Multidisciplinary Artist Salon: Transcendence

Join us July 29th & 30th for New England Multidisciplinary Artists Salon: Embodiment & Transcendance 2022. A weekend of performances, images, readings, workshops, artist talks and more. Locally-sourced cuisine and refreshments will be provided. This series was made possible by support from Vermont Humanities Council and the Vermont Community Foundation. Tickets for this event are $25. Thanks to a generous grant from the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, $5 subsidized tickets are available for those who self-identify as experiencing financial hardship. In order to make this program accessible for all,  we are offering tickets to all of the Multidisciplinary Artist Salon events by sliding scale. Taking equity and inclusion into account, please pay what you can to help support the artists and venue. 

Doors 8pm, Performances start  shortly after 8:35pm,  please plan to arrive within that window of time to enjoy a refreshment, experience the art exhibition, and choose your seat to best avoid disrupting the program. Thanks! 

Featured Artists Performing in the Sanctuary of Epsilon Spires on Friday, July 29th:

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Zimbabwean-American poet, performance artist, storyteller, and educator with an international reach and a transnational lens. Her debut poetry collection, Soul Psalms (She Writes Press), was published in April 2016, and hailed by David Updike as “a fearless female voice … tempered with optimism and healing possibilities of love.” Most recently she has been featured on GBH’s “Suitcase Stories” and “ Growing Up Black Part 2 “, collaborated on multiple films for the 2021 Boston Globe Black History Film Festival. U-Meleni is an advisory board member for Write On the Dot and a member of the New England Poetry Club. She is a 2021 Creative Entrepreneur Fellowship recipient from the Arts and Business Council of Boston. She is also the founder of Maoko Project, an arts-based approach to DEI, Wellness, and Education guided by Ndau ( Shona) principles. U-Meleni is also a former adjunct professor at Endicott College (Boston) teaching creative writing and performance poetry. She has a Master’s in Education from Lesley University, focusing on multicultural education and theatre arts. Also very proud as undergraduate alum of UMASS Boston. She is fiercely passionate about using her voice for women’s empowerment, holistic wellness, and exploring “hyphenated identities” through her work. When not writing, performing, or collaborating with other artists, she can often be found enjoying a Riesling at a winery, biking and running for charity with her husband and son, and traveling the world. She lives in Massachusetts. For more information: www.u-meleni.com

 

Holland Andrews (they/them) is an American vocalist, composer, and performance artist whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and dissonance. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing, Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet, and electronics. Andrews harnesses these instruments’ innate qualities of power and elegance to serve as a cohesive vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range including

contemporary opera, theater, and jazz, while also cultivating their own unique vocal style which integrates these influences with language disintegration and vocal distortion. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews develops and performs the soundscapes for dance, theater, and film, and whose work is still toured nationally and internationally. Andrews has gained recognition from publications such as The New York Times, Le Monde, La Republica, Business Times, and more. Holland Andrews is currently based in New York City. For more information: https://www.hollandandrews.com/

Shanta Lee is an artist who works in different mediums as a photographer, writer across genres and is a public intellectual whose work has been widely featured. She is the author of  GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, named 2021 Vermont Book Award, winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize with an honorable mention from the Sheila Margaret Motton prize. Shanta Lee's forthcoming collection, Black Metamorphoses (Etruscan Press, 2023),  is what Shanta Lee describes as a 2000+ year old phone line opened to Ovid as well as an interrogation of the Greek mythos while creating her own new language in this work. Black Metamorphoses is an illustrated poetry collection that has been longlisted for the 2021 Idaho poetry prize, shortlisted for the 2021 Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and named a finalist in the 2021 Hudson prize.  Her current multimedia exhibition, Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine, is on view from now until December 9 at the Fleming Museum of Art. To learn more about her work, visit: Shantaleegander.com

The music of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nialah Hunter  opens gateways into magical worlds. Shimmering with dulcet harp tones and dreamy electronics, her debut EP Spells was released by LA’s acclaimed Leaving Records in May 2020 and described by Rolling Stone as “one of the best recent releases of its kind.”

Nailah was born in Manhattan and raised in LA - the daughter of a Belizean pastor - playing drums and acoustic guitar in her dad’s church band and singing in its choir. As a teenager, her growing interest in classical and jazz artists like Erik Satie, Alice Coltrane, and the soundtracks of Miyazaki films began to crystallise into the delicately ethereal musicality that led her to composing the songs on Spells.

A key turning point came aged 19, when she received a baby harp as a gift. She was already a student at CalArts, developing a keenly trained compositional sense and a perfectly smoky singing voice. Enchanted with her new instrument, she began creating radiant soundscapes, weaving together glittering harp melodies with field recordings, voice, and mystic imagery from the Tarot, Greek mythology, and Arthurian Legend. Her songs - like lush, fantasy landscapes or pools of moonlit water - are Edenic worlds, shining with transcendent wonder and healing energies.

Nailah hosts a monthly NTS radio show, Astral Garden, and has collaborated with Lyra Pramuk, No Joy, John Carroll Kirby and Bing and Ruth. She is also a member of New Age supergroup Galdre Visions along with Green-House, Yialmelic Frequencies and Ami Dang. In June 2020, she released the standalone single “Black Valhalla” to raise funds for the Loveland Foundation, a charity providing therapy to young black girls. To listen to Nialah's music visit: https://nailahhunter.bandcamp.com/

Saturday, July 30th: EMBODIMENT: Creative Workshops in Guilford at The Green River Bridge Inn

12:00-1:30PM: Embodied Voice Workshop by Holland Andrews in the gardens of The Green River Bridge Inn. 

This participatory workshop is open to all levels of vocal and performance experience. Together we will explore vocal embodiment as a vessel for softening the resistance to living as our most compassionate and harmonious selves through visualization and emotional prompts. Please carpool when possible and bring a bathing suit to enjoy swimming in the beautiful waterfall after the workshop! Spaces are limited, we recommend reserving in advance.

2:30-4PM: A Practice of Co-creation: Curating with Jasmine Agosto Sageseeker.

Workshop and Harp Concent at The Green River Church (Located directly across from The Green River Bridge Inn). Featured Artists Jasmin Agosto Sageseeker and Nialah Hunter. Free Admission by R.S.V.P. 

What is it like to work collaboratively with someone else whose art form and story is different from your own? This free workshop led by Jasmin Agosto Sageseeker, invites participants to share a bit about themselves and co-create a short performance or work of art with an unknown collaborator. It is more about an exploration of raw creation process and not about a finished, polished product. Please bring an artifact/item from home that speaks to an important aspect of who you are. The Workshop will begin with an acoustic performance on harp by Nialah Hunter to help guide us into a grounded, meditative state.

Jasmin Agosto (she/they) is the founder of Sageseeker Productions, an event/experience curation company based in Hartford, CT that centers Black womxn, womxn of color, trans and non-binary folks, and the queer BIPOC community. By day, she is the Education and Community Outreach Manager at the Hartford History Center at Hartford Public Library. She has been working with artists, activists, healers, students, and elders to organize cultural arts and history/herstory focused events, exhibitions, festivals and programs for more than 15 years. Jasmin holds a BA in Educational and American Studies from Trinity College and a MA in Artist Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Community Development from NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study.