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Friday Nights at NOMA: Lecture with Katie Pfohl
Fri, November 20th, 2015 at 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Tonight at NOMA, curator of modern and contemporary art Katie Pfohl will give a lecture on NOMA’s newest exhibition Visions of US: American Art at NOMA. As always, we’ve got live music, free art activities, a cash bar, and great art!
- 5-8 pm: Art on the Spot
- 5:30-8:30 pm: Music by John Mahoney Big Band
- 6:30 pm: Visions of US lecture by Katie Pfohl
About Visions of US
Visions of US: American Art at NOMA explores evolving ideas about American cultural identity from the 18th through 20th centuries. Drawn from NOMA’s world-class collection of American art, the exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures, photography and decorative arts to tell a rich and inclusive story about how we imagine and represent the United States.
Katie Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at NOMA, will present an overview of Visions of US: American Art at NOMA. Following the lecture, Pfohl will lead a conversation about Dennis Oppenheim’s 1970 performance piece Guarded Land Area (featured in Visions of US) with Amy Plumb Oppenheim, Director of the Dennis Oppenheim Studio, and Aaron Levy, Executive Director of the Slought Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally performed at NOMA in 1970, the piece will be re-enacted at the museum this fall, and Pfohl, Oppenheim and Levy will discuss the idea of “re-enactment,” and explore the meaning of the work both then and now.
About the John Mahoney Big Band
The JOHN MAHONEY BIG BAND, first organized in 1992, has performed at the IAJE Conference in 2000, the JEN Conference in 2010, and most recently at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2014. Comprised of 18 of the most talented reading and improvising musicians from the New Orleans region, the band plays at Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro several times each year. John Mahoney, recently retired as Coordinator of Jazz Studies at Loyola University New Orleans, is a graduate of SUNY Potsdam and the Eastman School of Music. A CD of ten of Mahoney’s big band compositions was released in 2001 entitled In From Somewhere, while Christmas Joy was released in 2009. Mr. Mahoney has twenty-four compositions and arrangements published with ejazzlines.
The program tonight spotlights Battle of New Orleans: Score for Unity, a composition of New Orleanean educator and musician Michael Rihner, which was arranged for big band by John Mahoney. This piece tells the story, through music and narration, of the War of 1812, and General Andrew Jackson in the last major conflict between Great Britain and United States. The composition was sponsored by a grant from the National Jazz Historic Park Service in New Orleans. The big band will feature Loyola faculty Ray Moore and Gordon Towell on woodwinds, Nick Volz on trumpet, John Mahoney on piano, Ed Wise on bass and Wayne Maureau on drums. Other exceptional musicians in the band include on woodwinds Rex Gregory, Richard Leveille, Michael Jenner and Khari Lee, on trumpets Bobby Campo, Brian Graber and Riccardo Emilien, and on trombones Rick Trolsen, Andy Pizzo and B.J. McGibney.
Score for Unity was commissioned by the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans.
