Guiding Lights: Music and Art from Impressionism to Jazz with Emilie Conway

“Music and Art are the guiding lights of the world.” - Pablo Picasso

Join vocal jazz artist, Emilie Conway for an exploration of the relationship between music and art from the light play of Ravel's Jeu d'Eau and Monet's Water Lilies to the pulsing tri-colour rhythm of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie and Monk's In Walked Bud!

Following the sound of the music and the smell of oil paint, we will journey through time to la Belle Époque Europe, Paris, Munich, Vienna, east to St. Petersburg, through World War I, the Spanish flu, back to Paris for Les Années folles, the Jazz Age, the Roaring '20s and at the outbreak of World War II, fleeing to the safety, lights and glamour of New York in the 40s, a city astir from the Harlem Renaissance, the end of Prohibition, vivid and fizzing, shaken and stirred, with the mixing of artists from old Europe and the New World.

By looking at the paintings and listening to the music of artists like Monet, Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Kandinsky and more, we will discover the musical and artistic movements to which these artists' restless quest for inspiration, authenticity and expression gave rise: Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Swing, Boogie Woogie, Bebop, ultimately Jazz!

The Musical Art of Piet Mondrian

THE ARTS • Tuesday, November 15th - December 6th, 6:00 - 7:00 PM GMT

With Emilie Conway Award-winning vocal jazz artist, composer, and lyricist.

The development of Mondrian’s work, his growing relationship with music, and its increasing influence on his work charts a fascinating and synchronous course through pivotal cultural, musical, artistic, philosophical, and historical moments of the 20th century.

Register here.

And here’s an article about the fascinating 92NY itself and the story of its recent rebranding from the New York Times.

Thank you to the Washington Square Hotel, NYC, a great friend to artists for 119 years, and to me and my work, for writing this blog about my 92NY course:“We just love our guests...they're funny, kind and oh-so-interesting.

The Roaring 20s: La Soiree Folle at the Project Arts Centre, August 25, 7:30

Book here: The Roaring 20's La Soiree Folle @ Project Arts Centre, August 25, 7:30

Join us for Jazz at the Speakeasy in Project Arts Centre. Password La Soirée Folle! 

The 1920s, The Jazz Age, Les Annee Folles, The Roaring Twenties, the Charleston, Swing Orchestras, Surrealism, DADAism, Jazz.  A time of casting off the stays and corsets of old ways of life for all that was new and modern. A time of self-expression, great freedom, and release following the restriction and destruction of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic. The arts sparked with iconoclastic and rebellious artists like Joyce, Dali, Josephine Baker, and Mondrian fearless and relentless in their experimentation and drive for innovation. 

A centenary on, as we emerge into an uncertain future from our own pandemic, Emilie Conway takes inspiration from the artists and musicians of the 20s as she presents a concert that explores some of the music of that time like Sweet Georgia Brown, Ain’t Misbehavin, Blue Skies, T’Aint Nobody’s Business, and Stardust.

Friends of Alec Wilder presents the 2021 Annual Wilder Concert: First International Event November 14, 7pm GMT.

"I go back to songs like I go back to an old friend, a garden, a fireplace, like a cat that comes back after being away..." - Alec Wilder

This is exactly what it felt like for me coming back to Alec's songs for this very special performance, particularly after all the lockdowns.

My research of Alec's music and the subsequent album, Dear World, would not exist in the way that it does without Judy Bell, and the heart and the harmony of her encyclopedic knowledge and experience, of which she gave so generously.

MUSIC FOR MONDRIAN: COMMISSION WITH THE NATIONAL GALLERY

Emilie Conway is an award winning jazz singer, composer and lyricist. Her music is informed and complemented by her love of literature, poetry, sound and silence. Emilie’s distinctive voice and inimitable style have earned her much acclaim in Ireland and abroad, having toured across Europe and the United States. She has studied in Dublin and Vermont, and has been supported by the Arts Council.

As part of this project, Emilie will be taking part in an episode of our Mondrian podcast, and she will be the guest at our January Talk and Tea. Working with her musical collaborators Johnny Taylor (piano) and Barry Donohue (bass), Emilie will also be producing a musical response to the exhibition, the exact format of which will be confirmed soon. Visit the National Gallery website here.

Visit: Music for Mondrian Podcast Notes
Music for Mondrian, Spotify Playlist
Podcasts: Music for Mondrian Part 1 on Spotify | Music for Mondrian Part 2

 Carnegie Hall’s Migrations Festival: The Making of America

YEATS + TAGORE - A Performance Collage

John Sorensen - Director
Emilie Conway - Project Advisor, Vocalist & Performer
Evan Leslie - Artistic Producer, Library for the Performing Arts
Presented with The American Irish Historical Society as part of Carnegie Hall’s city-wide festival, Migrations: The Making of America

SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2019 at 2:30 p.m.
The New York Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln Centre.
BRUNO WALTER AUDITORIUM 111 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10023-7498A

You Won’t Forget Me: Celebrating Maeve Brennan in Words and Music

Preview from the Irish Times ahead of Performance at the National Concert Hall, September 12, 2017

You Won’t Forget Me is vocalist Emilie Conway’s celebration of the life and work of Maeve Brennan, the Ranelagh-born writer who, as the Long-Winded Lady, was a much-admired social diarist with the New Yorker during the 1950s and 1960s. The ethereal Conway has woven together extracts from Brennan’s writing – read by actor Cathy Belton – with an eclectic musical selection that charts Brennan’s progress from daughter of Irish revolutionaries (her parents were both active in the 1916 Rising) to doyen of New York’s high society to respected short story writer to abject destitution in later life. There’s a pre-concert talk from academic Angela Bourke, author of the Maeve Brennan biography Homesick at the New Yorker.

Dear World: Emilie Conway Sings Alec Wilder

"I am concerned with the miracle of life in all its incredible forms. I'll stop for a spider, a bird, a tree, a flower, a child, a book, a storm, a sound, a scent, a smile. I'll blow bubbles, watch bobble birds, read a dictionary, listen to a sad tale, make up a puzzle, row a boat."

- Alec Wilder

“A terrific document to Alec.” Friends of Alec Wilder Newsletter

Debut Album: The Secret of a Rose

Life has taught me, well keeps teaching me, that there is always hope, and there is beauty, that this is a beautiful life we have here - where there are dark shadows, there is also light. For me, these songs are about affirmation and acceptance because ....
"Beneath the deepest snows, the secret of a rose,
Is merely that it knows, you must believe in spring!”

You Must Believe in Spring, Legrand / Bergman