City of Asylum
Giving Voice.
They visit Pittsburgh to play their newest album, Were We Where We Were (March 2022) featuring primarily original compositions from Michael Formanek. This is an evening of jazz masters at work.
Film historian and writer Wil Haygood visits City of Asylum to discuss his newest book “Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World. Wil is joined in conversation by Pittsburgh filmmaker and activist Emmai Alaquiva.
Chuck Smith is a long-time, active August Wilson director, a resident director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where he’s supervised and directed Wilson plays (including Gem of the Ocean, which just closed) and, during his free time, a regular director at the West coast Black Theatre Troupe in Sarasota. He seems to know just about everyone in the Wilsonian theater universe. We’ll have a good time talking!
Join the staff writers from Sampsonia Way Magazine for a launch party celebrating the magazine’s new website and its newest series: “The Everyday Pandemic.”
In person tickets for this concert are sold out. You can still register to watch the live-streamed concert via City of Asylum @ Home.
This sumptuous English-language ‘50s piece recounts the mid-life years of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (play by Mirando Otto, Lord of the Rings), when she left America to live and write in Rio de Janiero. In Brazil Bishop would also fall in love with well-off architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Initial hostilities between the pair make way for a complicated yet long-lasting love affair that dramatically alters Bishop’s relationship to the world around her.
Please note this program is in person only.
A live reading and conversation with translator and poet Yasmine Seale, the first female translator to release The Thousand and One Nights in English.
August Wilson House celebrates America’s greatest playwright with substantial insider interviews, with leading August Wilson actors, directors and artists, national and regional. Featuring Ron OJ Parson is working now on his 30th August Wilson production, sometimes as an actor but mainly a director, where he is just one-and-a-half shows short of completing his 10-play Cycle. His long journey allowed him to persuade Chicago’s Court Theatre to consider Wilson a classic, along with other Black playwrights. He says, “I like to bring August into the room.”
Founded by Violinist/Composer Gwen Laster in 2015, New MUSE 4tet is an improvising string quartet offering 20th and 21st century new works and original compositions as a vehicle for social activism. Their "Black Lives Matter Suite" continues to draw great audiences and critical acclaim.
The concert celebrates the release of their newest album "Blue Lotus".
Michael Weiss is one of the great journeymen in Jazz and has played and recorded with many of the music's masters. He joins the Off Minor Jazz series to present a program of original music along with original arrangements from his latest album, Persistence.
The #notwhite collective in-Dialogue series features conversations with BIPOC, AALANA, indigenous and immigrant artists and arts administrators. April’s program features artists Marika Constantino & DS Kinsel.
Pittsburgh Opera and City of Asylum are partnering together to explore the rich traditions of global operatic music and present an evening of Spanish-language poetry + song.
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