February 2010


Make Reservations

Sundays, February 7 - March 7, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
NEW WORKSHOP: Spiritual Drum Circle
There is nothing quite like the experience of a drum circle to help you feel exuberantly and powerfully alive! Instructor Rich Reiter, an acclaimed jazz musician and Emmy Award-winning composer, has studied African drumming in Senegal, and has led drum circles around the country (including one for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra). Rich brings many drums and percussion instruments for everyone to use if you don't have one yourself. No prior musical training necessary.

5 classes held on Sundays, 12:00-2:00 p.m.
Feb. 7, 14, 21, 28, & March 7.
$50 for 5-week workshop. Payment via check to “Puffin Foundation”. Reservations 201-836-3499. More details.

Saturday, February 6, 8:00 p.m.
THEATER: Grandma’s Hands Reading & Discussion
Celebrate Black History Month with a reading and discussion of Dr. Henry Miller’s play, Grandma’s Hands. Dr. Miller, stage director, dramatist, and scholar, is a veteran of the 1960s/70s African American Theatre movement. In Grandma’s Hands, two sisters deal with their 80-year-old mother against a backdrop of police sirens and exploding Molotov Cocktails and discover that love and the “Black Revolution” are not such strange bedfellows. Following the reading, Professor Emeritus James V. Hatch, a pre-eminent scholar in the field of African American theatre, and Dr. Miller will engage the audience in a discussion of issues raised by the play and the history of Black Theater.
Dr. Miller, director, dramatist, and theatre scholar, has more than 30 Regional, Off, and Off-Off-Broadway stage productions to his directing credit and was the 2009 Langston Hughes Visiting Professor’s Chair of Theatre at the University of Kansas and is presently co-director of Harlem's Uptown Playwrights’ Workshop. His collection, documenting his and many other artists contribution to African American Theatre, “The Henry Miller Theatre Papers,” is archived at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Division of the New York Public Library. James V. Hatch, Professor Emeritus at City University of New York, now retired after almost a half-century of teaching, himself an Obie Award winning playwright and author/co-author of more than a dozen books, is one of the original and pre-eminent scholars in the field of African-American theatre. His works include the 2003 Cambridge University Press publication, A History of African-American Theatre, which has won numerous awards, and he is founder, with wife Camille Billops, of the Hatch-Billops Collection in New York, an archive of African-American theatre and African-American contemporary art.

$10 suggested donation.
Reservations strongly recommended.

Saturday, February 13, 8:00 p.m.
FILM/MUSIC: Benya Krik with the Paradox Trio
The Paradox Trio’s score to the rare Russian film Benya Krik, (screenplay by Isaak Babel, 1926) is a unique expression of their music. Inspired by the colorful and violent life of  “Mike the Jap” Vinitsky and his band of Jewish gangsters, the film was banned almost immediately due to its unflattering depiction of Russian politics and remained lost for 70 years. One of the first bands to introduce a blend of Eastern, Middle Eastern, Yiddish and other traditional music into jazz, the Paradox Trio quartet was ideally suited to scoring the film. The result is exciting music set to an equally exciting depiction of the tough and violent life in revolutionary Odessa. Matt Darriau (sax, clarinet, Kaval and Gaida {bagpipe}), Seido Salifoski (dumbeks/percussion), Greg Heffernan (cello), and Katie Down (glassware, flutes, and toys).

$10 suggested donation.
Reservations strongly recommended.

Friday, February 19, 8:00 p.m.
ART OPENING: Cuba Uncovered
Displayed will be a selection of rarely seen works in many different media by renowned and emergent Cuban artists, including Jose Rodriguez Fuster, Adrian Rumbaut, Jorge Perugorria, William Perez, Jairo Castellanos, Mabel Poblet, Manuel Mendive, Agustin Bejarano and others. All are on loan from the Cuban Art Space and the Center for Cuban Studies in New York, which has been collecting the work of Cuban artists for almost 40 years.
Sandra Levinson, Center Director, will speak about Cuba, the selected art work, and the artists.

Free and open to the public.
This exhibit runs through April 19. Regular gallery hours are Mon-Fri, 1-5 p.m. or by appointment.

Saturday, February 20, 8:00 p.m.
JAZZ: TriPolar & WPU Big Band
TriPolar is the newest ensemble of bassist/composer/producer John Lindberg, who has recorded over 50 albums featuring his original compositions. The group, featuring John on contrabass, multi-reed instrumentalist Don Davis and master percussionist Kevin Norton doubling on drums and vibraphone, will headline the first set. The second set, performed by the William Paterson University Big Band (WPU), led by Kevin Norton, culminates the WPU’s semester focus on the work of a group of works that include John Lindberg’s rarely-performed “m to M,” Kevin Norton's “The Enduring Heart,” Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy,” and others. The group, developed from the renowned Jazz Studies Program at William Paterson University, decided to focus on the work of a group of composers whose work is a positive example of large group composition combined with small group interactive improvisational techniques.

$10 suggested donation.
Reservations recommended.

Saturday, February 27, 8:00 p.m.
WORLD: Sexteto Rodriguez Cuban-Jewish All Stars
Roberto Juan Rodriguez’s inventive blending of klezmer and timba isn’t as strange as it sounds and these two upbeat musics create a thrilling energy bursting with exhuberant optimism and the excitement of being alive. They brought the full house down a few years ago so reservations are strongly recommended.
Sexteto Rodriguez Cuban-Jewish All Stars is comprised of Cuban and Israeli musicians, Gilad Harel (clarinet), Bernie Minoso, Paul Simon's former bassist, Jonathan Keren (violin), Uri Sharlin (accordion/piano), Igor Arias Baro (congos/vocals), and Roberto Rodriguez (percussion) perform selections from the 2009 CD Timba Talmud, Roberto’s 5th CD on the Tzadik label. Catch this rising star following his great success at Lincoln Center and 92nd St. Y-Tribeca before it’s too late! Dancing is encouraged.

$10 suggested donation.
Reservations strongly recommended.