Two Performances In Honor of Judson with work by choreographers, composers and performers Toby Armour, Arthur Aviles, Remy Charlip, Malcolm Goldstein, Aileen Passloff, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, and Elaine Summers will take place Friday and Saturday, October 29 and 30, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, in New York City.

Tickets are $20 (students/seniors $10) and can be purchased at www.judson.org or by calling 917-727-0431.

The Artistic Director of the performance is Aileen Passloff, who has enjoyed a long career as a choreographer, dancer, director, actor, teacher, and who was instrumental in the founding of Judson Dance Theater. According to Passloff, “pioneering artists who had their beginnings at Judson Church will be returning to perform or speak about their memories and about their collaborations in Greenwich Village during a period of political and social ferment.” Two Performances In Honor of Judson is produced by Nicole and Michael Bloom.

These performances are held in conjunction with the exhibition “A Sanctuary for the Arts: Judson Memorial Church and the Avant-Garde, 1954-1977”, which opens at the Fales Library in the NYU Library on October 28. This groundbreaking exhibition, curated by Joanna Steinberg, will explore the synergies between the artists who performed at Judson Memorial Church in the 1960s and 70s and the church ministry and congregation. While the arts movements that took shape at Judson Church have enjoyed prominence, this exhibition re-examines the church’s involvement in the downtown arts scene, giving the church a stronger presence in the narrative.

A Roundtable Discussion, moderated by famed Village Voice critic Deborah Jowitt, launches the exhibition, focusing on the reverberations of Judson’s history, both for the church and the arts. Participants will include Essie Borden (former member of the Judson Poet’s Theater and congregant), and renowned members of Judson Dance Theater Malcolm Goldstein, Carolee Schneemann, and Yvonne Rainer. The roundtable discussion will be at Judson Church at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 28th, and the exhibition opening and reception will follow directly at 7:45 p.m. at Fales Library on the 3rd Floor of the NYU’s Bobst Library (one block east of Judson).

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The exhibition “A Sanctuary for the Arts: Judson Memorial Church and the Avant-Garde, 1954-1977” will be held at Fales Library, New York University (3rd Floor of the NYU’s Bobst Library) from October 28, 2010 – January 7, 2011. The Tracey/Barry Gallery is located at New York University, 70 Washington Square South in New York City. Hours are: Monday-Thursday: 10:00am – 5:45pm; Friday: 10:00am – 4:45pm, and closed on weekends. The exhibition will remain open until 8:00 pm on Friday evening before the performance. Visit http://www.judson.org/falesexhibition for more information.

The multi-media exhibition features original prints by photographers: Martha Holmes, Peter Moore, Al Giese, Jan Van Raay, Julie Abeles, Larry Fink, and Howard Smith among others; printed materials: programs, posters, graphic notations; and oral histories.  There are writings by Al Carmines and Howard Moody about Judson’s Arts Ministry, music recordings, and video recordings of dance performances, among other never-before-seen visuals that have been loaned from congregants’ personal collections. Featured subjects include artists Meredith Monk, Claes Oldenberg, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, and Carolee Schneeman, A complete list of artists featured in the exhibition is available upon request.

Curator Joanna Steinberg has worked in the education department at the Museum of the City of New York since she graduated from Oberlin College in 2006. Last June she completed her Master’s degree in the Public History and Archives program at New York University.

Judson Memorial Church defines itself as “a church in the Christian tradition and a sanctuary for progressive activism and artistic expression.” In the 1950s Judson reinvented many of its traditions and its liturgy, and integrated the arts into its mission, beginning with the Judson Gallery in 1957. The Judson Poets’ Theater and Judson Dance Theater followed in 1961 and 1962, transforming the church’s meeting room into a dynamic space where three communities came together: a congregation involved in the political, spiritual, and artistic activities of the church; the artists who created and performed innovative visual art, theater, and dance; and Greenwich Village neighbors and city residents, who provided the audience for Judson’s bold experiments.

Brooklyn-based chamber pop quartet Likeness to Lily performs as part of the Tribeca Performing Arts Center’s Spotlight Series on Friday, November 12th at 8pm.

The Tribeca Performing Arts Center is located at 199 Chambers Street in New York City (betw. Greenwich St. & West Side Hwy, Subway 1,2,3,J,M,Z,A,C to Chambers; 4,5,6 to Brooklyn Bridge). Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at www.smarttix.com or by calling 212.220.1460.

For this concert, Likeness to Lily (named after lead singer Susan Oetgen’s great-grandmother) will be going back into the archives to tap some treasures from their first record, Solitude’s Dollhouse, as well as gems from their second record, Farewell, Recruit.  Meanwhile, there will be a surplus of new, as yet unrecorded songs, a generous handful of cover tunes, as well as highlights from their recent evening-length opera, Command Voice. Additionally, original drawings-in-projection by Justin Waldstein (www.justinwaldstein.com) will be featured.

Formed by singer-songwriter Susan Oetgen in 2003 after an unanticipated but fortuitous detour from her opera career, Likeness to Lily is not only named in honor of her great-grandmother, but also for an old legend which declares that these mythic flowers will bloom out of the dirt wherever a saint sheds her tears. Likeness to Lily also features pianist Tony Melone, bass player Ian M. Riggs and drummer Evan Pazner. Their 2008 record Farewell, Recruit featured guest luminaries Franz Nicolay and Peter Hess from the Hold Steady, Jeremiah Lockwood from Sway Machinery & Balkan Beat Box, Max Moston from Antony & the Johnsons, and Dave Wechsler from The Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Distinct for the classic lyricism heard in Susan’s melodies, and for the adroit harmonies and rhythms cultivated by Tony, Ian and Evan, Likeness to Lily’s songs are musical portraits of the world they inhabit, at once intimately confessional and operatically universal, modern and timeless. Susan’s writing is at the core of each composition. Much in the same way that classical composers set poetry to music, Susan translates her words into melody, which in turn becomes the raw material of the band’s collaborative arrangement process. Song arrangements vary from scored parts to conversational, dynamic improvisation, given Susan’s opera background and Tony, Evan and Ian’s shared jazz chops. The end result is a musical alchemy that reflects an ever-expanding circle of influences that range from Baroque opera and 19th C. French melodies, to Tin Pan Alley classics, to Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, and Loreena McKennitt, all the way to Cynthia Hopkins, Jeremiah Lockwood, Howard Fishman, Pyeng Threadgill, Aprille Goodman, Chris Parrello and so many other friends and colleagues in Brooklyn’s thriving indie-music scene. Easy to recognize and hard to define, Likeness to Lily’s music is, above all, true to its own sweet soul.

Peter Flint and friends play new trio music for accordion, cello, and woodwinds at

571Projects
551 West 21st Street, Unit 204A
New York, NY

Peter Flint, assisted by Avian Orchestra musicians Arash Amini (cello) and Alfonso Sturgeon (woodwinds), will premiere new music for his accordion trio at the intimate 571Projects gallery in Chelsea. Expect a quirky and engaging musical evening surrounded by edgy contemporary art as Peter puts his new-found accordion skills to the test and delves into new creative territory.

Purchase tickets now.

The River Peace is large-scale public participatory art installation by Thomas + Guinevere with the collaboration of composer John McDowell and presented by The Historic Distillery District in partnership with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010 and Le Labo. Saturday, October 2nd, 6:57pm to Sunrise.

The music, composed and directed by John McDowell, will be based on the principals of Indian Raga. Using this as a basis, but adapting to Western genres, musicians will collaborate on the workings and nuances of particular themes, memorize several brief segments and phrases and collaborate on their playing.

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s concept and scope of Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, The River Peace is a mass participatory sculptural movement and sound performance installation; a giant metaphoric river where the content is not water, but a mass human meditation and expression of peace.

It will take the form of a 1,500-foot long luminescent sculpture, stretching around and through the historic laneways in Toronto’s Distillery Historic District, which you are invited to help carry and move as a meditative expression while musicians and dancers create a mass orchestral and choreographic illusion of a river in constant flow – with everyone’s cell phones providing the installation’s luminosity.

The sculpture is made-up of 150 – 12ft light-weight telescopic poles/masts. Mallory Industries who make the poles, were also kind enough to cut and provide a longer 30″ version of a yard which will be attached to the top of the pole and to which will be secured (grommeted) the 1500 ft length of bubble-wrap through which the light from the public’s cell-phones will shine.

As the sculpture moves through The Distillery, an aerial perspective of The River Peace will be captured on video and projected onto the walls of Mill Street Rack House (a collaboration with Luminad and Rattail Films.)

(If you have a QR (Quick Response) reader installed on your phone, you can turn it into colour-shifting lighting instrument. A PDF menu of QR Codes will be available for download at www.thomasandguinevere.com starting September 30, so you can practice. The QR menu colour sequences will also be passed out on Nuit Blanche as well. But if if you can’t scan the codes, simple cell phone light is totally accepted.)

To see more details on how to participate or volunteer, please visit www.thomasandguinevere.com or  email [email protected]

New York’s Threefifty Duo has won a coveted space in CME Artist Services fall tour (Sep. 23 – Oct. 1) and will also be featured at the Lancaster Music Festival, October 8-10.

Now in its tenth consecutive year of putting on international showcases of original music spanning a multitude of genres, CME Artist Services presents two acts for their latest roots tour of some of the UK’s best small independent music venues. From Thursday Sept. 23rd through Sun. Oct. 1st the vocal and keyboard talent of precocious Vancouver based jazz artist Ali Milner, a 19-year-old from Canada is making her mark on the indie/jazz charts will be matched by New York’s award winning contemporary classical pair Threefifty Duo.

TOUR (all shows 9pm to 11pm unless otherwise stated):

Thur. 23rd Sept. White Hart (Atworth, SN12 8JR, 01225 702274)

Fri 24th Sept. Palladium Club (Bideford, EX39 2DE, 01237 478860)

Sat 25th Sept. Patriots MC (Crumlin, NP 114 PT, 01495 247178)

Sun 26th Sept (4pm) Coopers Arms (Pewsey, SN9 5BL, 01672 562495)

Mon 27th Sept. The Bell (Bath, BA1 5BW, 01225 460426)

Tues 28th Sept. The Sun (Lancaster, LA1 1ET, 01524 66006)

Thur 30th Sept. Penny Street Bridge Hotel (LA1 1XT, 01524 599 900)

Fri 1st Oct. Aspinall Arms (Mitton, BB7 9PQ, 01254 826223)

October 8-10 – see Lancaster Music Festival Schedule