NationalSawdust +
Concerts + Conversations featuring artists and thinkers
Curated by Elena Park
NationalSawdust+ is a lively performance and conversation series in which luminaries from across disciplines share their passion for music and explore ideas, making surprising connections. The series, curated by Elena Park with Associate Producer Jeff Tang, taps artists and thinkers from theater, film and visual art, literature, science and beyond, to create insightful programs that reflect their own interests. Whether through live performances, conversations, or readings, each program has its own alchemy, engaging the audience in new and unexpected ways. Often topical, and always imaginative, NationalSawdust+ is an ideal space for those with curiosity, adventure, and vision.
NationalSawdust+ Past Events
NationalSawdust+ presents: Jad Abumrad’s “Covering Home” with Caroline Shaw, Bora Yoon, and Shelley Washington
October 1st
NationalSawdust+ presents : A Spatial Sound Lab Hosted by Laurie Anderson & Arto Lindsay
February 22nd
NationalSawdust+ presents: “Beyond Butterfly and the Don”
January 24th
NationalSawdust+ presents “Inside Juggling”
December 3rd
NationalSawdust+ presents: Paul Muldoon’s “Against the Grain” featuring Carolyn Forché, Andrey Kurkov and the Knights
November 21st
NationalSawdust+ presents: An Evening with “Blue” and “Between the World and Me”
National Sawdust+ presents: An Evening with Moby + John Hodgman
NationalSawdust+ and ARRAY present: “The Burial of Kojo” + Blitz the Ambassador with the Embassy Ensemble
NationalSawdust+ and Array present: A special screening of “Vaya” with Ava DuVernay + Akin Omotoso
NationalSawdust+ presents: Paul Muldoon’s “Against the Grain” featuring Min Jin Lee, Tracy K. Smith, and Sō Percussion
Sold Out – NationalSawdust+ presents: Paul Muldoon’s “Against the Grain” featuring Jorie Graham, Colm Tóibín, and Laurie Anderson
Mai Khoi and The Dissidents + Paul Tran
National Sawdust+ presents: Paul Muldoon’s “Against the Grain” featuring Jennifer Egan, Kevin Young, and Matmos
NationalSawdust+ presents “Gatekeepers”
NationalSawdust+ and London Review of Books present Regarding Whitney
June 13th, 2018 - 6:30pm doors • 7:30pm show In this special evening created by NationalSawdust+ and the London Review of Books, writers and musicians will reflect on Whitney Houston as artist, actress and icon, and help us consider her anew. Poet, critic, and melomaniac August Kleinzahler and musicians such as Du Yun and Shayna Dunkelman, Carl Hancock Rux, and Esperanza Spalding will share performances and readings inspired by Houston’s sweeping body of work.
National Sawdust+ presents Yo-Yo Ma + Maria Popova
May 18th, 2018 - 6:15pm doors • 7pm talk Yo-Yo Ma's generous spirit and expansive curiosity have led him far beyond music and the arts, fueling explorations into culture, society, and creativity. Maria Popova casts light on essential ideas across philosophy, science, poetry, and more on her indispensable website "Brain Pickings," an “online emporium of ideas” (The New York Times) that helps us deepen our understanding of the world and of ourselves. Now, National Sawdust+ presents these two extraordinary thinkers in a rare conversation.
NationalSawdust+ presents The Perception of Beauty
May 24th, 2018 - 6:30pm doors • 7:30pm show “National Sawdust+ presents the Lab of Misfits in a mind-expanding evening, The Perception of Beauty, conceived by neuroscientist Beau Lotto and musician Oded Lev-Ari. Join an evening of audience experiments, musical demonstrations, and conversation that reveal the invisible matrix that govern the way we experience sound, investigate notions of beauty, and explore imperfection.
National Sawdust+ Talk: Mario Livio + Isabel Behncke + Paola Prestini
Sept 24, 2017 - 4:00pm Renowned astrophysicist Mario Livio, Chilean primatologist Isabel Behncke, and composer Paola Prestini take part in an expansive conversation about curiosity, play, evolution, and creativity.
National Sawdust+ Elements of Time + Taste: A night of inventive food, mixology, and music
Sep 28, 2017 - 7:30pm NS+ presents Elements of Time + Taste, a creative experience of music, libations, and delectable fare! Patrick Connolly, Rider's award-winning chef, and New York Distilling Company's Allen Katz join forces with an extraordinary group of musicians including Magos Herrera and Yuka C. Honda, led by Oded Lev-Ari.
National Sawdust+ Who Owns the Story: Artists Speak Out
June 11, 2017 - 4:00pm The program, featuring conversations and performances, will explore the idea of who has the ownership – or the right – to tell which/what stories. Are there limits? And what is the responsibility of the artists telling the stories? Artists will include Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Kauila Kanaka’ole, Morley, Dael Orlandersmith, and Carl Hancock Rux.
National Sawdust+ Gentle on my Mind: An Evening with artist Carrie Mae Weems
June 2, 2017 - 7:30pm The singular American artist Carrie Mae Weems, “a superb image maker and a moral force” (New York Times), whose art has investigated topics from cultural identity to politics to the consequences of power, debuts a new program created for NS+. Gentle on my Mind uses narratives, photographs and video, sharing the essential role that music has played in shaping both Weems’s life and work.
National Sawdust+ Talk: Rachel Eliza Griffiths + Chris Jackson
January 15, 2017 - 4:00pm Two bold voices come together for a provocative National Sawdust+ conversation: Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whose brave, sobering, and lyrical work spans poetry, photography, and mixed media and pioneering editor Chris Jackson, whose category-defying books have re-shaped the literary narrative at large. The intimate talk, moderated by Jackson, will span subjects such as beauty and resistance, and transforming politics and conflict into art.
NS+ PUSSY RIOT THEATRE: Revolution
March 17, 2016 - 10:00pm Pussy Riot presents its new music-theater project, PUSSY RIOT THEATRE. They will perform the East Coast premiere of a new piece, “Revolution”, based on the book of Maria Alyokhina – one of the leaders of Pussy Riot. This is Maria’s personal story of Pussy Riot, including their legendary protest punk actions in balaclavas, hiding from police, their arrest, time in a Moscow jail and police investigation, trial and sentencing to a remote penal colony. The roster of performers will include Maria Alyokhina herself, Kiryl Kanstantsinau, AWOTT (Asian Women On The Telephone) psycho-punk music duo, and VJ Vasily Bogatov. The hour-long piece about protest art and political activism in a hostile state will be directed by Yury Muravitsky and produced by Alexander Cheparukhin, with video footage by Taisia Krugovykh and video art by Katya Sсheglova. The NS+ evening will end with a conversation with members of the creative team.
National Sawdust+ curated and hosted by Jacqueline Woodson
December 14, 2016 - 9:30pm On the heels of her acclaimed novel, Another Brooklyn, award-winning writer Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming, Miracle’s Boys) hosts a National Sawdust+ program showcasing two powerful voices from her borough: Carl Hancock Rux and Toshi Reagon. The unusual evening will feature music, readings and conversation in an intimate setting.
National Sawdust+ curated and hosted by Maria Popova
January 27, 2017 - 7:30pm In this National Sawdust+ evening, Maria Popova curates a celebration of cultural and personal heroes. Musicians perform original compositions paying homage to luminaries, from Amelia Earhart to James Baldwin, and covers of songs by their own greatest musical heroes.
National Sawdust+ presents The Anat Cohen Tentet and Jon Glaser
October 30, 2016 - 8:00pm Israeli clarinet virtuoso Anat Cohen brings her Tentet to her home borough of Brooklyn featuring a pre-concert conversation with comedian Jon Glaser, moderated by NS+ curator Elena Park.
National Sawdust+ Presented and Curated by Elizabeth Peyton
August 18, 2016 - 7:00pm Since she began exhibiting her paintings in the 1990s, artist Elizabeth Peyton’s work has often featured artists and musicians, including composer-musician Nico Muhly and Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, whose music she will feature on her National Sawdust+ evening on Thursday, August 18 at 7pm.
NS+ Talk: Meredith Monk + Yuval Sharon
May 08, 2016 - 4:00pm This NS+ Talk brings together two mavericks in the world of music and art. Meredith Monk, whom Björk calls “one of the most important composers alive,” has created enthralling opera, music-theater, film, and installations over more than five decades. Fluidly creating new vocabularies of contemporary performance, this singular composer, singer, and director/choreographer has “mapped a world that never quite existed in the history of the arts” (The New Yorker).
NS+ Talk: Marina Abramovic + Laurie Anderson
May 01, 2016 - 1:00pm Merely mention their names, and indelible images, sounds, and experiences spring forth. These pioneering artists have blazed unexpected, highly individualistic paths, transforming artists and audiences in their wake.
NS+ Talk: Waltraud Meier + Patti Smith
Apr 17, 2016 • 5:00pm What does rock icon, writer, and visual artist Patti Smith do when she has a night off? Often, she seeks out the opera－especially if German soprano Waltraud Meier is on the stage. The two women share an incredible expressivity, a searching intellect, and a passionate commitment to their craft －inspiring in their fans an almost cult‐like fascination and devotion.
NS+ Concert: Laura Nyro
Apr 22, 2016 - 7:30pm The music of Laura Nyro has been a touchstone for a generation of artists whose work fills our world, including director Michael Mayer, who fell hard for the singer-songwriter when he first heard her in college. The Tony-award winning director of stage, screen, and opera curates and hosts a National Sawdust+ evening that explores her influence.
NS+ Concert: Jad Abumrad ft. Glenn Kotche, Caroline Shaw, and Nick Hakim
May 14, 2016 - 8:00pm What is MacArthur “Genius” award-winner Jad Abumrad listening to? The sometime composer and “co-host of the on-air amazingness that is ‘RadioLab’” (Wired) takes a break from entertaining his fans －who listen to him on 600 stations across the country and through the 8 million podcasts downloaded each month－ to host an evening that showcases his intriguing musical interests. Details to come soon!
NS+ Concert: Adam Gopnik
Mar 18, 2016 - 7:00pm For National Sawdust+, Gopnik hosts a program featuring Broadway star and close collaborator Melissa Errico (My Fair Lady, Amour), who will perform songs, new and old, that he has hand-picked. Selections will include songs from the one-woman show, Sing the Silence, which they co-wrote, as well as an eclectic mix of standards and original material co-written with Shire, Scott Frankel, and Peter Mills.
