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Morningside Lights is a new weeklong arts event, culminating in an illuminated procession of large-scale public art in Morningside Park on Saturday, September 29.
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Join us! From September 22 to 28, you’re invited to help imagine and build a fleet of illuminated, mobile sculptures in series of free guided workshops at Miller Theatre at Columbia University.
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On the evening of September 29, 2012, a strange and luminous city will suddenly emerge amidst the winding paths of Morningside Park, as a procession of large-scale mobile sculptures makes its way through upper Manhattan.
Co-produced by Miller Theatre and the Arts Initiative at Columbia University School of the Arts, this incredible procession of moving architecture will be the culmination of a week of drop-in workshops at Miller Theatre. The artists from Processional Arts Workshop—a New York-based partnership whose creations lead the city’s annual Halloween Parade—will be on hand to guide the building of these large-scale illuminated structures, and help each participant realize his or her own individual vision of urban space—realistic or fantastical.
Beginning on Saturday, September 22 and running daily through Friday, September 28, the workshops are free and open to all, and will be held at Miller Theatre at Broadway and 116th Street. Participants are invited to paint, craft, sew, papier-mâché, and put their unique creative skills to use in building fantastical sculptures. Sign up to get involved!
Inspired by the theme “The Imagined City”, the first annual Morningside Lights procession will explore concepts of urban planning and development in one of New York’s most diverse neighborhoods, at the intersection of Harlem, Morningside Heights, and the Upper West Side. When Olmsted and Vaux designed Morningside Park in 1873, they could not have foreseen the diversity of communities who would one day settle along its borders. Produced by two of Columbia University’s artistic powerhouses, Morningside Lights seeks to celebrate and further the continued revitalization of Morningside Park and its surroundings through a shared act of creation and public performance.
Composer and music director Nathan Davis will collaborate with Processional Arts Workshop to create a unique soundscape for the parade, working with both recorded sound and acoustic instruments, some of them constructed during the workshops. The score, like the parade, will be participatory in nature, with opportunities for musicians of all backgrounds to perform as part of the piece. Sign up to play in the procession.
The procession will be part of the Friends of Morningside Park’s annual fall festival, “On Common Ground,” which takes place in the park on September 29.
Founded in 2005 by artists Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles, Processional Arts Workshop (PAW) was formed to preserve, promote, and develop public processions and pageant puppetry as a distinct and vital art form. Informed by diverse, global traditions of vernacular street theater, large-scale puppetry, and ritual pageant, PAW uses processional art as means to build and sustain community spirit and awareness, creating original works for established public events and festivals (most notably, leading New York’s Village Halloween Parade each year), as well as seeding site-specific pageant traditions in communities where no such events may have existed before.
Drawing on regional cultures, history, folklore, ethnicity, and current sociopolitical concerns, the performances encourage local residents to participate at every stage of production, thus empowering them to identify, express, and preserve the narratives that uniquely define “local” in their own community, against the current tide of global homogenization. PAW’s mission encompasses broad set of goals that include creating a permanent artist residency for teaching and practicing the arts of procession; developing published resources for creating pageants; and continuing to expand and develop their own work in pageant puppetry.
Inspired by natural processes and acoustic phenomena, composer and percussionist Nathan Davis makes music that elucidates essential characters of instruments and the fragile athleticism of playing them. He has received commissions from the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Calder String Quartet, the Ojai Festival (for Eighth Blackbird and an installation by sound-sculptor Trimpin), Meehan/Perkins Duo, TimeTable Percussion, Concert Artists Guild, and the Moving Theater Dance Company, and received awards from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, Meet the Composer Commissioning Music USA, Argosy Foundation, MATA, ASCAP, and the ISCM. Lincoln Center inaugurated the new Tully Scope Festival in 2011 with the premiere of Nathan's 30 minute site-specific work "Bells", performed by ICE and praised by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times as "an alluring and pensive musical experience.”
The Arts Initiative at Columbia University exists to make arts and culture a meaningful part of every Columbian's experience. Its diverse programs encourage students, faculty, and staff in all fields to generate, study, and engage the creative life of the campus, the city, and the wider world, connecting Columbians to the arts and to each other.
Founded by Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger in 2004, the Arts Initiative has created and continues to support a wide variety of programs to further its mission, from coordinating and subsidizing class trips to ballet and opera performances to producing on-campus lunchtime talks that connect students with working professionals in the arts. The Arts Initiative maintains partnerships with more than 100 cultural organizations throughout the city, from Harlem to Brooklyn.
Miller Theatre at Columbia University is the leading presenter of new music in New York City and one of the most vital forces nationwide for innovative programming. In partnership with Columbia University School of the Arts, Miller is dedicated to producing and presenting unique events in dance, contemporary and early music, jazz, opera, and performance, and is committed to reinvigorating public enthusiasm in the arts nationwide by pioneering new approaches to programming. Founded in 1988 with funding from John Goelet, Brooke Astor, and the Kathryn Bache Miller Fund, Miller Theatre has built a reputation for attracting new and diverse audiences to the performing arts and expanding public knowledge of contemporary music.
In June 2011, Miller Theatre produced its first free outdoor performance in Morningside Park, presenting John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit performed by 99 percussionists scattered throughout the park. Other community programs include an ongoing series of free early-evening Pop-Up Concerts, which the New York Times called “a wonderfully informal way to experience bracing contemporary music.”
Coming soon.
The artists and producers of Morningside Lights are available for interviews, and members of the press are welcome to attend, participate in, and cover the procession and workshops with advance permission. Photos and b-roll are available upon request, both before and after the event.
For further information, press passes, and to arrange interviews, please contact Aleba Gartner at Aleba & Co: 212/206-1450 or a@alebagartner.com.
For photos and video, please contact Charlotte Levitt, Associate Director of Marketing & Outreach at Miller Theatre at Columbia University: 212/854-2380 or cl2867@columbia.edu.
We’re working to build a broad network of friends who can help us spread the word about Morningside Lights. Interested in getting involved? Click here to send us your information.