Ron Arad: “Concrete Stereo” (1983) / Credit: Librado Romero/The New York Times
In the New York Times’ review of designer Ron Arad‘s show at the Museum of Modern Art, art critic Roberta Smith wrote:
The designer Ron Arad has always had a lot of nerve, and it ricochets around his rambunctious, ultimately inconclusive retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art like an ammo belt’s worth of stray bullets. Sometimes the bullets hit, turning random targets into bull’s-eyes. More often they are wide of the mark, resulting in things that seem self-indulgent and frivolous. No wonder this show, which opens on Sunday and is the first major survey of Mr. Arad’s work in the United States, is titled “Ron Arad: No Discipline.
Roberta at once offers acclaim and stinging assessments, which might seem an apt appraisal of Ron Arad’s work, one he might even embrace. To wit, Vanity Fair was there as well, and says the exhibit “confirms Arad’s status as a design world punk rocker (see his own defacement of the exhibit’s wall text), and his is one of the most thrilling “rides” ever mounted at MoMA.”
Continuing our Dialogues with Design Legends series, Ron Arad will be here on Sep 17 in conversation with design historian Daniella Ohad Smith. And on Nov 3, Karim Rashid and Gaetano Pesce will continue the series.
In the lead up to screenings at 92YTribeca’s Queer/Art/Film series, we asked a few questions of the presenters via email. One question asked of all them was: “The use of the term Queer seems wide reaching nowadays, not restricted to “gay” individuals. For instance, we have heard it used by heterosexual people who identify as Queer, which implies definitions aside from sexual. Do you agree? What does “Queer” mean to you?”
Filmmaker Jenny Livingston offered our favorite answer, saying in part:
Since the 90s, it’s been used by LGBT people to denote a difference that sparkles, people who set themselves apart, (in relation to gender identity and sexuality) because they don’t fit the norm. It’s important to know that fitting in, while not wrong, is certainly not the thing that makes you more lovable, more interesting, more human.
Continuing below, we collected the answers from all five interviewees and are reprinting them in full.
Hmm...is all this press leading up to something? There has been talk of a new Ghostbusters movie. The Guardianreported in May: “all the players have stated their intentions to go back, and a script is being written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg.”
Could a release date be far behind?? In the meantime, here is a clever re-imagining of Ghostbusters as it might have been made in 1954, as opposed to 1984.
And on Oct 25, Peter and Dan Aykroyd are here at 92Y for Ghosts and Other Creepy Things, discussing among other things, the delightful story that inspired Dan to make the mega-hit Ghostbusters.
Upcoming events at 92Y:
Sex and the City and Best Friends Forever: Candace Bushnell and Jennifer Weiner: Sep 8
The Calculus of Friendship: Alan Alda and Steven Strogatz: Sep 13
The Spitzer Lecture: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Charlie Rose: Sep 22
In the early 1990s, Helen Simonson was a stay-at-home mother in Brooklyn, taking care of two young boys and squeezing in an hour or two here and there to attend beginner fiction classes at the 92nd Street Y. Today, Ms. Simonson’s boys are 14 and 16 years old, and their mother is on the fast track to literary success—her first novel, “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand,” has been picked up by Random House as part of an impressive six-figure deal.
Simonson told 27East that she had no idea how to write a novel going into this. “I wasn’t really sure how to write a novel,” she said with a laugh. “I was just kind of stumbling along.”
Looks like those beginner fiction classes at Unterberg really paid off.
Fall classes at Unterberg Poetry Center Writing Program are beginning soon. View them all.
Since that first reading at 92Y in 2003, there have been more than 60 performances of Voices of a People’s History in 17 different states. What began here has taken on a life of its own.
And now it has become a television project for the History channel, The People Speak. On a panel recently to discuss the project, TV Squad.com quoted Zinn: “When we did our first reading years ago at the 92nd Street Y (in New York), the reaction was fantastic.”
Matt Damon—who lived next door to Zinn in Cambridge MA—and his Project Greenlight partner Chris Moore, have been trying to bring the book to movie screens for years. Damon told the panel:
I have one of first copies (of Zinn’s book) in hardback. It had a huge impact on my life so that’s why I stayed with it. The moment we had any influence in [Hollywood] we tried to get this project off the ground.
Inside The Rapper’s Studio at 92YTribeca: The New [Jewish] Apollo
Raekwon at 92YTribeca performing snippets from the seminal classic Only Built For Cuban Links / Video from YouTube user BLUCHEEZ
Rapper Raekwon of Staten Island’s infamous and groundbreaking Wu-Tang Clan was at 92YTribeca (with our ”ill sound system”) last night for Noisemakers with Peter Rosenberg, whose Hot 97 show Real Late with Peter Rosenberg is a must listen to in New York City’s Hip-Hop circles. With the release date of Raekwons new album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II and ”its increasingly mythical reputation” fast approaching, the event last night was charged with anticipation. For those that missed it, Grandgood has audio from the event available for listening and download.
Twitter user @zeusXXII cleverly noted that “Noisemakers @92ytribeca should be called inside the rapper’s studio, raekwon killed it last night...”
But the cleverness didn’t end there. “This is the New Apollo [Theater]” Raekwon declared. To which Peter Rosenberg responded” “The Jewish Apollo? The Jewpollo?”
William Guiracoche filmed by an audience member, singing an original song for his mother on Mothers Day at 92Y with the acclaimed jazz singer, pianist and 92Y instructor Deadra Hart
92Y School of Music just keeps turning out one star after another! Recently we wrote about students Deborah Karpel and Ashley LaLonde. And this week, while reading the Daily News (after his very proud mother alerted us!) we discovered that 14 year old William Guiracoche is performing the lead male role in Thoroughly Modern Millie this Thursday at the Manhattan School of Music as part of their summer music camp. “Here, we speak the language of music,” William told the paper, “and we are around people you can relate to.”
William Guiracoche has been taking private voice lessons with Deadra Hart at the 92nd Street Y School of Music since the Fall of 2006, and was a Recanati-Kaplan merit scholar in 2007-2009. His endearing performances of his own compositions as well as popular Broadway songs have brought some 92Y audience members to tears.
For more information on private instruction for children and teens, see here. The registration deadline for returning students is August 1.
The Poetry Foundation has announced the five recipients of the 2009 Ruth Lilly Fellowships: Malachi Black, Eric Ekstrand, Chloë Honum, Jeffrey Schultz, and Joseph Spece. Among the largest awards offered to aspiring poets in the United States, each Lilly Fellowship carries a $15,000 scholarship prize for fellows to use as they wish in continued study and writing of poetry.
The editors of Poetry magazine selected the winning manuscripts from over 550 applications. In announcing the winners, Poetry editor Christian Wiman remarked, “2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships, and the quality of work the program attracts is more impressive every year. Being able to recognize and support five such talented young poets is a real pleasure, surpassed only by reading their work.”
From left, Bill Charlap on piano, with Gary Smulyan, Harry Allen, Jerry Dodgion, Jeremy Pelt, Peter Washington and Kenny Washington / Credit: Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times
Bill Charlap waited until almost the last possible moment in “The Gerry Mulligan Songbook,” a tribute at the 92nd Street Y on Monday night, before divulging a sentimental piece of trivia. It was in that room, he said, where he played his first concert with Mulligan’s quartet, in 1988. The evidence suggests that it was a fine debut: a review in The New York Times singled out Mr. Charlap as “a particularly enlivening element in the group,” adding that “broad gestures, even incipient levitation, helped him milk emotions from the piano.
Mr. Charlap didn’t levitate this time, but there was plenty of emotion in his solo reading of “Noblesse,” an impressionistic ballad from the late shift of Mulligan’s career. And in many ways Mr. Charlap’s bandstand experience informed the entire program, part of Jazz in July, a concert series he has produced for the last five years.
The last concert in the festival, Saxophone Summit, takes place tomorrow evening. And Jazz Piano at 92Y Series beginning in Oct is now on sale, get your tickets here.
Below are two songs from the musical, from a collection of pieces culled from a stack of Yiddish sheet music that was the prized possession of her paternal grandfather, Philip Karpel:
Ms. Karpel has been taking private piano lessons with Arielle Levioff at the 92Y School of Music since the Spring of 2006, receiving a need-based scholarship to support her musical studies. She has taken advantage of our other programs as well, studying Yiddish and taking a class at Unterberg Poetry Center titled “Creating the One Person Show.” Perhaps this was the inspiration for her own musical memoir?
Yet he was always a creature of New York. Close to the founding members of the so-called New York Schools of Music, Painting and Poetry, Mr. Cunningham himself, along with Jerome Robbins and the younger Paul Taylor, led the way to founding what can retrospectively be called the New York School of Dance.
These choreographers both combined and rejected the rival influences of modern dance and ballet, notably the senior choreographers Martha Graham and George Balanchine. They absorbed aspects of ordinary pedestrian movement, the natural world and city life. They tested connections between private subject matter and theatrical expression. And they re-examined the relationship between dance and its sound accompaniment.
With Graham and Balanchine, they made New York the world capital of choreography; and the New York School influenced the world in showing how pure dance could be major theater. Many of the dancers who passed through Mr. Cunningham’s company — notably Mr. Taylor and Karole Armitage — went on to be prestigious choreographers themselves. Many other choreographers, notably Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris, paid tribute to his influence.
Like many of his generation, Merce performed at 92Y early in his career with Martha Graham's Dance Company (on 3 separate occasions in the mid-1940s) and then later in a few of his own works. The audio clip above is an excerpt from his appearance with dance critic Deborah Jowitt on March 21, 1994 for the "Breaking Ground" lecture series, established that season and has included such guests as Erick Hawkins, Judith Jamison, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Bill T. Jones, and Jerome Robbins. You can read more on Celebrating 75 Years Of Dance at the 92nd Street Y.
You can also download the MP3. [3 MB]
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What You Missed: Holly Miranda and Joan as Police Woman at 92YTribeca
Holly Miranda and Joan as Police Woman played at 92YTribeca last weekend, and put on quite a show. Joan had on a leopard print outfit with matching boots. That’s fashion code for ‘watch out here comes the Rock and Roll.’
If you missed that one, we have a number of great shows coming up. Check them out below:
Upcoming events at 92YTribeca:
Noisemakers with Peter Rosenberg Featuring Raekwon: Jul 29
You may have heard that the 92Y library (as it currently exists) is closing on July 31. You may also have heard rumors about what that means, and we want to set the record straight. The reality is that this is one of many actions the Y is taking to cut costs because of the recession. We’re committed to offering library services, and many of the books will be available in other locations around the building. We’re also working on building a ground-floor reading room where people can relax, read, use their laptops (there will be free wi-fi) or one of our computer terminals. If you want to know more, you can read about why we’re making the changes and what our plans are in this letter from our executive director, Sol Adler.
What is it about Ackerman’s 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle that resonates with you?
That’s a huge question. She’s the generation before me of Jewish lesbian artists- born within memory of the Holocaust and organically contributing to the artistic revolutions of the 60’s and 70’s. Many of these women made great contributions but few were overtly out in their work. Although she took that step from time to time, she also knew that it would cause marginalization and tried to mitigate that in successful and unsuccessful ways. Her formal innovations are exciting, her point of view is invigorating, the emotionality of the work and the way that the form comes organically from the emotions at the core of the piece are expansive. She’s one of the artists I have followed all my life and who has never disappointed me. I recently watched a tape of a recent lecture she gave at MIT about her work on the cruelty the US shows toward Mexican immigrants. I found her to be as interesting now as when I first started looking at her work.
Read more below, including Sarah’s answer to the same question we’ve asked all interviewees in this series, “...What does “Queer” mean to you?”
This American Life: Behind the Scenes with Ira Glass and Others
This American Life, a weekly hour-long radio program begun in 1995 and produced by Chicago Public Radio and hosted by Ira Glass, might be to radio what Baseball is to America. As of 2007 it is also found on television at Showtime, as seen in the trailer above.
On Sep 16 NY1’s Budd Mishkin and Ira Glass will show you a behind the scenes look to hear how the award winning public radio and TV show is put together. It’s a great chance to revisit episode 328: What I Learned from Television, when Ira discussed being referenced on a popular TV show at the time, The O.C. Summer, a character on The O.C. asked: “Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?”
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Dan Aykroyd has been receiving a flurry of press lately. In Easthampton this weekend dining at Georgica, he 
Yesterday we were happy to tell you about the star power 
Howard Zinn’s classic work, 
92Y 
What is it about Ackerman’s 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle that resonates with you?
