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Multimedia artist Azzah Sultan leads audience through multifaceted portfolio highlighting culture, faith

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To flesh out her multifaceted experiences in her latest work, “Anak Dara,” artist Azzah Sultan had to upgrade her tools to match by experimenting with and doubling down on video, performance and installation aspects.

“I felt like the topics I was focusing on were so complex, I felt like the medium it was displayed on needed to be as complex as they were,” Sultan said.

Sultan shared her story as a Muslim immigrant who channels her experiences into her art, and how her work has evolved, in her lecture “Navigating Culture and Faith Through Art.” It was released on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 16, as part of the Week Three Interfaith Lecture Series theme: “Art: A Glimpse into the Divine.”

Sultan received her MFA a few months ago from Washington State University, but her reputation as an innovative artist precedes her. Earlier in the week, art historian and Chautauqua regular Ori Soltes praised her portfolio as a powerful set of installations on the politics of gender.

Part of a Malaysian diplomat family, Sultan was born in Abu Dhabi and grew up in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Finland and Bahrain. She first came to the United States seven years ago at 16 years old to study at Parsons School of Design.

I use my art to express frustrations in the society I am living in. By doing so, my feelings would be felt and my voice heard  — without antagonizing anyone or jeopardizing my true faith.”

Maureen Rovegno, the director of Chautauqua’s Department of Religion, led the subsequent Q-and-A, which lasted 36 minutes. She delivered questions that the audience populated through submissions via questions.chq.org and on Twitter at #CHQ2020.

“You are bringing this authority into this very different American context, in which you have to deal with the multiple sorts of conditionalities here in America, such as dealing with racism and ethnicity, which people often conflate here and don’t distinguish,” Rovegno said.

Sultan left home to study art, but also retains her connection to her home through practicing art — and her religion. She started wearing a headscarf shortly before leaving for the United States.

“I started to realize that my faith was the only thing I could hold onto (from home), which is why I found it important to highlight aspects of my religion within my art, as the Islamic faith has molded me to what I am today,” Sultan said. “I use my art to express frustrations in the society I am living in. By doing so, my feelings would be felt and my voice heard  — without antagonizing anyone or jeopardizing my true faith.”

Sultan’s body of work turns Islamophobic and racist ideas of the West on their heads while also celebrating her own experiences as a Muslim woman with family lineage reaching through India, Pakistan and Malaysia. 

In her installation “Radical Media,” Sultan stitched video clips of news pundits misusing terms to describe Islam — “radical Islam,” “radicalized,” “moderate Muslim,” “jihad,” and “sharia law” — so they played on the same screen in unison. It’s a 7-second clip on a constant loop, which is meant to emphasize how often Muslims hear these words used against them and how negative news media can perpetuate a hatred of a peaceful religion.

“Islam is peace, to me,” Sultan said. “Islam means peace.”

While working toward her master’s degree, Sultan dove deeper into performance art with her installation, “Oriental Woman,” which flashed images of 18th- and 19th-century European artwork that depicted “women of the East” as objects.

“These images of oriental women embody images of fantasy, myth and exoticism,” Sultan said.

While the images projected onto her body and the background, Sultan performed a traditional Malaysian dance she learned while she was a child.

Her installation, “Perfectly Blushed,” tackles companies like Fair and Lovely that market skin-bleaching products to South Asian women.

In this project, Sultan models in a mock commercial where her skin synthetically pinkens to an unnatural color, playing on these products’ claims to create a “rosy” complexion as a result of having whiter skin. She said she does not fault anyone who uses these products, since they are simply caught up in expectations fueled by white supremacy and colonialism, but seeks to guide her audience through questions of what it means for a person to change their skin tone.

“Women of color are often encouraged to use methods of skin bleaching, as it promises them a future in which they can succeed in their own careers, love life and any obstacles that they face,” Sultan said. “The removal of dark skin tone is akin to the removal of one’s history and past. ‘Perfectly Blushed’ is an examination of the way marketing works to sell this fantasy.”

Her latest work, “Anak Dara,” includes five installations focusing on childhood nostalgia, materials of memorabilia and familial ties using digital media. It’s her master’s thesis. Her mother is featured prominently throughout, teaching Sultan how to make sambal, or Malaysian chili paste, in a video, as well as through her material items. While wearing a greenscreen suit and covered with a vibrant batik wax print background, Sultan wraps her headscarf like her mother does in one performance. In another, she plays with the sounds of her mother’s jewelry. Partway through the video, she hides her hands with a distorted batik background.

“My hands are a signifier to my race, and the lack of (skin shown) in the other clips creates emphasis on the jewelry worn and the patterns of the batik, a nod to my own culture,” Sultan said.

Due to the coronavirus, Sultan could not host a traditional reception for her thesis and couldn’t show her parents the end result of her work, despite the fact that they inspired it. One element of the installation — spice sachets reminiscent of the smells of Sultan’s family home, which viewers would have been invited to carry around while they explored the other installations — while innovative, would be too high risk of a contact point in a live viewing.

But even in a virtual viewing, Sultan’s description of her work ignites all human senses.

“My current art serves almost as an altarpiece, enshrining my culture by representing it through visuals, smells, colors and textures,” Sultan said. “I am making art as a tribute to where I am from, and an investigation of how I perceive myself through garments and objects of personal memories. The viewer is invited into this space to reflect on their own personal connections through their past and cultural background.”

As a young artist, Sultan’s work continues to evolve. She said that the Western influence has crystallized and misread the femininity of cultures and faiths, and she is considering exploring a wider range of what the term “feminine” means in future installations through craft, materiality and video distortion. 

“I’m at this point right now where I want to create art that’s very open to interpretation, but at the same time very present as well,” Sultan said.

Award-winning musician Gina Chavez to bring Latinx flair to virtual Chautauqua performance

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Gina Chavez is a half-Mexican bilingual musician and a self-described “Catholic lesbian from Texas.” Vice President of Performing and Visual Arts Deborah Sunya Moore said her mixture of Latinx music and advocacy filled out the season’s program at Chautauqua in a “very important way.”  

“I think her own pride in who she is comes out in her music,” Moore said. “Just by being the person she is, her music explores those diverse aspects, even if it’s not intentional.”  

In 2018, Chavez told Vortex Magazine bearing her heart and being true to herself is the “easy part” of being a musician.

“The hard part is writing music,” Chavez told Vortex Magazine. “Being alone in a bedroom with a guitar is one of the most vulnerable places for me. I’m just alone with all the things I think about myself. I love being in front of people, I love being on stage.”

Chavez, a Latin-folk musician and 12-time Austin Music Award winner — including 2019 Female Vocalist and 2015 Austin Musician of the Year — will perform at 5 p.m. EDT Friday, July 17, on CHQ Assembly’s Video Platform

In a “Talking Up Music Education” podcast, Chavez said she got her start in music in middle school, where she discovered a love of singing in her sixth-grade choir program. 

“I was kind of a sponge,” Chavez said in the podcast. “I like to pick up parts of other people’s cultural expression through music and try to fuse that into my music a little bit.”

A native of Austin, Texas, Chavez wasn’t exposed to much of her Mexican heritage, including the Spanish language. It was not until a study abroad trip to Argentina that she began to take a deeper interest in Latin music. When she started singing in Spanish, she said she began discovering more of herself. La Que Manda, Chavez’s first all-Spanish language album, was released in May. On Chavez’s website, she describes the five tracks as “an anthem to reclaim our bodies, our hearts, our voices, and show the world what we’ve known the whole time: we are La Que Manda.”

The advocacy work Moore referenced began in 2010, when Chavez started a college fund with her wife Jodi Granado. Niñas Arriba is a fund that offers full scholarships to a private, Catholic university for girls who live within Soyapango, as well as a six-month paid internship upon graduation. She also completed a 12-country tour through Latin America, the Middle East, and Central Asia as a cultural ambassador with the U.S. State Department. 

Chavez brought her Spanish flair to her Chautauqua debut last season with a performance during Week Nine, “Exploring Race and Culture with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center.” Moore said she was an “instant hit,” as she is “sure to be this time around, too.”

“Often when we have an emerging artist, I am not looking to sell single tickets, I am looking for someone who is a real match for Chautauqua,” Moore said. “She not only broadened our program, (but) people absolutely adore her.” 

Following the performance, Moore will host a 20-minute Q-and-A where audience members can submit questions for Chavez at www.questions.chq.org, or on Twitter using #CHQ2020.

This program is made possible by The Jane Robb Shaw Hirsh Endowment.

Heritage Lecture Series to present 1923 film marketing Chautauqua

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In the wake of a pandemic, American political turmoil and disturbed international relations, people turned to Chautauqua Institution — amidst an organizational metamorphasis — for a sense of reprieve. The year was 1923.

“There was a frustration amongst Chautauquans with the world. They didn’t lose faith in God, but they did lose faith in the world. The war that was never supposed to happen did happen. The peace it was supposed to produce did not happen. Prohibition came; it did not end all the social ills it was supposed to. (Women’s) suffrage came; it did not fix the political situation the way it was supposed to,” said Jon Schmitz, Institution historian and archivist. “So, these schemes of hope for the future had been frustrated. As a result, people were looking for things like a place to spend a good time with their family.”

It was a safe place for women to go and do things without having to worry about their kids. But, dad wasn’t always there. He was back in the city, or whatever,” Schmitz said. “(The Institution) wanted to stress that this was a wonderful place for the modern businessman to relax and spend time with his family. There was something for dad to do: the men’s club, golf, fishing, etc.”

At the time people were itching for normalcy, Chautauqua Institution underwent a marketing shift to target every member of the family — not just the mothers and children. The Institution used film as one way to accomplish this. 

Schmitz will present a 1923 Institution marketing film at 3:30 p.m. EDT Friday, July 17, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform as the third presentation in the Heritage Lecture Series. Schmitz will address the then-new demographic of the 1920s. 

“It was a safe place for women to go and do things without having to worry about their kids. But, dad wasn’t always there. He was back in the city, or whatever,” Schmitz said. “(The Institution) wanted to stress that this was a wonderful place for the modern businessman to relax and spend time with his family. There was something for dad to do: the men’s club, golf, fishing, etc.”

By attracting the breadwinning businessman, the Institution hoped to secure bonds and gifts to fund programming. At the time, the Institution was facing financial uncertainty. 

“The hope was that people would buy bonds, and then when they mature they would roll them over so as to go on financing the Institution. The gate was no longer able to pay for the programming and the grounds,” Schmitz said. “There had to be other sources of income so there needed to be gifts, but they also were relying on bonds. They needed that commitment from a family, to actually go and purchase the bonds.”

Schmitz said that from a historian’s standpoint, films are a unique way to observe the past. Film can fill in gaps where artifacts, still pictures, and written documents may lack. 

“Photographs and films add a great deal to the texts and artifacts, because it captures a moment where you can see the various aspects of this captured moment.” Schmitz said. “With a film, you get a temporal dimension which completes what the photograph is telling us. Film completes what the elements are, what the elements existing at a certain time were doing, and interacting with.”

This series is made possible with a gift from Jeff Lutz and Cathy Nowosielski.

A portrait of America: PBS CEO Paula Kerger discusses ‘profound importance’ of organization’s work

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Fifty years ago when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, he wanted to create an organization that acted in the public interest. 

“Time and time again, we need to remind ourselves and come back to the core of why we were established in the first place,” said Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS.

PBS is a relatively small media organization, she said, and spends less on content annually than Netflix does for a big series. All PBS affiliate stations are also locally owned, operated and governed, which Kerger said is important in “this era of media consolidation.”

“It’s profoundly important to have local media organizations that are accountable to the communities that they serve, that are run by people that live in those communities,” Kerger said. “No one understands the needs of a community better than people that live there.”

She said that many news agencies aim to attract the most views, but PBS has a different goal.

“If we create a program that opens people’s eyes, and hearts, then we’ve been successful,” Kerger said.

Kerger became the CEO of PBS in 2006, and since then, the media organization has gone from the 14th most-watched channel in the United States to the seventh. Kerger talked on Thursday, July 16, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, with Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill. The conversation, titled “Who Are The American People?” was the fourth part of Week Three’s theme of “Art and Democracy.” Kerger talked about PBS’ role during this time of social unrest, and how the organization is commemorating its 50th anniversary with the American Portrait project, which aims to capture who the American people are during this time in history.

Hill first asked how PBS’ 50th anniversary has been going, given the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against racial injustice.

“I think about all of the things that PBS has done over the years and all of the work that we have engaged. It has really prepared us for this moment,” Kerger said.

She said that PBS has led discussions around race for a long time, such as broadcasting works of filmmakers such as Henry Hampton and Stanley Nelson. PBS has also been focusing on programs that will help people make decisions about their daily lives, such as providing reporting on the pandemic. Kerger said the organization, throughout its history, has also focused on broadcasting for children, such as “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “Sesame Street” and recently “Molly of Denali.” 

When LA Unified was discussing closing schools due to the pandemic in the first week of March, superintendent Austin Buettner asked Kerger to create an app to stream PBS shows, as many families did not have access to broadband. 

“Our stations around the country have created an app, a home-learning environment that is both broadband-based, as well as broadcast-based,” Kerger said. “I think that we’ve tried to really help to fill in gaps, and continue the educational experience, particularly for so many families for whom connection to robust broadband is not a possibility.”

Hill then asked how PBS’ approach to programming has changed with people working and watching in isolation.

Kerger said that during the summer, PBS does a lot of productions in the field, such as “Antiques Roadshow,” which cannot be filmed due to the pandemic. Many British productions have been put on hiatus, as well, though she said there will be new programming in the fall. 

PBS is also looking further down the line, like finding compelling stories from international producers, such as Peter Gelb, director of the Metropolitan Opera. PBS will broadcast a series of concerts Gelb is working on, which Kerger said will be recorded “in extraordinary places around the world with the world’s best singers.”

“That project would not have come to us (if other productions were not canceled), and it’s going to be spectacular,” Kerger said.

She said that PBS has recently added programs — old and new — centered on race, such as Henry Louis Gates’ series on reconstruction in the South after the Civil War.

Hill then asked about the origin of the American Portrait project, in which people across the country can send videos of themselves answering a series of questions about what it means to be an American.

“We were very interested in paying tribute to some of the extraordinary visionaries on whose shoulders we all stand,” Kerger said. “But I always feel that it is too easy to get tied up in your past, and all of the great things that have been accomplished and really lose sight of what is important: that 50 is a milestone. And you need to talk about what you will do moving forward.”

For the project, Kerger said PBS is populating a map of the country with people answering open-ended prompts that get to the heart of the U.S. as a nation. 

“What unites us is so far greater than what separates us,” Kerger said. “And I spend a lot of time traveling the country. I’ve been in every state. I have spent a lot of time in rural America. I have talked to a lot of people who feel that, ‘No one understands me. No one understands my story, my community.’”

PBS will select certain submissions and have filmmakers make a docu-series about them, which Kerger said will air January 2021, “so, after the election, when I think all of us will look at one another and say, ‘What does it mean to be in America?’ ‘Who are we?’ ‘Where are we going?’”

The final question from Hill was what should people be thinking about and looking at to understand the issues in this election, and also the future of the United States.

Kerger stressed the importance of people voting and educating themselves.

“My suggestion to everyone is don’t get caught up in the horse race in the end of the polls, but just to look at the facts,” Kerger said. “Look at the issues and vote, and encourage everyone around you to do the same. That’s how a society is strong, when people are engaged.”

Eugene Friesen shares his improvised cello music as an alternative language in his lecture “The Beauty We Love”

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Armed with his cello, four-time Grammy Award-winning musician Eugene Friesen played alone in his Massachusetts home on July 5. His only audience was a fern on a stool in the corner while Friesen played as he recited a poem by Jalal Al-Din Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi poet who drew inspiration from his Islamic faith.

Friesen opened his eyes and put down his instrument.

“Hello, I’m Eugene Friesen, and I have to kind of imagine your generous applause, just like I have to imagine Chautauqua’s beautiful campus today,” Friesen said. 

Friesen unwound the importance of spontaneous concert in his lecture “The Beauty We Love” released at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 15. It was part of Week Three’s theme for the Interfaith Lecture Series: “Art: A Glimpse into the Divine.”

Eugene is an artist-in-residence with his fellow members of the Paul Winter Consort at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and teaches music as part of the faculty of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Paul Winter Consort creates  “healing prayer-in-concert” special events at the cathedral, including an “ecological mass.” Friesen is also a composer and conductor.

The name of the lecture is based on a line in the poem Friesen performed at the beginning of his performance, which was originally written by Rumi and popularized in the English-speaking world with Coleman Barks’ translation: “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

Music speaks in a language that has a completely different kind of precision than words do,” Friesen said. “The mind that understands the workings of music, the theory, the techniques, the history, the style, is not the place to be when you’re actually making music to create expression, to communicate with the hearts of other beings.”

For the last 25 years, Friesen and Barks have put on joint performances in which Barks recites Rumi’s words and his own poetry while Friesen pulls on improvised notes on his cello strings. These performances “are an experience I’ve come to regard as profound as playing the music of J.S. Bach,” Friesen said.

Friesen said spontaneous playing requires a musician to stop thinking about the technicalities of making the notes and tap into a different kind of source for inspiration.

“Music speaks in a language that has a completely different kind of precision than words do,” Friesen said. “The mind that understands the workings of music, the theory, the techniques, the history, the style, is not the place to be when you’re actually making music to create expression, to communicate with the hearts of other beings.”

This is a step away from how music is taught with sheet music within a traditional Eurocentric context. Friesen attributes his reintroduction to improvised playing to the influence of Black jazz musicians who pioneered the genre. Then and now, jazz musicians craft a riff at the right moment while still matching accompanying instruments. 

Friesen played another of his pieces, “Voice in the Wood.” The song of a Japanese bush warbler interlaced with his cello. He first heard the birdsong while recording music with the Paul Winter Consort for six full nights in the Miho Museum, which is embedded in the mountains of Kyoto, Japan. As he packed up to leave each morning when the museum opened to the public, the warbler’s song was a constant morning greeting that seemed to call for the music.

His next piece was inspired by the Friendship Bench program in Zimbabwe, which tackles a mental health crisis in towns with a network of “grandmothers,” or designated listeners who give therapy-like services to anyone who sits with them. The Shona language, one of many languages spoken in Zimbabwe, does not have a word for depression and substitutes this with “kufungisisa,” which means “thinking too much.” This word is the song’s name, and is meant to represent the healing that comes from listening.

The beginning and end are the same each time Friesen plays “Kufungisisa,” but he always improvises the middle. This is when he started smiling a little while he played.

Friesen then jumped into the creation of his song, “Humpback Harmony,” which is based on the sounds of a humpback whale. Inspiration for this song began when he fell asleep listening to the radio one night and awoke to the song of a humpback whale.

“Some of the sounds reminded me of the sounds that a cello can make,” Friesen said.

He promised himself to meet a whale in person someday. He finally could when Paul Winter, a bandleader and composer, invited him to Baja, California, in February, when gray whales give birth every year.

Though gray whales don’t sing like humpback whales, Friesen and Winter regardless hopped into a rowboat to share a bay with a couple dozen whales of varying sizes just underneath the water. In the distance, a whale burst out of the water for air.

“An animal that big could blast this boat to smithereens,” Friesen recalled Winter saying. “You realize that, don’t you?”

Moments later, a whale sprung up out of the water near their little boat, close enough to Friesen that he could have reached out and touched the whale while making eye contact with it. Yet the two musicians weren’t afraid.

“I imagine the world of the whale to be a vast, blue cathedral,” Friesen said. “And though that world is being defiled by waste and noise pollution, there are still habitats that are intact. And I believe our role is to protect the beauty we have left.”

In his last song, “My Africa,” Friesen was inspired by how early humans lived in nature in Africa 200,000 years ago prior to migration to other continents.

“The way animals share a sonic space has become a kind of blueprint for basic concepts of rhythm, composition and orchestration,” Friesen said. “And the way they coexist in diversity really has inspired our harmony, our counterpoint and our polyrhythm. We developed our languages of music, dance and rituals from mimicking the orchestra of animals all around us.”

Chautauqua Institution Vice President for Religion Gene Robinson led the Q-and-A with Friesen following the lecture. He asked audience questions submitted through the questions.chq.org portal and by tweeting with the hashtag #CHQ2020.

“You didn’t just play the strings, you played the whole thing,” Robinson said.

Friesen has had his current cello, which sports a loving scuff on the front, for the last 30 years.

Friesen said music without words speaks in an “alternative language” that connects to other people, reaching where words can’t. Once while playing for a classroom, one student who was deaf sat in front of Friesen while he played, and she put her hands on the cello to feel the vibrations. These healing vibrations are that alternative language.

“The kind of listening we are invited to do with music is something that really takes us out of our troubled and worried mindset,” Friesen said. “So it’s an opportunity and an invitation to really revisit another world. It’s a world with a lot of important information for us.”

‘Music that speaks:’ Instrumental students to mix Bach, Shostakovich with 21st Century sound at first recital

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Violinist Rebecca Moy Of The Chautauqua School Of Music, Accompanied By Pianist Shannon Hesse, Plays Beethoven’s “Allegro Con Brio” During The Open Recital Sunday, July 7, 2019, In Fletcher Music Hall. VISHAKHA GUPTA/DAILY STAFF FILE PHOTO

When musicians were forced to leave the energy of live performances behind, School of Music student Allyson Cohen found herself alone with her violin. 

It first struck her as an obstacle, until she realized it could be an asset, too. 

“The pandemic has been a time for me to really explore the solo violin  repertoire,” Cohen said. “I don’t live with a pianist, so it’s nice to play something that is complete — just me and my violin.”

Cohen, along with violinist Darren Carter, trumpeter Riley Conley and cellist Alexander Smith will take to the digital stage at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 16, on the CHQ Assembly Virtual Porch

The first instrumental recital is an “open recital,” meaning students are allowed to play whatever piece they like. Cohen’s selection, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Fantasy” for solo violin, is a 21st-century piece commissioned as a compulsory work for the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, the most recent work on the night’s program.

Cohen said 21st-century music explores a “whole different sound world” that has not been tapped into until recently.

“It can express so many things at once, which is why it might feel like sensory overload if you’re not used to it,” Cohen said. “I think the beauty of it is that if you take the time to listen to these pieces more than once, you begin to learn the essence of it. Understanding this music is something you earn.”

“Fantasy,” according to Cohen, shows off the range of the violin, all the way from the G string to the highest registers. 

“It’s a very empowering piece, both to play and to listen to,” she said. “It has a really fun, contemporary jazzy element that is super melodic and understandable to non-musicians.” 

Darren Carter, a violinist from Baylor University, chose the first movement from Bach’s 1802 Violin Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV 1005. Out of Bach’s three violin sonatas, this is the only one that is in a major key. 

Carter said although it’s a rather slow movement, the overall tone is “uplifting in nature.”

“I love that this piece has a constant, pulsating rhythm that goes through the entire piece, but on each beat, there’s a new chord that grows from the last one,” he said. “It’s a very calming piece because your ear knows what to expect.”

Carter said playing Bach is a challenge, because a musician must “bring out the right voice within the chord.”

“One of the hardest parts about playing Bach is finding a way to make it sound balanced and even, because the violin can’t sustain four notes at once,” he said. “You have to be able to break the chord in such a way that two and two sound as if it were four.” 

Alexander Smith, a student from the Blair School of Music, will play the second movement from Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1934 Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40. Smith said it’s one of Shostakovich’s last works without “political intent or bias at play.”

“He wrote it right after a fight with his wife, so it’s a dance, but it’s ironic and sarcastic,” he said. “I imagine it as him trying to get distance from his issues and have fun, but the darkness he is ignoring looms in the background.”

Making it sound simple, Smith said, is the hardest part. 

“The important thing is to keep the sense of dance and the folk-melody that he composed this piece with in mind,” he said. “There is an antagonistic three-beat rhythm, but you can’t get caught up with the technicalities.”

Compositions from male composers like Bach and Shostakovich are just that — classic. But what hasn’t been seen “until now,” Cohen said, are female composers, such as Zwilich, who were also creating music — whether it be chamber, orchestra or solo pieces — alongside their male colleagues.

“It’s something special to be able to give light to these well-deserving women who are writing amazing things,” Cohen said. “At the same time, you play your piece and the audience has no idea if it’s written by a man or a woman, a Black person or a white person. It doesn’t matter. It’s the music that speaks.”

CSO to hit the virtual stage with rebroadcast of Gavrylyuk’s Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto performance

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The Chautauqua Symhony Orchestra, led by Conductor Rossen Milanov, delivers a strong performance accompanied by famed pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk on Tuesday night, July 2, 2019 in the Amphitheater. ALEXANDER WADLEY/DAILY STAFF FILE PHOTO

Sometimes, cyberspace just doesn’t cut it. 

In the months since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Rossen Milanov has found himself teetering between the loss of what he knows and the possibilities of what he doesn’t. But he’s pushing forward anyway, as the internet may be the closest thing he has to bringing his beloved symphony orchestra back where it belongs: “The hands of those who need the music the most.” 

Milanov, conductor and music director of the CSO, is keeping the sounds of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra alive through his “Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra Rebroadcasts” series on select Thursday evenings throughout the remainder of the season. 

When the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees unanimously decided to suspend any in-person programs on the grounds on May 1, Milanov said he was “instantly determined” to find a place for the orchestra in the virtual programming. After searching through video archives, Milanov settled on five concerts from the 2019 season.  

Although the content of the selections will be familiar to returning Chautauquans, Milanov said some aspects of the rebroadcasts will appear to be “brand new.”

We always like to bring that kind of access to the artistic platforms,” he said. “I think it’s very important to not only share our artistic ideas with an audience, but to also make sure we have a moment of reflection in which we hear how it was received from the other side of the stage. It’s not a one-way street.”

“I think what is so special about these videos is they will allow people to experience what they can’t from the audience, whether those are close-ups of the musicians’ facial expressions or how I communicate with them,” he said. “It’s bringing us closer.”

The series begins with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Alexander Gavrylyuk at 8:15 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 16, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. Subsequent performances include: “Wagner and Rachmaninoff” on July 30, Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in collaboration with the Music School Festival Orchestra on Aug. 13, and Strauss’s “Don Quixote” on Aug. 27. One additional rebroadcast has yet to be confirmed. 

Some rebroadcasts will also include live conversations with featured musicians, Milanov said.

“We always like to bring that kind of access to the artistic platforms,” he said. “I think it’s very important to not only share our artistic ideas with an audience, but to also make sure we have a moment of reflection in which we hear how it was received from the other side of the stage. It’s not a one-way street.”

Gavrylyuk’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was originally performed on July 2, 2019, opening night for the CSO. Gavrylyuk, Chautauqua Institution’s Heintzelman Family Artistic Adviser for the School of Music Piano Program, said after returning to the Institution for 14 consecutive years, he couldn’t “imagine a summer without Chautauqua.”

“Chautauqua, for me, is very near and dear to my heart,” Gavrylyuk said. “It’s been a personal journey that has reflected my own personal philosophy with art and music in its open-mindedness and acceptance of differences. If there is a good way to continue that journey, whatever the circumstances, it would be a privilege to take part.”  

Rachmaninoff wrote his opening piano concerto — the first of four — when he was just 19 years old. The concerto was his first serious attempt at composition as a student and, according to Gavrylyuk, the first he “deemed worthy of release.” Gavrylyuk said it is the perfect performance to start the series with because it’s a “message of a new beginning.”

“It’s a piece with a youthful and optimistic energy,” he said. “It’s very appropriate for the time we are in now because even though it’s a challenging year, it’s also the beginning of a new chapter, just as it was for Rachmaninoff when he finished it. I think it’s just the right piece to lift our spirits.”

Ultimately, Milanov said he is grateful for the newfound “exposure and longevity” past CSO performances will have on the digital platform.

“I feel good about the fact that someone who may have never been to Chautauqua before can now be exposed to this kind of programming and can, hopefully, feel the depth and closeness to the music returning Chautauquans felt seeing it live,” Milanov said. “For the first time, these performances have the chance to live past the moment they are played.”

Artist Azzah Sultan to showcase the prints and folds of her work beyond others’ misconceptions of her religion in lecture “Navigating Culture and Faith Through Art”

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Azzah Sultan received her MFA a few months ago from Washington State University. But she has already shown her work in exhibitions in Paris and across the United States in the states of New York, Washington, Maryland and Connecticut.

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Sultan

Now, she will showcase her work virtually through the CHQ Assembly Video Platform in her lecture, “Navigating Culture and Faith Through Art.”

To reach outsiders’ misunderstandings of her religion and culture, Sultan’s latest work puts traditional Malay and Islam prints — batik wax print, headscarves and prayer rugs — front and center. It moves her viewers beyond the misconception that Islam’s customs oppress her and other Muslim women, which she will discuss in her lecture at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 16, for Week Three’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme: “Art: A Glimpse into the Divine.” Viewers will be able to ask questions during the lecture and subsequent Q-and-A at questions.chq.org and on Twitter at #CHQ2020.

Sultan received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2016. The Malaysian native was born in Abu Dhabi and grew up in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Finland and Bahrain.

She first moved to the United States from Malaysia to study fine arts at The New School’s Parsons School of Design at 16 years old. In true-to-form fashion as a 15-year-old girl, she included the former boy band One Direction in the lower corner of a piece she submitted for her portfolio application to Parsons in 2013. While this specific element was not unexpected for a 15-year-old girl at the time, the piece dealt with thoughtful themes of beauty within society.

At 23, she has spent the last six years in the United States practicing and showcasing her art, which has been featured in 18 exhibitions and two solo shows.

In 2016, she handstitched a U.S. flag out of headscarves donated by women across the country.

“The act of me hand stitching these scarves together brought the different backgrounds and stories of these women into one piece,” Sultan said in an interview for HuffPost. “This is a testimony of coming from various backgrounds but still sharing the common idea of being a Muslim and an American.”

In 2018, she partnered with Adobe Project 1234 to create an ATTN: video titled “I Fear” featuring her work and her voice.

“I fear praying in public by myself because others might think I am up to no good,” Sultan said in the video’s voiceover. “You fear that my culture will integrate into your lifestyle. You fear my foreign tongue because it is too alien. You fear that my abnormal practices will infiltrate how you live your life.”

Since then, she has completed various exhibitions in New York, but the COVID-19 outbreak forced her most recent installation, her MFA thesis titled “Anak Dara,” onto an Instagram Live virtual reception on March 29.

“Anak Dara” in Malay translates to “young, unmarried child,” which Sultan’s mother calls her as a term of endearment. The installation is about Sultan reclaiming her understanding of her culture after leaving home.

The first part of the installation, called “Membalut,” includes three performance videos that Sultan created, played on tube TVs wrapped with Malaysian batik prints. Sultan purchased many of the items included in the installation in Malaysia while visiting home during winter break.

If a viewer were to experience it in person, they would kneel on one of three prayer rugs, one in front of each TV, to watch each performance. But underneath the TVs is a larger single plastic mat “commonly used in the homes of brown families,” she said in a virtual Instagram Live reception of the installation. She found the mat in an Idaho thrift store.

In one performance video, covered in a greenscreen suit, she plays with her mother’s jewelry. In another, she is invisible and blends into a distorted batik print background behind her as she puts on a square headscarf like her mother does (Sultan said she prefers wearing hers in a different way).

For the first performance video, Sultan filmed herself in a greenscreen suit while folding a sarong in a traditional method from a village back home.

“You can’t see me at all, and you only get a sense of what my identity is through the fabric and through the print,” Sultan said during the virtual reception.

This program is made possible by the Mackenzie Fund for Chautauqua.

Tricia Rose, Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, Discusses How Storytelling is used to understand Systemic Racism

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Rose

Systemic racism has existed in the United States since the country’s founding, and yet, just five years ago, Tricia Rose found that the term was barely used. 

“I would find over and over again people who are generally quite well educated, even on issues of race or African-American culture and history would earnestly ask me, ‘So, what is this structural or systemic racism? What are you talking about?’” Rose said. “Like it was just beyond the grasp of their imagination.”

Systemic racism is a process by which practices and policies — past and present — generate and reinforce racial inequalities in every area of society, such as health, housing and criminal justice. Rose said that when she explained systemic racism to people, “particularly white people, but not limited to white people,” she was consistently told that racism in society ended decades ago because of the Civil Rights Movement.

Data also supported that many people thought little about systemic racism; a survey around seven years ago found that 80% of white Americans believed the U.S. was at a point of racial equality, or close to it.

“The consistency of this story became just shocking and fascinating to me,” Rose said, “because it wasn’t as if people had vastly different conceptions and they’re coming up with stuff. It was like this was the story.”

Rose is the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies and associate dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives at Brown University. Rose talked on Wednesday, July 15, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, with Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt. The conversation, titled “Artistic Solutions,” discussed how society uses storytelling and metaphors to understand systemic racism. She is working on a project titled How Structural Racism Works, a public information academic project which shows how systemic racism happens in theory and in daily life.

In the past few months, Rose said more people have been talking about systemic racism. 

“I’m really pleased that it’s got more traction, but I’m concerned that a lack of understanding about what it is might also have its own perils,” Rose said.

Rose said that leaders of the Civil Rights Movement understood more work had to be done.

“Martin Luther King Jr. and everyone else involved knew, … certainly at the legal level, that there were tremendous compromises made in order to get things passed, and that those were just baseline starting points,” Rose said. “There were many, many things Lyndon Johnson and others knew, the Kerner Commision Report knew, that those laws did not necessarily result, automatically, in anything approximating racial equality or equal access.” 

An example of this conflict of stories is unemployment rates. For around 50 years, unemployment rates for Black Americans have been twice that of non-Hispanic white Americans. Rose said the a 16% unemployment rate for the latter is considered “catastrophic,” even though that is the average for the former.

“And if you see yourself as agreeing with racial equality and believing that society as a whole has eradicated (racism), then what explanations are you left with to explain this disparity?” Rose asked. “What you end up being left with are behavioral examples, and behavioral-based evidence.”

These examples include believing that certain cultures are lazy, and Rose said “you get this at the high political level, and you get this in everyday storytelling.”

“I’m not suggesting behavior doesn’t matter. I’m not suggesting discipline doesn’t matter, and I’m not suggesting that culture doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “I’m just saying that it is not an answer that it can explain a consistent doubling of an unemployment rate by itself … and that these systemic factors are clearly playing a significant role.”

Another example is finding job opportunities through social networks. Rose said Black people tend to have a more diverse social network, but the average white person’s social network is just 1% Black.

“A systemic analysis is asking us to look at the way all of those factors play a role together, you see? And once you’re looking for it, you find it everywhere,” Rose said. “It’s amazing how much you realize others have been overlooking when you really start looking.”

Rose stressed the importance of metaphors in order to understand systemic racism. A birdcage is commonly associated with systemic racism; Iris Marian Young, a political theorist, said that if a person tried to understand racism by looking at one wire of the cage, it is hard to understand why the bird is trapped. Young said only a large number of wires connected in a certain way will make sure the bird can’t escape.

Rose believes that there are a few aspects of racism the birdcage image misses, or is sometimes confusing — for example, does the cage have a door?

“If there’s no door, how do people get into this cage? And then if there is a door, does it open out? Does it open in? Who’s opening the door?” Rose said. “Who has the key? Is there only one exit? Is it through the door? Are there other exits? Is it really just a one-area problem? So you see, the birdcage gets us going, but it also raises questions.”

Rose said that as people understand systemic racism more, they are able to say why a certain metaphor does not work, as the topic is very complex. Another metaphor for systemic racism, which Rose said is more successful than the birdcage in some ways and less in others, is a web. She said that webs can be everywhere in society, like in transportation and housing.

“If you think from a Spider-Man perspective, web covers everything. Or … think about a web that an actual spider produces, these fine and stretchy networks of fibers that people get caught in,” Rose said. “You can push and you can stretch and you’re still in the web.”

A web is also flexible, but stuck in a certain spot.

“It’s very difficult to decide where you would want to draw and put some energy because, well, what’s the difference between the top right corner and the bottom left corner?” Rose said. “How do they relate to one another? 

The third metaphor Rose developed for the  How Structural Racism Works project is a series of gears. Each gear is a major institution in American society, like housing and education, and each cog is a policy that interacts with other policies on another cog to push systemic racism. Rose likes this metaphor for a few reasons, including that gears work together to keep moving. 

“I love it because I believe in the monkey wrench. I believe that you can put a monkey wrench in education and housing discrimination … and have a big impact,” Rose said.

Ewalt then asked where, such as in schools, news or popular culture, should these metaphors and ways of storytelling be taught.

Rose said that she is writing a handbook that will be concise and accessible. She said that when she travels on airplanes, her job comes up in conversation with other passengers.

“You don’t want to be trapped going cross country in the seat with some first-class guy drinking way too many whiskies and having an argument about race,” Rose said.

Rose thought that if she had a handbook, she could give it to people who ask about her work and they could read and educate themselves on their own time.

She also said brief educational YouTube videos could explain certain areas, like criminal justice, and stressed the importance of retelling stories that show how systemic racism works person to person. The story of Trayvon Martin’s death, for example, is often conveyed as one of a chance encounter with a racist, Rose said, but “when you look at it from a systemic standpoint, there are all of these factors that colluded to bring him there.”

They call the police more, they feel worried and they start to move. And when they start to move, that tipping point turns it into a Black neighborhood and brings with it the economic discrimination that, of course, follows people around,” Rose said. “So people are very panicky in protecting neighborhoods.”

Martin was in Florida because he was suspended from school, for infractions that should not have resulted in suspension, and he was visiting his father. Rose said that Black students are “hyper-punished, a criminal justice phenomenon that has been fed into the school system for infractions that would otherwise go unnoticed.” 

Another factor Rose said led to Martin’s death is that when neighborhoods have a population of 10 to 15% Black people, white people get “very anxious.”

“They call the police more, they feel worried and they start to move. And when they start to move, that tipping point turns it into a Black neighborhood and brings with it the economic discrimination that, of course, follows people around,” Rose said. “So people are very panicky in protecting neighborhoods.”

Martin’s father lived in a neighborhood that was at this tipping point, and George Zimmerman, who killed Martin, was involved in the real estate business. Rose said Zimmerman was likely aware of the transition in the neighborhood

“When you put Zimmerman in context in the town and the racial culture of segregation that drives property values,” Rose said, “and when you put it in the context of systemic school discrimination based on hyper-punishment of young Black people, especially boys … it’s not the story of a chance encounter between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.”

Ewalt’s final question for Rose: What are the first steps in understanding and combating systemic racism?

“There has to be a process of sort of depersonalization, because I think what gets activated for people is a blame narrative about racism. ‘Am I a bigot?’ ‘Am I a racist?’ It becomes a personal attack to have the conversation. And I just don’t think that’s a very productive way to start a conversation about anything volatile.”

Rose ended by talking about educating younger generations.

“They shouldn’t come up without (being educated about systemic racism) and then be shocked, disillusioned and depressed about what the world is really about when it’s at its worst,” Rose said.

‘Power of love:’ Chautauqua school of music voice students bring unofficial theme of love to first virtual recital

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Matthew Payne Performs At The Voice Program’s Annual Sing-In At Fletcher Music Hall On Tuesday, June 26, 2018. HALDAN KIRSCH/STAFF FILE PHOTO

For Chautauqua School of Music voice student Julia O’Sullivan, performing a song doesn’t just take skill — it takes heart. 

“It takes a lot of emotion to get these right,” O’Sullivan said. 

O’Sullivan, a student at Purchase College, will be singing Mozart’s “Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte,” which translates to “As Luise was burning the letters of her unfaithful lover.”

“It is a very fiery piece about a woman explaining how her husband betrayed her,” O’Sullivan said. “There is so much anger in her words, but there’s also a lot of despair.”

O’Sullivan, along with four other students from the Chautauqua School of Music Voice Program, will perform in their first recital of the season at 7 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 15, on the CHQ Assembly Virtual Porch

O’Sullivan will also perform Franz Liszt’s “Oh! Quand je dors!,” a French piece she has been practicing for two years. “Oh! Quand je dors!” is based on a poem by Victor Hugo, which she said encompasses many “God-like references about being in love.”

“It’s all about passion and the true love you can feel for someone that is unlike anything else in this world,” she said. “It’s like comparing the woman you love to an angel. A lot of Mozart’s pieces are very square, but this one has a lot more freedom in its vibrato and rhythm. It’s much more involved musically.” 

Since the School of Music only has four weeks of programming this season, faculty gave students the guidelines for upcoming recitals in early June. While there is no theme to this first recital, each student was given two song suggestions to provide roughly 7 minutes of music each. Students were given the option to switch a song out if they wanted to. 

Each piece will have pre-recorded musical accompaniment on the piano, which was provided by one of three members of the School of Music’s faculty: Martin Dubé, Kanae Matsumoto or Donna Gill. After students recorded their selections, they sent them to faculty members who then edited them all together. In total, the five voice students will perform 10 songs at the recital.

Nathaniel Wilkens, a student from Miami University, will sing Charles Gounod’s “Avant de quitter ces lieux” which translates to “Before leaving this place.” It is an aria for baritone from the French opera Faust, one Wilkens described as an emotional farewell from a soldier. 

“The story is that he is going off to war and he is asking God to protect his sister while he is away,” Wilkens said. “I have had this one in my pocket for awhile, but I wanted to perform it because the story it tells is so beautiful and heartfelt.”

Adam Catangui, a student from the Eastman School of Music, will sing “A Simple Song” by Leonard Bernstein. “A Simple Song” is the second movement in Bernstein’s Mass, a musical theater composition he created to communicate the “crisis of faith” present in the 1970s. 

“I think those words really spoke to me in this time because there is so much for us to overthink and a lot on our minds, and I think taking the time to sing about how simple music and our love for music is, is comforting,” he said.  

Catangui will also perform Frank Bridge’s “Love Went A‑Riding Over the Earth,” which he called “memorably colorful.” 

“It has a fan-farish sound that is huge and bold,” he said. “You need a certain emphasis because you are ultimately singing about the power of love.”

Love is the unofficial recurring theme in each of the students’ recital selections. For Catangui, it’s also what drove him to return to the School of Music for the second season in a row. Although he misses the nights spent in Bellinger Hall with his friends and ice cream runs to the Brick Walk Cafe, the personal connections with faculty have remained on the virtual platform. Those, he said, are worth “holding onto.” 

“No one there has ever made me feel like I am just some young kid trying to make it in music,” Catangui said. “I feel like I belong when I study at Chautauqua. A screen hasn’t gotten in the way of that feeling.” 

Chautauqua Theater Company presents it’s not a trip, it’s a journey for the first New Play Workshop reading of the season.

Charly Evon Simpson

Sometimes, a road trip is more than just a road trip.

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Simpson

Charly Evon Simpson returns to Chautauqua this season to workshop her play, it’s not a trip, it’s a journey, a story about friendship, self discovery and being Black. CTC will host the play’s first reading before it premieres at Round House Theater in Maryland next spring. 

The first New Play Workshop reading of the 2020 Chautauqua Theater Company season will take place at 8:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 15, 2020, on the CHQ Assembly Virtual Porch.

Though a NPW play would traditionally be performed in Bratton Theater in front of an audience, CTC’s shift into the virtual world for the 2020 season necessitates a virtual performance, something which presented unique challenges for Simpson, director Nicole A. Watson and every person involved. 

“There are many moments in the play that are difficult to really capture on Zoom,” Simpson said. “It required some re-thinking and, at times, specific rewriting to make the play work in this new format.”

CTC Artistic Director Andrew Borba spoke highly of the play, and is excited to see it come alive during the first reading. 

“This is such a beautiful play on the page, (and) what I’m most looking forward to is seeing it brought to life and giving our audience a chance to witness Charly’s magical world brought to life by these extraordinary actors,” Borba said.

According to Simpson’s website, it’s not a trip, it’s a journey tells the tale of a girl named June and three of her friends who have been convinced to “ditch New York City (and their cellphones) for an impromptu road trip to the Grand Canyon. As the four wildly different women travel through the wondrous and not-so-wondrous sights of the United States, they must come together to contend with being Black, female-identifying, and American … all at the same time. An intimate play with vast ambitions, it’s not a trip, it’s a journey is about road trips, friendships, and finding the difference between surviving and thriving.”

An award-winning playwright, Simpson’s other works include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown and more; Jump was Simpson’s first play workshopped with CTC in 2018 , and went on to premiere at PlayMakers Repertory Company in January 2019. The play is a story about a family struggling with the loss of a loved one, partially inspired by Jumpers, an article in The New Yorker about those who attempt suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

it’s not a trip, it’s a journey is directed by Watson, associate artistic director of Roundhouse Theater, in her debut with Chautauqua. 

Each year, the CTC New Play Workshops, made possible by the Roe Green Foundation, takes plays in the final stages of writing and polishes and perfects them before they premiere. 

“Our goal with the NPWs is to produce the plays in ways that help the writer test the play,” Borba said. “Stretch it, work it, so that when it moves on to a full production, as this one will at Roundhouse Theater in 2021, the play begins further down the road in the rehearsal process.”

Though the online nature of the performance has been difficult, Simpson appreciated the challenge and enjoyed her collaboration with CTC. 

“It was a joy to work with this group of people,” Simpson said. “Watching the play come to life, even as we all sat in our homes, in different parts of the country, was a gift.”

Artist and scholar Fahamu Pecou to discuss Black masculinity, art, language

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For artist and scholar Fahamu Pecou, language can be slippery. It can be oppressive. It can reinforce harmful stereotypes of Black masculinity and trauma. But, where language fails, art can be a respite.

“When we talk about democracy, there’s no truer form of democratic expression than in the arts — because every artist’s internal perspectives and views will be as unique as a fingerprint,” he said. “It creates spaces for every voice to be valued.”

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Pecou

Pecou will discuss language, art, democracy and Black masculinity in a presentation called “Notions of Resistance in Black Art” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 15 on CHQ Assembly. This lecture will usher in the 2020 lecture series hosted by The African American Heritage House

Ultimately with all of my projects, whether it’s a lecture or an exhibition or whatever it may be, my ultimate goal is always to trouble questions. To get us to think, and question and challenge the way that we see the world, the way we see ourselves in the world, the way we see others in the world,” Pecou said. “For me, the goal is never about having the right answer as much as it is about figuring out what question to ask.”

Art means many things to Pecou. In his decades-long career as an artist, he has worked in painting, drawing, performance art, film and music. Regardless of medium, Pecou has focused his art on issues of Black masculinity. 

“When it comes to representations of Black men, they’re often very extreme representations,” Pecou said. “You’re either George Floyd or Barack Obama, and I think that is equally problematic and equally traumatic, so I have been exploring ways to represent Black men and show aspects of Black masculinity and Black male livelihood that we don’t often see depicted in the media.”

Twenty years ago, this meant commentary on hip-hop culture. In his early work, Pecou created and marketed his art the same way hip-hop artists were presented in pop culture, despite his medium being painting and not music. But as time went on, his artistic focus began to change. 

“When my son was born in 2008, that shifted to be specific around the enduring and intergenerational traumas of Black masculinity. I wanted to explore those as I question my own upbringing. I didn’t grow up with a father or male role model around me and I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to raise a Black man,” Pecou said. “I began to focus my work on those questions around Black masculinity — what it meant, what it looked like, why it looked the way it looked, and how we could change the narratives.” 

Pecou found that many representations of Black men were inextricably tied to trauma. Rather than depicting suffering, Pecou was compelled to create more diverse images of Black men that show joy. 

“One of the things that I’m drawn to currently is trying to work around the notion that continues to confluate Black bodies with trauma,” Pecou said. “When we talk about resistance, we have to broaden the scope of what that looks like. A few of the projects that I’ve been working on over the last year and half or so have centered on exploring spaces of Black pleasure and joy.”

In a 2019 TEDxAtlanta presentation, Pecou spoke further about the importance of representation. He referenced psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage,” in which people internalize cultural cues of what they are or ought to be. 

“Rather than identity being formed from the inside out, it’s more likely shaped from the outside in,” Pecou said on the TEDx stage. “This becomes crucial when understanding Black male identity and performance because largely those representations are extremely narrow and problematic.”

Pecou’s art is not intended as an all-knowing voice. He said that he does not see his art as having all of the answers, but asking questions of its viewer and of society. 

“Ultimately with all of my projects, whether it’s a lecture or an exhibition or whatever it may be, my ultimate goal is always to trouble questions. To get us to think, and question and challenge the way that we see the world, the way we see ourselves in the world, the way we see others in the world,” Pecou said. “For me, the goal is never about having the right answer as much as it is about figuring out what question to ask.”

The presentation will be followed by a live Q-and-A session with Pecou where listeners can submit questions through a submission portal, or on Twitter with the hashtag #CHQ2020.

The beauty in nature, the beauty in music: Friesen to present musical Interfaith lecture using his cello

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There’s the rosewood scroll, the strings, the bridge, the tailpiece and the bow. It all comes together to form a cello, a vehicle through which a person can create music and harmony.

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Friesen

But for renowned cellist Eugene Friesen, the instrument is also a vehicle for expressing love — in his case, love for nature.

“The music that I make is really inspired by the time I spend alone, outside, especially in the woods here in New England and in the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River,” said Friesen, a composer, conductor, teacher and four-time Grammy Award-winner. “I’ve been with the whales in Baja, California, I’ve been to Siberia and Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. These experiences are inspirational and transformational.”

Friesen’s experiences outdoors are “a kind of nature mysticism” that directly informs his music-writing process. 

“At its best, the music really comes from those experiences,” he said. “It’s not stuff that I make or workshop, it’s stuff that just appears, pretty much fully formed.”

At 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, July 15, Friesen will present his lecture, “The Beauty We Love,” on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform as part of Week Three’s theme for the Interfaith Lecture Series: “Art: A Glimpse into the Divine.”  

The importance of nature in creating art is something Friesen champions as being essential for young musicians today.

“It’s become more difficult — I’m not even talking about the pandemic. I’m talking about being able to get out of the city and into nature that’s really pristine,” he said. “When we think about some of the greatest works of art that we revere the most, many of them are either describing nature, or making metaphors from nature.”

According to Friesen, a whole generation of inner-city kids will not understand the “musical language” that nature provides.

And equally important, Friesen said, is the need for orchestral musicians who are classically trained to nourish their creativity.

“And nourish not only our performance abilities, but also our improving abilities,” he said. “I like to say that it’s not what we play, it’s why we play. Those experiences in nature and the values we have from our spiritual lives as well as our families — these are the things that should shape the sounds we make.”

Friesen said his lecture will consist of a musical program made up of his original compositions.

And though the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted Friesen’s busy schedule of touring and performances with the Paul Winter Consort, he said it’s been “incredible” to be stuck at home for these last months.

“I’ve been able to really go deep into my studies, as well as into my own music,” he said. “I wake up every day really enthused about working on the music, because I never really know what’s going to come out.”

This program is made possible by the Lois Raynow Department of Religion Fund.

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, Discusses the Arts, Social Justice and Philanthropy

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Art may seem useless when society itself is going through great change, especially in the midst of a worldwide pandemic that has killed 138,000 Americans, and people are marching through the streets to protest systemic racism that has killed countless Black men, women and children.

But Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, said during this time of “extraordinary inequality, where everything is seen through the lens of capital, and what is valued correlates with capital,” art reminds people what really matters. Art often helps people find words and imagery that match experiences.

“I noticed from my own experience when I lost my David (Beitzel, Walker’s partner of 26 years), I was so grief stricken. I couldn’t actually fully articulate what I was going through,” Walker said. “And I found through certain words that are in poems, or looking at his favorite Joan Mitchell and Hans Hoffman paintings, I found him, and I found ways of coping with my grief.”

Walker said that there is a dialogue with many forms of art. In theater, there is a dialogue in vignettes, when traditions from the past are grounded in the present and, he said, “that dialogue that happens between the person sitting in the seat and what’s going on the stage.”

“I was literally just lamenting the fact that the Nutcracker is not going to be on stage at New York Koch Theater this winter. I look forward to that dialogue,” Walker said.

Art also reminds people of the past.

“I remember the first time I saw Merrill Ashley come out as the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Walker said. “And now there’s some new principal of the dancer, Tyler (Angle) who I don’t really know, but I’m in a dialogue with Tyler and Merrill Ashley about the Sugar Plum Fairy, and what it all means.”

Walker talked on Tuesday, July 14, on CHQ Assembly, with Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill. The conversation, titled “Arts and Social Justice” was the second presentation of Week Three’s theme of “Art and Democracy” 

What we learn from those experiences (with the arts) is empathy. We develop the empathy muscle that allows us to see the humanity in other people,” Walker said, “to put ourselves in their shoes, to imagine what it must be like to be marginalized, dispossessed, disrespected and disregarded — which often too many people in our society are and that is why there is so much injustice.”

Walker grew up in Ames, Texas, and in 1965, a woman walked around the neighborhood asking if families would enroll their children in a new government program called Headstart. He joined the inaugural class of Headstart, which developed a love of reading and encouraged curiosity within him.

“I think the art for me, initially, was something that felt remote. I first remember going with my grandmother, who was a domestic for a wealthy family in Houston, to clean their house,” Walker said. “They threw away programs from events they attended. Cultural activities. And then, I remember just taking some of those.”

Walker said he was lucky to attend the University of Texas in Austin, which had a “fantastic cultural program.” He saw the Dance Theater of Harlem in 1980, as well as many Broadway road shows. 

“I just saw my life change because of the arts in so many ways,” Walker said.

Hill asked how Walker went from getting a law degree to working in philanthropy at the Ford Foundation.

Walker said he did not know what philanthropy was until he received a scholarship to go to school from a wealthy Texas oilman. He was hired as COO of the Community Development Organization of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where one of the funders gave his name to the president of the Rockefeller Foundation. A few weeks later, Walker was hired as the director of the U.S. program of the Rockefeller Foundation. 

“Going from Harlem, from a basement office on 138th Street where we literally counted every penny,” Walker said, “(to) where, when you went to Washington, you took the $2 bus, not the Amtrak, to Rockefeller was a very different world, to say the least.”

Walker found that he could help people in this career.

“I never wanted a career in philanthropy. I still don’t want a career in philanthropy. I found that philanthropy could be a place for someone who wanted to work on social justice,” Walker said.

Walker takes the most joy with working with the arts, which he believes are an essential part of a just society. He said that we “can’t have justice without the arts.”

“What we learn from those experiences (with the arts) is empathy. We develop the empathy muscle that allows us to see the humanity in other people,” Walker said, “to put ourselves in their shoes, to imagine what it must be like to be marginalized, dispossessed, disrespected and disregarded — which often too many people in our society are and that is why there is so much injustice.”

Walker said society has to become more empathetic to solve injustices like mass incarceration. This includes empathy in leadership.

“I hear the words that leaders use to describe other human beings. I look at those leaders and I say, ‘This is a person who has clearly never read poetry, has clearly not had that empathy muscle developed,’” Walker said. “(That muscle) is only developed through the experience of the arts and humanities.”

Hill then asked about Walker’s book, From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth — specifically why he chose to include this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Philanthropy is commendable, but should not allow the philanthropists to overlook the economic injustice that makes philanthropy possible.”

Walker said that in the U.S. it has been important for wealthy people to be charitable and to feel good about giving back.

“And I still believe that that imperative is important, but it’s no longer enough. Philanthropy cannot solve the challenges we see facing our society today,” Walker said.

Walker said that wealthy people, including himself, will have to ask what they are willing to give up, rather than give back. This conversation will be difficult because, Walker said, many Americans, particularly successful ones, believe that the U.S. is a meritocracy, meaning power in society is based on personal ability. There are policies in place, he said, that push some people forward and hold others back — such as tax systems and legacy admissions to colleges.

“I think all of us, from where we sit, are going to have to get uncomfortable to see real progress in America,” Walker said.

Hill asked if the U.S. is ready to be uncomfortable.

Walker thinks that more people are ready, but is not sure that society as a whole is. From his conversation with CEOs, philanthropists and other foundations, he has seen that people are engaging in different kinds of conversation.

“Part of the reason the ball can be moved farther down the field now is because, for 400 years in this country, racism has been denied,” Walker said. “There was always deniability as an option for white people.”

I believe we as a people are willing to hear things that are difficult and uncomfortable, and that are antithetical to our professed values and our romanticized narrative of who we are as a people,” Walker said. “I think we’re in a different position and that’s one of the reasons I’m hopeful.”

The hearts of centuries of African Americans have been broken in America, Walker said, but now more white Americans are anguished, depressed and heartbroken by that racism, too.

“Now we’re able to experience the heartbreak together, of what racism can do to a society,” Walker said.

Walker said George Floyd’s death and the deaths of other Black people by police has made denying racism no longer an option.

“I believe we as a people are willing to hear things that are difficult and uncomfortable, and that are antithetical to our professed values and our romanticized narrative of who we are as a people,” Walker said. “I think we’re in a different position and that’s one of the reasons I’m hopeful.”

Hill’s last question was what everyday citizens should do “in the midst of this changing democracy we find ourselves in.”

“The thing that we need today is compassion, is love, is grace. This is what will get us through this moment. (But) only if each of us commits in our own lives, to live by those values, and to show love, compassion, and grace to others,” Walker said. “Can we imagine a better world? That’s what I hope for all of us. And that’s what the arts can help us to do.”

From Pharaoh’s Egypt to Trump’s USA, Ori Soltes links artists’ religious references and political statements in “The Spiritual Soul and Political Body in Art”

SoltesScreeshot

From Pharaoh’s Egypt to Trump’s USA, Georgetown University’s Ori Soltes said that artists have used religious symbols to uphold — and dissent against — political power and control.

Soltes is a professor of art history, theology, philosophy and political history, as well as the former director of B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. As an author of 280 books and a seasoned Chautauqua Institution lecturer, he delivered his lecture “The Spiritual Soul and Political Body in Art” on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform at 2 p.m. EDT Monday, July, 13. His lecture was the first in Week Three’s interfaith theme, “Art: A Glimpse into the Divine.” 

“Anything and everything we say about God — and even how God says anything to us — is really functionally a metaphor, an analogy,” Soltes said. “God is powerful as we understand ‘powerful.’ God is good as we understand ‘good.’ God is interested in as far as we understand ‘interested,’ and that is as far as we can go.”

Visual art in religion has been another way — outside of texts — to express human understanding of God’s will. Religious cues in art can also make a political leader appear god-like or as a direct channel to divine will. 

“As far back as we can trace art, one of its most important purposes has been to be an instrument in the hands of religion,” Soltes said. “But here’s the thing: Religion has also been an instrument in the hand of politics, whether we talk about a pharaoh who wants you to understand that he is divine or rules by divine (authority) … Or in some cases, we may even have a president who thinks he’s the chosen, who wants his constituents to believe that he is virtually God.”

Soltes’ first example of such religious art was the Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, an imperial work of carved pink limestone from the Mesopotamian Akkadian Dynasty. Held in the Louvre, the carving exalts King Naram-Sin, who is twice as big as the other figures, and his overtaking of the Lullubi people.

Stele of King Nimran Sin
Stele of King Nimran Sin

“As an (Akkadian), you would know that he is not just a king because he’s got a helmet that has horns that look like the horns of a bull,” Soltes said.

The bull is associated with the chief Akkadian god, Marduk. And above the depicted mountainscape, two sunbursts also signify the god Anu. Even if viewers can’t read cuneiform on the side of the mountain, “and most of them (back then) wouldn’t have been able to,” Soltes said, viewers know that the king has divine will.

Soltes then backtracked to Egypt’s fourth dynasty with a diorite statue of the pharaoh Khafra, which is designed to make him appear physically perfect.

Pharaoh Khafra

“Everything is symmetrical. Nothing is irregular. Nothing is going to change,” Soltes said. “Eternal, unchanging, perfect — this is god-like. But that’s not enough. He has an addition behind him, the image of a falcon hawk, that every Egyptian would know represents the god Horus.”

This depiction of the god of Horus would root itself in the Greek language. Soltes said the Greek word for favor or grace would become chári, or χάρη, which became the root for the word charisma. In the example of the enthroned Khafra statue, this charisma was granted by the god of Horus.

This same tactic of using religious symbols to depict political power carried into monotheistic religious traditions.

On the north wall sanctuary of the 1180-era Monreale Cathedral in present-day Italy, a throned Jesus crowns King William II, who ruled between 1166 and 1189. William II funded the construction of the cathedral, which was finished in 1180.

Mosaic from Sicily cathedral

While Islamic art usually uses abstract geometric shapes and writing forms rather than figures, these elements in architectural structure still exemplify the depiction of political power.

Soltes used the architectural elements of the Dome of the Rock, a holy Islamic site in Jerusalem, as an example.

Its circular dome rests on an octagonal structure, which in turn rests on a squared base. The dome, without beginning or end with one continuous color, is suggestive of heaven. The octagonal structure is the interior of an eight-pointed star with tiny details, while the square base represents human reality of north, south, east and west points.

“The four-sided base and the rounded dome is a point of meeting that signifies the meeting between the human and divine,” Soltes said.

The political role of this structure was the very reason for its construction. 

“It was to mark the place that is referenced very briefly in the first verse of the 17th chapter of the Quran, this miraculous night ride,” Soltes said. “Muhammad went from what turns out to be Mecca to what turns out to be Jerusalem, and in what’s called the Isra and the Mi’raj, where he ascended past all past prophets, had conversations with God and came back down to Mecca.”

Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who ruled from Damascus, was too far away from Mecca and Medina to protect those sacred sites. But Jerusalem, where he would build the Dome of the Rock in 691, was geographically closer. The caliph could then rule as both a political and spiritual leader since he ruled close enough to protect a nearby sacred site.

In the 17th through 20th centuries in the West, people shifted toward secular influences, art in turn became secularized. But religious symbols still carry weight with some strictly secular artists.

French Post-Impressionist Paul Gaughin was not religious but was regardless fascinated by religious symbols, which he used in “Yellow Christ,” which depicts three women who stopped below a cross to kneel before an imagined Christ.

“It’s a miraculous show of faith that he can’t ignore with his fascination,” Soltes said.

Ben Shahn, a New York-based artist in the 1900s, is another contemporary example who was quoted as saying that he wished he’d been “lucky enough to be alive at a great time — when something big was going on, like the Crucifixion.”

His breakout piece in 1932, “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti,” represented a crucifixion of his own time. This mural criticized the decision of a judge and subsequent committee who put to death two Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, for robbery and murder in 1927. Despite public controversy, the committee sentenced the two radical immigrants to death.

The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti

In the painting, Shahn depicts Judge Webster Thayer taking an oath. The committee in the foreground holds lilies while presiding over the coffins of Sacco and Vanzetti, a treatment that is reminiscent of the condemned Christ.

The same questioning of authority can be seen in contemporary art. Azzah Sultan, who will deliver her own lecture in the Interfaith Lecture Series at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 16, explores Islamophobia, the intersection between Islam and Asian culture, and the politics of gender in her work.

Helène Aylon’s body of work is a contemporary example of Jewish feminist art on the politics of gender. Her structure “All Rise” is a play on the Bedin seats of the three male Rabbinic leaders who oversee judgment for community decisions, including if a woman requests a divorce from her husband. The piece protests the lack of female representation on these benches and in the Rabbinic leadership. The “God Project” was another installation of Aylon’s, where she blacked out misogynistic passages and instances of violence toward women in the Torah.

Marsha Annenburg’s “Home on the Range” is another piece that satirizes the current moment. It is a lazified version of the “American Gothic” painting — a positive representation of rural Christian values painted in 1930 on the cusp of the Great Depression. These quaint elements have been replaced with vapidness and false worship, and “freedom has now been reduced to the size of a TV screen,” Soltes said.

Soltes finished with an example of a work that satirizes Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” which depicts Christ, by replacing Christ’s face with Trump’s.

Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi and Satirization Salvator Mundi Trump

“He’s taken what was intended to be a marriage between the spiritual and art, and further married it to politics,” Soltes said. “… There’s no question that in this image, the notion of the way in which art and religion and politics have interwoven for thousands of years takes on a new face, if you will.”

Eva Stern & Vahn Armstrong to play ‘contrasting’ Mozart and Martinů in Into the Music concert

Van-Armstrong-Eva-Stern
Armstrong & Stern

No horns, no harps — just beauty. With strings alone, Vahn Armstrong and Eva Stern are bringing the contrasting styles of Mozart and Martinů to this week’s “Into the Music” with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

Armstrong, violinist and the CSO’s associate concertmaster, will be joined by Stern, his partner and long-time member of the CSO’s viola section, at 8:15 p.m. EDT Tuesday, July 14, on the Virtual Porch

The duo will play three movements of two pieces: Mozart’s “Duo for Violin and Viola” in G major, K. 423 and Bohuslav Martinů’s “Three Madrigals,” also arranged for violin and viola. 

“Even with no horns, harps or trumpets, both pieces are remarkable in the range of color and texture they achieve,” Stern said. “We love playing them both simply because they’re beautiful.”

Beautiful, but in their own way.

“They contrast one another significantly,” Armstrong said. “When you put them on a program together, you give the listener the best of both worlds.” 

Mozart’s “Duo for Violin and Viola” in G major, K. 423, is the first of the two he wrote in the summer of 1783 to complete Michael Haydn’s set of six for the Archbishop Colloredo. Haydn couldn’t finish them because he was sick, so Mozart wrote the pieces and released them under Haydn’s name. 

Armstrong considers it a “standard” in a violin and viola duo’s repertoire.

“We have been talking for years about finally doing this Mozart piece,” he said. “Apparently, it does take a pandemic to do it.” 

Haydn’s duos typically gave the violin a more soloistic lead, adding viola accompaniment through multiple double stops, or two separate strings bowed or plucked simultaneously. Mozart’s duos differ in that the viola has many of its own passages in sixteenths, almost in equal proportion to the violin. 

There is a saying about Mozart, that it is too easy for children and too hard for grown-ups,” Armstrong said. “There is a kind of simplicity, which doesn’t give young students a chance to flex their technical muscles. But to actually play it like it’s supposed to be played — it’s perfection. Perfection is never easy.”

The violin starts the piece with a descending scale leading to grace notes, musical “ornaments” not essential to the melody, Armstrong said. For the remainder of the piece, as each instrument takes a breath, the other comes in with a more thematic tone, mimicking a game of “cat and mouse.”

“There is a saying about Mozart, that it is too easy for children and too hard for grown-ups,” Armstrong said. “There is a kind of simplicity, which doesn’t give young students a chance to flex their technical muscles. But to actually play it like it’s supposed to be played — it’s perfection. Perfection is never easy.”

The “Three Madrigals” for violin and viola were completed in New York in July 1947 and dedicated to the violist Lillian Fuchs and her brother, Joseph. Stern said the sound gives off a “20th-century feel” in its syncopated rhythms and harsher dissonance.

“There are so many moments that sound like more than two instruments,” Stern said. “The second movement stands out because it has these chorale-sounding parts that make it seem like, all of a sudden, the sound has blossomed into being more than just the two of us.”

Martinů drew from Bohemian and Moravian folk themes and dances to create rhythms representative of madrigals, vocal chamber music that originated in northern Italy during the 14th century. Stern said the tone contains hints of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

“There is so much energy that it feels satirical in a sense,” Stern said, adding that their responsibility is to do “as best as we can.”

“Our best is the musical equivalent of getting into different characters as an actor,” Stern said. “The two pieces are such different characters, but both are full of imagination and surprising colors and, I think, some really exalted moments of beauty.”

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