Thursday, October 1 @ 2:00 pm
National Jazz Museum in Harlem
The trio known as aRT – akLaff, Robinson, Thayer – is a highly adventurous group of creative minds that has been performing new and startling music since 1988, although they only recently released their first album. aRT has appeared at jazz festivals, art galleries, and scientific conferences here and abroad, and has produced collaborative projects with sculptor Rob Fisher and choreographer LaRue Allen (now executive director of the Martha Graham Dance Company). aRT’s 1991 “Flying Carpet” multimedia performance at the Knitting Factory premiered a new, improvisational method of interactively intermixing art/performance video streams. This idea was expanded upon in 1996 for the Studio for Creative Inquiry in Pittsburgh, where their planetarium performance “Night of the Living Cell” combined imagery of cell life with real-time video feed of the performers – in 3D! “The result,” The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, “could become a new form of artistic experience.”
In 1997, aRT was selected to be the closing act for the Sun Ra Festival in New York. In 2020, aRT performed in Philadelphia for the Institute of Contemporary Art’s exhibition on Milford Graves, with whom aRT had been working toward a collaborative music/science project. As Mr. Graves was not well enough to perform, he graciously provided a set of his TonoRhythmology/Sonification recordings – which he created by translating his own physiological data into musical sound — along with his blessing to incorporate them into the performance. This provided a means by which he could, in a way, be present and part of the music… an idea that aRT hopes to expand on in future performances. In 2021, aRT mounted a major multimedia concert event at Roulette, “Higher Powers,” in honor of painter Richard M. Powers’ centennial. Then in 2024 the release of their first album, aRT, was followed by an appearance at the Rochester Jazz Festival and a two-page feature article in DownBeat magazine.
Presented in partnership with the Jazz Foundation of America, supported in part by an award from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the Howard Gilman Foundation.
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We are your go-to venue for off-site meetings, receptions, film screenings, workshops, networking events, socials and more. Located in the heart of Central Harlem’s thriving culinary and entertainment district, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is the perfect place to hold your next gathering.