I was at a bone-jittering and soul-soothing jazz event last night – the Yannick Rieu Quartet playing at La Kemia in Montreal. Each of the fingers of the keyboard player was a little miracle in motion. And then there was the horn player, the thrum of the base, the trembling of the drummer on his seat. We were transported out of our daily troubles and tragedies and into a shared space of a kind of love, the energy of music. In my revelry, I began to wonder about gender in jazz music. Perhaps it was a non sequitur, but I began to think about women in jazz, and why it is that when I am in jazz clubs, more often than not, it is men on stage. It wasn’t a complaint – the Yannick Rieu Quartet are amazing, beautiful inspired performers. But it was a question. And in my attempt to come up with some kind of answer, I discovered online archives of women jazz players, books and articles about women in jazz, and the amazing story of sax player Peggy Gilbert who died a few weeks ago at the age of 102...
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Posted by Michael Lithgow on March 22, 2007 in
On March 23, the Brooklyn Museum of Art will open the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Its first exhibition – Global Feminisms – will feature work by 87 contemporary feminist artists from around the world. The Centre will offer a computerized study area, a biographical gallery, a gallery space for a regular exhibition schedule of feminist art, and additional space for the presentation of related public and educational programs. The Center’s mission is to promote feminism’s cultural contributions and to educate new generations about the meaning of feminist art.
The Centre will also permanently house The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, a large-scale work that celebrates the achievements of 1,038 actual and mythical female figures. The Dinner Party is a massive ceremonial banquet arranged on a triangular table measuring forty-eight feet on each side with a total of thirty-nine place settings. The “guests” are commemorated by embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and porcelain plates with a raised central motif based on vulvae forms. The names of the other 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on March 19, 2007 in
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