Arthur Russell's New York—An Instagram Tour by Devonté Hynes

Musical pioneer Arthur Russell was born 64 years ago today. In honor of his birthday, and in anticipation of next week's Master Mix: Red Hot + Arthur Russell! concert, Devonté Hynes—who has a wealth of musical knowledge, and will be performing in the show—gave us a virtual tour of some of Russell's old haunts on Instagram, and with it, a true education in all things Arthur Russell. We've included the photos and videos below, along with some to dive even deeper.

Hello! This is @devhynes, and I’m taking over the BAM Instagram account today to show you some of music pioneer #ArthurRussell’s old haunts before performing in Master Mix: Red Hot + Arthur Russell! on May 29 & 30, part of @redbullmusicacademy’s #RBMANYC (link in bio) #BAMtakeover To start, here's Arthur with cello having a nice time in Central Park.

A photo posted by BAM (@bam_brooklyn) on May 20, 2015 at 8:41am PDT

Kronos Quartet's Unlikely Collaborations

Kronos Quartet, photo by Jay Blakesburg

Few string quartets can claim to have been around for over 40 years, small changes in personnel aside. But fewer still—we'll go out on a limb and say precisely zero, aside from Kronos Quartet—can boast of having commissioned over 800 new works and collaborated with so many artists outside of the classical and new-music purview. Maybe no one told Nine Inch Nails, the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks, Tom Waits, Noam Chomsky, or even Kronos itself that the string quartet was born out of the princely courts of 18th-century Austria and not the postmodern schizophrenia of the shuffle mode. But whatever the reason for their open-minded audaciousness, we're grateful for it.

Add Natalie Merchant, Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, and Rhiannon Giddens (September 20), as well as Laurie Anderson (September 23—27) to the list, all of whom are coming to BAM with Kronos as part of Nonesuch Records at BAM. For a little context, here are 10 other Kronos collaborations that have turned preconceived notions of their genre inside out.

The Secret BAMlife of Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg at the Hydrogen Jukebox premiere

Everyone’s favorite 20th century Whitman progeny was quite the scenester during his 70 years on this planet. From Eastern spiritual leaders like Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche to downtown transgressives such as Arthur Russell, Allen Ginsberg was a key ally to dispossessed visionaries, hopeless outsiders, and the über-chic. Everyone knew him, and everyone had an opinion on him.

During his expansive globetrotting Ginsberg collected many friends, enemies, and admirers—and he made a few stops at BAM along the way. Below is a timeline with Ginsberg’s key BAM moments. If readers are aware of any other Ginsberg-BAM connections, please chime in and let us know.

1969. Poetry reading in the opera house with musical sets by The Band and Joy of Cooking.

1971. The Chelsea Theater Center’s production of Kaddish, a dramatization of Ginsberg’s second book of poetry, which dealt with the mental breakdown and eventual death of his mother, Naomi. Ginsberg was particularly impressed with Marilyn Chris’ performance of Naomi. So were the critics: she received an Obie, as well as awards from the Drama Desk, a Variety Best, and a Drama Critics Circle Award.

1969 ad from the Village Voice

1973. Ginsberg, along with Julian Beck and Judith Malina of the Living Theatre, attended the opening of Robert Wilson’s The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, which began at 7pm and ended at 9am. “We all stayed for the whole thing,” Ginsberg recalled. (They were three of about a dozen people who stayed for the entirety of the premiere.) This was Ginsberg’s introduction to the world of Robert Wilson, with whom he would later collaborate on the apocalyptico-musical theater piece, Cosmopolitan Greetings.

1984. It has been rumored (though not confirmed) that Ginsberg attended BAM’s production of Einstein on the Beach with none other than Andy Warhol…

1989. Ginsberg was a host at the Next Wave Festival Gala Benefit, which celebrated the 10th anniversary of New Music America with musical performances from the Kronos Quartet and Moondog, who guest-conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. Other hosts included Steve Reich, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, and Laurie Anderson.

1991. Hydrogen Jukebox, an operatic collaboration with Philip Glass and stage designer Jerome Sirlin, is performed during BAM’s spring season just a few months after the Persian Gulf War. Made up of poems from Ginsberg’s vast body of work, the libretto for Hydrogen Jukebox circles around many of Ginsberg’s key themes, such as alienation and the longing for community:

Too late, too late
the Iron Horse hurrying to war,
too late for laments, too late for warning—
I’m a stranger in my country again.

This Week in BAM History: Between Sun Ra and Philip Glass

Ad from the Village Voice, October 1969

As the 1960s drew to a close, the varying tastes of the psychedelic hippie and civil rights crusader dovetailed across two nights at BAM. On October 10th, 1969, jazz prophet of the outer limits Sun Ra, and the always explosive if precise poet and dramatist LeRoi Jones (who would soon discard his imposed moniker and become Amiri Baraka) graced the opera house stage at BAM. As if this weren’t enough to glut even the most insatiable cultural epicure, the following night brought an even greater bounty as The Band (known then as the backing band behind Bob Dylan’s breakthrough into electric rock) and the legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg took the stage. These two nights in Brooklyn stand as a convergence of some of America’s most radical minds, in what was surely one of the last great near-trysts of a tumultuous era.