Partnerships

The Hermitage partners with organizations of all kinds to support residencies and to create meaningful arts programming for the community. Local, national, and international partnerships have included:

Alliance of Artists Communities

American Opera Projects
Brooklyn, NY

Art Center Sarasota
Sarasota, FL

Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County
Sarasota, FL

Asolo Repertory Theatre
Sarasota, FL

Aspen Music Festival and School
Aspen CO

Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation
Sarasota, FL

The Bay Park
Sarasota, FL

Black Theatre United
New York, NY

Booker High School Visual and Performing Arts (VPA)
Sarasota, FL

Bookstore1
Sarasota, FL

Camargo Foundation
Cassis, France

Charlotte County Public Schools
Port Charlotte, FL

City of Antwerp
Belgium

Community Foundation of Sarasota County
Sarasota, FL

Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast
Osprey, FL

ensembleNEWSRQ
Sarasota, FL

Florida Alliance for Arts Education
Orlando, FL

Florida Humanities Council
St. Petersburg, FL

Florida Studio Theatre
Sarasota, FL

Greenfield Foundation
Philadelphia, PA

Gulf Coast Community Foundation
Sarasota, FL

John & Mable Ringing Museum of Art
Sarasota, FL

Manasota ASALH
Sarasota, FL

Manatee County School District
Bradenton, FL

Nantucket Screenwriters Colony
Nantucket, MA

New College of Florida
Sarasota, FL

Observer Media Group
Sarasota, FL

The Players Centre
Sarasota, FL

Resilient Retreat
Sarasota, FL

Ringling College of Art & Design
Sarasota, FL

SaraSolo Festival
Sarasota, FL

Sarasota Contemporary Dance
Sarasota, FL

Sarasota County Schools
Sarasota, FL

Sarasota Film Festival
Sarasota, FL

Sarasota Museum of Art
Sarasota, FL

Sarasota Opera
Sarasota, FL

Sarasota Orchestra
Sarasota, FL

Selby Foundation
Sarasota, FL

Selby Gardens
Sarasota, FL

State College of Florida
Bradenton, FL

Urbanite Theatre
Sarasota, FL

Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe
Sarasota, FL

Van Wezel Foundation
Sarasota, FL

Venice Theatre
Venice, FL

The Hermitage property is owned by Sarasota County and is leased to the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Inc.
The property is maintained by the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Inc. and the Sarasota County Department of Parks and Recreation.

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Oct

Fri

ZOOM: “As the Musical Turns: A Soap Inspiration” @ ZOOM

Tickets

Oct 21 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

“As the Musical Turns: A Soap Inspiration”
with Hermitage Fellow Michael R. Jackson

Friday, October 21 at 6pm

Virtual Event: Registered Guests will receive a link 24 hours prior to the program.

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

For many, the trials and tribulations of characters on any number of contemporary soap operas have been constant companions for years; we laugh at their antics, cry at their heartbreaks, and scratch our heads at their improbable circumstances. In the hands of Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award Winner Michael R. Jackson there is more than a quickly accessible story in soap operas; there is cultural insight with a biting wit. Funny and irreverent but always quintessentially human, hear from Michael on how soap operas and other sources of inspiration have shaped his work in a candid conversation moderated by Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg.

Michael R. Jackson is a returning Hermitage Fellow and the recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, and New York Drama Critics Circle winning musical A Strange Loop (which had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) was called “a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins” and a “gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies” by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In addition to A Strange Loop, Jackson also wrote book, music, and lyrics for White Girl in Danger. Awards and associations include the New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, an Antonyo Award, a Fred Ebb Award, and a Dramatist Guild Fellowship. Jackson is an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group. For a full bio, visit: TheLivingMichaelJackson.com

Oct

Fri

“Composition to Performance: Music Start to Finish” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

Oct 28 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

“Composition to Performance: Music Start to Finish”
with Hermitage Fellows Nkeiru Okoye and David ‘Doc’ Wallace

Friday, October 28 at 5:30pm

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

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

Like many art forms, music begins in the imagination of one creator, is documented on paper, and later interpreted by a completely different individual. But perhaps more than any other artform, musical creation, notation, and performance is simultaneously codified and constantly evolving. Hear from two exceptional practitioners on the process from start to finish. Nkeiru Okoye’s work is performed around the world, welcoming and affirming traditional and new audiences alike; David “Doc” Wallace is the chair of Berklee College of Music’s String Department whose performance style has been described by The York Times as “Jimmy Page fronting Led Zeppelin.”

Hermitage Fellow Nkeiru Okoye is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. She was born in New York, NY and raised on Long Island. After studying composition, music theory, piano, conducting, and Africana Studies at Oberlin Conservatory, she pursued graduate studies at Rutgers University and became one of the leading African American women composers. An activist through the arts, Okoye creates a body of work that welcomes and affirms both traditional and new audiences. Her works have been commissioned, performed and presented by Detroit Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera North UK, Mt. Holyoke College, Juilliard School, Houston Grand Opera, the American Opera Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Symphony, Tanglewood Music Festival, Virginia Symphony, Tulsa Opera, Royal Opera House, Da Capo Chamber Players, Cellist Matt Haimovitz, Pianist Lara Downes, Soprano Louise Toppin and many others. Her works include Briar Patch, Inside is What Remains, Black Bottom, We’ve Got Our Eye on You, Voices Shouting Out, Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom, Charlotte Mecklenburg, Songs of Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, African Sketches, and The Creation. Among her honors are a Hermitage Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the inaugural International Florence Price Society award for composition, a Beneva Foundation award, composer grants from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, many awards from ASCAP, the Yvar Mishakoff Trust for New Music, and the National Endowment of the Arts. An educator, Dr. Okoye has taught Master Classes and Composition Classes in colleges and Universities throughout the US including University of Michigan, Oberlin Conservatory, University of Denver, Old Dominion University, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music, The New School, Spelman College. Dr. Okoye’s music has been recorded on Albany Records, MSR Classics, Le Chateau Earl Records, and Rising Sun Music. Her works are published by Theodore Presser Music and Carl Fischer Music. They are available throughout the world. For a full bio, visit: NkeiruOkoye.com

David “Doc” Wallace improvises like “Jimmy Page fronting Led Zeppelin” (New York Times). Whether playing classical viola for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Texas fiddle with The Doc Wallace Trio, klezmer fusion with Yale Strom’s Broken Consort, new compositions with Hat Trick (his flute-viola-harp trio), or six-string electric viola at heavy metal shows, Wallace is at home in front of an audience. Around the globe, musicians have widely adopted the ground-breaking approaches of his book Engaging the Concert Audience: a Musician’s Guide to Interactive Performance (Berklee Press). Wallace’s broadcast credits include NPR, PBS, KTV (Korea), Tokyo MX, WQXR, CBS, and ABC. He has recorded for Bridge Records, BIS, Innova, Tzadik, Resonance Records, and Mulatta Records. An award-winning composer, Wallace’s commissions for original compositions and arrangements include the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, the Marian Anderson String Quartet, and violinist Rachel Barton Pine. Currently Chair of Berklee College of Music’s String Department, David previously enjoyed a fourteen-year tenure as a Juilliard professor and seventeen years as a New York Philharmonic Teaching Artist. Learn and hear more at DocWallaceMusic.com

Nov

Wed

“Richard Kennedy: Performance and Conversation” @ Ringling Museum: Historic Asolo Theater

Tickets

Nov 2 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

“Richard Kennedy: Performance and Conversation”
with Hermitage Fellow Richard Kennedy

Presented in partnership with The Ringling Museum

Wednesday, November 2nd at 6pm

The Ringling Museum of Art: Historic Asolo Theater (entrance at 5401 Bay Shore Rd., Sarasota, FL 34243)

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

Returning Hermitage Fellow Richard Kennedy is a genre-defying creator working across dance, opera, and visual art. Just as their career has spanned Broadway and gallery spaces, museums and clubs, New York and Berlin, their interdisciplinary work is “…at once light with a sensual joy and heavy with mournful emotion” (ARTnews). Their wide variety of skills challenges and invites an audience to reimagine more traditionally defined boundaries of art. In a program combining performance and conversation, Kennedy reveals selections of past and upcoming work while also providing contextual insight.

Hermitage Fellow Richard Kennedy (b. 1985, Long Beach, CA) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. They have choreographed for SSION & Chino Amobi as well as collaborated on projects with NOWNESS, Nicopanda, and Hercules & Love Affair. Richard wrote You Can Shine (MR. INTL) and For Some Reason (Crew Love) before releasing their debut EP Open Wound in a Pool of Sharks (Sweat Equity, 2016). They presented two operas, Black Rage and Comeuppance at Signal in 2016. In 2017, they presented the ballet Both at Artists Space, From.Under.Above at MoMA PS1, and Everything is gonna be Ok at Danspace. In 2019 they received his M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in Music & Sound.

Nov

Fri

Hermitage @ Booker: “Reggie Harris and the Power of Music” @ Booker High School Courtyard

Tickets

Nov 4 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Hermitage @ Booker: “Reggie Harris and the Power of Music”
with Hermitage Fellow Reggie Harris

Presented in partnership with Booker High School VPA

Friday, November 4 at 5:30pm

Booker High School “Outdoor Courtyard” (entrance at 3201 N Orange Ave, Sarasota, FL 34234)

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

Returning Hermitage Fellow Reggie Harris believes that music has the power to unite, the power to uplift, and the power to heal. An international leader in the folk and acoustic music scene for more than 40 years, Harris brings all his skill and charm to Booker High School and is inviting the community along for the joyful ride. Join this incredible musician and storyteller to rediscover the essential power of music to move us all.

Hermitage Fellow Reggie Harris has been a vital part of international folk and acoustic music circles for over 40 years. He is a songwriter, a storyteller, songleader, educator and a Kennedy Center teaching artist who travels the world presenting over 300 performances a year spreading hope and light through song to audiences of all ages. As Co-President and Music Education Director for the Living Legacy Project, he leads pilgrimages to sites of the Modern Civil Rights movement in the southern US. Reggie’s solo CD Ready To Go was the #5 CD on the Folk DJ charts for 2018 and his collaboration Deeper Than the Skin with fellow artist Greg Greenway has led to a growing movement of “courageous conversations on race and history across the nation. He is an artist who entertains, educates and builds community throughout the world. For a full bio, visit: ReggieHarrisMusic.com

Nov

Sat

Artful Lobster @ Hermitage campus

Tickets

Nov 12 @ 11:30 am – 2:00 pm

The highly popular Artful Lobster is our signature fundraising event, and the only benefit to take place on our historic Gulf front campus on Manasota Key. With a luscious lobster feast catered by Michael’s On East and live entertainment featuring Hermitage Fellows, the Artful Lobster is anticipated as the season kick-off for many across our community. Learn more about this outdoor celebration here.

October – November 2022 Oct – Nov 2022

Partnerships

Hermitage Artists Respond to COVID-19.

Engage Creativity