City of Asylum
Giving Voice.
Join us for the US debut tour of Illegal Crowns, a collective quartet that brings together the long-time collaborative trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum with the French pianist Benoît Delbecq. All four artists are critically recognized as leading figures in contemporary music, and have created multiple original compositions written specifically for this group.
Each June since 2010, City of Asylum has been home to Cave Canem's annual reading to coincide with the week-long Cave Canem Retreat, their long-standing flagship program. This year we are thrilled to welcome Cave Canem back in person to read and celebrate, featuring an evening of poetry with 2022 retreat faculty.
This is an unusual interview for Actors Talk August: a duo of young actors just finishing their first August Wilson play. Brenden Peifer and Melessie Clark are playing Sterling and Risa in “Two Trains Running,” directed by Justin Emeka at Pittsburgh Public Theater (through June 19). Their first encounter with August Wilson traditions, characters and an experienced cast feeds plenty of thought by two lively, smart, responsive professionals just starting their August Wilson journeys.
In person tickets are SOLD OUT. You can still join us via livestream.
Sharing Our Story works with people to create their own digital stories in the form of short 3 minute videos.
“Stories of Motherhood” is the fourth storytelling celebrating its completion at City of Asylum. The videos and digital stories shared are from refugee and US-born mothers whose lives and families were impacted by the pandemic. Participating mothers are connected to the Hello Neighbor Network.
Keep Quiet is a feature length documentary film chronicling the struggle of journalists and pro-democracy advocates in their fight against the constitutional change and in favor of democracy in the Republic of Congo.
An evening of performance that crosses the musical frontiers of Argentinean folklore, art song and improvisation.
Folklore refers to a body of popular music created in Argentina and based on indigenous dance rhythms like the zamba, cueca, chacarera, carnavalito and vidala. These songs were passed on through oral tradition and were virtually unknown outside their own region until the early 20th century.
Finlandia explores the lives of a group of muxes—the third gender of the Zapotec indigenous community—as they navigate transphobia, globalization, and love in southern Mexico. Awarded Best Feature Film at the OUTshine Film Festival as well as the Audience Award at the Festival de films LGBTQI+ de Toulouse.
Run time: 120 minutes
Language: Spanish
Celebrate the global release of What You Need to Know About Me, a powerful new anthology that centers on the immigration narratives of young people between the ages of 11 and 24.
Edited by Yalie Saweda Kamara, the anthology’s eighty-four young writers share their dreams, hopes, fears, and realities with unrelenting candor, tenderness, and strength. The anthology’s entries challenge perceptions of migration and identity and compel readers to view these stories with open-mindedness and compassion.
The Concord Jazz Quartet returns to Alphabet City with a whole new program of music. Often in jazz, it’s the players who get most of the attention, but in this concert, the Concord Quartet highlights the unique masters who created the songs loved by musicians and fans alike. Join us as the Concord Quartet honors and puts their own spin on everything from BeBop tunes and Third Stream songs to rarely played ‘60s gems and music from today.
The #notwhite collective in-Dialogue series features conversations with BIPOC, AALANA, indigenous and immigrant artists and arts administrators.
The series reimagines the past and present history of the arts sector by engaging and presenting the wealth of experience, strategies, and tactics of the global majority, notwhite descendants, inheritors of colonialism, indigenous and immigrants who navigate a predominantly white arts sector.
In-person tickets for this event are sold out. You can still join us virtually. Pipas, guzhengs, ouds, and more! HarmoniZing, a Pittsburgh-based group founded with the aim of nurturing cross-cultural understanding through the arts, brings together musicians playing a diverse array of instruments for an evening of global voices and soaring music.
The concert features solos of the pipa (Chinese lute), guzheng (Chinese zither), oud (Middle Eastern lute), and tabla (Indian hand drums) and concludes with two ensemble pieces recently composed by Chinese Canadian Yao Wang and Iranian American Ehsan Matoori respectively.
