Holiday Parranda: Papo Vázquez and the Mighty Pirates Troubadours at Real Art Ways

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Holiday Parranda: Papo Vázquez and the Mighty Pirates Troubadours
Real Art Ways welcomes back trombonist, composer and arranger Papo Vázquez for an annual concert and holiday parranda. Bring an instrument to receive free admission!

Real Art Ways le da la bienvenida de regreso al trombonista, compositor y arreglista Papo Vázquez a nuestro concierto anual y parranda navideña.

Parranda de aguinaldo (Christmas folk music), is an Afro-Indigenous musical form played during the holidays in various Caribbean and Latin American countries including Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad, and the coastal area of the states Aragua and Carabobo in Venezuela.

Parranda de aguinaldo (música folclórica navideña), es una forma musical afro-indígena que se toca en temporada de vacaciones en varios países del Caribe y América Latina, incluidos Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad y la zona costera de los estados de Aragua y Carabobo en Venezuela.

Band of Pirates

Papo Vázquez, Trombone, Vocals, Leader
Raul Rios – Vocals, Trumpet Ivan Renta, Tenor Saxophone
Rick Germanson, Piano
Ariel Robles, Bass
Alvester C Garnett – Drums
Carlos Maldonado – Percussion, Vocals
Reinaldo Dejesus – Percussion, Vocals

Papo Vázquez
Trombonist, composer, arranger has 40+ years of career spanning Jazz, Latin and Afro Caribbean music. National Endowment for the Arts Master Artist, Grammy Nominee. Featured in the 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll.

“En fin, Vázquez junto a sus Mighty Pirates Troubadours e invitados exponen un proyecto exquisito y cadencioso que se transforma en un banquete para los amantes del género.” – El Vocero, 2020
(In short, Vázquez along with his Mighty Pirates Troubadours and guests present an exquisite and lilting project that becomes a banquet for lovers of the genre.)

•Musical Director for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Orchestra, (NYC/WABC) 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
•Commissioned by Wynton Marsalis to compose music for Jazz and Art series, conducted and performed with J@LC orchestra, CD release August 2019
•New York Pops Education, Board of Education certified, 2018 and 2019
•Commissioned new music for Afro Latin Jazz Alliance for “Nueva Musica” concert series
•Grammy nominated for Papo Vázquez’ Mighty Pirates, Marooned/Aíslado, 2008

Vázquez was deeply moved by jazz at a young age. His appreciation and knowledge of the indigenous music of the Caribbean provides him with a unique ability to fuse Afro-Caribbean rhythms with freer melodic and harmonic elements of progressive jazz.

Learn more at his website.

Improvisations Now

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. This series runs from September 2023-May 2024.

December’s Performance:
Reggie Nicholson – Drums

Reggie Nicholson is one of the most distinctive, inventive and inspirational drummer/percussionist of his generation. Nicholson first gained a reputation as a drummer and percussionist in his hometown of Chicago. During his early days before moving to NYC, Nicholson worked around Chicago with many great musicians, and performed regularly at the famous organ club, The Other Place.

Nicholson has performed and recorded with a wide variety of jazz and new music luminaries such as Jon Logan, Larry Frazier, Mendai, Vince Willis, Phil Cohran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Myers, Henry Threadgill, Ernest Dawkins, Leroy Jenkins, Edward Wilkerson, Hanah Jon Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Sam Newsome, Myra Melford, Wilber Morris, Elektra Kurtis, Billy Bang, Butch Morris, Yuko Fujiyama, Oliver Lake, Fay Victor, Roy Campbell, just to name a few.

As a composer, he was nominated twice for the Cal Arts Composition Award in 1993/1994. Concerts of his compositions have been presented at Roulette, Interpretations, Jazz Shares, Firehouse 12, Constellations, Vision Festival, and AACM concert series. Nicholson has also toured throughout USA, Europe, and Japan.

For more information, please visit their website.

A man playing the drums.

Ray Anderson – Trombone

Ray Anderson is an American jazz trombonist based in New York. He started playing trombone when he was eight, and moved to New York City in 1972. Trained by the Chicago Symphony trombonists, he is regarded as someone who pushes the limits of the instrument, including performing on alto trombone and slide trumpet. He is a colleague of trombonist George E. Lewis. Anderson also plays sousaphone and sings.[2] He was frequently chosen in DownBeat magazine’s Critics Poll as best trombonist throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. He picked up a wide variety of musical experience, played in the booming loft scene and spent important periods with Barry Altschul’s trio and Anthony Braxtons’ quartet. These bands have included the wild funk unit Slickaphonics and a trio with bassist Mark Helias and drummer Gerry Hemingway called BassDrumBone. Now Anderson can be heard leading his quartet (piano or guitar, upright bass and drums), his Wishbone Ensemble (which adds percussion and violin to the quartet), his Alligatory Band (electric bass and guitar, drums, percussion and trumpet) his Bonified Big Band (classic big band instrumentation) and Ray’s latest incarnation, The Pocket Brass Band featuring Jack Walrath on Trumpet, Bob Stewart on Tuba and Charli Persip on Drums. Ray is also a member of Slideride, a four trombone cooperative featuring Craig Harris, George Lewis and Gary Valente.

A man playing the trombone.

Joe Morris – Bass

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke, electric bass and drums.

Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others. He has been curating Improvisations Now at Real Art Ways for many years.

To learn more about Joe Morris, please visit his website.

A man playing the bass.

Riverwood Poetry Series

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month. An open mic will precede the featured reader—one poem, one page please.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Food and drinks will be available to purchase.

Free of charge. Ample parking available.

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is a Colombian-born writer, translator, and educator. Her honors include a CT Office of the Arts Emerging Recognition Award, a John K. Walsh Residency Fellowship at the Anderson Center, an Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellowship at Ragdale, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinatti Review, Shenandoah, Rattle, Mid-American Review, RHINO, Diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Nashville Review, The Night Heron Barks, On the Seawall, Sunken Garden Poetry 1992-2011, and elsewhere.

A headshot of a woman smiling into the camera.

Nadia Sims

Nadia Sims is a Manchester based poet spreading her message of grace across Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts. The Princeton graduate is the proud author of A Soft Place to Land and We Know The Dark. Her spoken word album, The Weight of Grace, is available everywhere.

A headshot of a woman standing in front of a yellow back drop.

 

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

The Silent Book Club
The Silent Book Club: The Introverts Happy Hour at Real Art Ways

Good news, book lovers! The Presidents’ College and Alumni Engagement at the University of Hartford are bringing you the Silent Book Club at Real Art Ways. Bring a favorite book!

Thirty minutes to mingle, an hour to read quietly (maybe near a work of art that pleases you), and a final half-hour to chat with other lovers of the written word – or explore the galleries or duck into a late evening film at the venue’s cinema. Co-sponsored by the River Bend Bookshop (book-hunters, their book truck awaits!). Popcorn and drinks for purchase at the concession stand. Admission includes a $5 River Bend Bookshop gift card, plus hors d’oeuvres!

Click here to register!
Creative Cocktail Hour: Reunion
Every November, Creative Cocktail Hour celebrates another year at Real Art Ways. We invite you to come see old friends and make new ones, while enjoying everything that Real Art Ways has to offer.
Live music, art exhibitions, DJ. Come as you are.

Everybody is welcoming, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Live Music: Nigel Bello Group & DJ Mr. Realistic

Nigel Bello, a 16 year old junior at East Hartford High School, is a trombonist out of Hartford. Being exposed to the trombone at the age of 6, he has shared the stage with musicians such as Nat Reeves, Gary Bartz, Steve Davis, etc.

Nigel has been playing for 10 years and has studied with Steve Davis, Dr. Emmett Goods, and Hommy Ramos just to name a few. He has attended numerous music camps such as Litchfield Jazz Camp, Newport Jazz Camp, and New England Music Camp all with scholarships provided. This July, he is flying to France with the New Jersey Youth Symphony’s Jazz Orchestra as their 2nd chair trombone.

His band includes:

Nigel Bello: Trombone

Alex Pastrana: Piano

Matt Dwonszyk: Bass

Fernando Garcia: Drums

Nelson Bello: Percussion

A man in a pink suite standing next to a statue of a lion.

Immersive Art Exhibitions

sub-marine: Jeweler of Memory by Simon Benjamin

Ayiti, I Saw It In A Dream by Steven Baboun 

El Disco Es Cultura by Adrian Martinez Chavez 

Tubular Times

Food Truck:

Mama Nena, serving fresh, hand made tapas from across Spain.

Hands-on art making activities led by RAW staff!
Improvisations Now

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. This series runs from September 2023-May 2024.

November’s Performance
Ikue Mori – Electronics

Ikue Mori (b. 1953) is an electronic musician expanding the range of sonic and technical possibilities for experimental and improvisational music. She creates rhythmic and ambient soundscapes using digital processing techniques, a laptop computer, and repurposed elements of electronic drumming equipment. She is known for transforming the use of percussion in improvised music and has inspired generations of electronic musicians.

She has collaborated with numerous musicians in diverse genres and styles throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own compositions. Ikue Mori was recently received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2022 for transforming the use of percussion in improvisation and expanding the boundaries of machine-based music.

For more information, please visit her website.

Nate Wooley – Trumpet

Nate Wooley (b.1974) was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. He made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the opening series of their 2019 season. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language.

Wooley moved to New York in 2001 and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Ken Vandermark, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada. He has premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ash Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies and Eva-Maria Houben.

Click here for his full bio.

Joe Morris – Percussion

Morris was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Fred Hopkins, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others.

Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 200 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan.

He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

For more information, please visit their website.

Creative Cocktail Hour
Live music, art exhibitions, DJ, food trucks, and more. Come as you are.

Everybody is welcoming, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Music:
Keila Myles & The Moose Knuckles

Keila Myles is a multidisciplinary artist based in Hartford, CT. She is best known for her work and performance as a musician. Her freshman project titled Just Add Water best sums up her ability to shape shift and aqueous to any genre and art form. Her style is a blend of R&B, soul, boom bap, classic rock and reggae. Keila draws from her American heritage in her lyricism and song-writing yet her delivery is reminiscent of classic reggae music. She will be performing with her band, The Moose Knuckles.

A band of 5 people with a woman standing in the middle.

DJ Kasey Cortez:

Kasey Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist currently working to merge her many realms of creative expression. She has delved into worlds of music, theatre, photography, design, fashion, & installation art. Her work across mediums is inspired by a deep fascination with collective trends/culture, the minutiae of human choice & the mundane passing of time. She’s also a yoga teacher of nearly 10 years, & DJing has become her new favorite form of expression!

A woman behind a DJ booth looking at a laptop.

Art Exhibitions:
Exhibition Opening: sub-marine by Simon Benjamin (Opening Reception 6-8pm)

sub–marine is a constellation of video, photography, and sculpture by Jamaican artist Simon Benjamin. The project’s title borrows from Barbadian Poet Kamau Brathwaite’s assertation that “the unity is sub-marine” – resisting the notion of the Caribbean as a fractured region divided by nation-state borders and language. Through the project’s lens, the Caribbean is reframed as expansive, relational, and interconnected over multiple temporalities and geographies, transgressing colonial divisions.

Steven Baboun – Ayiti, I Saw It In A Dream
Adrian Martinez Chavez – El Disco Es Cultura
Food Truck

Rolling Roti – authentic Guyanese cuisine.

Hands-on art making activities based on current exhibitions lead by Real Art Ways staff.

$15 General Admission, Free for Real Art Ways members!

Become a member today! 

 

CT Lit Fest

 

CT Lit Fest Logo

Saturday October 14, 2023 from 10am-6pm.

The CT Lit Fest is a fall book festival presented by Real Art Ways. A literary carnival under one roof in the center of Connecticut. A day for writers, teachers, students, and readers to mingle and discover new voices. Events run throughout the day. Admission is free.

The Fest takes over the galleries of RAW for readings, talks, performances, and an interactive typewriter installation. The main gallery hosts a bookfair to showcase publishers, journals, writing programs, and arts organizations.

Organizations interested in exhibiting in the bookfair can complete an online application starting in April. Space will be limited. Sponsorships are also available. Programming information is forthcoming.

Food Trucks: Rolling Roti and Muncher’s International

Featuring writers Wally Lamb and Antoinette Brim-Bell, also featuring Victoria Buitron, Sean Frederick Forbes, Catina Bacote, Steve Ostrowski, Frederick-Douglass Knowles II, Lara Ehrlich Margaret Gibson, Julien Strong, José B. Gonzalez, Hirsh Sawhney, Janae Marks, Susan Campbell, Sarah Darer Littman, Natasha Grambell, Bessy Reyna, and Ryan Parker, plus readers from the 2023 CT Literary Anthology and a live recording of Writer Mother Monster Podcast.

Two headshots of a man and a woman.

Check out the full program for the day HERE!

For flyers and times for each event, click HERE!

The program will include a panel discussion with Sarah Darer Littman (as moderator), Janae Marks, Jenny Lussier and Susan Campbell. 

Book panel flyer.

 

Donations

To the readers, writers, artists, and literary enthusiasts of Connecticut and beyond: We invite you to support the CT Lit Fest and to grow our state’s literary community. Your generous donation will not only help us to provide the best possible showcase for our state’s writers, thinkers, and presses, but it will allow us to keep the festival accessible to all with free admission.

Your donation is essential to our success. If you choose to make your tax-deductible donation anonymously, your name and giving amount will be kept private. Thank you.

Donate to the CT Lit Fest

Sponsored By:

Leading Sponsor:

CT Humanities Logo.

Other Sponsors:

Weber and Rubano logo.

friends and enemies of wallace stevens logo.

Riverbend Bookshop Logo

Hartford Public Library Logo

Logo for CT Institute for Refugees and Immigrants

Randall Family Charitable Gift Fund

Dowd Family in Memory of David Kroupa

Improvisations Now – Anthony Braxton

 

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. This series runs from September 2023-May 2024.

October’s Performance:
Anthony Braxton – Alto Saxophone

Anthony Braxton (b. 1945 in Chicago), is an American composer as well as sax, clarinet, flute, and piano player. He has created a large body of highly complex work, having released well over 100 albums of his works since the 1960’s.

Braxton is recognized as one of the most important musicians, educators, and creative thinkers of the past 50 years, highly esteemed in the creative music community for the revolutionary quality of his work and for the mentorship and inspiration he has provided to generations of younger musicians. Drawing upon a disparate mix of influences from John Coltrane to Karlheinz Stockhausen to Native American music, Braxton has created a unique musical system that celebrates the concept of global creativity and our shared humanity.

His work examines core principles of improvisation, structural navigation and ritual engagement-innovation, spirituality and intellectual investigation. His many accolades include a 1981 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a 2014 NEA Jazz Master Award.

Braxton studied at the Chicago School of Music and at Roosevelt University. One of the first Black abstract musicians to acknowledge a debt to contemporary European art music, Braxton is known as much as a composer as an improviser. The output ranges from solo pieces to For Four Orchestras, a work work that has been described as “a colossal work, longer than any of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies and larger in instrumentation than most of Richard Wagner’s operas.”

Braxton is the founding Artistic Director of the newly incorporated Tri-Centric Foundation, Inc., a New York-based not-for-profit corporation including an ensemble of some 38 musicians, four to eight vocalists, and computer-graphic video artists assembled to perform his compositions.

Braxton is also an Emeritus professor at Wesleyan University, one of the world’s centers of world music. His teaching career, begun at Mills College in Oakland, California, has become as much a part of his creative life as his own work, and includes training and leading performance ensembles and private tutorials in his own music, computer and electronic music, and history courses in the music of his major musical influences, from the Western Medieval composer Hildegard of Bingen to contemporary masters with whom he himself has worked (e.g. Cage, Coleman).

Braxton’s name continues to stand for the broadest integration of such oft-conflicting poles as “creative freedom” and “responsibility,” discipline and energy, and vision of the future and respect for tradition in the current cultural debates about the nature and place of the Western and African-American musical traditions in America. His newly formed New York-based ensemble company is bringing to that debate a voice that is fresh and strong, still as new as ever even as it takes on the authority of a seasoned master.

To learn more about Anthony Braxton and the Tri-Centric Foundation, please click here.

Joe Morris – Guitar

“One of the most profound improvisers at work in the United States.” – Wire Magazine

Morris was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Fred Hopkins, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others.

Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 200 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan.

He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

For more information, please visit their website.

Riverwood Poetry Series

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month. An open mic will precede the featured reader—one poem, one page please.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Food and drinks will be available to purchase.

Free of charge. Ample parking available.

Charles Rafferty

Charles Rafferty has published 15 collections of poetry — most recently A Cluster of Noisy Planets (BOA Editions, 2021). His second collection of stories is Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). His stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Milk Candy Review, Juked, Okay Donkey, and New World Writing. His first novel is Moscodelphia (Woodhall Press, 2021). Rafferty has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.

A headshot of a man wearing glasses.

Robert Cording

Robert Cording has published ten collections of poems, the most recent of which is In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022). A book on poetry, the bible and metaphor, Finding the World’s Fullness, is also out from Slant. He has received two NEAs in poetry. He has won two Pushcart Prizes in poetry, and his poems have appeared in publications such as the Georgia Review,
Southern Review, Poetry, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Image, The Common, Agni, New Ohio Review, Orion, and Best American Poetry, 2018.

A headshot of a man standing in front of a body of water with trees in the background.

 

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Best Short Stories 2023
A Celebration of the Best Short Stories 2023: A panel discussion with Lauren Groff, Lisa Taddeo, and Jenny Minton Quigley.

Real Art Ways is proud to present in collaboration with River Bend Book Shop A Celebration of Short Stories 2023. Featuring a panel discussion with Lauren Groff, Lisa Taddeo, and Jenny Minton Quigley.

This literary evening is a perfect night out for fiction lovers! Bring your book club!

Join us on Friday October 6 at 6:00 PM for a panel discussion that will spotlight these three amazing authors’ work on Best Short Stories 2023 collection, as well as highlight the work of other O’Henry prize-winning authors. The panel will be moderated by River Bend’s own Jillian Puzzo.

Best Short Stories 2023 is edited by Jenny Minton Quigley with guest editor Lauren Groff. Lisa Taddeo’s O’Henry prize-winning short story, “Wisconsin,” is featured in the collection.

For tickets, please click here.

An infographic of authors for an event.

Creative Cocktail Hour
Live music, immersive art exhibitions and openings, DJ, and you. Come as you are.
This Creative Cocktail Hour event is sponsored by our friends at Guilford Savings Bank!

GSB logo.

A monthly experience of art, community, and connection in Hartford.

Everybody is welcome, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Featuring:

Live Music: Colmena

Jim Hunt – trumpet

Nelson Bello – congas

Jeffry McQuillan – percussion, cajón

Kris Jensen – saxophone, flute

Edwin Rios – guitar

Carlos Hernandez Chavez on bass.

A mix of Latin Jazz, jazz standards, rock and R&B.

Art Exhibition Openings: 

El Disco Es Cultura by Real Art Award Recipient and Hartford’s own Adrian Martinez Chavez

Ayiti, I Saw It In A Dream by Real Art Award Recipient Steven Baboun

Exhibitions by: 

Ying YeBurn The Midnight Oil 

Food Truck: Auntie’s Pasta and Muncher’s International

Art Making Activities

& You!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about community and expression.

Buy your tickets online and skip the line at the door! Free for Real Art Ways Members, $15 General Admission
Riverwood Poetry Series

 

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month. An open mic will precede the featured
reader—one poem, one page please.

Join us for this in-person reading! An open mic will precede the features readers – one poem, one page.

The author’s books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Food and drinks will be available to purchase.

Free of charge. Ample parking available.

Rennie McQuilkin

Rennie McQuilkin, who grew up in Rochester, NY, received degrees from Princeton and Columbia Universities, and decided against a law career following a stint at Harvard Law School. After teaching English at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, the Loomis-Chaffee School, and Miss Porter’s School, he co-founded the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which he directed for 9 years, and later served as CT Poet Laureate from 2015-2018. He was the publisher of Antrim House Books, which issued over 300 titles, mostly poetry collections. His own poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, the Hudson Review, and other publications. The author of numerous volumes of poetry, he has received a number of awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, six fellowships from the CT Commission of the Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the CT Commission on the Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the CT Center for the Book, and its 2010 poetry award under the aegis of the Library of Congress.

A man sitting in a chair holding a cane with a woman wrapping her arms around him.

Clare Rossini

Clare Rossini has published three collections of poems, most recent of which is Lingo (The University of Akron Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies such as The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. The Poetry of Capital, an anthology Rossini co-edited with Benjamin Grossberg, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2021. After 45 years of college teaching, Rossini retired as Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at Trinity College in Hartford in Spring of 2023. She plans to continue teaching creative writing courses at Trinity and continuing her community outreach work.

A headshot of a woman with glasses.

 

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Mary Collins Book Launch Event

 

Join us for a book launch and story-sharing program to celebrate the launch of Mary Collins’ new book A Play Book: Creating Writers, Creating Citizens. 

An author reading followed by story-sharing activities with Mary Collins!

Attendees receive a copy of her new book A Play Book: Creating Writers, Creating Citizens, with ticket purchase.

Book synopsis: In A Play Book, Creating Writer, Creating Citizens, part memoir-part manifesto, a creative writing professor with three decades of experience taps into tales from her classroom and own childhood to highlight the steady decline in unsupervised play, intellectual flow, and reflection, and what it all means for our democracy. The author picks up watercolor painting to add whimsy to her creative process and finds herself penning a collection of flash nonfiction essays and illustrations that make clear what she does with her students is about so much more than writing and vital for all citizens. As one outside reviewer states, the book is a “much-needed antidote to what is making us all, young and old, feel cut off from our senses, our creativity, our courage, and our common humanity.”

Improvisations Now

 

An experience of music imagined and created in real time. This series runs from September 2023-May 2024.

September’s Performance:
Charles Downs – Drums

Charles Downs is an American free jazz drummer. During the 1970s, he was active in the New York City loft jazz scene, performing at venues such as Rashied Ali’s “Ali’s Alley” and Sam Rivers’ “Studio Rivbea”. He was a member of Ensemble Muntu with Jemeel Moondoc, among others.

In 1976, Downs performed in a production of Adrienne Kennedy’s A Rat’s Mass directed by Cecil Taylor at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan. Musicians Jimmy Lyons, Andy Bey, Karen Borca, David S. Ware, and Raphe Malik also performed in the production. Taylor’s production combined the original script with a chorus of orchestrated voices used as instruments. Downs continued to perform with Taylor into the 1980s, appearing on his albums The Eighth and Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants). Downs is also a member of Other Dimensions in Music with Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, and William Parker.

Darius Jones – Alto Saxophone

“Witty, soulful and brimming with invention, an inspired marriage of creative music and song.” – The Wire

“The sound is breathtaking. The space, color, intensity, and every single note Darius Jones plays is not only a note, but a pure vibration that goes right into our bones and straight to our heart, taking the time and space its needs, so it can be purely felt in its intention, strength, and depth.” – Best of Jazz

Darius Jones is a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer who embraces individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black music. Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence and commission, Western Front residence and commission, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation Award, and a Fromm Music Foundation commission from Harvard University. He has collaborated with Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Andrew Cyrille, Craig Taborn, Wet Ink Ensemble, Jason Moran, Trevor Dunn, Dave Burrell, Eric Revis, Matthew Shipp, Marshall Allen, Nasheet Waits, Branford Marsalis, Travis Laplante, Fay Victor, Cooper-Moore, Matana Roberts, JD Allen, Matthew Shipp, Nicole Mitchell, Georgia Ann Muldrow, International Contemporary Ensemble and many more.

For more information, please visit their website.

Aquiles Navarro – Trumpet

“This Canadian-Panamanian trumpeter’s playing features glorious improvised fanfares as if announcing the arrival of some cosmic dignitary, as well as repeated melodic themes, providing a brightly lit entry point into jazz’s outer regions.” The Guardian

Aquiles Navarro is a New York-based trumpeter, composer and DJ of Panamanian heritage. He is also the CEO & Founder of River Down Records, a label that focuses on documenting and expanding the creative sounds and minds of Panamá. Aquiles derives his sounds from folkloric music, salsa, reggae and everything that were around. This eclectic music background, based on his upbringing in Panama has led him to collaborate with folkloric musicians, dancers, visual artists, actors, poets and really the world around him.

Navarro is a part of the liberation-oriented free jazz collective, Irreversible Entanglements.

For more information, please visit their website.

Joe Morris – Bass 

“One of the most profound improvisers at work in the United States.” – Wire Magazine

Morris was born in New Haven Connecticut in 1955. He began playing guitar at the age of 14 first playing rock music, progressing to blues, then to jazz, free jazz and free improvisation. He released his first record Wraparound (riti) in 1983. He has composed over 200 original pieces of music. Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Fred Hopkins, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and many others.

Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 200 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan.

He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

For more information, please visit their website.

Riverwood Poetry Series

 

The Series takes place in-person on the second Wednesday of the month. An open mic will precede the featured reader—one poem, one page please.

Season Opener:

Join us for this in-person reading! An open mic will precede the features reader – one poem, one page.

The authors’ books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Food and drinks will be available to purchase.

Free of charge. Ample parking available.

Antoinette Brim-Bell

Antoinette Brim-Bell (Antoinette Brim), Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three full-length poetry collections: These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alumna of Voices of Our Nation Foundation (VONA). Her poetry has appeared in various journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies.

A printmaker and collage artist, Brim-Bell exhibited both poetry and monoprints in Jazz: an exhibition of Poetry, Print, and Photography at the Summer McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery in New Haven, CT, and Sheroes, in partnership with the Alliance of Women Veterans at the Grove in New Haven, CT. She serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors of Indolent Arts Foundation based in New York City, is a past Board Member of OneWorld Progressive Institute, and a past President of the Board of Directors of the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT.

A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, Brim-Bell is a Professor of English at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut.

 A headshot of a black woman wearing glasses.

 

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

Creative Cocktail Hour
Live music, art exhibitions, DJ, and you. Come as you are.

A monthly experience of art, community, and connection in Hartford.

Everybody is welcome, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Featuring:

Live Music: Nelson Bello & Friends: funk, soul, rhythm and blues with Nelson Bello on percussion, Dexter Pettaway on drums, Simone Moñe on vocals, Kris Jensen on saxophone, Asa Livingston on bass, and Jeremiah Fuller on piano.

A black and white image of a man playing a drum

Music from DJ Mr. Realistic

Art Exhibitions from: 

Ying Ye

Jim Whitten

Roni Aviv 

Paloma Izquierdo, Miguel Gaydosh, Matthew Schreiber, Laura Henriksen, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Dylan Hausthor

Park Art Celebration:

Every year, Real Art Ways offers free art making workshops for kids in our neighborhood in the park across the street! Please join us at our End of Park Art Celebration, starting at 5pm (leading into a performance at 6:15pm as a part of CCH – free before 6:00pm).

Park Art Celebration poster.

Food Truck: Rolling Roti & East-West Grille

Hands-on Art Making Activities led by Real Art Ways staff

& You!

Creative Cocktail Hour is about community and expression.

Buy your tickets online and skip the line at the door!
Creative Cocktail Hour
Live music, art exhibitions, DJ. Come as you are.

Everybody is welcoming, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Music:
Funkrust Brass Band

Funkrust Brass Band is a 20-piece, Brooklyn-based,  post-apocalyptic disco-punk brass band playing all original music with megaphone vocals, heavy tuba bass lines, thundering percussion and searing brass melodies. Their explosive live performances feature full band choreography, signature wasteland/glam uniforms and LED lighting effects. The band mixes post-punk, disco, EDM, metal, and funk with Balkan brass and New Orleans second line sounds, and filters that through the medium of a massive street brass band with a punk rock sensibility. For more information, please visit their website here.

A close up of a woman playing the saxophone.

DJ Mr. Realistic:

DJ Mr. Realistic and Real Art Ways have a longstanding relationship! He has been our house DJ for CCH for many years, and is the owner of My House Radio, a multicultural, award-winning internet broadcast radio station focusing on all genres of house music.

A man with headphones behind a DJ board.

Art Exhibitions:

Exhibition Opening by Real Art Award Recipient Ying Ye!

Barricade – Jim Whitten

Speaking Sentences Backwards –  Paloma Izquierdo, Miguel Gaydosh, Matthew Schreiber, Laura Henriksen, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, and Dylan Hausthor

A Temporary Weight – Roni Aviv

Food Truck:

East-West Grille

Hands-on art making activities based on current exhibitions lead by Real Art Ways staff.

CCH will be outside, weather permitting.

Artist Talk: Romina Chuls
Saturday, July 8, 2:30 PM. Free admission, no RSVP required.

You’re invited to a gallery talk with artist Romina Chuls, who will discuss the current exhibition parir los pétalos at Real Art Ways. Chuls is a recipient of a 2022 Real Art Award.

Romina Chuls (b. 1991, Lima) holds an M.A in Arts Politics from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a Bachelor in Fine Arts, with a major in painting, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. Later, Romina continued her training with several Peruvian pre-hispanic textile courses, such as brocade weaving, Paracas ringed knitting and backstrap weaving. She completed a residency focus on Mexican embroidery at Arquetopia (2017), in Oaxaca, Mexico. She participated in the Artists in Residence program at Textile Arts Center (2018-2019) and she was granted a residency at Gasworks ceramic studio (2019), both in New York City.

 

Creative Cocktail Hour
Live music, art exhibitions, DJ. Come as you are.

Everybody is welcoming, conversations abound, people connect.

Come with friends, come by yourself, hangout. Creative Cocktail Hour is a great way to meet new people!

Music:
QUITAPENAS

This tropical Afro-Latin combo borrows aesthetics from the radical 60s, 70s and 80s. Each song echoes a remix of history and invites one to engage in the liberating evenings of Angola, Peru, Colombia, Brazil and beyond. The name means “to remove worries.” The mission of QUITAPENAS is simple: to make you dance and leave you without a worry. Using the healing mix of guitar, saxophone, keyboards, bass, and percussion, they will keep you moving to the music all throughout their performance.

A group of men standing under a tree in the sun.

DJ: Sonia Sol

Sonia Sol is a traveling performing artist, open format DJ, singer, and acrobatic dancer currently living / touring in Latin America as well as North America. Born & raised in Hartford, Sonia draws a lot of inspiration from her Jamaican roots incorporating island sounds throughout her show experience. Through her voice she uses an eclectic blend of Neo-Soul, Reggae, & R&B sounds. As an open format DJ she blends all sounds but loves House, Hip-Hop, Afrobeats, and more.

A woman singing into a microphone with headphones on.

DJ Mr. Realistic:

DJ Mr. Realistic and Real Art Ways have a longstanding relationship! He has been our house DJ for CCH for many years, and is the owner of My House Radio, a multicultural, award-winning internet broadcast radio station focusing on all genres of house music.

A man with headphones behind a DJ board.

Art Exhibitions:
Exhibition opening in the Real Room:

Barricade, curated by David Borawski

BARRICADE

Who’s on one side?
Who’s on the other side?
What does one of them want?
What does the other one want?
Will the barricade hold?
If not, how long does it hold for?
Does this extra time provide an opportunity?
Is everyone safe?

Speaking Sentences Backwards –  Paloma Izquierdo, Miguel Gaydosh, Matthew Schreiber, Laura Henriksen, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, and Dylan Hausthor
A Temporary Weight – Roni Aviv
parir los pétalos – Romina Chuls
Food Truck:

Auntie’s Pasta

Hands-on art making activities based on current exhibitions.

CCH will be outside starting 6/15 – weather permitting!