Art Works Podcast

Meet Cassandra Wilson—singer, songwriter, musician, and 2022 NEA Jazz Master Fellow. In this tuneful podcast, the Grammy Award winner takes us through her career in music, her influences, her approach to singing, how she works with other musicians, her ideas about songwriting, and the centrality of the blues and Mississippi’s rich musical heritage to her work. Wilson is as insightful as she is talented as she discusses the trajectory of her long and rich career.

Photojournalist Lynsey Addario has been making news herself lately: she recently took what many consider to be a war defining photograph--that of a church worker, a mother and her children killed by a mortar as they tried to flee the Russian bombardment outside Kyiv. It’s a photograph that resonated around the world, showing clearly the cost civilians are paying for the war in Ukraine.  Working regularly for the New York Times, Addario has been documenting the cost of war—particularly for women and children for over 20 years. in Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, Congo, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine, Addario has insisted that we look and understand what “collateral damage” actually means. We’re revisiting my 2016 interview with Addario in which she discusses what compels her work, her ability to interact and document women in Muslim countries, how she deals with her own fears, her kidnapping in Libya, and the effects of motherhood on her work.  

Novelist and 2022 NEA Literature Fellow Marjan Kamali talks about her recent novel The Stationery Shop a story that begins in 1953 in Iran and spans 60 years. It’s a book that is steeped in Persian culture, poetry and food even as its protagonist spends the majority of her life in the United States. Marjan discusses her decision to write about a lost love but a life fully lived, the balancing act of telling a story shaped by a political moment that isn’t subsumed by politics,  the centrality of poetry in the lives of Iranians and Iranian-Americans, living on the hyphen between Iranian and American, her plans for her 2022 NEA Literature Fellowship, and the absolute joy of writing about the food at the heart of Persian culture.   And from Marjan, below are links to food blogs she mentions in the podcast: “There are many great food blogs out there that explain everything in Persian cooking so well. I highly recommend: https://turmericsaffron.blogspot.com mypersiankitchen.com Nooshe jân! (May it nourish your soul!)” Follow us on Apple Podcasts!  

We’re marking Women’s history month by replaying my in-depth interview with the late Valerie Boyd who wrote the acclaimed “Wrapped in Rainbows: the Biography of Zora Neale Hurston.”   Zora Neale Hurston is now recognized one of America’s great authors whose work opened doors for writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. When we heard that Valerie Boyd who wrote the acclaimed biography of Hurston “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Biography of Zora Neale Hurston” died on February 17, it seemed appropriate to honor both women by revisiting my 2006 in-depth interview with Valerie Boyd about Hurston and “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  In this podcast, Boyd talks about the impact Hurston and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” had on literature, the significance of Hurston’s hometown of Eatonville to her life and work, Hurston’s place in the Harlem Renaissance, and her final years out of the public eye but deeply embedded in her community.  Boyd brought years of research, her writer’s eye, and a keen curiosity to the biography and to our conversation. Follow us on Apple Podcasts!

Violist Ashleigh Gordon and pianist Anthony R. Green were students at the New England Conservatory of Music and were frustrated by the lack of representation of Black voices in classical music. So, in 2013, they co-founded Castle of our Skins—a music initiative in Boston focused on celebrating Black artistry in music. Ashleigh Gordon is the organization’s artistic and executive director as well as violist who performs in many of the concerts. From its successful first outing, “Castle of our Skins”—the name comes from a poem by Nikki Giovanni—has grown into a distinguished concert and music education series with creative programming that weaves music with visual art, dance, history, and storytelling.  In this podcast, Gordon talks about the organization’s founding, how its mission has evolved and expanded throughout the years, the centrality of interdisciplinary work and partnerships to its programming, and how, as a Black arts organization, Castle of our Skins, which received an ARP grant from the NEA, is moving forward through “a health pandemic and a racial pandemic.” Follow Art Works on Apple Podcasts! You can listen to Castle of our Skins’s YouTube channel here. Music Excerpts from today’s podcast: “Love Let The Wind Cry...How I Adore Thee" by Undine Smith Moore, performed by soprano Sirgourney Cook and pianist Sarah Bob. Performed live May 26, 2018 at Hibernian Hall, Boston as part of Castle of our Skins's "Ain't I a Woman" project.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8GV-bTW740 “Wade in the Water” from Spiritual Fantasy No 12 by Frederick Tillis, performed by Gabriela Díaz, violin; Matthew Vera, violin; Francesca McNeeley, cello; Ashleigh Gordon, viola. Recorded live in the Boston Athenaeum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c68p3p_JT1g “Positive Negativity” by Gary Powell Nash, performed by Ashleigh Gordon, viola and Anthony R. Green, from Castle of our Skins's Black Composer Miniature Challenge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkrqPTkLl0  

Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, the 13th chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, is no stranger to the Arts Endowment having had a great deal of first-hand experience with the agency as she has served on the National Council on the Arts since 2013.  She comes to the position of chair with years of experience in comprehensive community building that focuses on the centrality of the arts, culture, and supports what she terms an “artful life.”  The first African American and Mexican American woman to chair the Arts Endowment, Chair Jackson received her doctorate in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Her resume is long, deep, and rich, with notable work at the Urban Institute, Kresge Foundation, and as Institute Professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, where she also holds an appointment in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. In this thoughtful and engaging conversation, Chair Jackson shares her thoughts about the arts, an artful life, and the Arts Endowment at this time of reopening, rethinking, and reimagining the arts landscape.

Photo Credit: Photo by Tom Pich/tompich.com¸ To celebrate Black History Month, we decided to mine the archives and revisit my interview with pianist, NEA Jazz Master and National Medal of Arts recipient Hank Jones. Born in 1918, Jones began performing by the time he was 13, and he continued performing and recording until his death in 2010. His career contains much of jazz history—with 60 solo albums and literally thousands on which he was a sideman. And his family history is entwined with jazz as well: two of his brothers--trumpeter Thad and drummer Elvin-- were great and well-known jazz musicians. Always in demand for record dates and tours, Hank Jones played and recorded with a who’s who in the jazz world, including bandleaders like  Coleman Hawkins, Billy Eckstine, Howard McGhee, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman and with artists such as Charlie Parker Lester Young, Cannonball Adderley, and Wes Montgomery. He was Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist for almost five years and served as the original pianist of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. He was an eloquent and lyrical pianist with an unmistakable style.  I spoke with him in 2008 when he had been awarded the National Medal of Arts, and as you’ll hear, Hank Jones was elegant, humorous, and happy to talk about his extraordinary life in music. Enjoy!   Follow us on Apple Podcasts!  

Donald Harrison, Jr. may have been named a 2022 NEA Jazz Master for his advocacy work, but this hard-swinging improvisational saxophonist is also a brilliant player as evidenced by his performances and recordings with musicians like Ron Carter Terence Blanchard, Miles Davis Lena Horne, Eddie Palmieri the Notorious B.I.G., and the powerhouse jazz group the Cookers.  Yet, Harrison’s passion for preserving and celebrating the music and culture of his hometown New Orleans is unmatched.  He founded the Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group to honor the cultures brought from Africa that found root in New Orleans and then traveled the world. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Harrison, who had been a dedicated teacher and mentor for young musicians, increased his activism and worked tirelessly to help musicians remain in the city.  An intentional and avid student of some of the jazz greats, Harrison has devoted himself to passing down the lessons he’s learned to younger musicians. And he has mentored some extraordinary jazz artists including Jon Batiste, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Trombone Shorty, and Esperanza Spaulding. And in this podcast, Harrison talks about it all—from the importance of Congo Square to New Orleans and to jazz, to his playing with and learning from Art Blakey and Roy Haynes,  his commitment to learning music from all the eras of jazz and passing that knowledge along to his students, and, of course, his thoughts about the music itself. Follow us on:  Apple Podcasts   Google Podcasts

Sade Lythcott, CEO of National Black Theatre (NBT), is carrying on the legacy of her mother, Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, who founded NBT back in 1968. Based in Harlem and born out of the Black Arts Movement, NBT has spent the last five decades presenting stories by and about Black people with an aim is "to produce transformational theater…by telling authentic stories of the Black experience.” It has done so not just on its stage but in the streets, parks, shops, and bars of Harlem. And in the process, this nonprofit community theater has become an important cultural incubator. Since its founding NBT has produced over 300 new works and worked with artists ranging from James Baldwin to Nikki Giovanni, from Nina Simone to Maya Angelou. In this podcast, Lythcott talks about the philosophy that’s been guiding NBT since its beginning, its emphasis on community and placemaking, how NBT develops new work and how, at this moment of racial reckoning, NBT has no interest in calling anyone out, they’re calling people in to sit at “the table we’ve been setting for 50 years.” Follow us on:  Apple Podcasts   Google Podcasts

Educator and advocate Joel Snyder is one of the pioneers of audio description which makes the visual verbal for people who are blind or have low vision. Just as captioning or signing gives people who are deaf or hard of hearing access to media and performing arts, audio description provides a similar service to people who are blind or have low vision.  It’s a specialized skill: AD must provide a narration of what a show is depicting visually, and it must do so without stepping on dialogue or musical cues. And there is no question: the use of AD is removing barriers to culture for blind people. And Joel Snyder was there from beginning. In the podcast, Snyder takes us back to the origins of AD, the differences in providing AD for live-theater or dance as opposed to film, television, or streaming, how technology is shaping the future of AD, and his work at the Audio Description Project at the American Council of the Blind. Follow us on:  Apple Podcasts   Google Podcasts