Last night at Cipriani Wall Street, Colum McCann was awarded the National Book Award for fiction for his novel Let the Great World Spin. A novel, “featuring a sprawling cast of characters in 1970s New York City whose lives,” the New York Times wrote, “are ineluctably touched by the mysterious tightrope walker who traverses a wire suspended between the Twin Towers one morning.”
On stage accepting the award, McCann said: “As fiction writers and people who believe in the word, we have to enter the anonymous corners of human experience to make that little corner right.”
NPR’s All Things Considered did a segment on Johnny Mercer yesterday, and the piece led off with mention of his appearance here in 1971:
In May 1971, songwriter Johnny Mercer appeared at New York’s 92nd Street Y to sing and talk about his remarkable career. He told the audience what he tried to listen for when a composer first played the music for a new song.
“You get a little glimmer and you say, ‘Ahhh!’ “ he told the crowd. “You don’t even know if it’s a word. And then it begins to ... you know, it’s like you’re tuning in to a musical instrument that’s miles away. And you say, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s something there. If I just dig hard enough, I know it’ll come.’ ”
You can listen to the segment in full. As well, NPR is offering four audio tracks from Mercer you can stream here, including this incredible audio from his appearance here in 1971. NPR offers the following description:
This is an extraordinary recording: He sings a medley of his hits at the end of the evening that goes on and on and on. But he also performed the very first professional song he ever wrote, which gives you a sense of how accomplished he was as a lyricist, even at 21.
92Y Podcast: From the Poetry Center Archive: Philip Levine: The Language of the Place
Tonight the Poetry Center is pleased to welcome back Philip Levine, whose new collection is News of the World. He’ll be reading with Rita Dove. In an interview with The Atlantic, Mr. Levine once remarked on the difference between performing poetry and writing it:
“The process of writing poetry depends on being alone in a room, and being comfortable being alone for long periods of time—almost reveling in solitude and slow time. I’ve had friends tell me, younger poets, that when they came back from their early reading tours they’d get very depressed. I guess they were waiting for applause as they picked up pen and pencil. But there is no applause.”
There was plenty of applause at Mr. Levine’s last appearance at the Poetry Center in November of 2001. Today’s featured recording is the entirety of that reading, which included “On the Meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane,” “My Father With Cigarette Twelve Years Before the Nazis Could Break His Heart” and “Two Voices.”
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time—many of whom, like Philip Levine, are returning this season. To purchase tickets to tonight’s readings by Mr. Levine and Ms. Dove, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
You can also download the MP3. [15 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.
During chamber music concerts, even if the whole performance is first-rate, there is sometimes one riveting moment in which the ensemble seems particularly cohesive. When the excellent Keller Quartet made its debut at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday afternoon, that moment came in the slow movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F (Op. 135).
Ms. DeYoung is a powerful singer with a warm, seductive tone that she used to consistently fine effect. Her rendering of Brahms’s “Geistliches Wiegenlied” had a meltingly gentle core, and she brought subtle changes in coloration to the seven songs in Dvorak’s “Zigeunermelodien.” But she was at her most highly charged in the closing Strauss group, which included a steamy performance of “Heimliche Aufforderung” and an impassioned account of “Cäcilie.”
Chamber Music, Nov-Dec 2009, A Labor of Love; Ellen Taaffe Zwilich discusses her new Septet: (PDF)
Sharon Robinson and artist manager Frank Salomon assembled a consortium of 12 presenters to share costs and stage performances over two seasons, starting with the work’s April 28, 2009 premiere at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. The repeated performances not only give the work a wider airing than it would get from a single commissioner; they allow the interpretation itself to mature and deepen.
Keep abreast of 92Y Concert events and happenings by becoming a fan of 92Y Concerts on Facebook, and sign up for their eNews alerts to be first to learn about added events, late-breaking news and exclusive offers. For those aged 35 and under, we have a selection of concerts with special discounted pricing, see all of those here.
92Y Podcast: From the Poetry Center Archive: Rita Dove: Living History
In May of 1999, the 92Y Poetry Center celebrated its 60th anniversary with a gala reading. Appearing that night were Stanley Kunitz, Grace Paley, Edward Albee, Reynolds Price, Tony Kushner and Rita Dove, who read poems from her latest collection, On the Bus with Rosa Parks. In a note at the back of the book, Ms. Dove shared the origin of its title:
“In 1995, during a convention in Williamsburg, Virginia, as the conferees were boarding buses to be driven to another site, my daughter leaned over and whispered, ‘Hey, we’re on the bus with Rosa Parks!’ Although the precipitating incident did not make it into a poem, the phrase haunted me—and so this meditation on history and the individual, image and essence was born. (By the way, Mrs. Parks took a seat in the front of the bus.)”
Today’s featured recording is Rita Dove’s reading from the Poetry Center’s 60th anniversary celebration in 1999.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time—many of whom, like Rita Dove, are returning this season. To purchase tickets to this Thursday’s readings by Ms. Dove and Mr. Levine, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
You can also download the MP3. [8 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.
Junot Díaz and Jamaica Kincaid read from their novels at the 92nd Street Y on Jan 26, 2009. Junot leads off the reading with a humorous and sometimes cringe worthy story about a couple’s fractious trip to Santo Domingo. Kincaid begins at the 2:52 mark, reading a personal excerpt from a book about her brother, who is no longer with us.
Kincaid will be here again on Feb 1 for The Immigrant Experience: Becoming Americans with Jamaica Kincaid, Norman Manea and others.
Browse all upcoming readings in the Main Reading Series. And for those of you 35 and under, a limited number of tickets are available to each Reading Series event for just $10.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
From the Poetry Center Archive: Vladimir Nabokov: Aesthetic Bliss
In March of 1964, Vladimir Nabokov returned to New York for the publication of his translation of Eugene Onegin. On April 5th, he read at the Poetry Center for the first (and last) time. Though his Eugene Onegin was forthcoming, he did not read Pushkin. Instead, he read a poem called “A Lecture on Russian Poetry” and verse by Humbert Humbert and John Shade. There is also a prose selection from Pale Fire, which he introduces like this:
“For those who committed the grave mistake of not reading my novel, I should add that both my poet and my speaker are invented characters.”
Before taking the stage, Nabokov himself was introduced by Susan Sontag, who praised his work as a “literature in which ideas have been completely transformed into stylistic beauty, into elegance, into sensuousness.”
Today’s recording is an excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov’s reading here at the Poetry Center on April 5, 1964. It was the second-to-last public reading he would ever give.
When he died in 1977, Nabokov left behind the fragments of an unfinished novel on 138 hand-written note-cards—The Original of Laura. In an interview with The New York Times from October of 1976, he spoke of how Laura had kept him company during a recent illness, how he would read it aloud to “a small dream audience in a walled garden. My audience consisted of peacocks, pigeons, my long-dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family doctor so old as to be almost invisible.”
After decades of deliberation, his son Dmitri has now decided to have the note-cards compiled as a book under Nabokov's original title. And on Monday night, upon Laura’s publication, the Poetry Center will host A Celebration of Nabokov, with appearances by Martin Amis, Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd and Chip Kidd, the book’s designer. To purchase tickets, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here.
(Please note: a dozen of Nabokov’s note-cards will be on public display for the first time at the Celebration, courtesy of Christie's auction house, and only ticket-holders will gain access to this special one-night-only exhibit, which will open at 6:30pm.)
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of recordings from our archive. For access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
92Y Podcast: Poetry Center Archive: Brian Boyd on Vladimir Nabokov: A Mastery of Particulars
When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left behind the fragments of an unfinished novel on 138 hand-written notecards. After much deliberation, his son Dmitri has now decided to have them compiled as a book under Nabokov's original title—The Original of Laura. Next Monday, upon Laura’s publication, the Poetry Center is proud to host A Celebration of Nabokov, with appearances by Martin Amis, Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd and Chip Kidd, the book’s designer. (Please note: A dozen of these notecards will be on public display for the first time at the Celebration, courtesy of Christie's auction house. Only ticket-holders will gain access to this special one-night-only exhibit, which will open at 6:30 pm on the night of November 16.)
Professor Boyd first spoke about Nabokov at the Poetry Center in 1992, as part of our Biographers and Brunch series:
“Nabokov hated novelized biographies, where biographers think they can bring to life a scene that they didn’t witness, or peer into the thoughts of a person they didn’t invent. Yet he loved to biographize his novels. For Nabokov, the past one lives through is enormously particular, irreducible to any formulae or generalizations, and not accessible to another mind. It’s not even accessible—real though it is—to the mind of the person who’s lived through it all, except through the faded images and misplaced files in the photo-library of memory.
“Nabokov’s novels are filled with invented biographers, biographies and autobiographies because he loved to explore the themes of the unrevisitable nature of time past and the impenetrable uniqueness of the individual. He loved to contrast what was possible in novels, where other minds are accessible and the past endlessly revisitable, with the conditions of real life.”
Today’s post is the entirety of Professor Boyd’s lecture from 1992. Of particular interest, perhaps, are his remarks during the question-and-answer session near the end, when an audience member asks him about Laura.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of recordings from our archive. To purchase tickets to A Celebration of Nabokov, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
You can also download the MP3. [18 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.
Celebrating 75 Years Of Dance at the 92nd Street Y
Photo: 92Y Afro-Caribbean Faculty Dancers and guests celebrate 75 years of dance on stage
For 75 years, the 92nd Street Y has supported, presented and taught dance, creating a home for everyone from Martha Graham to your own child. Our legendary past, starting with a commitment to modern dance in 1935, rubs shoulders with our future and our present, as avant-garde choreographers and high-school dance students create and show work in the same studio where Graham taught. That’s why the theme of Harkness Dance Center’s 75th anniversary year was Past-Future-Now. To celebrate, over 200 dancers and choreographers will perform over the next year.
Photo: Foreground L-R: Emma King, Aneyn O’Grady. Background L-R: Sarah Botero, Kai Monroe in New York Export: Opus Jazz by Jerome Robbins
The Gala performance on Nov 5 featured work by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Alvin Ailey, David Parsons, Monica Bill Barnes and Doug Varone and links our past to our present and future with our teen dance troupe performing excerpts from Jerome Robbins’ NY Export: Opus Jazz. Dance Educator Martie Barylick said of the performances: “...it was one of the most beautiful evenings of dance of my life!”
Photo: Jody Gottfried Arnhold and Martin Rabinowitz
Renata Celichowska, the Director of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, says: “What’s important is not just that dance has had a place at the 92nd Street Y for 75 years. It’s that we continue to embody the vision and meet the high standards we set for dance in the 1930s by being an unparalleled resource for everyone who cares about dance - from professionals to kids to teachers to audiences.” The Dance Center is part of the 92nd Street Y School of the Arts (Robert Gilson, director), which offers programs in visual arts (fine arts, jewelry, ceramics and more) and music (classical and popular; classes, lessons and ensembles) in addition to dance.
This month’s Metalsmith magazine, not yet online, features one of Jonathan Wahl’s drawings (above) in an article called: Objects of Remembrance: Contemporary Mourning Jewelry.
Jonathon, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant recipient this year, is the Director of the Jewelry Center at 92Y. As it happens, the article was written by Marjorie Simon, a regular contributor to Metalsmith and former Jewelry Center student. And if you didn’t catch it when it aired on television, here is PBS’ Craft in America segment featuring Jonathan!
Priority registration for classes and workshops at the Jewelry Center begin Nov 19.
This summer, the First Lady Michelle Obama and the White House celebrated Jazz music with a Jazz Studio session. The concert was one of a series of student workshops the First Lady has been hosting. Next week another workshop will be held in the East Room, this one a classical music session.
“...Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, Grammy-award winning guitarist Sharon Isbin, along with the cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the pianist Awadagin Pratt. The concert will also include child protégés Sujari Britt and Jason Yoder, who will accompany Ms. Weilerstein in duets.
Fans of our concert programming at 92Y have most likely seen some of these artists here on our stage.
You can watch Deborah Reed, ceramics student at the 92nd Street Y, talk about her love of clay. Or see “talented young jewelry artist,” Nathan Bergelson, as he creates a bangle bracelet under the guidance of jewelry instructor Amy Haskins.
Left to right: Alexandra Wilder (winner), Libby Burton (winner), Genevieve Burger-Weiser (winner), Paula Trachtman (sponsor of the award in honor of her daughter Amy Rothholz), K.D. Henley (winner).
Poets & Writers is pleased to announce that Genevieve Burger-Weiser, Lisabeth Burton, K.D. Henley, and Alexandra Wilder are the winners of the 2009 Amy Award.
The 14th Annual Amy Awards featured winners reading from their work as well as a guest poet. It happens that past and present individuals associated with 92Y were well represented.
Alexandra Wilder, Managing Director of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, was an award winner, as was Libby Burton, 92Y Poetry Center intern last year. The featured poet, Grace Schulman, was a former Director of the Poetry Center. Lastly, Galen Williams, also a former Director of the Poetry Center and founder of Poets & Writers, was in attendance.
That’s a lot of 92Y representation, and well deserved! You can read more work from students and faculty of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center in Podium, a literary journal produced by the Poetry Center. The Center also has a Facebook, where you can keep up to date on events, get new content and podcasts, special deals, and more!
92Y School of Music faculty member Rupert Boyd was a finalist in this year’s Concert Artist Guild competition—a prestigious competition for ensembles, instrumentalists and vocalists. In its nearly 60 year history, very few guitarists have won the competition. Notable examples are Manuel Barrueco, (here on Dec 5) The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (here on Nov 11) & The Brasil Guitar Duo.
With regard to the competition, Rupert told us via email:
I am just so honoured and consider it a great achievement to have made it as far as I did in such a prestigious competition. Out of over 350 contestants, I was one of only 12 (and the only guitarist) to be chosen for the finals. I shared the stage with some extremely talented musicians, including the current principle flutist of the Metropolitan Opera, pianists and violinists who have performed concerti with orchestras around the world, a vocal quintet from Germany and a chamber ensemble from Israel.”
92Y Podcast: From the Poetry Center Archive: A.S. Byatt: “Your Own Poet’s Voice”
A.S. Byatt first appeared at the 92Y Poetry Center in October of 1991, for a reading from Possession, which had won the Booker Prize the year before. This Thursday, some 18 years later, Ms. Byatt returns to the Poetry Center to read from The Children’s Book, a finalist for this year’s Booker. (Hilary Mantel, this year’s winner, was one of the judges who awarded Ms. Byatt the prize in 1990.)
The Sunday Times of London has called The Children’s Book “easily the best thing Byatt has written since her Booker-winning masterpiece Possession...[It] superlatively displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip.” Like Possession, The Children’s Book is a teeming, polyphonic novel.
“I started writing in other voices really when I wrote Possession, partly because I was somehow dissatisfied with the ‘voice’ of realist prose about people’s feelings,” Ms. Byatt said in a recent interview with Bookforum. “That is only one way to write. So I wrote parodies of scholarly analysis, biographical musings, Victorian love letters and poems, and I think this makes the ordinary ‘storytelling’ voice in turn more surprising and problematic. When people ask me why I write, I say it’s because I love the language and what it can do. I think I’m not very interested in self-expression.” Read her interview on Feministing for more insight.
Today’s featured recording is Ms. Byatt’s October 28, 1991 reading from Possession. In this excerpt, which comes from Chapter 8 of the novel, Ms. Byatt conjures the voices of all four of her main characters—two modern-day researchers (Roland and Maud) and two Victorian poets (Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte).
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time—many of whom, like Ms. Byatt, are returning this season. To purchase tickets to Ms. Byatt’s reading, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
You can also download the MP3. [12 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.
in 1970s New York City whose lives,” the 
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