Wave Hill Marks 60 Years; Remembering Barney's; A Novel About Evil Private School Moms; The Opera Next Door; Get Lit Preview
This year, Wave Hill in Riverdale is commemorating its 60th anniversary. Gabriel de Guzman, Wave Hill Director of Arts and Chief Curator, reflects on the anniversary, guides us through the history of the horticultural space, and previews Celebrate! Arts in the Garden: Wave Hill at 60 happening later this month on Sept. 20-21.
Gene Pressman was the former co-CEO, creative director, and head of merchandising and marketing for Barneys New York before the beloved department store closed in 2020. Now, he chronicles the history of his family's business, and his own experience there, in the new memoir They All Came to Barneys: A Personal History of the World's Greatest Store. Pressman discusses the book, and listeners share their memories of Barneys.
What do you get when a group of mean mom's at a private school in NYC encounter a new mom who has secrets? Is she dating the principal? How much money does she have? And why do bad things happen whenever she is around? Mean Moms was described as "Emma Rosenblum examines the relationship between money and morals while satirizing an affluent social set."
The Opera Next Door began in 2020 as jam sessions with musician friends when they could only gather outdoors. In 2021 they produced their first opera, Mozart's Così fan tutte. Many stoop concerts have followed and this month they'll stage Don G, an adaptation of Don Giovanni, on a stoop in Bed Stuy (on Sept. 13) and at Shapeshifter Lab in Park Slope (Sept. 17). Co-founders Sasha Gutiérrez and Zack O'Farrill join us to talk about the project.
Our September pick for Get Lit with All Of It is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which, in addition to celebrating its 25th anniversary, is being turned into an opera! We'll have Chabon and the opera's librettist Gene Scheer at our NYPL event on Sept. 24, as well as performers from the production. For a preview of the event, we're joined by the opera's composer, Mason Bates.
