Event Details
Wed, June 28, 2017
20:30 – 21:30
Garden Villa La Pietra
VILLA LA PIETRA
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, ITALY
Imani Uzuri presents her experimental work-in-progress visual, performative, and sonic installation entitled Come On In The Prayer Room, inspired by visual artist, street evangelist, mystic and musician Sister Gertrude Morgan’s (April 7, 1900-July 8, 1980) “all white” Prayer Room which was located in the front room of her New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward home (that she christened the Everlasting Gospel Mission). She ran prayer services there from 1965 until her death. In this work, Uzuri explores the intersection of spirituality, ritual, spectacle, and sound.
Featured Biographies
Imani Uzuri
VOCALIST, COMPOSER AND CULTURAL WORKER
Imani Uzuri is a vocalist and composer called “a post modernist Bessie Smith” by The Village Voice. Uzuri creates concerts, experimental theater, performance art, theater compositions and sound installations to perform in international venues/festivals including Performa Biennial, France’s Festival Sons d’hiver, London’s ICA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Public Theater and MoMA. Her work has been called “stunning” by Vulture and she has been praised in the New York Times for her “gorgeously chesty ruminations”. She has also collaborated with noted artists across various disciplines including Carrie Mae Weems, Vijay Iyer, Robert Ashley, Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Sanford Biggers and Wangechi Mutu. In 2016 Uzuri made her Lincoln Center American Songbook debut and was also a featured performer on BET for Black Girls Rock. She recently received her M.A. in African American Studies from Columbia University and was also the 2017 Keynote/Performer at Harvard University’s Graduate Music Forum. Uzuri has been a Park Avenue Armory Artist in Residence and is a MAP Fund grantee to begin composing her contemporary opera Hush Arbor. She is currently a Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow to support her travel, research and composing of a large music work celebrating the iconography of the Black Madonna. Time Out New York says, “[Imani Uzuri] never fails to mesmerize audiences with her narcotic blend of…ethereal sounds”. www.imaniuzuri.com