SICK MUSIC

SICK CENTER proposes Sick Music(s) as a category, and tool of communal speculation; the innovation of Sick Music as genre(s) is an experiment towards creating new nodes of connection and solidarity between Sick musicians (and listeners)- living, ancestral, and our shared critical fabulations (a term borrowed from Saidya Hartman).

This event is the first in a series of meet-ups for Chronically Ill/Sick Musicians and Singers in NYC, towards building community, sharing questions, ideas, struggles with each other. We'll start with a short presentation of research by Anna : “Bed Pianos, and a missing Sick Music archive,” followed by discussion, and opportunity for a few communal musical experiments — trying out ideas around sick and tired improvisation and singing.""

Access info :

The event is located at Arts on Site at 12 Saitnt Marks Place.

Those who are not able to join in the space, can join via zoom, a link will be shared with those who have registered prior to the event.

Air purifiers will be in use, and masks required. Rapid Tests will be available for any who are not able to mask.

Sick Music is Anna RG (she/they), a Culture Push Associated Artist.

Anna makes work in composition, traditional music, sculpture, and community organizing. Based in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, her experimentation is rooted in a decade of apprenticeships in communities of traditional song, fiddle and banjo in Appalachia; and more recently in her experiences with long covid and disability justice community.

Her longtime folk music/theater duo Anna&Elizabeth was heralded as “a radical expansion of what folk songs are supposed to do”(The New Yorker). Smithsonian Folkways artists, they performed at Carnegie Hall, the Newport Folk Festival, the Hirshhorn Museum, Big Ears Festival (where she was guest curator of traditional music), and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, and many other venues which are not currently accessible to high risk/immunocompromised artists. Anna has played with musicians across genres, including Lonnie Holley, Cochemea Gastelum, Susan Alcorn, Ellen Fullman, Sarah Hennies, and wrote a piece for the award winning Aizuri Quartet.