Afleveringen
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WPKN programmer Valerie Richardson speaks with artist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo about his exhibition Arwe Journey: Twentieth-Century Afri-Caribbean Migration, which will be on view at the Housatonic Museum of Art from Weds. Sept. 18, 2024, through Feb. 21, 2025. In the 61 paintings in this exhibition, the artist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo tells the story of the 20th-century Afri-Caribbean migration to Europe and North America. Arwe Journey takes its inspiration from Jacob Lawrenceâs Great Migration series and August Wilsonâs plays. The exhibition will be accompanied by many special programs including performances of poetry and storytelling by the artist himself. Also joining the conversation were co-curators Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, director of the Housatonic Museum of Art, and Suzanne Kachmar, director of Bridgeportâs City Lights Gallery. On a side note, Valerie chose to end the interview segment with a snipper of the song Push Back Your Bam-Bam by the Calypso Antiguan artist King Short Shirt. Iyaba was delighted to hear this song and shared after the interview that his mother worked as a backup singer with King Short Shirt.
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Bryan Munar, Orpheus in the upcoming touring production of Hadestown, talks with WPKN's Valerie Richardson ahead of the Hadestown theatrical debut at the Waterbury Palace Theater, October 3-6.
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WPKN Director of Operations and New Initiatives (and filmmaker) Brendan Toller sits down with Artistic Director / Founder Jason Coombs of the Bridgeport Film Festival, and Filmmakers Nilsa Laine and Brian A. Russell for a preview of the 2024 festival.
Nilsa Laine is the Director of "Undergraduate Experiences of Black Women at PWI Campuses" [14.57] a short documentary exploring the undergraduate experiences of Black Women - touching on freshman experience, intersectionality, and 'Black Girl Magic.'
Brian Russell is the Director of SilverSizzle [13.35] a short described as: a cemetery caretaker embarks on a quest to help two recent widowers find new love among widows visiting their departed spouses.
https://www.bridgeportfilmfest.org/
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Kevin Gallagher talks with Michael Pillot, Festival Organizer of the Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr's Quantum Leap Festival, Nola2Nofo, happening Friday 9/13 through Sunday 9/15 at Borghese Vineyard, 17150 Middle Road Cutchogue, NY 11935
Funk, blues, jazz, hip-hop, zydeco, swampadelic guitar - the music and culture of New Orleans hits Long Island wine country. WPKN partners on this festival featuring a staggering lineup of New Orleans greats including Fred Wesley of the JBs, Sonny Landreth, Preservation Hall Legacy Band, Cyril Neville, CJ Chenier & The Red Hot Louisiana Band and so many more. Could this be NOLA JazzFest east in years to come?
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This interview features Erica Gies author of Water Always Wins, Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge (winner of the Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism) and jazz bassist Stephan Crump who was inspired by the book to write an 18-part suite called Slow Water. The two are joined by WPKN's Jim Motavalli.
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WPKN and Musician's Speak host and DJ Joseph Celli interviews composer and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis during amidst a 2024 tour with the Messethics featuring members of DC DIY pioneers, Fugazi.
âJames Brandon Lewis, a jazz saxophonist in his 30s, raw-toned but measured, doesnât sound steeped in current jazz-academy values and isnât really coming from a free-improvising perspective. Thereâs an independence about him, and on âDays of FreeManâ (Okeh), he makes it sound natural to play roaming, experimental funk, with only the electric bassist Jamaladeen Tacuma and the drummer Rudy Royston, and without much sonic enhancement. The record sounds a little reminiscent of what James Blood Ulmer and Ornette Coleman were doing in the late â70s and early â80s â on records that included Mr. Tacuma â but itâs not clearly evoking a particular past. Maybe itâs an improvised take on early â90s hip-hop, as Mr. Lewis has suggested, but it sounds less clinical than that. It sounds like three melodic improvisers going for it.â
â The New York Times -
Singer/Songwriter/Producer, Jon Auer (Posies, Big Star, Big Star Quintet), joins Richard Epstein of Sometimes Classical and WPKN's Director of Operations & New Initiatives, Brendan Toller, in the WPKN studios for an interview and performance. Auer discusses his musical origins, "power-pop," Big Star, Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens, his intruiging musical connections to William Shatner and Ringo Starr and much more.
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Andy Zax is an American music historian and a producer of music reissues.
As a producer of boxed sets and archival music reissues, Zax has been responsible for restoring and remastering the catalogues of Talking Heads, Rod Stewart, Echo & The Bunnymen, Television, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, The Sisters Of Mercy, David Axelrod and Lee Hazlewood, among others. His reissues of once-obscure cult favorites such as Television's Marquee Moon, John Cale's Paris 1919, Judee Sill and Heart Food by Judee Sill have successfully brought those albums to larger audiences that had eluded them upon their initial release, while his exploration of record company tape vaults has yielded discoveries such as the lost masters of Johnny Mathis's 1981 Chic-produced I Love My Lady.
In late 2005, Zax visited a Warner Brothers tape storage space in Los Angeles and encountered dozens of boxes of one-inch eight-track recordings from the Woodstock Festival. "From the moment I saw those tapes", he said, "I was like, 'Oh my God, there's so much more than I'd ever thought'", he said. "It was clear to me that no one was exploring this stuff and dealing with it in totality. Here was this vast trove of material not treated correctly."
In 2009, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, Zax produced the boxed set Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm, for which he was nominated for a Grammy for Best Historical Album.