Syrian Composer Opens Watermill Center Lectures
The Watermill Center will launch its annual Scaler Lecture Series on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. with a talk by Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist and composer, titled “Art in Times of Crisis.” Robert Wilson, the center’s artistic director, and Kate Eberstadt, a former artist-in-residence there, have selected the six speakers.
Mr. Azmeh, who was born in Damascus and has lived in New York City since 2001, has appeared as a soloist, composer, and improviser at such venues as Opera Bastille, Paris; Tchaikovsky Grand Hall, Moscow; Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the United Nations General Assembly in New York; the Royal Albert Hall, London, and the Damascus Opera House for its opening concert. He is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.
In a recent conversation with Yo-Yo Ma, available on YouTube, also titled “Art in Times of Crisis,” Mr. Azmeh said that he did not write music for an entire year after the popular uprising in Syria in 2011. “But in March 2012 I felt I owed it to myself to keep my own voice loud. If the whole uprising was about people expressing themselves, I thought I owe it to myself to speak up in a way, believing in the freedom that music-making is about.”
The discussion addressed issues Mr. Azmeh will take up during his talk at the center. “A piece of music doesn’t stop a bomb falling,” he said. “It doesn’t feed somebody who’s hungry, it doesn’t free a political prisoner. . . . But it can motivate people to be proactive. I think culture might be the only survivor of violent times. Culture and art document our times for future generations to learn from.”
Mr. Azmeh will begin his presentation with a performance of “A Sad Morning Every Morning” and conclude it with a new composition for video, electronics, and clarinet titled “Don’t Repeat After Me.”
Next Thursday, BG Muhn will discuss “Contemporary North Korean Art: Complexity Within Simplicity.” Mr. Muhn, a painter and art professor at Georgetown University, is an authority on the subject, having made many trips to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, where he has visited museums, exhibitions, and artists’ studios.
Carl Schoonover, a postdoctoral fellow in the Axel Laboratory at Columbia University, where he studies the neural circuitry of odor-driven behavior, will present a whirlwind survey ranging from the earliest attempt to interact with the brain to the seminal technical innovations of the late-19th century to the plethora of technologies that drive research today. His lecture, “How to Look Inside the Brain,” will take place Aug. 9.
Wesley Enoch, the artistic director of both the Sydney Festival and the Queensland Theatre Company, will talk about “Aboriginal Traditions in Contemporary Australian Culture” on Aug. 10. A Noonuccal Nuugi man from Stradbroke Island off the East Coast of Australia, Mr. Enoch has brought “more aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and audiences” to the festival, according to Clover Moore, Sydney’s Lord Mayor.
Cornel West is a prominent intellectual who will speak on “Democracy Matters” on Aug. 16. A frequent guest on the “Bill Maher Show,” CNN, C-Span, and “Democracy Now,” he has taught as Princeton, Yale, Harvard, the University of Paris, and, currently, Union Theological Seminary. Through the lens of the African-American freedom fighting tradition, Dr. West will discuss the 2016 political climate, Socratic self-examination, police brutality, social activism, and other topics.
The final talk, set for Aug. 18, will feature Mary Ellen Carroll, a New York conceptual artist known for her works of “performative architecture.” Her work engages the disciplines of architecture, public policy, writing, performance, film, and technology, and she is dedicated to political and social critique.
All lectures take place at 7:30 p.m. Reservations are free but must be made in advance at watermillcenter.org.