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Verdi’s ‘Luisa Miller’ at The Met Through Guild Hall

Verdi’s ‘Luisa Miller’ at The Met Through Guild Hall

In East Hampton
By
Star Staff

The Met: Live in HD will present a simulcast of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Luisa Miller” on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. at Guild Hall. Elijah Moshinsky’s production, the Met’s first of the opera in more than 10 years, stars Placido Domingo as Miller, the father of the title character, whose role is sung by Sonya Yoncheva. Piotr Beczala plays Rodolfo, Luisa’s suitor.

Originally set in the Tyrolean Alps during the 17th century, the story centers on the bond between a father and his daughter as they stand against a hostile world. The current production, for which Santo Loquasto designed the sets and costumes, updates the story to rural England in the mid-19th century.

Tickets are $22, $20 for members, and $15 for students.

Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow' Will Be Screened in Water Mill

Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow' Will Be Screened in Water Mill

The Idomeni refugee camp in Greece from a scene in "Human Flow"
The Idomeni refugee camp in Greece from a scene in "Human Flow"
At The Parrish Art Museum
By
Star Staff

During 2016, the renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei filmed at 40 refugee camps in 23 countries, among them Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. The resulting documentary, “Human Flow,” a powerful visual expression of the forced migration of more than 65 million people, will be shown at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow at 6 p.m.

A co-presentation with the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, the screening will be followed by a conversation between Firas Kayal, senior policy adviser at the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Corinne Erni, the museum’s senior curator of special projects.

Tickets are $20, $5 for members and students, and include museum admission.

The Parrish’s series “Inter-Sections: The Architect in Conversation” will continue on Saturday with a discussion between Iwan Baan, a Dutch photographer whose work is represented in “Image Building,” the museum’s current exhibition, and William Menking, the editor in chief of The Architect’s Newspaper. 

Mr. Baan and Mr. Menking will consider how a photographer’s aesthetic choices and use of technology can imbue seemingly static buildings with feeling and meaning. Tickets are $12, free for members and students.

South Fork Bell Choirs' Battle of the Hands

South Fork Bell Choirs' Battle of the Hands

At the Southampton Presbyterian Church
By
Star Staff

The handbell choirs from the Bridgehampton and Southampton Presbyterian Churches and the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will combine for the annual Spring Ring, a food pantry benefit concert on Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Southampton church. The melodies of more than 150 bells and 50 chimes will be followed by dinner in the church’s dining room. The donation of nonperishable food items has been suggested.

For Flute and Piano and the Organ Restoration Fund

For Flute and Piano and the Organ Restoration Fund

At Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor
By
Star Staff

A classical recital featuring Allison Bourquin O’Reilly on flute and Daniel Koontz on piano will take place on Sunday afternoon at 2 at Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor. In addition to two classics of the flute repertoire, Aaron Copland’s “Duo for Flute and Piano” and Paul Hindemith’s Sonate, the program will feature the world premiere of Sonatina No. 2 by Mr. Koontz, who is the church’s organist as well as a composer.

Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and proceeds will benefit the church’s pipe organ restoration fund. Tickets are available at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor.

The Genius of Mary Nimmo Moran

The Genius of Mary Nimmo Moran

“Mary Nimmo Moran at Age 42”
“Mary Nimmo Moran at Age 42”
East Hampton Library, Long Island Collection
“Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899)”
By
Isabel Carmichael

The Moran Studio, the East Hampton home of the artist couple Thomas Moran and Mary Nimmo Moran and their extended artistic family, will open after an extensive restoration this summer, and events marking the occasion are already underway.

On April 21, attention turns to Mary Nimmo Moran, when Shannon Vittoria, an art historian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will give a talk titled “Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899)” at Clinton Academy. The talk is sponsored by the Ladies Village Improvement Society.

Ms. Vittoria, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on Nimmo Moran, will offer an overview of her life and career, starting with the emigration of her family from Strathearn, Scotland, not far from where her husband’s family had lived, in Bolton, England. The breadwinners in both families were handloom weavers who had lost their work because of the Industrial Revolution. And both emigrated to Philadelphia, his family in 1844 and hers in 1852.

Nimmo Moran’s mother had died in Scotland and she came to this country at the age of 10 with her brother and father. Moran was 7 when he, his mother, and his six siblings followed his father to Philadelphia, then the center of the United States’ textile industry. Moran went to grammar school and Nimmo Moran was schooled at home.

The couple met in 1857, but did not marry until 1863, at which point she began learning the artistic techniques he had mastered. Both artists were essentially self-taught.

There is little question of Moran’s having signed his name to paintings or etchings actually made by his wife, but Ms. Vittoria thinks that Nimmo Moran’s assistance in her husband’s work was more extensive than is thought. 

Moran’s first success came with illustrations from sketches he made in the American West after being hired to go on various expeditions. From those came commercial work that became a family endeavor for the couple. Moran’s painting of Yellowstone made from sketches done on one of his expeditions is widely considered to be instrumental in Congress’s decision to establish the Yellowstone National Park, America’s first national park.

Nimmo Moran, who had started as a landscape painter and ended up being an influential and experimental etcher in the heyday of etching from 1879 to 1889, turned back to painting once the etching revival had subsided, and worked in both oil and watercolor. But it was as an etcher that her career took off. Because she could work quickly, she could sketch outside and print at home, one of the reasons many women did etchings. 

And, as she was not constrained by rules and was technically adept, Nimmo Moran had the flexibility to be creative. Ms. Vittoria will also talk about Nimmo Moran’s and Moran’s aesthetic. They worked on their etchings together, but because etching is like drawing, Ms. Vittoria said, you can see the hand in the work. What was important to Nimmo Moran, Ms. Vittoria said, “were small, intimate corners of nature, being in and surrounded by nature.” Her husband’s “aesthetic was the more dramatic and sublime; hers was the more picturesque.”

Nimmo Moran’s premature death in 1899 at age 47 was a huge blow to her husband as well as to East Hampton residents. She died after nursing her daughter Ruth, who had volunteered as a nurse at Camp Wikoff in Montauk, helping the soldiers recovering there from the various tropical diseases they had caught in Cuba fighting the Spanish-American War.

Moran left East Hampton two weeks later, moved his studio in Manhattan to Irving Place, and traveled abroad for 17 years, still spending summers in East Hampton, before settling for the rest of his life in Santa Barbara, Calif.

As a perk, audience members with a place reserved in advance through the Ladies Village Improvement Society at 631-324-1220 or by email to [email protected] can, weather permitting, expect a tour of the Moran house and studio, a short walk south on Main Street from Clinton Academy. 

Guild Hall Residency Program Takes Residence as Focus

Guild Hall Residency Program Takes Residence as Focus

Guild House will not only be home for Guild Hall’s five resident artists in April, it will also be the site of collaborative projects to be presented to the public at the end of the month.
Guild House will not only be home for Guild Hall’s five resident artists in April, it will also be the site of collaborative projects to be presented to the public at the end of the month.
The new residents are in residence
By
Mark Segal

Guild Hall’s spring 2018 artists-in-residence moved into Guild House on Monday for a month-long stay during which their creative energies will be focused on using that building as a site for collaborative and impermanent interventions, including installations and performances, which will culminate in an evening presentation at the house at the end of April.

Corey Jane Cardoso, the administrator of the artists-in-residence program, called this year’s blueprint a “creative reboot.”

“It was working before, but I think this is a more unique residency. It’s not so much to work on projects you’re already doing but more to connect with other artists and see what you can come up with when you collaborate. Most of the artists we’ve chosen are multi-disciplinary, and I’m just facilitating whatever ideas they want to produce.”

The five artists were chosen by Andrea Grover, Guild Hall’s executive director; Josh Gladstone, the artistic director of the John Drew Theater; Christina Strassfield, the museum’s director and chief curator; Philip Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and the artist Eric Fischl, who was instrumental in developing the program

The spring residents are Simone Bailey, Aviva Jaye, Siobhan O’Loughlin, Eva Schmidt, and Katherine Taylor. Ms. Bailey, who lives in San Francisco, works with video, performance, sculpture, and photography to explore themes related to perception, process, ephemerality, desire, violence, and the impossible.

Ms. Jaye and Ms. O’Loughlin, both from Brooklyn, have worked together and applied to the program as a pair. Ms. Jaye’s experience as a performer has included theater and dance productions, studio albums, and live concerts. Ms. O’Loughlin, a writer, performance artist, Moth Story Slam champion, and activist, has taught workshops throughout the United States, Southeast Asia, and in Syrian refugee camps in Greece.

Ms. Schmidt’s work in the culinary, visual, and performing arts fields investigates themes of lifespan, vision, and alchemy. A former chef at the Watermill Center, she will cook breakfast for the residents and cater the salon dinners in addition to collaborating on the art side. She is also based in Brooklyn.

Ms. Taylor, who lives in Los Angeles, is the author of the novels “Valley Fever” and “Rules for Saying Goodbye,” both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and has won a Pushcart Prize and the McGinnis Ritchie Award for Fiction.

The National Endowment for the Arts has just recognized Guild Hall’s artists-in-residence program with a $15,000 grant from its Art Works category, which supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement, and the strengthening of communities through the arts.

OLA Dance Party in Sag Harbor

OLA Dance Party in Sag Harbor

At Bay Street Theater
By
Star Staff

OLA of Eastern Long Island will present Pachanga 2018: Viva La Mujer! — an evening of live music and dancing celebrating OLA’s founders — Friday at 7 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

The dance party will feature Mambo Loco, which for more than a decade has brought music of Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican origin to the Long Island area, and Carolina Fuentes, a.k.a. Mila Tina, a percussionist whose drumming style combines elements of martial arts with dance moves, lighting effects, and video.

This year’s Pachanga is not only a celebration, but also an occasion to underscore the #YoTambien (#MeToo) movement that has encouraged survivors of sexual assault and harassment to come forward, according to Minerva Perez, OLA’s executive director. Ms. Fuentes, a graduate of Westhampton Beach High School, is a survivor of sexual assault. 

Tickets are $20 in advance at eventbrite.com or by calling 631-899-3441, and $25 at the door.

Niccolo Ronchi Is Next Rising Star in Southampton

Niccolo Ronchi Is Next Rising Star in Southampton

At the Southampton Cultural Center
By
Star Staff

Niccolo Ronchi will give a concert in the Southampton Cultural Center’s Rising Stars piano series on Saturday at 7 p.m. The program will include works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt.

Mr. Ronchi has distinguished himself on the national and international piano scene with almost 70 placements at competitions. In November 2006, he won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Rome, which included 60 competitors from around the world. His concert career has taken him to prestigious theaters and concert halls in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, England, Japan, China, Russia, and Australia.

Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and free for students under 21.

Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band in Sag Harbor

Jimi Hendrix Tribute Band in Sag Harbor

At Bay Street Theater
By
Star Staff

Kiss the Sky: The Jimi Hendrix Re-Experience will take the stage at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday at 8 p.m. Kiss the Sky features Jimy Bleu, the world’s longest-running Jimi Hendrix tribute artist and, like Hendrix, a virtuoso left-handed guitarist. Mr. Bleu has toured with Billy Cox, the original bass player of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys.

Kiss the Sky’s musicians perform in full replica wardrobe with replica instruments, celebrating all phases of Hendrix’s short but iconic career. The group’s 2016 U.S. tour kicked off with a TV concert devoted entirely to them on the season finale of AXS-TV’s “The World’s Greatest Tribute Bands.” Since then the group has performed at theaters, festivals, and clubs across the country.

Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 the day of the event.

Fabricius Front and Center and in Southampton

Fabricius Front and Center and in Southampton

Martin Fabricius, a Danish vibraphonist and composer, will lead a group, including Claes Brondal, in performance at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday.
Martin Fabricius, a Danish vibraphonist and composer, will lead a group, including Claes Brondal, in performance at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday.
Bablu Virinder Singh
Lush, dreamy soundscapes
By
Christopher Walsh

Live From Southampton Arts Center, a concert series organized by Claes Brondal, a musician who hosts the Thursday night Jam Session at Bay Burger in Sag Harbor, continues on Saturday at 7 p.m. with the Martin Fabricius Group. 

Mr. Fabricius is a Danish vibraphonist and composer of animation and documentary scores including “En Anden Pige” (“Another Girl”) and “Sidste Nat” (“Last Night”). His albums as a bandleader include “When Sharks Bite,” “The Speed of Why,” and “Out of the White.” 

Joining him on Saturday are Mr. Brondal, who is also from Denmark, on drums, Brad Shepik, a guitarist who has performed with Carla Bley and the late jazz greats Paul Motian and Bob Brookmeyer, and the bassist Steve Swallow, “a legend in his own right,” Mr. Brondal said, who has also performed with Ms. Bley, Keith Jarrett, and Pat Metheny as well as Motian and the late Jimmy Giuffre and Art Farmer. 

Mr. Fabricius creates lush, dreamy soundscapes that may include classical and electronic elements. “His style is very much of the Nordic sound,” Mr. Brondal said last week. “Big soundscapes, emotions, harmonies. He has that in his blood.” Mr. Brondal likened his music to that of the vibraphonist Gary Burton, the pianist Chick Corea, and Steps Ahead, a group founded by Mike Mainieri, a vibraphonist, and that of Mr. Swallow and Mr. Shepik to the German independent label Edition of Contemporary Music, or ECM, which is characterized by defiance of genres and musical boundaries and has itself issued many soundtracks. 

Mr. Fabricius is a graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied with Mr. Burton. He and his trio have performed worldwide, including throughout Europe and in China. 

Mr. Brondal and Mr. Fabricius have been acquainted for some 25 years, the former said. “We met at a summer jazz camp back in 1992, and have played together over the years.” One collaboration was with Lou Soloff, the late trumpeter and composer, Mr. Brondal said. “Now we’re picking it up again, starting with the concert at Southampton Arts Center with the special guests Steve Swallow and Brad Shepik.”

The series will continue on May 5 with a Cinco de Mayo concert featuring tango, boleros, and jazz, with Oscar Feldman on saxophone, Mr. Brondal on drums, and Walter Perez and Sandra Antognazzi, who are Argentinean-born dancers, among other performers. The concerts are recorded for later broadcast on WPPB Peconic Public Broadcasting, at 88.3 FM. 

Tickets for the Martin Fabricius Group performance are $20. In a new feature for the series, a $10 ticket price is now offered to students. Tickets are available at southamptonartscenter.org, by calling 631-283-0967, or at the door, subject to availability.

Doors will open at 6:30, and complimentary sangria and snacks from Union Cantina in Southampton and rosé from the Wolffer Estate in Sagaponack will be offered.