Event: A Remembrance
Curated by Alex Stadler and featuring performances by aAliy A. Muhammad, Kinan Abou-afach with the Bergamot Quartet and Elisa Sutherland, and Jessica Hecht
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Gallery:
About the Event:
The act of remembering is essential to our collective mourning and to strengthening our community. This Pride month, the New York City AIDS Memorial presented a program to encourage reflection and renewal with A Remembrance.
This afternoon of written work, performance, music, and art was curated by multidisciplinary artist, Alex Stadler. In 2022, Stadler commissioned and selected works from a diverse and accomplished group of living and deceased artists for a memorial and procession entitled Gone and For Ever, created to honor the unclaimed of the early years of the AIDS crisis. Gone and For Ever was the culminating event for an alternative HIV/AIDS memorial, Remembrance, organized by the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia. Stadler brought pieces and variations from this earlier work to the New York City AIDS Memorial for this program.
For this day of remembrance, aAliy A. Muhammad premiered an original essay-poem that is a response to the life and work of Melvin Dixon, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1992. aAliy is a poz poet, writer, journalist, and community organizer born and raised in Philadelphia. Syrian-born composer Kinan Abou-afach led members of the Bergamot Quartet and mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland in the New York debut of a performance of Untold Elegy, first created for Stadler’s Philadelphia project. Tony and Emmy Award-nominated actor Jessica Hecht performed a reading The Simplest Thing, a work by actor and writer Cookie Mueller, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1989. A limited edition print by Stadler, featuring an excerpt from The Simplest Thing, was also given away to the audience as part of the event.
Following these works, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus appeared for the first time since the New York City AIDS Memorial’s 2016 dedication to sing in honor of I Stop Somewhere, Waiting For You, the New York City AIDS Memorial’s new bench dedication program. Long-time friends of the New York City AIDS Memorial including Richie Jackson and Michelle Lopez also gave remarks. The bench program invites the public to remember a friend, a family member, a loved one, a mentor, or a hero, or to honor an activist, organization, ally, or noteworthy community member.
About the Collaborators:
Kinan Abou-afach is an acclaimed cellist, oud player, composer, and recipient of the prestigious Pew Fellowship in 2013. The Syrian-born musician began his musical studies at the age of seven studying at the Arabic Institute of Music in Damascus, where he eventually joined the National Syrian Symphony Orchestra and performed with the Middle Eastern Ensemble. He holds a Bachelor’s Degrees in cello and oud performance from the Higher Institute of Music where he Studied the cello repertoire with Fayez Zahril-Din, Rasi Abdullaiev, and Valery Volkov, and a Master’s Degree in Cello Performance from DePaul University School of Music where he studied with Stephen Balderston.
Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning. Their 2023-24 season has included the premiere of an evening-length work at Lincoln Center by percussionist Samuel Torres for Bergamot and Latin jazz sextet, collaborating with The Crossing Choir for a premiere of David T. Little’s SIN-EATER commissioned by Penn Live Arts, a performance of Dan Trueman’s “Songs That Are Hard To Sing” with Sō Percussion at Public Records in Brooklyn, an evening exploring Hildegard von Bingen with the New York Choral Society, and a collaboration with composer/percussionist Susie Ibarra and her Talking Gong trio. Bergamot operates the monthly concert series “Bergamot Quartet Extended” as a medium to showcase their many inspiring collaborators. Based in New York City, Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello. Bergamot Quartet was the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music 2020-2022, where they were mentored by the JACK Quartet.
Scholar, novelist, and poet Melvin Dixon (1950-1992) wrote the poetry collections Change of Territory (1983) and Love’s Instruments (1995, published posthumously) and two novels, Trouble the Water (1989), winner of a Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction, and Vanishing Rooms (1991). Influenced by James Baldwin, Dixon wrote extensively about the complexities of being a gay black man. Dixon produced scholarship on and translated writing by several African American writers, including Geneviève Fabre and Jacques Roumain. He was the recipient of a fellowship from the NEA and he taught at Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, Fordham University, Columbia University, and Williams College. He died from complications related to AIDS at age 42.
Jessica Hecht is an acclaimed stage actress and appeared most recently in Summer, 1976 opposite Laura Linney (Tony Nomination). Hecht's Broadway credits include The Price, Fiddler on the Roof, The Assembled Parties, Harvey Brighton Beach Memoirs, Julius Caesar, and A View from the Bridge (Tony Nomination). Off-Broadway, she has appeared in King Lear, Stage Kiss, Three Sisters, and at Lincoln Center Theater in Admissions for which she received an Obie Award. She received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the Netflix series Special. She is regularly seen on television in the series Super Pumped and The Loudest Voice and recurring roles in The Sinner, Dickinson, The Boys, and Succession. She is also recognizable to television audiences from Friends and Breaking Bad. She has just completed filming Eleanor The Great, Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut.
Cookie Mueller (1949-1989) was a legendary writer, actress, raconteur, and adventurer best known for playing leading roles in John Waters's classic cult films Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, and Multiple Maniacs. She also chronicled downtown New York life, romance, and culture for the East Village Eye and Details magazine, performed in a series of plays by Gary Indiana. She wrote numerous stories that would only be published posthumously. The first collected edition of her stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, was published by Semiotext(e) in 2022. Cookie died in New York City of AIDS-related complications at age 40.
aAliy A. Muhammad is a poz writer born/raised in Philadelphia. In their work they often problematize medical surveillance, discuss the importance of bodily autonomy and center Blackness. aAliy is the creator of Black Reverence Chair, a joy and affirmation ritual. With Dr. Lyra D. Monteiro, aAliy is a co-convener of Finding Ceremony, a descendant community-controlled process, restoring the lineages of care, reverence, and spiritual memory to the work of caring for our dead.
Alex Stadler is a multidisciplinary artist, author, illustrator, textile designer, and curator. At stadler-Kahn, his hybrid gallery/design laboratory in Philadelphia, he produced numerous exhibits over six years, featuring mid-career and emerging local artists and designers. He has curated shows at The Art Alliance, The Clay Studio, and The Independence Seaport Museum, as well as a pop-up shop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, featuring work from 40 Philadelphia-based artists and designers. Stadler has created public artwork for Reading Terminal Market and Comcast Towers and for Saks 5th Avenue's flagship store in New York City. Stadler holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and can be found on Instagram @alexanderstadlerart.
Mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland gives detailed, stylistic performances of early and new music with “soul-infused expressiveness and unselfconscious joie de vivre.” Highlights from this upcoming season include a performance of Jacquet de la Guerre’s Judith with TENET Vocal Artists, a European tour with Ekmeles, and three appearances with Alkemie medieval ensemble. Ellie is a core member of Ekmeles, a sextet dedicated to exploring microtonal tuning and extended vocal techniques. She has appeared in art song recitals with the Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) and Philadelphia’s Lyricfest. In the realm of vocal chamber music, Ellie frequently appears with the top ensembles in the country including The Crossing, Roomful of Teeth, Lorelei, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Variant 6, and Seraphic Fire.
Support
Cultural programming at the New York City AIDS Memorial is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Photography: Alexander Sargent