SHELBY LEE ADAMS: Appalachian Portraits + Ear Heart Music's Aeolus Quartet Feb 18th

Girls in Onion Patch, 2004 

Photograph © Shelby Lee Adams

Peggy and Albert behind the Aeolus Quartet

Projected Photograph © Shelby Lee Adams

Composer Stephen Snowden wrote a 7 minute piece inspired by the photography of Shelby Lee Adams. The Aeolus Quartet will perform it along with 2 other pieces sequenced to Adams photographs projected behind the musicians. Shelby Lee Adams will be in attendance at this performance and will speak about his work. His new book, salt & truth, will be available for purchase and signing. Don't miss this unique evening!

Ear Heart Music presents
Aeolus Quartet – Appalachian Portraits
featuring the portrait photography of Shelby Lee Adams

February 18, 8:00pm at Roulette

Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave (at 3rd Ave.) in Brooklyn

 $15 general / $10 members, students, seniors

Close to the Atlantic terminal, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q + LIRR

Listen to the Aeolus Quartet * here
Inspired by Shelby Lee Adams Portraits

MOBY: Destroyed Interview

My Weakness
(c) MOBY

Hyenas
(c) MOBY

Read the Full Interview on La Lettre de la Photographie

“When I play music, I’m just exclusively focused on the music. When I’m taking photographs, I’m exclusively focusing on that. There’s not a lot of interdisciplinary stuff going on in my head.”

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"I’ve been a photographer since I was ten years old. My uncle had been a photographer at the New York Times and as I was growing up he gave me his hand-me-down sort of cast-off camera’s and dark room equipment. I grew up shooting film and working in darkrooms...When I went on to University, I was a Philosophy major with a Photography minor, and although I’ve been doing photography since I was 10 years old, I’ve never really felt comfortable showing it to anyone. It’s only in the last couple of years that I got past my reservations or shyness in showing people my photographs...I think I was intimidated to show people my photographs because my uncle was such a good photographer."

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EA: Your parents nicknamed you “Moby” after your family’s ancestral relationship to Moby Dick author, Herman Melville. As you are both writers, have you felt a connection or been inspired or influenced by his work?

MOBY: That’s a really interesting question. The one thing, if I’m being completely honest, the one connection that I feel, and it’s not even necessarily a good one, is on that side of the family, my fathers side of the family, the men have a tendency to be very prone to brooding and taking themselves too seriously. For better or worse, I think I’ve inherited that. I’d love to feel more of a creative connection with Melville, and maybe it’s there, but I definitely more see the brooding New England melancholy, which is strange because I live in southern California now.

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"The image that’s on the cover of both the book and the album is a photograph I took in LaGuardia Airport and it was a sign that said “Unattended Luggage Will Be Destroyed”- a very small sign that would only fit one word at a time. So I stood in this hallway taking photographs of this sign every time it flashed this word “Destroyed”... Because a lot of the music on the album, and the images as well, are the product of insomnia and exhaustion and so the word “Destroyed” just summed up that feeling of living in these strange alien environments and trying to make sense of them through music and photography."

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moby exhibition to october 22

KOPEIKIN GALLERY

EXCLUSIVE: Hey, I Talked To MOBY!

La Lettre de la Photographie: Interview Here

Sept 10 – Oct 22
MOBY at the Kopeikin Gallery, LA

STING: St. John The Divine Rehearsal

Sting Rehearsal with Ira Coleman on bass, St. John the Divine Cathedral
Photograph (c) Eleonora Alberto

Performing at Rehearsal, left, Kathryn and Peter Tickell on fiddles,
Sting, Ira Coleman on bass, guitarist Dominic Miller
Photograph (c) Eleonora Alberto

Sting Rehearsal with Music Director Robert Sadin and the Newark Boys Chorus, St. John the Divine Cathedral Photograph (c) Eleonora Alberto

"Winter is about inspiration and imagination"–Sting
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STING Winter Concert Rehearsal. St. John the Divine Cathedral's medieval architecture was the setting for Sting's private "family and friends" winter concert rehearsal last night. (I was a lucky friend of a friend). The Gothic/Romanesque backdrop of the Cathedral only added to the haunting beauty of the songs performed from Sting's album "If On A Winter's Night" that included madrigals to traditional Gaelic folk music.

Sting was accompanied by an ensemble of 35 musicians, including friend and long time colleague, guitarist Dominic Miller, Ira Coleman (double bass) and four remarkable musicians from his hometown (Sting called them "Geordies") in Northeast England, near the Scottish border : Kathryn Tickell (fiddle and Northumbrian pipes) and brother Peter Tickell (fiddle) Julian Sutton (melodean) and Mary MacMaster (metal string Scottish harp). With Robert Sadin as Music Director, the guest artists included Vincent Ségal (cello), Daniel Hope (violin), Chris Botti (trumpet), Ibrahim Maalouf (trumpet), Cyro Baptista (percussion), Bijan Chemirani (percussion) and the three fabulous backup singers from NYC and Australia. The Newark Boys Chorus joined all of them for a beautiful chorus. I'm sorry to those I've left off. The evening was unbelievably beautiful and perfectly conjured up the seasons holiday Spirits.

Photographer Eleonora Alberto was there to photograph the performance which included her husband, Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. She was gracious enough to allow me to post some of the evenings highlights. Many thanks to Susan Forristal for the invite.