Performance: suite for a minor meeting

Join Tufts University Art Galleries and commissioned artist in Magical Thinking, of Systems and Belief Jonathan González for a performance, suite for a minor meeting, at the African Meeting House featuring performers Ifeanyi Epum, Ogechi Okoye, and Valentine Umeh. The performance refers to a print series on view at the Tufts University Art Galleries and a sonic composition for mezzo soprano, countertenor, and baritone voices, drawing upon layered embodied research for Black gathering. González draws inspiration from Asher Benjamin’s architectural renderings, William Grant Still Jr.’s Harlem Renaissance compositions and Roland Hayes’ arrangement of the African American Spiritual Lit’l Boy (1974), site-based abolitionist legacies from Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sarah Grimké, and conceptions of long emancipation and a Black Commons from Rinaldo Walcott, Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, and J.T. Roane.

The program will begin at 5:00 PM at the African Meeting House, 8 Smith Ct, Boston, MA 02114 with tea, followed by performers guiding audiences through the architecture at 5:30 PM, and ending in the Meeting House sanctuary.

Image: Jonathan González, Spectral Dances, American Academy of Arts and Letters. Performance Installation. Performer: Chazz Giovanni. 2024. Photo: Maria Baranova.