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Exciting Events Around New York: January 2024

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EXCITING EVENTS AROUND NEW YORK: JANUARY 2024

By Great Performances

Explore Great Music, Art and More at Our Partner Venues This Month!



UPTOWN HALL: THE INCONVENIENT KING

Sunday, January 14th at 2:00pm

Location: Apollo’s Historic Theater

Tickets: Free with RSVP

The Apollo has a decades-long tradition of serving as a convener for our community as well as people from across New York City. That tradition continues as The Apollo partners with WNYC in our 18th annual celebration of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his enduring legacy on the culture.

This year’s presentation focuses on a renewed commitment to understanding the context, confronting the complexity, and elevating our collective consciousness in the face of injustice and discrimination.

NPR’s Notes from America host, Kai Wright moderates the first hour of this year’s celebration. Music, spoken word and other forms of creative expression round out the afternoon. Please check back for additional information about this program.

Not to know is bad; not to want to know is worse.” – African proverb

In collaboration with March On Washington Film Festival.

Uptown Hall: The Inconvenient King is part of The Apollo’s Winter/Spring 2024 season.

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PROFESSIONAL LEARNING:

APOLLO STORIES

Monday, January 29th from 8:30am to 3:00pm

Location: Apollo’s Soundstage

Tickets: Before December 31, 2023: $25; After January 1, 2024: $35

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING FOR EDUCATORS
Join Apollo Education for a full day Professional Learning Workshop to explore our groundbreaking national digital learning hub, Apollo Stories. These educator-created materials will spark critical thinking in the minds of your students and ignite thought-provoking discussions on justice, culture, and identity.

The Apollo Stories team will provide expert guidance for seamlessly integrating and adapting the free lessons featured on the platform into your classroom curricula. Gain hands-on facilitation experience and dive into engaging, practical, classroom-ready activities that include discussion & writing prompts, assessments and various arts integrations.

By attending this workshop, you will have full access to the Apollo Stories digital learning hub and more from our profound inaugural project, Between the World and Me, by award-winning author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, as well as an exciting first look at our upcoming project, The Renaissance Mixtape created by dynamic artists and educators, Soul Science Lab.

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FROM MEIJI TO NOW: THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN

Wednesday, January 17th from 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Tickets: $20 Nonmembers; $10 Members

The significance of the Meiji Restoration, an important political period in Japanese history credited for ushering in an era of major political and social change continues to be debated extensively, more than a century and half on. As the third-largest economy in the world, Japan today is assuming an increasingly assertive role on the global stage and continues to undergo rapid changes, as it did during the Meiji era. This program will focus on the transformations in politics, society, and culture Japan experienced during the Meiji era and their relevance to the contemporary era; examine the parallels and continuity between the two periods of transformation; and explore their implications for the region as well as the wider world.

This program is associated with Asia Society’s current Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan exhibition, which reevaluates a seminal era of turmoil, creativity, and transformation in Japan spanning the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries.

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Howardena Pindell, Autobiography: East/West (Gardens), 1983. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery

BLACK ARTISTS SHAPING ASIAN ART: JOAN KEE & STEVEN NELSON

Monday, January 22nd from 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Tickets: $15 Nonmembers, $8 Members. Students and Seniors: Contact Box Office for Discount!

In this conversation, renowned art historians Joan Kee and Steven Nelson will discuss Black artists who have incorporated Asian techniques, motifs, philosophies, and forms into their innovative works, resulting in a rich artistic dialogue that expands the boundaries of modern and contemporary art. Drawing from Kee’s recent book, The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art beyond Solidarity (2023), this discussion will center around the ink paintings of Norman Lewis, the impact of travel in China on the sculptures of Barbara Chase-Riboud, and the role of Japanese landscape architecture in the work of Martin Puryear.

Venturing beyond existing stories of globalism, the intersection of Black and Asian art can help us reimagine art history as it expands, folds, curves, and bends across time and space.

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OUR CLASS

Friday, January 12th through Sunday, February 4th

Location: BAM Fisher, Fishman Space

Tickets: start at $59

MART FOUNDATION & ARLEKIN PLAYERS PRESENT
OUR CLASS

WRITTEN BY TADEUSZ SŁOBODZIANEK
DIRECTED BY IGOR GOLYAK
ADAPTATION BY NORMAN ALLEN

Featuring: Gus Birney, Andrey Burkovskiy, Jack DiFalco, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Will Manning, Stephen Ochsner, Alexandra Silber, Richard Topol and Ilia Volok.

Friends. Enemies. Classmates. Based on the true story

Ten Polish classmates — five Jewish and five Catholic — grow up as friends and neighbors, then turn on one another with life and death consequences. Inspired by real life events surrounding a horrific 1941 pogrom in a small Polish village, this shocking, timely story follows their lives from childhood through eight decades in a new contemporary production of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s masterpiece, from Ukrainian-born Jewish director Igor Golyak (The Orchard; State vs. Natasha Banina).

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ANGEL ISLAND

Thursday, January 11th through Saturday, January 13th

Location: BAM Strong, Harvey Theater

Tickets: start at $30

BAM and Prototype Festival
Present

Angel Island
Composed and conducted by Huang Ruo
Directed by Matthew Ozawa
Film by Bill Morrison

Part of Next Wave 2023

Starting in 1910, many immigrants who journeyed to America were processed at an immigration station on Angel Island, located in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Until a fire led to its closure in 1940, the station primarily functioned as a detention center, where half a million people from 80 countries were held under barbaric conditions—some for weeks, others for years. The majority of these detainees were Chinese migrants, who were banned from entering the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, with few exceptions.

Making his BAM debut, acclaimed Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo (M. Butterfly, An American Soldier, Book of Mountains & Seas) revisits this chapter of American history in Angel Island, a poignant multimedia experience scored for voices and string quartet that blurs the boundaries of opera, theater, dance, and music. In collaboration with the Del Sol Quartet, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and archival filmmaker Bill Morrison, Huang Ruo and director Matthew Ozawa weave a powerful requiem from the century-old poetry engraved on the detention center’s walls by some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants who were incarcerated and subjected to dehumanizing horrors. Angel Island arrives amid an ongoing epidemic of brutal violence and rampant discrimination against immigrants, asylum-seekers, and Asians across the diaspora. This production is a stirring plea for care and empathy as well as a visceral, clear-eyed tribute to the rebellion and resilience of those who passed through and perished at Angel Island.

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THE 38TH ANNUAL BROOKLYN TRIBUTE TO DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Monday, January 15th at 10:30am

Location: Peter Jay Sharp Building, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

Tickets: Tickets are free for this event and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 8am on January 15 in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House lobby.

Presented by BAM and the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso

Part of Winter/Spring 2024

We honor Dr. King’s radical spirit at this beloved Brooklyn tradition, which rings in a new year with musical performances and an invigorating call to action. Keynote speaker Reginald Dwayne Betts—a poet, lawyer, and founder and CEO of Freedom Reads—offers reflections on freedom anchored in his own journey, his enduring commitment to social justice, and his work to radically transform access to literature in prison. Featuring uplifting performances by Sing Harlem and singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin, this annual tribute invites us to reflect, recharge, and support one another as we carry on Dr. King’s relentless pursuit of equality and justice.

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Sunday Art: Lunar New Year, 2022. (Photo: Elena Olivo)

SUNDAY ART: LUNAR NEW YEAR CELEBRATION

January 14th through February 18th

Tickets: free with Museum admission

Bring the family to this free drop-in program celebrating Lunar New Year. We’ll create art inspired by the collection and enjoy a lion dance performance by the Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club.

Locations
January 14: Arts of Asia, 2nd Floor
January 21: Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor
January 28: Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor
February 11: Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor
February 18: Porcelains in the Mist: The Kondō Family of Ceramicists, 2nd Floor

Click here to learn more


2020_Brooklyn_Symphony_Orchestra_popup_Kolin_Mendez
Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, 2019. (Photo: Kolin Mendez)

POP-UP PERFORMANCE:

BROOKLYN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Sunday, January 21st from 2:00pm to 4:00pm

Location: Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor

Tickets: Free with Museum admission

Drop by to hear music selections performed by members of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, the Museum’s orchestra in residence.

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YES TRIO FEATURING ALI JACKSON JR., AARON GOLDBERG, AND OMER AVITAL

Monday, January 8th and Tuesday, January 9th

Tickets: start at $20

An explosive ensemble of swinging rhythms, virtuosic language, and high-level spontaneity, YES Trio features three distinctive solo leaders whose combined expression invites audiences to truly lose themselves in the music. Bonded by a 30-year friendship, Ali Jackson, Omer Avital, and Aaron Goldberg center swing as “a timeless idea,” and combine their roots and experiences, from Motown to the Middle East, from blues to bebop, for a joyful and sensitive journey. For this two-night event, they celebrate the release of their third album Spring Sings, presenting fresh arrangements of standards with beautiful original compositions.

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A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN IN JAZZ, CURATED BY ALEXA TARANTINO AND CECILE MCLORIN SALVANT

Tuesday, January 30th at 7:00pm

Tickets: start at $20

This evening’s performance unveils a new series curated by Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Artist Advisory Council. The Council’s series showcases new and lesser-heard voices, sounds, and musings to Dizzy’s Club with the mission of expanding JALC’s global jazz community. Council members Alexa Tarantino and Cécile McLorin Salvant have co-curated this evening to celebrate women in jazz by bringing an intergenerational ensemble of up-and-coming artists to the Dizzy’s Club stage.

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THE UNITY JAZZ FESTIVAL

Friday, January 12th and Saturday, January 13th

Location: Ertegun Atrium

Tickets: start at $85.50

ABOUT THE CONCERT

Welcome to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s inaugural Unity Jazz Festival! Join us for a weekend of non-stop music and vibrant entertainment. Groove to the beats of 15 diverse acts, including JALC favorites and global jazz talents. The House of Swing comes alive as we expand and uplift the JALC community. Don’t miss this must-see event with emerging acts and cherished legends.

WHAT TO EXPECT

  • 1 Weekend, 15 Unique Acts: From soul-stirring vocalists to electrifying instrumentalists, experience the diverse scope of jazz in all its splendor over the course of two nights!
  • The Best of Jazz: Discover seasoned maestros and rising stars as they come together under one roof, celebrating the unifying power of music.
  • All-Access Pass: Be it the captivating notes of a blues performance or the rhapsodic rhythms of a big band ensemble; every corner of Jazz at Lincoln Center will be alive with music.
  • Shape Your Own Musical Journey: Wander from stage to stage, letting the diverse sounds guide your journey. With the freedom to see any act, craft your own personalized jazz experience

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THE BLUES WITH BOBBY RUSH AND SHEMEKIA COPELAND

Friday, January 26th and Saturday, January 27th

Location: The Appel Room

Tickets: start at $90.50

ABOUT THE CONCERT

Jazz at Lincoln Center welcomes an inexhaustible legend of blues tradition and innovation: the multi-Grammy Award-winning artist and Blues Hall of Famer Bobby Rush. At 90, the Louisiana-born singer, guitarist, and blues harp master is still a unique and electric performer who takes listeners on a kaleidoscopic journey across the landscape of 20th-century American music.

Multi-Grammy-nominated vocalist and effervescent storyteller Shemekia Copeland joins Rush for this Appel Room event.

WHAT TO EXPECT

  • Blues Hall of Famer Bobby Rush’s first show at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
  • Stories and songs from a legendary act who spent more than a half-century touring.
  • Featuring acclaimed vocalist Shemekia Copeland.

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PUTTIN’ INK ON PAPER WITH AMOS PAUL KENNEDY, JR.

Saturday, January 27th from 10:00am to 4:00pm

Tickets: $455

Poster House is excited to partner with the Center for Book Arts for a special letterpress printing workshop with Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. Over the course of this two-day workshop, participants will work collaboratively to make posters that convey environmental messaging, inspired by Poster House’s current exhibition We Tried To Warn You! Environmental Crisis Posters, 1970-2020. Learn how to make striking compositions through the layering of wood type, and leave with a stack of posters that advocate for the environment. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to put ink on paper with a master printer described in Hyperallergic as having “the feistiness of a best friend, the warmth of a grandmother, a low tolerance for bullshit, and the energy of the most precocious toddler.”

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is a prolific letterpress printer based out of Detroit, Michigan, known for his social and political commentary and distinctive, layered printing style.

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EVENING OF TRANSCENDENT SOUND

Sunday, January 21st from 4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: Armor Hall

Tickets: $50, including admission to the grounds. Wave Hill Members save 10%.

With Wave Hill’s majestic Armor Hall space as the setting, be guided through a combined musical and meditative experience in celebration of winter transcendence. Join Bronx Arts Ensemble along with Artemis Audio & Ayurveda for a unique performance and variety of healing instruments and sounds. Wind up your transcendent evening with a tranquil stroll through the winter gardens as you depart, guided by the fading sunset and the twinkling lights along the distant banks of the Hudson River. A co-presentation with Bronx Arts Ensemble. Winter Haven event.

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Photo: Karsten Moran

WINTER WORKSPACE 2024:

DROP-IN SUNDAY

Sunday, January 28th from 1:00pm to 3:00pm

Location: Glyndor Gallery

Tickets: Free with admission to the grounds

The Winter Workspace is a program that takes place over two, six-week sessions and provides artists with free studio space, a financial stipend and access to Wave Hill’s living collection. Session One takes place from January 2 to February 18, 2024. Since its start 14 years ago, the Workspace has supported more than 150 artists. During the Winter Workspace, artists have intimate access to the greenhouses, as well as horticultural and curatorial staff. Experimentation is encouraged and artists expand their practices while working on site. Artists also engage with Wave Hill visitors through Drop-In Sundays and Open Studio events, as well as adult or family workshops. At the core of the Winter Workspace is the recognition that creating art within the context of a garden is a unique experience.

The Winter Workspace Drop-In Sunday series provides an opportunity for Wave Hill visitors to deepen their connection with the arts and their experience of the garden by learning how artists are drawing inspiration from our site. During this event, visitors can mingle with three Workspace Artists in their studios, ask questions and learn about their creative practice. Each Sunday a different group of artists participates.

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ICE SEASON RETURNS!

now through March, 15th, 2024

Wollman Rink NYC in iconic Central Park will open for ice skating daily from Saturday, October 28th, 2023 to March 15, 2024.

Don’t miss your chance to skate at Wollman Rink NYC, the perfect place to enjoy an iconic New York experience!

Tickets on sale now!

Click here to learn more

RINK SIDE IGLOOS

now through March 15th, 2024

Elevate your skating experience at Wollman Rink inside our cozy, private, heated Rink Side igloos, under the Midtown Manhattan skyline in Central Park. Both of our transparent igloos feature an electric fireplace, soft lighting, and comfy seating for eight, as well as delicious food and beverage options.

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NORDSTROM PRESENTS

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

November through December

A stylish, heated rink side retreat, outfitted by Nordstrom, is part of the Wollman Rink Premier Pass experience. The Premier Pass, available as an upgrade to rink admission purchases online or in-person, includes expedited rink entry, skate rental concierge service, 2 hours of tent access, cozy “fireside” seating, complimentary coffee, hot chocolate, tea and refreshments, as well as a dedicated tent attendant and locker. Premier Passes are released one week in advance of public skating dates. Admission and skate rentals are separate, available on select dates during the ticket purchase process. Sessions start at the top of every hour, 2 hours before close. See Premier Pass page for available dates and times.

Click here to learn more