For the Birds
June 11, 2022 — 1-3pm
Brooklyn Botanic Garden — 990 Washington Avenue
Bird Dance Party
Insta-worthy, larger-than-life bird stilt walkers by Mortal Beasts & Deities and lifelike bird puppets from Processional Arts Workshop dance to processional music* from Metropolis Ensemble. Like a giant sonic mobile, musical textures created by Paula Matthusen, Matthew Evan Taylor, and John Wesley Dankwa and performed by 12 improvisers weave and play in dialogue with the dancing puppets.
Performers begin at Lily Pool Terrace, the Osborne Garden, and the Water Garden, then parade to the Plant Family Collection for a giant dance party. Listen for the music, join a parade, and dance along!
*2022 Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Metropolis Ensemble commission
For the Birds Opening Celebration
Celebrate the opening of For the Birds, an exhibition and program series presented in partnership with acclaimed music supervisor Randall Poster. Be among the first to check out the new, Garden-wide birdhouse installation, meet the exhibition artists, join a dance party and parade, and get up close with incredible birds of prey. All programs free with Garden admission.
About the Birdhouses
For the Birds is centered around a Garden-wide outdoor exhibition of dozens of site-specific birdhouses created by artists of international renown. Inspired by bird species in residence at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, each birdhouse provides an opportunity to learn more about birds and their habitats through the eyes of artists working with a variety of materials and points of view.
Composers
John Dankwa is an ethnographer and performer who specializes in African music. His performance area ranges from West African traditional drumming to African pop and art music. As a performer, Dankwa has shared the concert stage with several renowned groups such as the So Percussion, Georgia Spiritual Ensemble, and the Griffin Choral Art. Currently, he directs the West African Drumming and African Pop Music ensembles at Wesleyan. Dankwa is also the music director of the Association of Ghana Methodist Church Choirs in the US and Canada.
Dankwa’s current research focuses on Dagaaba/Dagara xylophone music tradition in northwestern Ghana. His book-in-progress, When the GyilSpeaks, is a study of meaning in Dagaaba/Dagara xylophone music. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Nandom Traditional Area in northwestern Ghana, Dankwa’s work weaves together Dagaaba/Dagara cultural narratives with detailed analysis of sound material, song repertoire, performers, performance contexts, history, beliefs, customs, and values to illuminate how a single instrument and the music it performs can be invested with so much meaning in the cultural matrix within which it operates. Read more »
Dr. Matthew Evan Taylor is an AfroPnuematic composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser who has “…wrestled with the societal boundaries of Black artistry only to blast them apart…” (Dr. Kori Hill, I Care if You Listen) through creating music that is “insistent and defiant…envelopingly hypnotic” (Alan Young, Lucid Culture).
An artist at the intersection of concert music, free improvisation, and multi-disciplinary performance, Matthew has worked with many leading artists and ensembles including the Metropolis Ensemble, Turtle Island String Quartet featuring Cyrus Chestnut, Elliott Sharp, dancer Laurel Jenkins, and visual artist Dannielle Tegeder, in front of audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the World Saxophone Congress 17, CineJazz Film Music Festival Paris, and the Perez Art Museum Miami.
A “risk taker” (Neil De La Flor, Huffington Post), Matthew’s latest work focuses on expression and liberation through breath. This music, AfroPneumaism, subverts Western aesthetics and philosophy by replacing chronometric and metronomic time with the human breath. Through this work, musicians are asked to listen inward as well as across the ensemble, as the audience joins in the collective act of deliberate breathing. Read more»
Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. Read more »
