Mar
10
Sun
“Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat” @ Sarasota Art Museum
Mar 10 @ 10:00 am – Jul 7 @ 5:00 pm
"Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat" @ Sarasota Art Museum

“Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat”

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Art Museum 

Sunday, March 10 – Sunday, July 7

Sarasota Art Museum (entrance at 1001 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34236)

Click here for more information.

This exhibition will feature work from ten nationally and internationally renowned Hermitage alumni artists: Diana Al-Hadid, Sanford Biggers (2010 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner), Chitra Ganesh, Todd Gray, Trenton Doyle Hancock (2013 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner), Michelle Lopez, Ted Riederer, the late John Sims, Kukuli Velarde, and William Villalongo. A key factor these ten artists have in common is that over the past two decades, each has been a Fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat on Manasota Key — a unique experience that contributed to each of their creative processes in a variety of ways. Overseen by guest curator and former Hermitage Curatorial Council member Dan Cameron, Impact represents the first major exhibition in collaboration between the Hermitage and Sarasota Art Museum. The exhibit will feature work across a range of media, including sculpture, painting, installation, video, photography, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and social practice. Sanford Biggers, a distinguished Hermitage alumnus and internationally renowned artist, is also now a member of the Hermitage’s National Curatorial Council and was a featured guest speaker at the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner.

A longtime member of the Hermitage’s Curatorial Council, Dan Cameron is a curator of contemporary art who also writes about art, teaches and lectures about art, makes art, serves on art-related juries and boards, and advises both public and private collections. He has lived in Manhattan since 1979, although at times he has also been based in New Orleans and Long Beach. Throughout his 40-plus year career, Dan has steadfastly championed both the unexpected and the under-recognized. In 1982, he was the first American curator to organize a museum exhibition on LGBTQ art, and in 2008 he launched the Prospect New Orleans triennial in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Along the way, he has curated international biennials in Istanbul, Taipei, Ecuador, and Orange County, California, as well as retrospectives of such esteemed artists as Carolee Schneemann, Paul McCarthy, Peter Saul, William Kentridge, Faith Ringgold, David Wojnarowicz, Marcel Odenbach, Pierre et Gilles, Cildo Meireles, and Martin Wong. As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative in 2017, the Palm Springs Art Museum hosted Dan’s exhibition “Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art 1954-1969.” Dan’s core connection with art stems from its capacity to expand our collective awareness of ourselves, the world around us, and the way that humans invent ways to communicate essential values with one another. Whether in the cause of furthering social justice or challenging art history, Dan believes that the artist’s fundamental obligation to civilization is to push sensorial and perceptual engagement into new, fruitful realms of engagement. The curator’s role is to provide an appropriate platform and context for that expression, and to provide a public forum for viewers to more fully immerse themselves in the experience, and for the artists to engage in critical dialogue about the art and its meaning.

Hermitage Fellow Diana Al-Hadid is known for her practice that examines the historical frameworks and perspectives that continue to shape discourse on culture and materials today. With a practice spanning sculpture, wall reliefs, and works on paper, Al-Hadid weaves together enigmatic narratives that draw inspiration from both ancient and modern civilizations.

Sanford Biggers was the first recipient of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize in the discipline of Visual Art in 2010. His work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while also examining the contexts that bore them. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often-overlooked cultural and political narratives from American history. Working with antique quilts that echo rumors of their use as signposts on the Underground Railroad, he engages these legends and contributes to this narrative by drawing and painting directly onto them.

Across a 20-year practice, Hermitage Fellow Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons.

Hermitage Fellow Todd Gray works in photography, performance, and sculpture. Gray’s work is represented in numerous museum collections. He works between Los Angeles and Ghana, where he explores the diasporic dislocations and cultural connections which link Western hegemony with West Africa.

Trenton Doyle Hancock won the Hermitage Greenfield Prize in 2013. Influenced by the history of painting, especially Abstract Expressionism, he transforms traditionally formal decisions — such as the use of color, language, and pattern — into opportunities to create new characters, develop sub-plots, and convey symbolic meaning. Balancing moral dilemmas with wit and a musical sense of language and color, Hancock’s works create a painterly space of psychological dimensions. Trenton Doyle Hancock was the winner of the 2013 Hermitage Greenfield Prize for Visual Art.

Michelle Lopez is a Hermitage Fellow, interdisciplinary sculptor, and installation artist. As a builder, conceptualist, and manipulator of materials, Lopez inventively explores cultural phenomenon, stretching to their limits the industrial processes that craft consumerism in its many forms. Lopez examines collapsed political and social structures by inverting cultural tropes through the process of building, exploiting industrial materials to expose the hidden boundaries of embedded societal constructions.

A “one-time refugee from punk and sometime band member,” Hermitage Fellow Ted Riederer has armed himself with painting supplies, electric guitars, amplifiers, old LPs, record players, drum kits, hard disk recorders, photography equipment, a vinyl record lathe, and long-stemmed roses as he’s ambled artistically from the Americas to the Antipodes. His work has been shown nationally and internationally.

John Sims, a Detroit native and Hermitage Fellow, was an interdisciplinary conceptual artist who created multimedia projects spanning the areas of mathematics, art, text, performance, and political-media activism. His main projects were informed by the vocabulary of mathematical structure, the politics of sacred symbols and poetic reflections. As the former coordinator of mathematics at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, he designed a visual mathematics curriculum for artists and visual thinkers. John Sims died in 2022 at the age of 54.

Hermitage Fellow Kukuli Velerde left Peru as an adult, already aware of its racial, social, cultural and economic climate. Latin contemporary culture, its finest expression: family ties, and herself as result, are together the frame within which her work evolves. Velerde’s mediums include paining on aluminum plates and ceramic installations.

Hermitage Fellow William Villalongo’s work is concerned with stories and images of time and change in the arch of inhumanity to humanity that has marked the black experience shaping his subject and study as an artist. He often works in series where he looks for frameworks to make these concerns visible. A figure, a still life, a painting, a drawing or a sculpture are his vessels for information and sites to produce meaning.

 

Mar
28
Thu
“Piano Classics Remade” @ Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (Downtown Campus)
Mar 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
"Piano Classics Remade" @ Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (Downtown Campus)

“Piano Classics Remade”
Featuring Hermitage Fellow Conrad Tao

Presented in partnership with Marie Selby Botanical Garden

Conrad Tao’s concert and Hermitage residency are made possible through the Ruby E. Crosby Alumni Music Series at the Hermitage.

Thursday, March 28 at 7pm

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (entrance at 1534 Mound St, Sarasota, FL 34236)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

With his uniquely energetic style, celebrated concert pianist and composer Conrad Tao gives a masterful demonstration of all the nuance a piano is capable of delivering. This internationally renowned Hermitage Fellow alternates between the most cutting-edge music venues and some of the world’s most celebrated concert halls. From the New York Philharmonic to the Chicago Symphony and Germany’s Klavierfestival Ruhr, Tao has been known to play everything from Gershwin and Rachmoninoff to his own contemporary compositions, always with his instantly recognizable improvisatory panache. In the third season of the Hermitage’s annual Crosby Alumni Music Initiative, join Conrad Tao to pay homage to the music of our past and hear into the future of music.

Hermitage Fellow Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer and has been dubbed “the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music” (New York Magazine), and an artist of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” (The New York Times). Tao has performed as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony. As a composer, his work has been performed by orchestras throughout the world; his first large scale orchestral work, Everything Must Go, received its world premiere with the New York Philharmonic, and its European premiere with the Antwerp Symphony, and he was the recipient of a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, for Outstanding Sound Design / Music Composition, for his work on More Forever, in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Caleb Teicher. A returning Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, Tao is also the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was named a Gilmore Young Artist – an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation.

 

Apr
5
Fri
“Stage, Page, and Useful Rage” @ Hermitage Beach
Apr 5 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
"Stage, Page, and Useful Rage" @ Hermitage Beach

“Stage, Page, and Useful Rage”
with Hermitage Fellows Julia Jordan and Xochitl Gonzalez

Julia Jordan’s Hermitage Residency generously sponsored by Gerald & Sondra Biller.

Xochitl Gonzalez’s Hermitage Residency generously sponsored by Liz & Duncan Richardson.

Friday, April 5 at 6:30pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Englewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Some artists adapt their art to get produced and noticed in the industry, but innovators like Hermitage Fellows Julia Jordan and Xochitl Gonzalez change the industry itself. Julia Jordan co-founded The Lilly’s, an organization dedicated to gender and racial parity in the American theater and served as its Executive President while creating such acclaimed theater works as Murder Ballad. Xochitl Gonzalez is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she was honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2023, and author of The New York Times best-selling novel Olga Dies Dreaming. Through both the works they create themselves and their advocacy for fellow artists, these two women are shaping our future world through their art and their words.

Hermitage Fellow Julia Jordan’s credits include select musicals; Murder Ballad (Conceived by, Book and Lyrics – Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics nominations) Sarah Plain and Tall (Book – Kleban Award, Jonathan Larson Award, ATandT Onstage Award) Select Plays; Boy (Susan Smith Blackburn Honorable Mention) Tatjana in Color (Francesca Primus Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn shortlist) DARK YELLOW (Susan Smith Blackburn shortlist) Film; The Hat (Sundance Film Festival, Bravo Channel) Dark Yellow (Best Short, Jackson Hole Film Fest.). Fellowships: Hermitage Artist Retreat, Lucille Lortel, Manhattan Theater Club, MacDowell, Juilliard Fellowships. Julia recently stepped down from her role as Executive Director of The Lilly Awards. She founded The Count, The Family Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm, and The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, Sculpture and Scholarship. She is the Former Treasurer of the Dramatists Guild and previously taught playwriting at Barnard College and NYU. Her work has been developed at Sundance, The O’Neill Playwrights Center, Ojai Playwrights Festival.

Hermitage Fellow Xochitl Gonzalez is a cultural critic, producer, screenwriter, and the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a “Best of 2022” by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR, Olga Dies Dreaming was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Awards. Her new novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, was just released by Flatiron Books. Gonzalez is a 2021 M.F.A. graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her non-fiction work has been published in Elle Decor, Allure, Vogue, Real Simple, and The Cut. As a staff writer for The Atlantic, she was recognized as a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. Prior to her career as a writer, Gonzalez was an entrepreneur, fundraiser, and all-around hustler for nearly 20 years. She is a board member of the Lower East Side Girls Club and the Brooklyn Public Library, and a trustee of the corporation of Brown University, where she received her B.A. in Visual Art. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, she lives in her hometown of Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.

Apr
13
Sat
“A Conversation with 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Deepa Purohit” @ Hermitage Great Lawn
Apr 13 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
“A Conversation with 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Deepa Purohit” @ Hermitage Great Lawn

“A Conversation with 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Deepa Purohit”
with Playwright & 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Deepa Purohit

Presented in partnership with the Greenfield Foundation, Community Foundation of Sarasota County, and Asolo Repertory Theatre

Saturday, April 13 at 3pm

Hermitage Great Lawn (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Sarasota, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

While we do not often discuss it directly, there is a question we all must encounter in our lives — how does one die with dignity? This question is at the heart of this year’s Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner Deepa Purohit’s new play commission. Further complicating this personal and profound theatrical exploration is a society that values a sophisticated medical system centered on a key tenet: to prolong life. Growing up with a father who immigrated to Ohio and built his career as a surgeon in the American medical system, and a mother who spent many years at the end of her life navigating the complex system as a patient, Purohit brings deep personal connections and insight to the creation of this new work of theater. Join the Hermitage for a candid conversation with this gifted playwright at the very beginning of this work’s journey, as well as her recent Off-Broadway debut at the Atlantic Theater Company.

Deepa Purohit (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based playwright. She made her Off-Broadway debut in the Atlantic Theater Company’s 2022-23 season with the world premiere of her play Elyria (2023 Drama League Award Nominee for Outstanding Production of a Play, 2017 NEA Commission, and 2019 Jerome Foundation support w/Ma-Yi Theater Company). She received the 2023 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for Excellence in Playwriting, and a 2022-23 Edgerton Foundation Award for Elyria. Plays: Crushed Earth with Sanjit De Silva (2017 People’s Light Theatre: New Play Frontiers Commission) – 2023 audio play debut with People’s Light, Theatre Horizon, and Hedgerow Theatre, The In Between, Mxx/perience, A Valentine (2016 Kilroys Honorable Mention), Bones (2017 Andrew Mellon Foundation Residency w/Ma-Yi Theater Company), Have Sari Will Travel! (Rising Circle Theater Collective), Flight, and Mothering: a collection of short form plays. Co-writing with Sanjit De Silva and Rising Circle Theater Collective: Pulling the Lever, American Family Project, Grace. Deepa is currently adapting Elyria into a TV series and working on a NYSCA new play commission from Atlantic Theater Company.   She co-founded and ran Rising Circle Theater Collective (2000-2012), a theater company centered on the stories of people of color. A former Baltimore City middle school teacher and 1992 Teach For America alumna, Deepa has a BA in History from Northwestern University, Masters in Public Health from Columbia University, and an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. She is currently the Director of New Works at People’s Light Theatre.

 

“Hermitage Artists and Thinkers: South Asian Artists in America” @ Hermitage Beach
Apr 13 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
"Hermitage Artists and Thinkers: South Asian Artists in America" @ Hermitage Beach

“Hermitage Artists and Thinkers: South Asian Artists in America”
with 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Deepa Purohit and Hermitage Fellows Kavita Shah and Nandita Shenoy

Presented in partnership with the Greenfield Foundation and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County

Saturday, April 13 at 6:30pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Englewood, FL 34223)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

Central to 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Deepa Purohit’s commission are the lives of South Asian women. To uplift and contextualize those stories and in honor of the Hermitage’s mission to serve artists across multiple disciplines, several Hermitage Fellows are coming together for a panel conversation highlighting the impact of representation and the rich diversity of lived experience coming from that particular part of the world. Singer, composer, and educator Kavita Shah has been praised by NPR for her “amazing dexterity with musical languages,” and her unique talents have taken her to concert halls and communities around the world. Playwright and actor Nandita Shenoy’s work has been seen across the United States, and her work on the steering committee for the Asian-American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) was honored with a 2020 Obie Award for their advocacy in the field of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Join these three remarkable women to hear about their artistic practices as innovative South Asian artists making bold and original work in the United States. Moderated by Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg.

Deepa Purohit (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based playwright. She made her Off-Broadway debut in the Atlantic Theater Company’s 2022-23 season with the world premiere of her play Elyria (2023 Drama League Award Nominee for Outstanding Production of a Play, 2017 NEA Commission, and 2019 Jerome Foundation support w/Ma-Yi Theater Company). She received the 2023 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award for Excellence in Playwriting, and a 2022-23 Edgerton Foundation Award for Elyria. Plays: Crushed Earth with Sanjit De Silva (2017 People’s Light Theatre: New Play Frontiers Commission) – 2023 audio play debut with People’s Light, Theatre Horizon, and Hedgerow Theatre, The In Between, Mxx/perience, A Valentine (2016 Kilroys Honorable Mention), Bones (2017 Andrew Mellon Foundation Residency w/Ma-Yi Theater Company), Have Sari Will Travel! (Rising Circle Theater Collective), Flight, and Mothering: a collection of short form plays. Co-writing with Sanjit De Silva and Rising Circle Theater Collective: Pulling the Lever, American Family Project, Grace. Deepa is currently adapting Elyria into a TV series and working on a NYSCA new play commission from Atlantic Theater Company.   She co-founded and ran Rising Circle Theater Collective (2000-2012), a theater company centered on the stories of people of color. A former Baltimore City middle school teacher and 1992 Teach For America alumna, Deepa has a BA in History from Northwestern University, Masters in Public Health from Columbia University, and an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. She is currently the Director of New Works at People’s Light Theatre.

Hermitage Fellow Kavita Shah is an award-winning vocalist, composer, researcher, and educator who makes work in deep engagement with the jazz tradition, while also addressing and advancing its global sensibilities. A lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin hailed for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR), Shah incorporates her ethnographic research on Brazilian, West African, and Indian traditions into her original music. Notable projects include “Visions” (2014), co-produced by Lionel Loueke, “Folk Songs of Naboréa” (2017), presented at the Park Avenue Armory, and “Interplay” (2018) in duo with François Moutin, which was nominated for France’s Victoires de la Musique for Jazz Album of the Year. Shah regularly performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Harvard and a Master’s in Jazz Voice from Manhattan School of Music.

Hermitage Fellow and theater artist Nandita Shenoy is a New York-based writer and actor. Her play The Future is Female was recently a Finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and her Rage Play was named to the 2020 Kilroys List. Her play Washer/Dryer has been produced multiple times nationally after its world premiere at LA’s East-West Players and an Off-Broadway production at Ma-Yi Theater, in which she also starred. Her first full-length play, Lyme Park: An Austonian Romance of an Indian Nature, was produced by the Hegira in Washington, DC. Her one-acts have been produced in New York City and regionally. Nandita won the 2014 Father Hamblin Award in Playwriting. Her acting credits range from dancing on national tours to Shakespeare festivals to world premieres of new plays by living playwrights. She is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, Dramatists Guild, Actors Equity Association, and SAG/AFTRA. She also sits on the Steering Committee of the Asian-American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC), which won a 2020 Obie for their Advocacy in the Field of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Nandita holds a BA in English literature from Yale University. NanditaShenoy.com

 

Apr
14
Sun
“2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner” @ Michael's on East
Apr 14 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
"2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner" @ Michael's on East

“2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner”
Honoring the 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Recipient, Playwright Deepa Purohit

Presented in partnership with the Greenfield Foundation

With Lead Community Sponsorship from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County 

Sunday, April 14 at 6pm

Michael’s on East (entrance at 1212 S East Ave, Sarasota, FL 34239)

Click here for more information.
For sponsorship information, contact:
Amy Wallace
Development@HermitageArtistRetreat.org
(941) 475-2098, Ext. 2.

Anchoring a series of events celebrating the prestigious Hermitage Greenfield Prize, this elegant dinner heralds the jury-selected prize recipient. The $35,000 Hermitage Greenfield Prize commission is awarded annually by the Hermitage Artist Retreat in partnership with the Greenfield Foundation, and rotates among music, theater, and visual art.

The 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize will be awarded in the discipline of theater, and the newly commissioned work will premiere in Sarasota in the spring of 2026.

Past recipients of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize include: Rennie Harris, choreographer (2023), Sandy Rodriguez, visual artist (2023), Angélica Negrón, composer/instrumentalist (2022); Aleshea Harris, playwright (2021); Helga Davis, composer/performer (2019); Martyna Majok, playwright (2018); David Burnett, photojournalist (2017); Coco Fusco, interdisciplinary artist (2016); Bobby Previte, composer/drummer (2015); Nilo Cruz, playwright (2014); Trenton Doyle Hancock, visual artist (2013); Vijay Iyer, composer/pianist (2012); John Guare, playwright (2011); Sanford Biggers, visual artist (2010); Craig Lucas, playwright (2009); and Eve Beglarian, composer (2009).

Apr
15
Mon
“Azul Naranja Salado: Angélica Negrón’s Hermitage Greenfield Prize Premiere”
Apr 15 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
"Azul Naranja Salado: Angélica Negrón's Hermitage Greenfield Prize Premiere"

Please note this program is not part of the Hermitage’s traditional free programming. This event is presented in partnership with enSRQ as part of their season of work.

“Azul Naranja Salado: Angélica Negrón’s Hermitage Greenfield Prize Premiere”
with Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Angélica Negrón

Presented in partnership with enSRQ

Made possible with generous support from the Greenfield Foundation.

Community Foundation of Sarasota County, Lead Community Sponsor.

Monday, April 15 at 7pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Rd, Englewood, FL 34223)

Click here for Tickets
Single Tickets are $25.

Angélica Negrón‘s commission seeks to engage the senses and encourage listeners to resist distractions. Her composition will be timed with the setting sun and inspired partly by the sun’s low-frequency sounds, as captured by scientists from NASA and the European Space Agency. The piece will feature slowly evolving musical textures, shifting patterns, natural sounds, and changes in scale and dimension that play with the unfolding gradations of light and color on the surrounding land, water, and sky. Composed for a unique ensemble of low strings, harps, percussion and electronics, Negrón hopes this  site-specific work will serve as a gentle reminder to the audience to seek out and surrender to moments of inspiration.

Angélica Negrón is a Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist and the winner of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. She writes music for voices, orchestras, and film as well as robots, toys, and plants. Angélica is known for playing with the unexpected intersection of classical and electronic music, unusual instruments, and found sounds. Residencies and commissions include WNYC’s The Greene Space (a 4-part variety show/multimedia exploration of sound and personal history), the NY Botanical Garden (an immersive site-specific work for electronics and 100 voices), and Opera Philadelphia (a drag opera film in collaboration with Mathew Placek and Sasha Velour). Her work has been commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, NY Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, and Roomful of Teeth. Angélica’s original scores for HBO include the docuseries Menudo: Forever Young and You Were My First Boyfriend directed by Cecilia Aldarondo. Recent premieres include works for Dallas Symphony Orchestra (featuring Lido Pimienta as a soloist), Santa Rosa Symphony & Eugene Symphony (First Symphony project), and her Carnegie Hall debut, commissioned and performed by Sō Percussion. As the recipient of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Angélica will compose a work synchronized to the setting sun, inspired by solar pulses captured by NASA, for EnsembleNewSRQ. Angélica regularly performs a solo show and is a founding member of the tropical electronic band Balún. Performances include the Big Ears Festival 2022 and various engagements in New York City, San Juan, and nationwide. Her musical education includes early studies at El Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico under Alfonso Fuentes—while making waves as a member of San Juan’s local DIY music scene—and later studies both at NYU under Pedro da Silva and The Graduate Center (CUNY) under Tania León. An educator herself, Angélica became a teaching artist with NY Phil’s Very Young Composers program (2013-2021) and with Lincoln Center Education (2014-2018), guiding young artists in creative composition projects. Angélica lives in Brooklyn, where she’s always looking for ways to incorporate her love of drag, comedy, and the natural world into her work.

 

Apr
21
Sun
“The Truth of the Night Sky: A Hermitage Collaboration” @ Sarasota Art Museum
Apr 21 @ 10:00 am – Sep 29 @ 5:00 pm
"The Truth of the Night Sky: A Hermitage Collaboration" @ Sarasota Art Museum

“The Truth of the Night Sky: A Hermitage Collaboration”
featuring Hermitage Fellows Anne Patterson and Patrick Harlin

Presented in partnership with Sarasota Art Museum

Sunday April 21 to  Sunday September 29

Sarasota Art Museum (entrance at 1001 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34236)

Click here for more information.

The Truth of the Night Sky, a Hermitage collaboration, is the second exhibition of Hermitage alumni premiering at Sarasota Art Museum this spring – opening on April 21, 2024 and remaining on display through September 29, 2024. After meeting while in residence at the Hermitage Artist Retreat ten years ago and building on their friendship and collaboration, multidisciplinary visual artist Anne Patterson and composer / soundscape artist Patrick Harlin have joined forces to develop this one-of-a-kind immersive experience. Patterson, who is familiar to Sarasota audiences from previous exhibitions at The Ringling Museum and whose “Divine Pathways” is currently represented in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, is widely celebrated for her grand environments that immerse the viewer and surround the senses. A distinguished Hermitage alumna with an impressive background in immersive exhibitions and theatrical design, Anne Patterson has frequently collaborated with musicians, including fellow Hermitage alum Patrick Harlin, to design mesmerizing environments. For this collaborative project, Patterson and Harlin are expanding upon Harlin’s original composition Earthrise (2022), an orchestral piece inspired by the eponymous photograph (1968) taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on humanity’s first-ever trip around the moon. The original composition by Patrick Harlin, who was also the very first recipient of the Hermitage Prize in Composition at the Aspen Music Festival, will play as visitors pass through the galleries. The exhibition will feature several works by Patterson, as well as a suspended tree and her signature satin ribbon installation work. With each step, visitors will travel imaginatively through space and time. Of their time at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Patterson and Harlin are fond of saying that their experience was invaluable to their craft and their collaboration, allowing them to achieve new heights, find a unique environmental inspiration, and explore new possibilities in their work.

Hermitage alumna Anne Patterson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. She recently served as a juror for the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Her body of work consists of paintings, sculptures, and large-scale multimedia installations that combine sculpture, architecture, lighting, video, music, and scent. Drawing from her background in theater and opera set design, she uses these modalities to create an artistic practice, hovering somewhere between the visual, experiential and immersive. Patterson’s large-scale installations have filled cathedrals, office buildings, and galleries across the country with miles of fabric, aluminum ribbon, and metal birds. Her most recent installation, “Divine Pathways” was created in concert with communities and organizations across the Morningside Heights neighborhood in New York City and is now on display at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. “Ascendant Light,” commissioned by Capital One as the centerpiece of their new corporate headquarters, is made of hundreds of hand plotted ribbons over six stories. Other recent commissions include “Art for Earth,” commissioned by the fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna, was made of thousands of lengths of fabric repurposed from Zegna fabrics. Anne has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at The Ringling Museum and Alfstad & Contemporary. Her work has been shown at The Trapholt Museum, Denmark; Cristina Grajales, New York; Scope Art Fair, Miami; Aqua Art Fair, Miami; Building Bridges Art Exchange, Los Angeles; Valerie Dillon Gallery, New York; Denise Bibro, New York; Cade Tompkins Projects, Providence, RI and One Twelve Gallery, Atlanta. Her paintings and sculptures are in private, public, and corporate collections across the USA (Tishman Speyer, Tribune Media, Nortek, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Rhode Island Blue Cross) and in London. Anne’s theatrical and symphonic partnerships have included Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Arena Stage, The Wilma Theater, The Kennedy Center, Alliance Theater and prestigious symphonies throughout the country (San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle).  Patterson was the 2014 and 2016 CODAaward Winner for Liturgical Art and received a Creative Capital Award in 2008. She is a proud Fellow of the Hermitage Artist’s Retreat. In Sarasota, her work has been exhibited at The Ringling Museum and commissioned by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Patterson received her B.A. of Architecture from Yale University and her M.F.A. in Theater Design from The Slade School of Art, London UK.

Hermitage Fellow Patrick Harlin’s “aesthetics capture a sense of tradition and innovation” (The New York Times). He is the inaugural recipient of the Hermitage Prize in Composition at the Aspen Music Festival, which offered a residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Manasota Key, Florida. Harlin’s music is permeated by classical, jazz, and electronic music traditions, all underpinned with a love and respect for the great outdoors. His works have been performed on subscription series concerts by the St. Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, the Rochester and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestras, Collegium Cincinnati, and Calidore String Quartet, among others. CD recordings include Wilderness Anthology by the Kinetic Ensemble and American Rapture on the Grammy-nominated album by the Rochester Philharmonic. Patrick was the inaugural composer in residence with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra (2019-2023.) To date, he is the only artist-recipient of a DOW Sustainability Fellowship. While at the Hermitage, Harlin met visual artist Anne Patterson, and they have been collaborating since, including the work The Art of Flight with Anne’s art installation “Murmuration.” Patrick’s interdisciplinary research in soundscape ecology — a field that aims to better understand ecosystems through sound — has taken him to imperiled regions around the world, including the Amazon rainforest and the Book Cliffs of Utah. His baseline recordings for ecological impact studies are also the fodder for artistic inspiration.  Patrick’s research on the importance of soundscapes has been supported by a Graham Sustainability Institute Doctoral Fellowship, Rackham Fellowship, Theodore Presser Award, and private support. The resulting works, the Wilderness Anthology draw parallels between the sounds of the natural world and those of the concert hall, seeking to bring awareness to the importance of sound in our environment. Patrick grew up in Seattle, holds a doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Ann Arbor.

 

Apr
24
Wed
“Writing for the Stage: The Annette Dignam State College of Florida Residency in Literature at the Hermitage” @ State College of Florida, Venice Campus
Apr 24 @ 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
"Writing for the Stage: The Annette Dignam State College of Florida Residency in Literature at the Hermitage" @ State College of Florida, Venice Campus

“Annette Dignam State College of Florida Residency in Literature at the Hermitage:  Writing for the Stage”
with Hermitage Fellow Sarah Gancher

Presented in partnership with State College of Florida

Sarah Gancher’s Hermitage Artist Residency made possible by the Annette Dignam State College of Florida Residency in Literature at the Hermitage.

Wednesday, April 24 at 3:30pm

State College of Florida (entrance at 8000 S Tamiami Trail, Venice, FL 34293)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

An Obie Award-winning playwright whose work has been produced at some of the country’s leading theaters, Hermitage Fellow Sarah Gancher is no stranger to writing for the stage. From works such as the recent Off-Broadway play Russian Troll Farm to collaborative musical projects like Hundred Days and The Lucky Ones with The Bengsons, Gancher has done it all. In this special program made possible by the support of the Dignam Family, Gancher will offer insight into how she approaches a range of projects, give updates on what is next for her, and share samples of her original works.

Hermitage Fellow Sarah Gancher is a Obie Award-winning playwright who loves epic stories, big ideas, and deep comedy. Her plays have been produced or developed at London’s National Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, The Public, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, The Vineyard, The Atlantic, Berkeley Rep, Steppenwolf, New York Stage and Film, Ars Nova, WP Theatre, The Flea, La Jolla Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Geva Theatre, Hartford Stage, and RoundHouse, among others. She has been a Time Warner Fellow at the WP Playwrights Lab, a member of P73’s writer’s group, a Playwrights’ Realm Writing Fellow, a member of the Orchard Project’s Greenhouse Lab, and a member of the Ars Nova Play Group. She is a resident at New Dramatists. Sarah is the winner of the Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre, New York Stage and Film Founder’s Award, and the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. Her play Russian Troll Farm ​won a special citation Obie Award, and was named one of the year’s ten best productions of 2020 by The New York Times. Sarah has written two musicals with rock band The Bengsons: The Lucky Ones, a commission for Ars Nova, and Hundred Days, which had its New York premiere at the 2017 Under the Radar festival at the Public and went on to rave reviews at New York Theatre Workshop and a national tour. Both The Lucky Ones and Hundred Days garnered a number of Lortel, Drama League, and Drama Desk nominations and wins. Sarah was the collaborating playwright on Mission Drift, a musical about capitalism and the myth of the frontier written with director Rachel Chavkin, composer Heather Christian, and The TEAM. It was included on The Guardian‘s Top 50 Shows of the 21st Century. Her latest musical in development, Eugene Onegin, was a 2024 finalist for the Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre. She currently teaches playwriting at NYU Tisch’s Department of Dramatic Writing and The New School’s MFA Playwriting program.

May
2
Thu
“Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens: Sound and Silence” @ Historic Spanish Point
May 2 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
"Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens: Sound and Silence" @ Historic Spanish Point

“Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens: Sound and Silence”
with Hermitage Fellows Bill Bowers and Kavita Shah

Thursday, May 2 at 6:30pm

Historic Spanish Point (entrance at 401 N Tamiami Trail, Osprey, FL 34229)

Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.

We say a lot with our words, but in the hands of a gifted artist, the notes in between and the gestures underneath unlock even deeper expression. Hear from two such creators in “Sound and Silence” as part of Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens series, featuring returning Hermitage Fellows Bill Bowers and Kavita Shah. A celebrated mime by training and a master of physical theater techniques, Bill Bowers is a charismatic storyteller who is currently writing his remarkable life story in a memoir about making theater all over the world. Hailed for her “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR), Kavita Shah speaks several languages and sings amazingly in them all. These two Hermitage Fellows embrace both the sounds and the silences surrounding them as opportunities for connecting through performance.

As an actor, mime, and educator, returning Hermitage Fellow Bill Bowers has traveled to all fifty of the United States, and throughout Europe and Asia. His Broadway credits include Zazu in The Lion King and Leggett in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Bowers has written and performed his own plays Off-Broadway and in theaters around the world. These plays include: ‘Night Sweetheart ‘Night Buttercup, Under a Montana Moon, It Goes Without Saying, Beyond Words, and All Over the Map. His newest solo play, The Traveler, is streaming on line and he has just completed filming an adaptation of Peter and the Wolf with the American Classical Orchestra that will air on PBS this season. A returning Hermitage Fellow, Bowers has been hailed by critics as “the great American mime,” winning top honors at festivals throughout the world. He was a student of the legendary Marcel Marceau. Bill-Bowers.com

Hermitage Fellow Kavita Shah is an award-winning vocalist, composer, researcher, and educator who makes work in deep engagement with the jazz tradition, while also addressing and advancing its global sensibilities. A lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin hailed for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR), Shah incorporates her ethnographic research on Brazilian, West African, and Indian traditions into her original music. Notable projects include “Visions” (2014), co-produced by Lionel Loueke, “Folk Songs of Naboréa” (2017), presented at the Park Avenue Armory, and “Interplay” (2018) in duo with François Moutin, which was nominated for France’s Victoires de la Musique for Jazz Album of the Year. Shah regularly performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Harvard and a Master’s in Jazz Voice from Manhattan School of Music.