Press Releases

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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Dec

Fri

“Angélica Negrón: Playing a Plant” @ Hermitage Great Lawn

Tickets

Dec 9 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

“Angélica Negrón: Playing a Plant”
with 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Angelica Negrón

Presented in partnership with ensembleNew SRQ, CreArte Latino, New Music New College and UnidosNow

Friday, December 9 at 5pm

Hermitage Great Lawn (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, Florida 34223)

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

2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winner Angélica Negrón is inspired by nature and the music all around her. Her wide-ranging performance and compositional practice extends beyond the traditional repertoire to include unconventional instruments such as plants and found objects, often layering in vocals and other electronics. Be among the first to hear a demonstration from this revolutionary artist and learn about her creative process before the outdoor orchestral string presentation of her Hermitage Greenfield Prize commission in Sarasota in 2024. (Negrón’s Hermitage Greenfield Prize commission is expected to culminate in an outdoor orchestral string performance in the spring of 2024, which will be presented in partnership with EnsembleNew SRQ.)

Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón is the winner of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. She writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2), while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, Prototype Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Negrón received an early education in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where she later studied composition under the guidance of composer Alfonso Fuentes. She holds a master’s degree in music composition from New York University where she studied with Pedro da Silva and pursued doctoral studies at The Graduate Center (CUNY), where she studied composition with Tania León. Also active as an educator, Negrón is currently a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. She has collaborated with artists like Sō Percussion, Lido Pimienta, Mathew Placek, Sasha Velour, Cecilia Aldarondo, Mariela Pabón, Adrienne Westwood, Tiffany Mills and has written music for films, theater and modern dance. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at WNYC’s The Greene Space working on El Living Room, a 4-part offbeat variety show and playful multimedia exploration of sound and story, of personal history and belonging. Recent and upcoming premieres include works for the Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative and multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. | AngelicaNegron.com

Dec

Thu

“Notes: On Writing and Music” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

Dec 15 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

“Notes: On Writing and Music”
with Hermitage Fellows Chigozie Obioma and Levy Lorenzo

Presented in partnership with Johann Fust Library Foundation

Thursday, December 15 at 5pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, Florida 34223)

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

Featuring two artists who both bring an international perspective, the program spans literature and music. Nigerian-born Chigozie Obioma, whose two novels The Fisherman and An Orchestra of Minorities were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize in Fiction, reads selections of his work and discusses his creative process. He is joined by Filipino-American musician, instrument designer, and returning Hermitage Fellow Levy Lorenzo, whose quirky and innovative work has been described as “a potent force on the side of exuberance, pleasure and awe of virtuosity” by The New York Times. Join these two incredible artists as the sun goes down on the Hermitage Beach.

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were shortlisted for The Booker Prize, making him one of only two novelists to be shortlisted for all their works. They have won awards including the inaugural FT/Oppenheimer Award for Fiction, the NAACP Image Award and the LA Times Book Prize, and been nominated for many others. His books have been translated into more than 29 languages. The Fishermen was adapted into an award-winning stage play by Gbolahan Obisesan that played in the UK and South Africa between 2018-2019. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015. His works have been published in The Guardian, VQR, Paris Review, New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the James E. Ryan Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and divides his time between the US and Nigeria. ChigozieObioma.com

Born in Bucharest, Filipino-American Levy Marcel Ingles Lorenzo, Jr. works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. On an international scale, his body of work spans custom electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, free improvisation, and classical percussion. With a primary focus on inventing new instruments, he prototypes, composes, and performs new electronic music. Lorenzo’s work has been featured at MoMA PS1, MIT Media Lab, STEIM, pitchfork.com, BBC, Burning Man, and The New York Times which named him an “electronics wizard.” A core member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble, he fulfills multiple roles as sound designer, electronics performer, and percussionist. Other performance engagements include Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project, and the Peter Evans Ensemble. Dr. Lorenzo holds a position as Assistant Professor of Creative Technologies at The New School, College of Performing Arts. LevyLorenzo.com

Jan

Fri

“Distinction and Unity” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

Jan 6 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

“Distinction and Unity”
with Hermitage Fellows DaMaris B. Hill, Molly Joyce, and Kenneth Tam

Friday, January 6 at 5pm

Hermitage Beach (entrance at 6660 Manasota Key Road, Englewood, Florida 34223)

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

Distinction is a term that is used to both elevate as well as separate. Join three distinguished Hermitage Fellows spanning literature, music, and visual art, each working through different styles and life experiences, each achieving recognition for the inventive work they create. Author DaMaris B. Hill’s latest work has been called “urgent” and “luminous” by Publisher’s Weekly. Molly Joyce is a composer and performer whose work focuses on disability as a creative source; she has been described as one of the “most versatile, prolific, and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Visual artist Kenneth Tam’s work focuses on ritual and reframing masculinity with a self-described “strain of absurdity and awkward humor.”

Returning Hermitage Fellow DaMaris B. Hill is the author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African-American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland (2020 NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry), The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, Vi-zə-bəl Teks-chərs (Visible Textures). Hill is inspired by the anxieties of our contemporary existence, complicated by fears that certain linear narratives of history fail to be inclusive. “I belong to a generation of people who do not fear death, but are afraid that we may be forgotten,” she states. Driven by a keen interest in the work of Toni Morrison and theories regarding ‘rememory’ as a philosophy and aesthetic practice, Hill uses digital material and critical fabulation research methods to write about “America” and geographic place. Similar to her creative process, Hill’s scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky. For more information: DaMarisHill.com

Hermitage Fellow Molly Joyce has been hailed as one of the “most versatile, prolific, and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. Molly’s creative projects have been presented and commissioned by Carnegie Hall, TEDxMidAtlantic, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical:NEXT, and in Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, and WNYC’s New Sounds. She is a graduate of Juilliard, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Yale, and alumnus of the YoungArts Foundation. She holds an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from City University of New York, and is a doctoral student at the University of Virginia in Composition and Computer Technologies. She has served on the composition faculties of New York University, Wagner College, and Berklee Online. For more information: MollyJoyce.com

Hermitage Fellow Kenneth Tam works in video, sculpture, installation, and photography, using the male body as a starting point for discussions about performance, physical intimacy and private ritual. Tam received his BFA from the Cooper Union. He has had solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; MIT List Center for Visual Arts; the Visual Arts Center at UT Austin, Commonwealth and Council, LA; Night Gallery, LA; Queens Museum, NY and at the ICA LA. Tam has participated in group shows at 47 Canal, NY; Hollybush Gardens, London; the Hammer Museum, LA; InPractice at SculptureCenter, Queens The Shed’s Open Call. He has participated in residencies including Artist Lab at 18th Street Arts Center; LMCC Workspace; The Core Residency Program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Pioneer Works; and at The Kitchen. Tam is a Lecturer at Princeton University, Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University and film/video faculty at Bard MFA. He was born in and currently lives in Queens, NY. For more information: KennethTam.info

Jan

Thu

“Violin and Voice” @ Hermitage Beach

Tickets

Jan 12 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

“Violin and Voice”
with Hermitage Fellows Lady Jess and Terry Guest

Presented in Partnership with Sarasota Magazine and Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast

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

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

Celebrated violinist, arts leader, and advocate Lady Jess combines talents with award-winning playwright Terry Guest in this dynamic program. This incredible duo will share words and music inspired by their experiences living and making work in the United States and around the world. Presented in partnership with Sarasota Magazine and Conversation Foundation of the Gulf Coast on the Hermitage Beach, join us to hear from these inspired creators.

Hermitage Fellow Lady Jess is a soloing member of Beyoncé’s band, and toured with the superstar and her husband, Jay-Z in 2018 for On The Run II tour, recording and arranging with the Carters for their Grammy-nominated album Everything Is Love in 2019, after appearing in the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary, Homecoming. She is a 2020 winner of the UNCSA Artpreneur of the Year award, 2020 Sphinx MPower grant recipient, and 2022 Sphinx MPower presenter. She has been a guest speaker and panelist for the League of American Orchestras, Gateways Music Festival, Sphinx Organization, University of NC School of the Arts, Apollo Theater and more. A regular session musician, Lady Jess was concertmaster and contractor for the Oscar nominated film Judas and The Black Messiah. She can also be heard on the soundtracks of The Lion King, Da 5 Bloods, Space Jam, Charlie’s Angels, It 2 and more. Artist collaborations include: Stevie Wonder, Solange, Max Richter, Carrie Mae Weems, Terrence Blanchard, Alicia Keys, et al. This year, in addition to completing her first tour with the Sphinx Virtuosi, Lady Jess released a premiere recording of music by Florence Price on the Naxos label with pianist Ric’key Pageot. For a complete Bio: LadyJessMusic.com

Hermitage Fellow Terry Guest is a Chicago-based playwright, actor, and teaching artist whose works include A Ghost in Satin (Williamstown Theatre Festival), The Magnolia Ballet (2022-2023 rolling world premieres), Marie Antionette and the Magical Negros, The Madness of Mary Todd (currently in development with Goodman Theatre), Andy Warhol Presents: The Cocaine Play, Ghost Town (Chicago Children’s Theatre), and At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen (The Story Theatre). Follow along on Instagram @terryexplainsitall or at TerryCGuest.com

Jan

Fri

“Man V. Nature: The Art of the Story Collection” @ Bookstrore1

Tickets

Jan 20 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

“Man V. Nature: The Art of the Story Collection”
with Hermitage Fellow Diane Cook

Presented in partnership with Bookstore1

Friday, January 20 at 6pm

Bookstore1 (entrance at 117 S Pineapple Ave, Sarasota, FL 34236)

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

Award-winning author and Hermitage Fellow Diane Cook’s debut work Man V. Nature is a collection of stories “told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality” (goodreads). Hear the creator of this remarkable work read selections from the text and discuss the intricacies of weaving a story collection around a theme. Interested in learning more? Join Bookstore1’s Short Story Book Club as they read Man V. Nature for additional insight into the work before meeting this breakout author.

Hermitage Fellow Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. She is a former producer for the radio show This American Life. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.

Jan

Mon

“Artists and Thinkers: Kareem Fahmy’s Distinct Society” @ ZOOM

Tickets

Jan 23 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

“Artists and Thinkers: Kareem Fahmy’s Distinct Society”
with Hermitage Fellow Kareem Fahmy

Presented with Support from Florida Humanities

Monday, January 23 at 5pm ET

Presented on Zoom

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

In Hermitage Fellow Kareem Fahmy’s play A Distinct Society, a sleepy library that straddles the U.S./Canada border becomes an unlikely crucible for five people from around the world when families separated by the “Muslim ban” begin using the library as a meeting place. Having its world premiere at Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City only a few days after this event, hear from the playwright about the origins of the story, the literary and cultural influences at play, and what this moment in history has to tell us about our present. Moderated by Hermitage Programs Manager James Monaghan, this Zoom conversation kicks off this season’s Hermitage “Artists and Thinkers” series, presented online.

Hermitage Fellow Kareem Fahmy is a Canadian-born playwright and director of Egyptian descent and was a 20-21 TCG Rising Leader of Color. His plays, which include Dodi and Diana, American Fast, A Distinct Society, The Triumphant, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the acclaimed Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building, have been developed at the Atlantic Theatre Company, New York Stage & Film, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Northlight Theatre, Target Margin Theater, The Lark, Fault Line Theater, and Noor Theater. He has directed and developed new plays at theaters around the country, including MCC, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New Group, New Dramatists, The Civilians, Geva Theatre, Pioneer Theatre, Portland Stage, Silk Road Rising, San Diego Rep, and Berkeley Rep. Fellowships/Residencies: Sundance Theatre Lab, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Phil Killian Directing Fellow), The O’Neill (National Directors Fellow), Second Stage (Van Lier Directing Fellow), Soho Rep (Writer/Director Lab), Lincoln Center (Directors Lab), New York Theater Workshop (Emerging Artist Fellow & Usual Suspect). Kareem is co-founder of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark and of Maia Directors, a consulting group for organizations and artists engaging with stories from the Middle East. MFA in Theatre Directing: Columbia University. For more information: KareemFahmy.com

Jan

Thu

Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens “Shariffa Ali: Roots, Routes, and Rhythm” @ Selby Gardens

Tickets

Jan 26 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens
“Shariffa Ali: Roots, Routes, and Rhythm”
with Hermitage Fellow Shariffa Ali

Presented in partnership with Marie Selby Botanical Gardens

The Hermitage Major Theater Award and Shariffa Ali’s residency is made possible with generous support from Flora Major and the Kutya Major Foundation

Thursday, January 26 at 5pm

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

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

2022 Hermitage Major Theater Award Winner Shariffa Ali shares her latest thinking on her new Hermitage commission in development. In collaboration with her longtime friend and South African-born vocalist Vuyo Sotashe, her project centers on small-town South Africa where a middle school choir, their principal, and their parents conspire to disguise the town’s most beloved singer as a girl in order to have him sing as a female soloist in a national competition. Learn about the origin for this in-progress commission, hear text and songs influencing the story, and get to know the theater-makers behind it in this next exciting installment of the “Hermitage Sunsets @ Selby Gardens” series.

Shariffa Chelimo Ali, born in Kenya and raised in South Africa, is an international theater maker, creative leader, director, and academic committed to advancing radical change through the power of art and activism. As a filmmaker, Ali’s works have been featured at acclaimed film/VR festivals and institutions throughout the world, including Sundance Film Festival (USA); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (South Africa); Brooklyn Film Festival (USA); Pan African Film Festival (USA); Electric Africa VR festival (South Africa) and DOK Neuland (Germany). As a theater artist and academic, Ali has taught at NYU, Brooklyn College, Yale University, and Princeton University. Past theater productions include Eclipsed, Detroit ’67, Intimate Apparel, We Are Proud to Present, and an original new musical called We Were Everywhere. In 2022, Ali was named Elizabeth M. Swayzee Artist-in-Residence at Miami University, where she curated the inaugural Black Roots Festival in the spring of 2022. For more information: Shariffa.com

December 2022 – January 2023 Dec 2022 – Jan 2023

Press Releases

Hermitage Artists Respond to COVID-19.

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