Germantown Artists Roundtable

Meet artist David Lawrence at October Gallery
2020-03-01 13:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | October Gallery, 6353 Greene Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19144, United States
Original Art on Chairs
by David Lawrence
Sat. & Sun Feb. 29 & Mar. 1
October Gallery 6353 Greene Street Philly 19144
1 to 5 PM Admission Free
Meet the Artist

Author Talk: Ruha Benjamin & Dorothy Roberts "Race After Technology:Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code"
2020-03-01 15:00 - 16:30 | Uncle Bobbie’s Bookstore, 5445 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19144, United States
Uncle Bobbie’s welcomes Ruha Benjamin, in conversation with Dorothy Roberts, to explore Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.
Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.
This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture.
Books will be available for purchase. Signing to follow the reading & discussion.
“Race After Technology is a brilliant, beautifully argued, engagingly written, and groundbreaking work. Ruha Benjamin is that rare scholar whose sophisticated understanding of science and technology is matched by her deep knowledge of race and racialization. Here she guides us into fresh terrain for understanding and tackling the persistence of racial inequality. This book should be read by everyone committed to creating a more just world.”

Blue Monday at La Rose Jazz Club
2020-03-02 18:30 - 21:30 | La Rose Jazz Club, 5531 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19144, United States
Enjoy this neighborhood jazz spot alone or with friends.
Tony Williams and his wonderful quartet: Aaron Graves & Dave Posmontier, keyboard, Mike Boone, bass, Craig McIver, percussion and Tony Williams and friends on saxophone.
Free parking on street and in rear parking lot.
Dinner available.

Jack St Clair & his l7 piece orchestra at La Rose Jazz Club
2020-03-05 19:30 - 22:00 | La Rose Jazz Club, 5531 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia,PA, PA, 19144, United States
Jack St Clair & his l7 piece orchestra at La Rose Jazz Club

7:30 pm – 10:00 pm
$10 – $15

The Jack Saint Clair Orchestra is a 17-piece musical organization. You can hear them every 1st Thursday of the month at LaRose Jazz Club, 7:30pm -10pm. Enjoy their new cocktail menu . Dinner available.

Free parking in rear lot or on street.

Admissions is $15 and $10 with Student ID

Artist Talk: Barbara Bullock in conversation at the Woodmere Art Museum
2020-03-07 15:00 - 16:00 | Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19118, United States
Lecture: In Conversation: Susanna W. Gold and Barbara Bullock
Susanna W. Gold PhD, art historian, independent curator, and curator of Africa in Philadelphia; Barbara Bullock, artist

Join Susanna W. Gold, PhD, and Barbara Bullock in a conversation about Bullock’s art and experiences at the Ile-Ife Black Humanitarian Center in North Philadelphia in the 1970s. There, Bullock interacted with artists Charles Searles and Twins Seven-Seven and was the director of the art department from 1971 to 1975, building a strong community arts program. The conversation will include a discussion about the artists’ connections to Africa in the development of their artistic voices.

Author Linda Sarsour, "We Are Not Here To Be Bystanders" at Uncle Bobbies
2020-03-09 19:00 - 21:00 | First United Methodist Church of Germantown, 6001 Germantown Avenue , Philadelphia, PA, 19144, United States
Uncle Bobbie’s welcomes Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March, in sharing how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist, and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized activist on behalf of marginalized communities across the country. In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill.
On a chilly spring morning in Brooklyn, nineteen-year-old Linda Sarsour stared at her reflection, dressed in a hijab for the first time. She saw in the mirror the woman she was growing to be—a young Muslim American woman unapologetic in her faith and her activism, who would discover her innate sense of justice in the aftermath of 9/11. Now heralded for her award-winning leadership of the Women’s March on Washington, in We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders Linda Sarsour offers a poignant story of community and family.
From the Brooklyn bodega her father owned, where Linda learned the real meaning of intersectionality, to protests in the streets of Washington, DC, Linda’s experience as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants is a moving portrayal of what it means to find one’s voice and use it for the good of others. We follow Linda as she learns the tenets of successful community organizing, and through decades of fighting for racial, economic, gender, and social justice as she becomes one of the most recognized activists in the nation. We also see her honoring her grandmother’s dying wish, protecting her children, building resilient friendships, and mentoring others even as she loses her first mentor in a tragic accident. Throughout, she inspires readers to take action as she reaffirms that we are not here to be bystanders.
In his foreword to the book, Harry Belafonte writes of Linda, “While we may not have made it to the Promised Land, my peers and I, my brothers and sisters in liberation can rest easy that the future is in the hands of leaders like Linda Sarsour. I have often said to Linda that she embodies the principle and purpose of another great Muslim leader, brother Malcolm X.”
***Books will be available for purchase. Get your copy signed by the author after the Q&A!***

Tea with Frederick Douglass at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion
2020-03-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, Tulepehocken & Greene Sts, Philadelphia, PA, 19144, United States
In 1844, at the age of 26, Frederick Douglass was invited by abolitionists to speak on the lawn of Independence Hall. Douglass had a natural connection with Philadelphia as this was the first Northern city he came to upon his escape. It is a testament to Douglass’ courage that he came to Philadelphia, so close to his old master’s state of Maryland, to give this speech
In March 2020 Douglass will return to Philadelphia in a one man show based on one of his most famous speeches.Audience members will have the opportunity to watch and participate as Douglass struggles with the concept of “independence” as it applies to enslaved Africans.
Written and directed by Shav’on Smith
Friday, March 20, 2020 at 7:00 pm
Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm
Friday, March 27, 2020 at 7:00 pm
Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm
Tickets are $30 / $25 for members / $15 for residents with 19144 zip code
For tickets call 215-438-1861 or buy tickets online
Tea with Frederick Douglass is brought to you by a generous grant from PNC Arts Alive!

PRISM QUARTET : Mending Wall
2020-03-21 20:00 - 21:30 | Goodhart Hall,Macpherson Auditorium, 150 N.Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA, United States
Germantown’s Matt Levy and his PRISM QUARTET

Mending Wall
World Premiere

Co-Presented by
Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series
and PRISM Quartet, Inc.
March 21, 8 PM
March 22, 3 PM
Bryn Mawr College
Goodhart Hall, McPherson Auditorium
150 N. Merion Ave. | Bryn Mawr, PA
Co-Presented by
Roulette and PRISM Quartet, Inc.

Soprano Tony Arnold

This March, the PRISM Quartet celebrates its 35th anniversary season with Mending Wall, arguably its most ambitious project.
Named after the 1914 poem by Robert Frost, Mending Wall is a fully staged concert exploring the meaning of walls in our world by giving musical form to questions about identity, community, division, and freedom. Soprano Tony Arnold and pianist Arturo O’Farrill join the PRISM Quartet in world premiere performances of works by four visionary composers—Martin Bresnick, George Lewis, Juri Seo, and O’Farrill—who take inspiration from poetry by Frost, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Waly Salomão, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Mending Wall is directed by Jorinde Keesmaat with lighting design by Aaron Copp.

Stage Director Jorinde Keesmaat and Lighting Designer Aaron Copp

“Walls are a foundational part of our world: they have mythical and poetic resonance, but also material consequences,” noted Matthew Levy, executive and co-artistic director of the PRISM Quartet. “The project began as a response to the idea of a wall as a dehumanizing force. Although America’s current zeal for wall-building has counterparts throughout history and across the globe, it represents a specific failure of imagination. As artists, we’re called to build another kind of structure: a collaborative experiment that restores mystery, complexity, and generosity to our encounters with one another. Mending Wall amplifies a range of musical and poetic voices; Our hope is that the project will illuminate and help us to confront and mend fractures in our human community.”

Composers George Lewis, Arturo O’Farrill, Juri Seo, and Martin Bresnick

Martin Bresnick’s commission, Mending Time, is inspired by the contradictions in Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” in which two neighbors meet yearly to rebuild the structure separating their farms. Bresnick writes, “According to Frost we are trapped and doomed by fences to eternal contact and inevitable alienation. But what if the walls between us were made of music?”
In Where Her Eye Sits, George Lewis set texts examining the legacy of Apartheid by the late South African poet and activist Keorapetse Kgositsile. The piece joins PRISM and soprano Tony Arnold “to link a coloratura’s sonic sensibility with the saxophone’s evocation of South African popular music via mbube-like orchestration.”
Juri Seo‘s work, Unsung Lullaby, is inspired by Algaravi: Echo Chamber, a volume of poetry by Syrian-Brazilian writer Waly Salomão that explores the dual meaning of “echo chamber”— the figurative connotation that’s ubiquitous in our politics/media, and its older (and literal) meaning, a walled space that repeats, amplifies, and distorts sounds.
Arturo O’Farrill’s Something to declare? (yeah, fuck your wall) is based on “Freefalling Toward a Borderless Future” by Guillermo Gomez Peña and son jarocho, a Mexican song form with a lead trovador voice supported by jaranas (guitar-like instruments), which PRISM’s saxophones approximate. His piece draws upon the rich political/cultural underpinnings of Fandango Fronterizo, an annual festival on both sides of the San Diego/Tijuana border fence.
We invite you to visit the Mending Wall Website to learn more about the project. The site includes artist statements from our stage director and composers, information about Mending Wall poets, a project blog, ticketing links, and much more.

Visit the Mending Wall Website For Tickets/Info

PRISM Quartet

Photo by Ara Howrani

Hailed by Chamber Music magazine for “pioneering achievements of the highest order,” the PRISM Quartet has performed in Carnegie Hall on the Making Music Series, in Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia under the auspices of the United States Information Agency and USArtists International. PRISM has also been presented to critical acclaim as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory. Two-time recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, PRISM has commissioned nearly 300 works, many by internationally celebrated composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Julia Wolfe, William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands; MacArthur “Genius” Award recipients Tyshawn Sorey, Bright Sheng, and Miguel Zenón; and United States Artists Fellow Susie Ibarra. PRISM’s discography includes releases on Albany, ECM, innova, Koch, Naxos, BMOP/Sound, New Dynamic, New Focus, and its own label, XAS Records. The Fifth Century, PRISM’s ECM recording with The Crossing under Donald Nally, was awarded a 2018 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. In 2016, PRISM was named by its alma mater, the University of Michigan, as the first recipient of the Christopher Kendall Award in recognition of its work in “collaboration, entrepreneurship, and community engagement.” The PRISM Quartet plays Selmer saxophones and mouthpieces exclusively. PRISM Quartet members are Timothy McAllister, Zachary Shemon, Matthew Levy, and Taimur Sullivan.
