Baryshnikov Arts Hosts Bloodlines Interwoven, A Festival Of Art And Diaspora, At Kaatsbaan
A multicultural collaboration at Baryshnikov Arts will be taking over the Tivoli center in June.
Bloodlines Interwoven Festival Artistic Director Kauro Watanabe, standing, at Baryshnikov Arts in New York City, flanked by musicians Maeve Gilchrist and Adam O'Farrill. All photos provided by Baryshnikov Arts.
The Bloodlines Interwoven Festival presented by Baryshnikov Arts (BA) will be held at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, in Tivoli, New York, June 10-16. The week-long event will center around the musical collaborations of 15 renowned international musicians, who have been coming together over the past six months at the Manhattan-based arts center founded by famed dancer and performer Mikhail Baryshnikov. The group has been sharing their cultural experiences, personal stories and artistic visions to create a lineup of festival programming throughout the grounds of Kaatsbaan that will allow guests to experience performances of ethnically diverse music in a wholly original way.
The inaugural festival is funded by the Mellon Foundation and is intended to become an annual program. The week-long event will include artist talks, informal music-making in traditional and contemporary styles, evening-length concerts featuring commissioned world premieres by acclaimed composers, late-evening fireside music, and curated storytelling and discussion sessions.
The project is led by festival artistic director Kaoru Watanabe. An acclaimed composer and multi-instrumentalist, Watanabe’s work is grounded in traditional Japanese music while also pulling inspiration from contemporary jazz, improvisation, and experimental music elements. Watanabe’s process of infusing Japanese culture with disparate styles has made him an in-demand collaborator for other multidisciplinary artists including Wes Anderson, Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson, Jason Moran, Yo-Yo Ma, Bando Tamasaburo, and many others. A trained jazz musician, he lived in Japan for a decade, where he became the first American to become a performer and later the artistic director of the internationally lauded drumming ensemble Kodo.
Jen Shyu, Martha Redbone and Alicia Hall Moran
“In the last 30 years of my career, cross-cultural collaborations have been a central part of my work, where I'm really exploring how different types of music and different cultures can come together,” says Watanabe.
Through Bloodlines Interwoven, Watanabe and Baryshnikov Arts are looking to pioneer a new collaborative process by creating new works that emphasize history and heritage as a bridge across cultures. As part of this initiative, the 15 featured artists — whose work is informed by their diverse creative, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds — are currently taking part in a five-month-long residency at BA’s studio in Manhattan, where they are sharing the stories of their ancestors, artistic process, and everything else about themselves in multiple “Gatherings.”
The "Gatherings" are described as a “durational dialogue of diaspora musicians and other artists and a sharing of all that makes up culture language, food, religions, customs, and philosophies,” Artists will be presenting a broad range of traditions as they speak to one another, seeking to embrace original and distinct perspectives and concepts. Watanabe said he wants to move away from the established performer-audience experience of the “world music” genre and create an experience that puts visitors in the cultural conversation more as participants than voyeur.
“The mold that I was trying to break with this festival is, instead of having one group after another perform, we have multiple artists from multiple places come together and play together,” Watanabe continues. “They are really developing works together. And, in order to develop works together, it's not just finding the right rhythms and scales that work on top of each other, but really building an understanding of where these influences come from, where the culture comes from.”
Featured artists include: Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar; operatic mezzo-soprano and conceptual vocal artist Alicia Hall Moran; vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and Guggenheim Fellow Jen Shyu; and harpist Maeve Gilchrist — just to name a few from the diverse group.
A gathering of Bloodlines Interwoven musicians at BA
Bloodlines Festival, prepared by and at Baryshnikov Arts in Manhattan, is being staged in the bucolic setting of Kaatsbaan thanks to the site’s former executive director Sonja Kostich, now the president and executive director at BA. An accomplished dancer in her own right, Kostich danced with Baryshnikov throughout her performance career and she facilitated a relationship between Kaatsbaan and BA during her time in Tivoli, which led to Kaatsbaan hosting a 75th birthday celebration for the dance icon in 2023. The event featured performances from artists across the creative spectrum, including Watanabe. Kostich says she can't believe how all these connecting threads have come together to craft the upcoming festival.
“Everything just fell into place,” Kostich says with bemused astonishment, underselling the immense amount of work she has put in. “ I love Kaatsbaan. When I was there I gave my heart and soul to it and it was wonderful in return. And so I feel really excited to now be working for it [Baryshnikov Arts], which is an incredible organization, and with Kaoru and all these incredible artists. I feel very honored to be able to be in the position that I'm in to do all this. For this particular initiative, we are also so grateful to the Mellon Foundation. It's really their vision and insight to support these kinds of artists."
Baryshnikov founded BA in 2005. The organization’s mission is "rooted in the belief that artists hold irreplaceable roles in our world, shaping perspectives, offering new approaches, and initiating crucial conversations in complex social, political, and cultural environments.” Kostich says people don’t often realize the organization is about more than dance and supports performers looking to experiment with an artistic expression that “asks audiences to view the world in new ways.” Kostich came on as president and director during a rebrand of the organization in June 2022, as BA looked to expand its capacity to create multi-platform and collaborative havens for artistic expression and innovation, committed to “elevating and sharing the stories of artists of diverse cultures and histories.”
The Bloodlines Interwoven Festival is undoubtedly a makegood on the promise of BA’s intended new direction. This June, the fields and stages of Kaatsbaan will be filled with songs and stories that define the human experience across, and free from, borders.
Bloodlines Interwoven Festival at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Tivoli, New York
June 10-16
Check the website for full schedule and to purchase tickets.
