Culture Picks: July 21

It’s too darned hot! I’m sticking to the great indoors this week and feeling incredibly grateful for my air-conditioning.

Aspen Music Festival presents
Aspen Festival Orchestra with Diana Adamyan, violin
Livestream on Sunday, July 24, 6pm
KHACHATURIAN Violin Concerto
RAVEL Alborada del gracioso
RAVEL Rapsodie espagnole
RAVEL La valse
Diana Adamyan is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of her generation’s most outstanding violinists. Born in Armenia, she won First Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition and First Prize in the 2020 Khachaturian Violin Competition. In her Aspen debut, she takes on the Khachaturian Violin Concerto. Conductor Lionel Bringuier leads the AFO in three works by Ravel.
Access the Aspen Music Festival Live-stream

The New York Public Library presents
Disability Pride Month, LIVE from NYPL:
Chloé Cooper Jones with Christine Smallwood: Easy Beauty
Livestream on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, 6:30-7:30pm
Pulitzer Prize finalist Chloé Cooper Jones’s new memoir weaves memory, observation, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability.
“I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.” So begins Chloé Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis, the way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and she sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and had denied herself.
Jones speaks with critic, journalist, and author of the novel The Life of the Mind, Christine Smallwood about what it takes to move through the world in a disabled body.
Learn more and register for access to the livestream

The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College presents
NYO-USA
Live on Thursday, July 28, 7 pm
In The PAC’s Concert Hall
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Daniel Harding, conductor
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
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ELGAR Cello Concerto
MAHLER Symphony No. 5
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NYO-USA is back! Carnegie Hall brings together more than 200 of the finest teen musicians from across the country to take part in an intensive training residency right here at Purchase. These talented young people perform as three acclaimed national youth ensembles: the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA), NYO2, and NYO Jazz.
To thank you for your support during our extended closure, we invite you to join us on the evening of July 28 for a free concert featuring NYO-USA. This concert is a preview of the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concert and European tour, which will visit Amsterdam, Berlin, Ravello, and Lucerne.
This event is free but registration is required. Click here to register.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra presents
Orpheus & Charles Yang perform Gregg August’s “Variations on a Theme by Pérotin”
On-demand
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and violinist Charles Yang performed Gregg August’s “Variations on a Theme by Pérotin” at The Riverside Church in April 2021. Gregg August’s “Variations on a Theme by Pérotin,” scored for string orchestra and solo violin takes advantage of the natural reverberation of Riverside Church and the richness of the Orpheus sound. It also leans on the stylistic range of soloist Charles Yang, who can traverse fluidly from a virtuosic cadenza to an improvised vamp. August himself straddles classical, jazz, and Latin styles in his work as a composer and bandleader, and his role as the bassist anchoring the string orchestra allows for openness in the musical treatment that will only reveal its final form in the moment of performance.
Watch and listen to Orpheus & Charles Yang performing Gregg August’s “Variations On A Theme By Pérotin” on YouTube

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presents
YouTube Tuesdays
On-demand
Every Tuesday, take a look at a performance from the CMS archives!
View the playlist

ALL ARTS Documentary Selects presents
Dreams from the Deep End
On-demand
Featuring up-and-coming and established artists, ALL ARTS documentaries give unprecedented access to creators, their work, and the industry as a whole. Follow Togo-born Nigerian artist Modupeola Fadugba as she paints NYC’s only African American synchronized swim team of senior citizens, the Harlem Honeys and Bears, continuing her ongoing focus on powerful Black figures in the water together.
Watch “Dreams for the Deep End” on AllArts.org

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Culture Picks is a weekly feature celebrating the performing arts. The arts are back and there is so much to take in, both live and virtual. Cultural connoisseur and PAC staff member Coni Guhl is here to help you sort through it all. Each week we will post her curated selection of events featuring the artists you know and love from The PAC Center Series, work being done by Purchase alums, plus a sampling of arts experiences you just can’t miss. Enjoy!

All times are EDT unless otherwise noted.