INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

  Nina Kennedy (photo: Arian Clay-Sirop) New York City -- Several LGBTQ leaders and allies were honored on November 21st for their outstanding achievements and dedication to the community at the ninth annual Gay City News Impact Awards, presented by Bethpage Federal Credit Union. The Impact Awards... "Honors individuals who make a difference to leave people better than they found them." There were honorees from various backgrounds, including activism, the arts, filmmaking, law, education, non-profit, government, and medicine. A VIP Power Hour was held before the actual awards ceremony, where honorees addressed the room from the stage to introduce themselves and their organizations. "It was a very delightful, inspiring evening," said Nina Kennedy. "As the owner of a production company, I've been very concerned about the huge discrepancy between men and women when it comes to film financing. Women are not producing enough feature-length films, as compared to ...

  While sitting in the audience for a screening of the documentary on James Baldwin titled The Price of a Ticket during the James Baldwin Centennial Convening  at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, I was forced to make a connection between Baldwin's words and a review of my recent concert in Mexico City. In the film, Baldwin says at a poignant moment: "It is not a romantic matter. It is the unalterable truth. All men are brothers. That's the bottom line." For a man who had been on the receiving end of such hatred, such discrimination and prejudice, that is quite a courageous statement to make. A few months ago I was invited to give a concert as part of the  27th Festival Internacional de Piano en Blanco y Negro . This was my first big concert since COVID, so I had quite some anxiety over whether or not I'd be able to pull it off. Fortunately it went very well; I received a standing ovation and was called back for an encore. The next day...

  by Pedro Antonio Muñoz Helguera September 15, 2024 | Mexico City [Translated from Spanish] Today we are going to talk of the incredible concert that the American pianist Nina Kennedy gave in the Blas Galindo Auditorium at the National Center for the Arts here in Mexico City just yesterday, September 14. Her presentation was truly emotional, impeccable technique, and a selection of pieces that ranged from European Romanticism to American and Latin folklore. The recital was solo piano, which gave it an extremely intimate touch and allowed the audience to connect to the compositions. Kennedy played it all: there were pieces by Chopin, also Liszt, there was music from America as in John W. Work and R. Nathaniel Dett. There were also Latino composers such as Manuel de Falla and Ernesto Lecuona. To begin the concert with Ravel's  Valses Nobles et Sentimentales , she transported us to a world full of delicacy, the complexity of the waltzes under the hands of Kennedy who showed perf...

  After a five-year pause due to the COVID pandemic, Nina Kennedy will be presenting concerts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and in Mexico City at the National Arts Center next month. In Mexico City she will be appearing as part of the  27th Festival Internacional de Piano En Blanco y Negro  on Saturday, September 14th at 7:00 pm., presenting a recital of works by Ravel, Chopin, Schumann, de Falla, Lecuona, and African-American composers John W. Work III and R. Nathaniel Dett. At Vanderbilt she will present the same program at the Blair School of Music  in Turner Recital Hall on Thursday September 5th. She will also appear Sunday, September 8th at the First Baptist Church Capitol Hill as part of the Grandparents' Day celebration. She will also conduct a master class at Fisk University. Praised by the New York Times as one of the great pianists of her generation, Nina   Kennedy is a world-renowned concert pianist, orchestral conductor, award- winning fil...

  As we celebrate one hundred years of the Rhapsody in Blue , I am inspired to reflect on the impact of George Gershwin's composition on my life. I first discovered the Rhapsody in Blue when my father had assigned the piece to one of his graduate students at Fisk University. Carol Elligan was a former Fisk Jubilee Singer and Piano Pedagogy major. I already considered her to be my best friend (even though I was eleven years old at the time, and Carol was in her early twenties). Before she started working on the Rhapsody in Blue , I was struggling with my piano studies, and had even reached the point where I was ready to quit piano. My parents went on about how expensive my piano lessons were, so I figured they'd be pleased with saving that little bit of money. But my quitting was not an option. They insisted that I continue with the lessons, whether I liked it or not. Enid Katahn, my piano teacher at the Blair School of Music in Nashville was struggling to assign repertoire tha...

The provocative title of my last blog ( Bradley Cooper's " Maestro" : Ho-Hum! Another Movie About White People )   brought lots of comments, re-posts, and controversy. Interestingly, all positive comments came from black people (American and otherwise), and several whites as well. All negative comments came from whites. It was shocking to me how blissfully unaware some of the non-melanated people are when it comes to the history of racism in Hollywood. They have no idea of the degree to which African Americans have been discriminated against, excluded, relegated to servant status, or portrayed as criminals. When a film about Leonard Bernstein completely ignored his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement, I could not keep silent. Here are some of the comments: Mark Bailey: "Brilliant review -- I agree with every word. Thanks for posting it. I was deeply bothered by the homophobia and gay-shaming in the film, especially by Felicia. The lack of inclusivity is yet an...

  Granted, most Hollywood films about American celebrities of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s are going to be about white people. But in a film about Leonard Bernstein, there were several opportunities to tell the story about Lenny marching with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, or Lenny introducing young André  Watts to the world concert stage, or even Lenny conducting Marian Anderson with the Israel Philharmonic. But no. The producers of Maestro chose to ignore the existence of African Americans, except when Bernstein's wife, Felicia (portrayed by Carey Mulligan), needed a nurse more than an hour and forty-five minutes into the film. At the very end, Bernstein directs his drunken, romantic attention toward a young black male conducting student, whom he had just instructed in a conducting master class. I suppose this young conducting student represented the future of classical music. But for a people who had been so discriminated against after the Second World War that young Ber...

Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry enjoyed enormous success during her short life. Her play A Raisin in the Sun won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award among others, had a long run on Broadway, and was developed into a successful motion picture. In an interview with Studs Terkel that was done in 1959, Hansberry says that the character of the daughter/sister "Beneatha" is the most autobiographical. Beneatha is a college student and determined to become a doctor. She, her brother and his wife and young son, and their mother all live in the same apartment on the South Side of Chicago. The matriarch of the family receives a check for the proceeds of her late husband's life insurance policy, and the drama begins. Beneatha needs money for her education. Her brother, Walter Lee, wants to invest the money in a get-rich-quick scheme involving partial ownership in a liquor store. Their mother wants to move to a house in the suburbs, which happens to be in a white neigh...

Tavern on Jane (31 Eighth Avenue) was the location for the opening of the exhibit A Solitude of Squares  by Marcia "GridKid" Gilbert last night. The owner of Tavern on Jane, Michael Stewart, has been featuring local artists four times a year since 2003. Regarding A Solitude of Squares : "Each piece in this new exhibition is a composition and even a keyboard: the improvisation that was never possible when [I] played the piano. At times the squares seem to precariously litter the page, dancing to a new tune," said Gilbert. "Watercolor paint, pencils, and crayons become colorful backgrounds for tumbling, sewn squares. Recycled colored patches of magazine pages come together, overlapped by more sewn squares, this time on clear plastic. Folded square paper components are linked together into multiples of color, textures, and layers." Originally from Lakewood, Ohio, Marcia Gilbert has lived in and around NYC since 1980 after graduating from Washington University...

  Women took over the Great Hall at The Cooper Union March 18th as part of the Women's History Month celebrations in New York City. Women's Rights icon Gloria Steinem engaged in a fascinating conversation with Salamishah Tillet, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and scholar. The event was part of The Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum series and a day of Cooper Union programming, including an exhibition on view in the Foundation Building's colonnade windows, dedicated to lifting up and celebrating Great Women Live from the Great Hall. Gloria Steinem Steinem and Tillet were introduced by Laura Sparks, the first female president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Hundreds of women and friends stood in line outside of Cooper Union to enter the Great Hall Saturday afternoon. We were invited to return that evening for stellar performances by Tiler Peck, principal ballet dancer for the New York City Ballet; Grammy nominated songstress Melissa Manchester...

Two years ago I was the only African-American Lammy Finalist in the Lesbian Memoir/Biography category for Practicing for Love . This year there is NOT ONE African-American finalist. WTF!  While there are no African Americans, there are some women of color represented in the category: an Asian-American, a Hispanic/Latina, and a Cambodian immigrant. The two white women represented are a butch dominatrix from West Virginia, and a Jewish woman who falls in love and loses her father to a heart condition around the same time. These were some heavy-hitting publications from major publishing houses. Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her book Lost & Found is Longlisted for the National Book Award, is a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and is Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. It is also one of People Magazine's Ten Best Books of the Year, and is listed as one of the Best Books of the Year in Time , NPR, Oprah Daily , Th...

  As part of the International Women's Day celebrations at the United Nations, the Permanent Mission of Italy to the U.N. and U.N. Women, among other Member States, presented a screening of a project titled Tell It Like A Woman in the U.N. General Assembly Hall on March 3rd. The film was created by the non-profit organization "We Do It Together" founded by Italian film producer Chiara Tilesi. Before the screening, opening remarks were given by the Permanent Representative of Italy Ambassador Maurizio Massari, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming, the Executive Director of U.N. Women Sima Bahous, Permanent Representative of Argentina Ambassador Maria del Carmen Squeff, and Chiara Tilesi. Tell It Like A Woman is a compilation of short films directed by eight women. The opening piece, directed by Taraji P. Henson, starred Jennifer  Hudson in the role of a mentally ill, drug-addicted prisoner. Eva Longoria also starred in one of the segments as ...