#LoveFromBAM: Podcasts

While our spaces are dark, you can stay connected to BAM by listening to podcasts featuring some of the artists we’ve welcomed in the past or planned to present this spring. Check out a few of our favorites in this list, which includes descriptions from the podcasts themselves. We’ll update as we hear of more. Happy listening!

There's 30something about Mary Reilly

By David Hsieh

(From left) Joseph V. Melillo, Mary Reilly, and Pina Bausch in 2001 for Masurca Fogo 

“For three decades, Mary Reilly has been BAM’s secret weapon. Working shoulder to shoulder with her is a pleasure as she creatively, imaginatively, and perceptively structures support mechanisms for the artists that I have curated for our main stages and ancillary programs. A vast range of sensitivities balanced by the most joyous humanity guarantees that each individual artist feels tremendous support before and during their work here and as they depart for home or other professional obligations. We are a respected cultural institution because of Mary’s professional contribution.” —Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer of BAM

Behind the scenes—Howard Tynes, Security of a different stripe

By David Hsieh

Security guards often wear dark suits, conservative ties, and dark sunglasses. But that’s not Howard Tynes’ style. A BAM security guard for the past 10 years, he is known—especially to Fisher building audiences—for his distinctive and nifty garb: freshly pressed suits in all colors and materials, and always with bowties and pocket squares. Anyone who has seen him would not be surprised to learn that he had a career in fashion. More unexpected is his career on the baseball field. Howard Tynes tells us how his three passions intersect.

BAMcinématek and The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness

Steve Martin and Richard Ward in The Jerk (1979), courtesy of Universal Pictures/Photofest

by Ashley Clark

“If whiteness gains currency by being unnoticed,” writes academic Sara Ahmed, “then what does it mean to notice whiteness?” The series On Whiteness (July 11—19)—a collaboration between BAMcinématek and Claudia Rankine’s The Racial Imaginary Institute—attempts to wrestle with this knotty question. Comprising works that address issues of ethnic identity, assimilation, racial grievance, passing, and privilege, this collection of films—augmented by talks and guest introductions—invites audiences to consider how whiteness has been deliberately and subconsciously constructed, ignored, and challenged in the history of American film.

The series begins in the heart of Hollywood’s dream factory with Julie Dash’s beguiling, World War II-era Illusions (1982), about an African-American movie studio executive passing as white, and the black singer she hires to dub the voice of a white actress. A profound deconstruction of Hollywood’s power to shape racial mythologies, Illusions screens with the acerbically funny short Free, White and 21 (1980), in which artist Howardena Pindell assumes the identity of a blonde white woman to discuss the racism she experiences as a black woman. Elia Kazan’s Pinky (1949), meanwhile, is one of Hollywood’s earliest attempts to grapple openly with racism. It’s a fascinating melodrama in which a light-skinned black woman (Jeanne Crain, complicatedly, a white actress) passing as white tempts crisis by falling in love with a white doctor.

Behind the Scenes—Noel Vega, BAM ticket services

Noel Vega. Photo: David Hsieh

Noel Vega is a grandfather, a writer, a life-long Brooklynite, and a 20-year-old veteran of BAM’s ticket services. The staff of ticket services has grown three-fold since he started in 1997, forcing it to move out the Peter Jay Sharp Building to larger offices in downtown Brooklyn. Technological advancements have made remote working possible. But the core of the work remains the same: to ensure ticket buyers have the best answers to their questions, whether by phone or by email. Vega tells us how that’s done.

David Hsieh: What does the ticket services job encompass?

Noel Vega: Our responsibilities include taking orders from people, answering their questions about current and upcoming events, giving them suggestions on where to eat, park, directions to the theaters, etc. People call us for everything—I can’t buy a ticket on the Website, I can’t use my ticket tonight, what do I do? What movie is playing?

Behind the Scenes—Jackie David and Raven Jones

Raven Jones and Jackie David. Photo: David Hsieh

Long-time BAM audiences will recognize Jackie David and Raven Jones, two stalwarts on the usher floors for the past 25 years. When they started (within three months of each other), the Harvey Theater was still called the Majestic and the Rose Cinemas were the Carey Playhouse, where a 35-year-old Robert Lepage made his BAM debut with a one-man show Needles and Opium. Neither of them expected to stay “more than two or three years.” But a quarter-of-a-century later, they have seen BAM grow along with their own families. They spoke with BAMbill.

Jackie David: I started because of my brother. He was an assistant manager in ticket services then. He told me about the usher opening and I started in September, 1992. Actually two of my brothers used to work here.

Raven Jones: It’s a family legacy! I started in December, 1992. My first show was Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut. I also came because one of my brothers was a choreographer and wanted to see the show from the audience’s point of view.
I was a school teacher. He said this would be perfect because I finish at three o’clock and could jump on a train and get here on-time. I intended to be here only two or three years. But that BAM thing happened and I kept up coming back. It has been a very rewarding and challengeing experience.

JD: After a year I became a supervisor. One day Christine [Gruder, theater manager] asked me to fill in for someone who couldn’t come in, and that was it—I was promoted.

RJ: Being an usher at BAM is very intense. You have to be on top of everything. You have to keep everything flowing. Every usher has a “station” to be in. You cannot leave that station. You don’t just disappear after you seat the audience.

JD: Before the house opens, I check it from top to bottom: make sure the lights are on and the exit doors are clear. After the show we check the house to make sure nothing is left.

RJ: When we had our 15th anniversary, all the ushers gave us a cake. We cut the cake and they said, “Feed the bride!” so we fed each other cake. I will always remember that day.

JD: Some of the board members and patrons know us by name. That make us feel very special.

RJ: They’ll share stories about their kids and I’ll share stories about my grandchildren. It feels very nice.

© 2017 Brooklyn Academy of Music, Inc. All rights reserved.

Working with a Visionary—Harvey Lichtenstein

Harvey Lichtenstein, who was president and executive producer at BAM from 1967 to 1999, recently passed away. Here are some memories from colleagues of the man who stoutly believed in Brooklyn, and whose actions would immeasurably transform and enrich both the borough's vibrancy and the world's cultural landscape.

Harvey feeling the dancing with his heart, 1985 Photo (crop): J. Ross Baughman

Harvey's Road to BAM

Harvey Lichtenstein, 2nd from right, dancing with Bennington College Dance Group in 1953.
Photo: Lloyd Studio

Sixty-two years ago, Harvey Lichtenstein (1929—2017)—in his dancing debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music—could not have guessed that he would eventually transform the institution into a modern paradigm for performing arts. In 1955, he was performing with modern dance group Mary Anthony and Company on a program of four works. His experience as a professional dancer was one of several threads of experience, in addition to working in marketing, fundraising, and arts administration, that he would draw upon in the years prior to 1967, when he took over at BAM.

Memorial Day at BAM in 1886

Courtesy: BAM Hamm Archives

For going on four decades, the BAM community has equated Memorial Day weekend not only with remembering those who have served our country, but also with the DanceAfrica Festival. But an item from BAM Hamm Archives reminds us of the organization's longstanding civic commitment.

This May 31, 1886 handbill details "exercises" at a Decoration Day program. Decoration Day was begun in 1868 by the Grand Army of the Republic, a veteran's group, to decorate the graves of soldiers lost in the Civil War. It became Memorial Day in the early 20th century.

The Grand Army of the Republic oversaw the event at the Academy. The veteran's group comprised soldiers who fought in the Civil War, primarily for the Union. In fact, Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza was named to commemorate this organization.

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher presided at the 1886 gathering (to which admission cost 50 cents). This brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe was a clergyman and abolitionist, and a prominent speaker sent abroad by President Abraham Lincoln to advocate on behalf of the Unionist cause. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Decoration Day slate included patriotic music with audience members joining on the choruses, as well as poems and prayers. While this event took place at the Academy's first hall, on Montague Street, it serves to remind us of the long, rich history that BAM occupies in the city and in America.

DanceAfrica Spotlight: Balé Folclórico da Bahia

Photo: Wendell Wagner

Become immersed in the enthralling culture of Brazil when Balé Folclórico da Bahia makes its BAM debut as part of DanceAfrica 2015: Brazilian rhythms. African roots. Performances take place on Memorial Day weekend, a DanceAfrica tradition, May 22—25 at the Howard Gilman Opera House.

Balé Folclórico da Bahia, based in Salvador in the northern state of Bahia, is the only professional folk dance company in Brazil. It was founded in 1988 by Walson Botelho and Ninho Reis, and is now under the artistic direction of José Carlos Arandiba. Its dancers, musicians, and singers perform a unique blend of dance theater drawing from Bahian folkloric traditions, including Carnival celebrations, samba, capoiera, and slave dances.

BAM Receives National Medal of Arts!

President Barack Obama presents the National Medal of Arts to Karen Brooks Hopkins, BAM president, on behalf of BAM in a White House ceremony on July 28, 2014. Photo by Jocelyn Augustino.

We here at BAM like to think of ourselves as well-seasoned cultural citizens, routinely interacting with some of the world's greatest artists—often bold-faced names—as well as national public figures.

But we were collectively truly humbled and honored as we gathered in BAM Rose Cinemas to watch a livestream of BAM President Karen Brooks Hopkins accepting a 2013 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama at the White House yesterday. (Watch the ceremony here.)

BAM was the sole organization to receive the arts award this year, and thus the only recipient to take home the medal in a handsome box. Individuals had their medals personally draped around their necks by President Obama, and included several BAM artists: choreographer Bill T. Jones, filmmaker Albert Maysles, and filmmaker Stanley Nelson (who received a National Humanities Medal). Other arts recipients included writer Maxine Hong Kingston and musician Linda Ronstadt, on whom President Obama confessed to having a crush back in the day.

The official citation (full brief here) reads:

Brooklyn Academy of Music for innovative contributions to the performing and visual arts. For over 150 years, BAM has showcased the works of both established visionaries and emerging artists who take risks and push boundaries.

As the citation was read, President Obama confided to Karen Hopkins that he saw The Gospel of Colonus at BAM in 1983. She invited him to return in the near future, perhaps setting the stage for another historical moment at BAM.

—Susan Yung

Daniil Kharms' Shimmering World

by Jess Goldschmidt

Willem Dafoe and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Photo: Lucie Jansch

Now, one day, a man went to work, and on the way he met another man, who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was heading back home where he came from.

And that’s it, more or less.

That’s the story “The Meeting” by Daniil Kharms. In its entirety.

It was translated by Matevei Yankelevich in his collection of Kharms’ work, Today I Wrote Nothing, which includes the novella “The Old Woman,” a stage version of Darryl Pinckney’s adaptation, directed by Robert Wilson and featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe, comes to the Howard Gilman Opera House from June 22—29. And it is by no means anomalous in the oeuvre of this Russian provocateur, a startling scion of the country’s literary avant-garde who starved to death in a Leningrad prison’s psychiatric ward in 1942 at the age of 36.

In fact the gesture of “The Meeting” is central to Kharms’ entire aesthetic: a drastic interruption, a boldfaced parody of plot, character development, and pretty much all the business-as-usual trappings of literature itself. And while many readers and critics have classified Kharms’ absurdism as a response to the Soviet era in which he lived and wrote, the truth is he was an outlier long before Stalin came to power. As writer George Saunders put it in a lovely 2007 essay on the author, “weirdness this deep seems more likely to stem from an aesthetic crisis than a political one.”

King of New York—Remembering Lou Reed at BAM

by Susan Yung

Lou Reed during Songs for 'Drella (1989).
Photo: BAM Hamm Archives

"Ordered sound is music," Lou Reed said in his last video interview, at Rollingstone.com. Reed, who died recently at 71, had a way of reducing complex thoughts and feelings to their essence, as he did so eloquently in his songs. In The New Yorker, Patti Smith remembers him as "a complicated man." Lou, whose name was both a cheer and a loving jeer, has been tagged as "the poet of New York," and by David Bowie as no less than "the king of New York." He was famous for never sugarcoating, neither his lyrics nor in interviews. "He was curious, sometimes suspicious, a voracious reader, and a sonic explorer," Smith wrote.

In three productions at BAM—Songs for 'Drella, Time Rocker, and POEtry—Reed expanded on his core body of rock music, from the Velvet Underground through solo projects, that had gained him a huge following. Songs for 'Drella (1989) reunited Reed with fellow VU co-founder John Cale, and was a paean to Andy Warhol, who had died two years earlier. Even in such a short span, Reed's frank perspective found its way into his fond, sometimes sardonic lyrics in tribute to the wigged artist. It was a powerful, intimate song-cycle performed movingly by Cale and Reed—part-time conspirators, but mostly wry observers, of Warhol's Factory.

Dancing Myths—The Legend of Apsara Mera

by Marina Harss

Photo: Andres Jiras

In accordance with the tradition of Cambodian classical dance, The Legend of Apsara Mera, in the Howard Gilman Opera House from May 2—4, begins with a tribute to the dance teachers, who transmit the steps from generation to generation, and to the spirits, whose earthly embodiment the dancers are meant to represent. This art, with its symbolism of survival and renewal, is rooted in the past and closely linked to the sacred. During the Khmer Empire (802—1431), when it was first developed, dancers were seen as intermediaries between the temporal and spiritual realms, living embodiments of the apsaras—or celestial dancers. Their likenesses, carved in bas-reliefs on temple walls, reveal poses recognizable even today. With serene, hieratic expressions, they tilt their heads and gaze out at the world. Their legs are bent in a soft plié, fingers curled back from their palms like flower petals. Their harmonious poses speak of an art that aspires to timeless transcendence and cosmic beauty.

If You Like…: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Edition (Part Two)

by Jane Jansen Seymour

In the second of a series, here are two more bands from the Brooklyn music scene that will be appearing at this year’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry at BAM from April 25 to 27. These groups are just another point of pride for the borough among many others in the vast line up.

If you like Foals, check out Here We Go Magic

Here We Go Magic (Saturday, April 27) delivers songs like waves of thought, seemingly simplistic on the surface but actually complex arrangements of guitars and percussion, similar to Foals, Real Estate, and Beach Fossils. Singer/songwriter Luke Temple flaunts his folk music background within an indie rock structure, alongside core members Michael Bloch on bass and drummer Peter Hale. (The group branches out into a quintet when touring.) Its fourth album, 2012’s A Different Ship, was created under the watchful eye of Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, as rhythmic patterns receive a similar treatment in both bands. Key tracks such as “Make Up Your Mind” and “How Do I Know” seem to have a life all their own, while gamely inviting the audience along for the ride. 

If You Like....: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Edition

by Jane Jansen Seymour

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry returns to BAM April 25 to April 27, a music and film festival curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National. Music fans may know the headliners (The Roots, Solange, and TV on the Radio), but they may not be as familiar with some of the other artists appearing during the three-day event. The musical offerings cross genres and configurations, from solo singers to full-fledged ensembles. Here are video performances by two CBF bands (both will play in the Howard Gilman Opera House) with ties to Brooklyn, to give a taste of what's in store.

If you like Pete Yorn, check out Phosphorescent

Phosphorescent (Saturday, April 27) is the musical project of Alabama native Matthew Houck, now based in Brooklyn. He’s a heart-on-your-sleeve troubadour who could be compared to Sea Wolf, Pete Yorn, or Jason Pierce of Spiritualized—indie folk hardened by a rock sensibility. This singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer just released his fifth album as Phosphorescent, Muchacho. The past three albums have been recorded in a studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, with ultra spare arrangements highlighting the raw vocal power of Houck’s expressive baritone. Most of the songs were written during a trip to Mexico, after a self-proclaimed “freak out” when his personal life seemed to be crumbling—just a man and his guitar capturing waves of emotion. Luckily for audiences he clearly revisits the scene during live gigs.

Celebrating the BAM Producers Council

This year's annual Producers Council Celebration took place Friday, November 30, 2012
(Photo: Etienne Frossard)

Last Friday we hosted the Producers Council Celebration, an annual event to honor the support of this group of committed BAM patrons. The evening began with cocktails in the Dorothy W. Levitt Lobby in the Peter Jay Sharp Building, followed by a Caribbean themed banquet dinner in the BAM Lepercq Space. After dinner, guests moved into the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House for the first night of Red Hot + Cuba, an all-star tribute to the music of our island neighbor.

During the Celebration, Producers Council Co-Chair Adam Wolfensohn warmly greeted his fellow Producers Council members and introduced BAM President, Karen Brooks Hopkins, and BAM Executive Producer, Joseph V. Melillo. The two BAM leaders personally expressed their thanks to the Producers Council members for their generosity and continued support of BAM, emphasizing that "You help make it all possible."

Keep reading for more photo highlights and check out the full event album here. For more on the benefits of joining the Producers Council, click here.

Trojan Women (After Euripides) Opening Night Reception

 Trojan Women cast members Katherine Crockett, Brent Werzner, and Ellen Lauren (Photo: Elena Olivo)

Last week, SITI Company, under the direction of Anne Bogart, proudly returned to the BAM stage with its thrilling production of Trojan Women (After Euripides). The magnificent actors mingled with BAM Producers Council members in the Campbell Lobby of the BAM Harvey Theater to celebrate opening night.

Read on for more about the event and check out the full web album here!

Untrained—Naked Onstage (so to speak)

We're so used to seeing highly trained dancers in New York that we forget how very different they are from your average plebe—how much they've learned, and how much they've forgotten, for better or worse.

In Lucy Guerin's Untrained (BAM Fisher, Nov 27—Dec 1), trained dancers, alongside untrained performers, translate into movement instructions written on cards. The results are charming, poignant, and at times hilarious. That's not to say the untrained guys are without gifts. Guerin explains a bit:

Harvey—House of Pain No More!

Demo time, with the lower part of the orchestra missing. Ashland Pl is below, through the door and past the dumpster. Photo: Carl Gillen

BAM audiences cherish the Harvey Theater with the possible exception of the seats, which in their 80s bench-like iteration reportedly garnered the venue the nickname "Peter Brook's House of Pain." But good news: over the summer, renovations have been underway, including new seats. BAM Capital Projects Manager Carl Gillen reports on some of the changes you'll discover beginning later this month.

After being rediscovered for Peter Brook’s Mahabharata, BAM remodeled the Harvey Theater in 1986, creating an inner lobby and reducing much of the orchestra seating by raising the stage level almost five feet and joining the leading edge of the mezzanine level to a new semicircular thrust extending out toward the audience from the proscenium. The result was the intimate and familiar space we enjoy today. The 1986 retrofit recast the space, halting much of its deterioration and recreating the rest in the likeness of the Bouffes du Nord in Paris.