Solange
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will honour Solange Knowles and the producer and arts advocate Mikki Shepard via a multi-genre evening of performances.
In a press release, the organisation said: "Each honouree distinctly embodies BAM’s adventurous spirit and commitment to elevating culture, and each has contributed to BAM’s vision of supporting outstanding achievements in the performing arts."
It noted Solange’s long association with the academy, since she headlined the Crossing Brooklyn Music Festival there in 2013. Last year, she returned to present Eldorado Ballroom, a performing arts series that celebrated theintergenerational expressions of experimental and transcendent Black performance through the decades.
Shepard, meanwhile, has produced more than 25 programs for BAM. In 1988, she founded Brooklyn’s 651Arts, an organisation committed to
developing, producing, and presenting performance and cultural programming rooted in the African Diaspora, with a primary focus on contemporary performing arts. It was headquartered on the BAM campus for more than three decades.
The event, taking place as the BAM’s spring benefit, will feature performances by the legendary musician and activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland, harpist Nailah Hunter and Alva Rogers’ Alva Puppet Theatre.
Rogers said: "I will present a ‘Topsy-Turvy’—an excerpt from The Harlem Doll Palace, premiering at Dixon Place in November 2024—with collaborators Bruce Monroe, Dave Pascal, Charles Burnham, and Brandon Ross. I transform this children’s toy—charged with antebellum sentiment and the illusion of innocent enjoyment—into a way for enslaved children to escape reality and experience enchantment. This puppet presentation will transition into a musical set of two songs: Mathew Petty’s ‘Weeping Mary’ and David Byrne’s ‘Heaven’."
L to R: Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Nailah Hunter, and Alva Rogers, who will perform at the ceremony
Glenn-Copeland said: "In the days of slavery, slaves were allowed thirty minutes once a week to get together to worship under the watchful eye of their masters. What many people don’t know is that the Negro Spirituals written for these services were full of code: messages of hope with, in some cases, specific guidance about how to escape and access the supports of the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth and I believe that all good art is embedded with code, with specific guidance about how to access our collective power and find our way to the new world of justice for all living beings that wants to be born."
An afterparty in the Adam Space will also feature a set from DJ Lovie.
