Blues in the streets,
A recently released podcast tells the story of the son of painter Alan Gussow, FAAR 1955, RAAR 1987 (1931-1997) and Joan Dye Gussow whose work in organic gardening and local foods influenced our own food heroine Alice Waters.
Falling a bit far from the tree, Adam Gussow may well have been the only Ivy League blues harp player busking on the streets of Harlem in the 1970s. Revivalism presents "Harmonicas, Serendipity, and Satan: Oxford, MS." Wandering over from Columbia, Gussow meets a musician known as Satan who owns the corner of 125th Street and Broadway and becomes his harp man. Enjoying the irony of their names they call themselves Satan & Adam and play some really righteous music for a lot of years. What follows is 38 minutes and 24 seconds of fine podcast listening. If you want more, Gussow's new book Busker's Holiday came out in October.
Composer Paula Matthusen, FAAR 2015, has returned to Wesleyan where her work "on the attraction for felicitous amplitude" premiered on November 21. It was performed by Brooklyn Rider. See her website for a schedule of upcoming performances.
"Sounding the Note of A," an installation of new work by Maureen Selwood, FAAR 2003, gathered quite a bit of attention last month. Carolina A. Miranda’s review in the Los Angeles Times peers deeply into the motivation and iconography behind the suite of works that was motivated by the actions of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot in Moscow. The show was at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in LA.
Margaret Fisher FAAR 2009, writes that the book she was working on at the Academy, RADIA: A Gloss of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto, Introduction, Notes, Tables of Futurist Broadcasts and Translation by Margaret Fisher was published in 2012 by Second Evening Art Publishing.
"Jelly and Jack" by Dana Spiotta, FAAR 2009 appeared in the December 14 issue of the New Yorker. An interview she did with Deborah Treisman is here.