Jóhann Jóhannsson, 48

Oscar-Nominated Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson Dies At 48
by Otis Hart, NPR Music, February 10, 2018

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Alan Cheuse, 75

Alan Cheuse, Novelist And Longtime NPR Contributor, Dies At 75
by Colin Dwyer, NPR The Two-Way, July 31, 2015

Carlos Santana finds a universal tone

Carlos Santana: 'I Am A Reflection Of Your Light'
Michel Martin, Morning Edition, NPR, November 4, 2014

Mavis Staples knows how to celebrate 75 years!

Mavis Staples: Newport Folk 2014 (audio 1:24:57)

from NPR Music

The music is playing me: the great Sonny Rollins explains

Sonny Rollins: 'You Can't Think And Play At The Same Time'
by NPR Staff, May 3, 2014

The story of "A Change is Gonna Come"

Sam Cooke And The Song That 'Almost Scared Him'
by NPR Staff, NPR Music, February 1, 2014

Listen to a preview of Angélique Kidjo's "Eve"

NPR's First Listen presents

a preview of 

Eve

the new album by

Angélique Kidjo

The magnificent Angélique Kidjo
performing at Rockefeller Park, NYC
(c)2013, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

on sale January 28

***click to listen***

Remembering dancer Lisa Bufano, 40

Remembering Lisa Bufano, A Dancer Who Found Beauty In Amputation

by Andrea Shea and Peter Bufano, The Artery, WBUR, December 24, 2013

Jazz artist Esperanza Spalding calls for action on Guantanamo

Esperanza Spalding
(photo by Johann Sauty)

Esperanza Spalding: Guantanamo Doesn't Represent 'Our America'
by TELL ME MORE STAFF, NPR, November 22, 2013

Dreaming America with Sekou Sundiata

Singer Ronnell Bey
from the 51st (dream) state

Launched in April and concluding tomorrow night, Blink Your Eyes: Sekou Sundiata Revisited festival has spanned numerous performance sites around town, paying tribute to the Black poet-griot-activist who died in 2007. A presentation of MAPP International Productions, Blink Your Eyes offers a timely retrospective of Sundiata's work and of questions that preoccupied him, such as the still unfinished business of realizing American democracy and justice.

Last evening, the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in Soho presented Sundiata's final theatrical work, the 51st (dream) state, in an adaptation for radio broadcast before a live audience. It was directed by Arthur Yorinks and hosted by John Schaefer of WNYC's Soundcheck. The unusually close, intimate space at the Greene heightened connection between audience members and an array of wonderful performers including jazz singer La Tanya Hall (taking Sundiata's role of narrator) and the original vocalists, Ronnell Bey, Audrey Martell, Bora Yoon and Samita Sinha.

La Tanya Hall as Poet/Narrator

Vocal cast of The 51st (dream) state
L-r: Hall, Bora Yoon, Ronnell Bey, Samita Sinha and Audrey Martell

Aside from a few times when the flourish of music swallowed Yoon's or Sinha's occasionally wispy vocalizing--both otherwise shine in quieter, spirit-filled passages--the work proceeded with fearless honesty and radiance. The small band--led by musical director/trumpeter Eddie Allen and conducted by Richard Harper--was tight, authoritative, sensuous to the max. Sitting just a few feet away, we could feel, to the core, everything they set before us.

The 51st (Dream) State is a post-9/11 meditation and intervention. Although, as Schaefer chose to emphasize, this is not "a 9/11 piece," Sundiata did not shrink from vividly invoking chilling imagery from that time of horror. He did so with exceptional courage to witness reality, free of sentimentality, and to grapple with consequences. And then he urged us to move on because we must--as a nation in flux and possibility--visualize who we want to be when we grow up.

Sundiata concluded with this challenge: "Why don't we get our hopes up too high?"

The poet has gone. His irreverent question resounds.

Watch the Blink Your Eyes presentation of the 51st (dream) state in its entirety here:

Blink Your Eyes: Sekou Sundiata Revisited continues with these remaining programs:

Days of Art & Ideas: Democracy, Imagination and Peeps of Color Now, a panel discussion at Harlem Stage Gatehouse. Tonight at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Days of Art & Ideas: Blood, Muscle, Bone: the anatomy of wealth and poverty. Discussion and presentation on community-engagement by dance artists Liz Lerman and Jawole Zollar at Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall. Saturday, October 12, 4pm-6pm. Free with reservation. Click here.

WeDaPeoples Cabaret: Fall 2013 at Harlem Stage at Aaron Davis Hall, Saturday, October 12, 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

1983 police killing of artist Michael Stewart remembered

'It Could Have Been Me': The 1983 Death Of A NYC Graffiti Artist
by Erik Nielson, Code Switch, WNYC, September 16, 2013

Author was FBI suspect for his "anti-progress themes"

F.B.I. Listed Prize-Winning Author as a Unabomber Suspect
by Daniel McDermon, The New York Times, August 22, 2013

Writer William T. Vollmann Uncovers His FBI File
Morning Edition, NPR, August 22, 2013

An Author Without Borders
by Charles McGrath, The New York Times, July 28, 2009

Marian McPartland, 95 [UPDATE]

Marian McPartland, 'Piano Jazz' Host, Has Died
by Felix Contreras, NPR, August 21, 2013

Marian McPartland, Jazz Pianist and NPR Radio Staple, Dies at 95
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, August 21, 2013

Poetry matters: NPR talks with Nikky Finney

"And I have this - I have a friend Dorianne Laux - lives in North Carolina. And she's married to poet. And she tell me this great story at the Dodge Poetry Festival this year. She said they bought one of those real estate boxes that the agents put outside the house with the information about the house inside.

"So they put it outside their house. Their house was not for sale but they stuffed poems inside the box. And so people would stop and they thought they were taking out, you know, information that would give them the square footage about the house. And they would unfrill the paper and it would be, you know, the square footage of the human heart instead. And they would stand at the window, she said, and watch people reading the poems slowly and how slowly the car might take off. That's what we do as poets."

          --Nikky Finney

Nikky Finney Ponders Possibilities Of The Poetry Profession

Neal Conan, Talk of The Nation, NPR, June 20, 2013

Associate Press to drop coverage of dance, opera and Off-Broadway

To Be, Or Not To Be (Covered By The AP)
by Howard Sherman, NPR, June 20, 2013

The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi in conversation with Brooke Gladstone

WNYC’s “On the Media”

presents

Brooke Gladstone in a conversation with Aasif Mandvi

Tuesday, February 26 (7pm)

at WNYC’s The Greene Space

Aasif Mandvi is best known as the “Senior Muslim Correspondent” on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but as Charles Isherwood of The New York Times recently remarked, “Those who know this talented performer only from his perky mock-commentaries on The Daily Show may be surprised to discover what a skilled stage actor he is.”

On Tuesday, February 26 at 7pm, the actor and comedian will join WNYC’s On the Media host Brooke Gladstone to discuss the full breadth of his television, film and theatrical work. From reporting “fake news” to creating nuanced roles for South Asians on the New York stage, Mandvi’s work has often engaged the experience of being Muslim in a post-9/11 America. In an evening that is sure to be both entertaining and illuminating, he will discuss all this, as well as what’s next on his plate.

Aasif Mandvi made his first appearance as contributor on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on August 9, 2006. He is the recipient of the OBIE award for his critically-acclaimed one-man show Sakina's Restaurant. Other New York stage credits include the recently ended Disgraced, the 2002 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, Homebody/Kabul, Suburbia, Trudy Blue and Speak Truth to Power. His TV and film credits include The Proposal, Ghost Town, Music & Lyrics, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Movie 43, and will star alongside Owen Wilson and Vince Vaugn in The Internship.

For tickets, click here.

The Greene Space
44 Charlton Street (between Varick and Sixth Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Yeah. What Ira said.

Monica Bill Barnes & Company in Thank You and Good Night (photo by Steven Schreiber)

The utterly charming Monica Bill Barnes & Company will be at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts with This American Life host Ira Glass tomorrow and Sunday (but this is not an announcement--because you already know that, right? And, if not, you can find out more here.)

I'm bringing this up because Glass said something about his experience of seeing Barnes' troupe for the first time that I'd like to share. I'll explain why later. Here's his quote:

NPR's Ira Glass

I was inspired to make our recent cinema event after seeing MBB & CO. in June 2011. I'll be honest, I don't go to a lot of dance, but her show was the most charmingly alive dance performance I've ever seen. Literally, while it was going on, all I could think was, ‘I want to see this again. How do I see this again? How do I bring everyone I've ever met to this?’ So I created that cinema event in May 2012 where we performed an episode of our show onstage at Skirball and beamed it into movie theaters, with dances by MBB & CO. Afterwards, the most common question I was asked was 'Who were those dancers?' People kept coming up to me saying 'I don't like dance. I don't go to dance. I want to see them again.' Which, yes, is a weird thing to say about an entire art form, but the point is, they won a lot of fans that night and I think when people see a full MBB & CO. show, they'll be even more wowed.

As it turns out, I feel this way about a lot of the dance and movement-based performance I see--I want to "bring everyone I've ever met to this." I want a lot of what I see to not fade away so fast--like after a night or a few nights or, if the artists are lucky, a couple of weekends. I want it to be seen by more than the usual suspects. And I want it to be pondered and processed and taken to heart and argued about and remembered. I want it to influence things beyond dance, beyond the arts. I want it on the American breakfast table and at the water cooler and on the supermarket queue and in the neighborhood bar and in the board room and in the war room.

Good going to Barnes for getting Glass's attention and his joyful response. Her efforts are good for her, of course, and possibly good for us all. What do you think, maybe in 2013 and going forward more of us can step up our magic(k) creativity and raise the outside world's awareness about what's doing in these excellent, essential little villages we call the dance communit(ies)? Let's work on ways to bring everyone we meet to this.

In memory of David Rakoff, 47

Postscript: David Rakoff
by Hilton Als, The New Yorker, August 10, 2012

David Rakoff's 'Half Empty' Worldview Is Full Of Wit
transcript of interview from NPR's Fresh Air with host Terry Gross

This American Life contributor page for David Rakoff (audio links)

David Rakoff, Morantly Comic Essayist and Actor, Dies at 47by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, August 10, 2012

Making art your business

Artists and the Business of Art

moderated by WNYC's Leonard Lopate

at The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space

Wednesday, March 21, 7pm

WNYC's Leonard Lopate will convene two panels of gallery owners and artists to discuss the ecosystem of the New York art world in 2012.

Lopate will explore a wide range of topics in the first panel, including the state of the industry and how it has fared in the economic downturn, the exponential growth of art fairs and their impact on the way art is being marketed these days.  His guests include Sean Kelly, owner of Sean Kelly Gallery in Chelsea, and artists Pat Steir (Cheim and Read Gallery) and Richard Phillips (Gagosian Gallery).

The second panel will welcome four artists at various stages of their careers – MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning abstract expressionist Joan Snyder, interactive video artist Peter Campus, nature photographer Ryan McGinnis, and installation artist Jean Shin – to swap stories and compare notes on surviving as artists in New York.  Topics will include taking a non-art job to pay the bills, the stresses of securing and managing studio space, and the politics of sustaining an art career in a city as expensive as New York.

Tickets are $15. Click here to order.

Live Video Webcast will be available to stream. Click here.

The Greene Space
44 Charlton Street (at Varick Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Charles Rice-Gonzalez talks about "Chulito"

Charles Rice-Gonzalez--known to many of us as an activist and Executive Director of BAAD!--discusses his new novel, Chulito, about a young gay Puerto Rican man living in the South Bronx, in this wonderful interview with Maria Hinojosa of NPR's Latino USA.

Tough Love (12:03)