Mateen, Tarbaby, a trio with Eric Revis and Orrin Evans, and his band Equality.

Waits has recorded or performed with Fred Hersch, Antonio Hart, Joe Lovano, Jason Moran, Andrew Hill, Ron Carter, Tony Malaby, Bunky Green, William Parker, Eddie Gomez, Casimir Liberski, John Medeski, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, and Amir ElSaffar.

Instagram

Joe Morris – Bass

“One of the most profound improvisers at work in the United States.” – Wire Magazine

Morris was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Fred Hopkins, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others.

Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 200 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan.

He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

Improvisations Now

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. A journey with preconditions through waves of sonic discovery.

Check out the entire series here.

Ingrid Laubrock- Tenor Saxophone

Ingrid Laubrock (b. 1970) is a German jazz saxophonist, who primarily plays tenor saxophone but also performs and records on soprano, alto, and baritone saxophones. In 1998, she released her first solo album Who Is It? and was nominated for the ‘Rising Star of the Year’ award at the 1999 BT Jazz Awards. She was also nominated for the BBC Award ‘Rising Star’ in 2005 and in 2009 won the SWR Jazz Award for her recording Sleepthief, featuring pianist Liam Noble and drummer Tom Rainey (her husband). They recorded a 2011 album called The Madness of Crowds.

She has played and recorded with Brazilian singer Monica Vasconcelos’ band NÓIS and the Brazilian quartet NÓIS4 of which she is a founding member. Other musicians she has made guest appearances with include Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, Polar Bear, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Scott Fields, and Anthony Braxton.

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Tom Rainey – Drums

Tom Rainey (b. 1957) is an American jazz drummer. He has played with Tim Berne, Nels Cline, Drew Gress, Mark Helias, Fred Hersch, Tony Malaby, Simon Nabatov, Tom Varner, and Kenny Werner. Rainey worked with Berne in the 1990s and 2000s in the bands Big Satan, Hard Cell, Paraphrase, and Science Friction. After thirty years as a sideman, he released his first album, Pool School (Clean Feed, 2010) in a trio with guitarist Mary Halvorson and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock.

Brandon Lopez – Bass

Brandon Lopez (b. 1988) is a composer and bassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. His music has been praised as “brutal” (Chicago Reader) and “relentless” (The New York Times).

Lopez has worked beside many luminaries of jazz, classical, poetry, and experimental music, including Fred Moten, John Zorn, Okkyung Lee, Ingrid Laubrock, Tony Malaby, Tyshawn Sorey, Bill Nace, Chris Potter, Edwin Torres, Tom Rainey, Cecilia Lopez, Sun Ra Arkestra, Susan Alcorn, Mette Rasmussen, and many others.

As a 2019–2020 Artist in Residence at Roulette, Lopez will play with his trio consisting of Gerald Cleaver, & Steve Baczkowski, a 4tet adding Cecilia Lopez, as well as a solo performance and duet with Greg Kelley. This continues Lopez’s work as 2018 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room and 2018 Van Lier Fellow at Roulette Intermedium, Recent highlight performances include opening the 2018–2019 season of the New York Philharmonic as a featured soloist in Ashley Fure’s “Filament” and a number of works with John Zorn, including the Zorn’s 35th anniversary of “Cobra”.

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Joe Morris – Guitar

Morris was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Fred Hopkins, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others.

Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 200 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan.

He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

Improvisations Now

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. A journey with preconditions through waves of sonic discovery.

Check out the entire series here.

Daniel Carter – Tenor & Alto Sax

Daniel Carter is an American free jazz musician who plays the saxophone, trumpet, and the flute. Carter has recorded and performed with many distinguished musicians, including William Parker, Federico Ughi, The Negatones, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, Soul-Junk, Anne Waldman, Cooper-Moore, Matthew Shipp, and scientist/musician Matthew Putman, among others. He is a member of the cooperative. free jazz groups Test, and Other Dimensions in Music.

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Michael Wimberly – Drums

Michael Wimberly is a percussionist performing in the soul, funk, rock, jazz, and classical music genres. A drummer and percussionist, Michael Wimberly is also a triple threat: he is a composer of note and has written for prestigious New York dance companies (Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Joffrey Ballet). Although his percussive repertoire is replete with traditional rhythms, Michael is known for playing cutting-edge music involving a meld of visuals and audio, not to mention a penchant for contemporary jazz.

As a composer and sound designer, Wimberly’s compositions have been performed by dance companies Urban Bush Women, Joffrey Ballet II, Alvin Ailey, Ailey II, Philadanco, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, Joan Millers Dance Players, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Noir, Alpha Omega, Purelements, and The National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Film scores include As An Act of Protest by Dennis Leroy Moore, and Atlantic City Lights by Brent Owens for HBO. Sound design for theatre includes Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Classical Theatre of Harlem, Saint Lucy’s Eyes by Bridgette Wimberly for the Women’s Project & Cherry Lane Theatre, and Iced Out, Shackled and Chained for the National Black Theatre for which Wimberly received two Audelco nominations.

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Jamie Saft – Piano

Jamie Saft is an American keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist and composer. He has performed and recorded with an eclectic variety of artists including John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Iggy Pop, Steve Swallow, Bobby Previte, and Marc Ribot. He has also written several original film scores including Murderball and God Grew Tired of Us; selections from these were released by Tzadik Records as A Bag of Shells. The same label has released several of Saft’s recordings.

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Joe Morris – Bass

“Joe Morris is the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” –DownBeat Magazine

“One of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.” – Wire Magazine

Morris was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Fred Hopkins, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others.

Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 200 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan.

He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

Riverwood Poetry Series

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2022 through May 2023. Each night begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally- or nationally-known poets, followed by an open mic – one poem, one page.

The authors’ book will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

Bring a friend! Free of charge. Ample parking available at Real Art Ways. Audience mask wearing is encouraged, but not required.

March’s Poets:

Julie Choffel

Julie Choffel is the author of the The Hello Delay (Fordham UP) and, most recently, the chapbook The Inevitable Return of What We Do Not Love (Finishing Line Press). Born and raised in Austin, TX, she now lives near Hartford and teaches at the University of Connecticut.

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer and visual artist. He is the author of two poetry collections: the full-length collection Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022), and Ubasute, which won the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. His honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies. His has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Plume Poetry, Poetry Daily, RHINO, Pirene’s Fountain, Cave Well, and elsewhere. He currently serves as a member of the Slapering Hol Press Advisory Committee and as a reader for Beloit Poetry Journal. Aaron earned his MFA in creative writing from Boston University and is also the author and illustrator of Text, Don’t Call: An Illustrated Guide to the Introverted Life (TarcherPerigee, 2017).

John Stanizzi

A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and New England Poet of the Year (1998), John Stanizzi has just been awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction – 2021- from the Connecticut Office of the Arts and Culture for work on his new memoir, Bless Me, Father, For I have Sinned.

John’s work has been widely published in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, Praxis, Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, the Laurel Review, Heron Clain, Impspired, the Caribbean Writer, Blue Mountain Review, Tar River, Poetlore, Rattle, Potomac Review, the Cortland Review, Stone Coast Review, Hawk and Handsaw, Plainsongs, and many others.

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”

Creative Cocktail Hour

Live music, art exhibitions, food and drinks, and you. Come as you are!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about the people. Everybody is welcome, conversations abound, people connect.

Live Music:

Elliott Sharp and Eric Mingus: Longtime collaborators, Mingus and Sharp have worked together for decades in a dizzying variety of musical situations culminating in their distinctive duo project Fourth Blood Moon in which they create a mashup of poetics, electronica, blues, opera, improvisation, funk, and the cosmic. They will be performing songs from their latest album on zOaR, Songs From A Rogue State with Mingus on vocals and Elliott Sharp on guitar and laptop.

Elliot Sharp is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2014 Fellow at Parson’s Center for Transformative Media. He received the 2015 Berlin Prize in Musical Composition from the American Academy in Berlin. He has composed scores for feature films and documentaries, created sound-design for interstitials on The Sundance Channel, MTV and Bravo networks, and has presented numerous sound installations in art galleries and museums.

Eric Mingus is the son of the legendary jazz bass player, Charles Mingus, who also plays bass! When not performing with Sharp, he works as a session musician and backing singer, playing on dates with artists such as Carla Bley, Bobby McFerrin and Karen Mantler.

DJ Mr. Realistic

Art Exhibitions:

Kate Bae: A Rite of Passage

Rashmi Talpade: Every Little Thing

Howard el-Yasin: Specific Matter

Hands-on Art Making Activities

Food Truck: East-West Grille (Laotian and Thai food with vegan and vegetarian options)

& You!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about community and expression. We’d love for you to be a part of it this month!

Buy your tickets online!

A Night of Surrealist Games

You are invited, solo or with company, for a relaxed and playful Valentine’s Day event.
Roger Clark Miller (Mission of Burma, Alloy Orchestra) will host an evening of drawing and word games that were developed during the heyday of surrealism. Games include the Exquisite Corpse drawing game (advanced drawing skills not required!), the Dream Game (a board game where you end up creating a dream!), and many varieties of surrealist word games.

Miller will not only explain and lead the games to kick off the event, but he’ll also DJ – providing a surrealistic soundtrack to the evening. Says Miller, “The wonder of these games is the unexpected juxtapositions that occur, creating amazingly synchronistic sequences and unexpected meanings and connections.”

“(Roger’s) knowledge of Surrealism and his skill in getting strangers to play together was a smashing success!” – John Andress, ICA, Boston

” At the end of the evening, the wall was covered with new creations made by people who don’t think of themselves as artists.” – Tom Johnson, First Night, Boston

“Fantastic night — a hilarious, creative, and healthy mix of mind-bend, head-clearing and humor-refraction. And met great new people.” -Attendee, Cliff Lazenby

Riverwood Poetry Series

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2022 through May 2023. Each night begins with a poetry reading featuring regionally- or nationally-known poets, followed by an open mic – one poem, one page.

The authors’ book will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will be available for purchase.

Bring a friend! Free of charge. Ample parking available at Real Art Ways. Audience mask wearing is encouraged, but not required.

February’s Poets:

Elizabeth Thomas

Elizabeth Thomas is a published writer and educator for students of all ages. She was a member of three national slam teams, organized and coached the Connecticut National Youth Slam team and was a Master Teaching Artist who has taught throughout the United States. She uses poetry as a way to unclench the fist that sometimes squeezes her heart.

Kate Rushin

Kate Rushin is the author of “The Bridge Poem,” and The Black Back-Ups. She has held fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Cave Canem Foundation. Her work is included in African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song from the Library of America, and POETRY Magazine. “The Williams Sister Play Doubles on Center Court,” was featured as a Poem-of-the-Day selection by The American Academy of Poets. She is a Professor of English and Poet in Residence at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut.

Photo by: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”