Requiems
Organized by Tabitha Piseno
September 17– 19, 2020
Requiems was a 3-day live performance series that took place in the Fall of 2020. Staged on the roof of the gallery at 5 East Broadway, the series addressed concepts of mourning and loss. A live stream of the performances were made available to the public from 8pm to 12am and recordings from the events were presented on Montez Press Radio.
Thursday September 17
Shots
Alexander Tominsky
Luke Moldof
Nick Scavo: Friday Night is Music Night
Italian Americans, once heavily influenced by labor organizing, Anti-Fascism, Marxism, Operaismo (Workism), and anarchism, have for decades been deeply rooted in the NYPD and the political power structure in NYC. Eric Garner was murdered by Daniel Pantaleo, an Italian-American police officer, and the “average joe” paesan Sunday Gravy and Bolognese jokes that warmed Cuomo and de Blasio to many suburbanites throughout the pandemic are ceaseless. Beyond relationships with the NYPD, Italian Americans have become entrenched in racism and are fully complicit in the maintenance of the status quo—as the recent Blue Lives Matter march in Bensonhurst demonstrates. Mulberry is one of the few streets in Lower Manhattan where you will see signs in support of the police during the recent protests and Black Lives Matter movement.
Friday Night is Music Night takes its name from a workers gathering and music night that took place on Mulberry street in 1919 that was eventually also (by chance?) used as the title for a long running BBC orchestral radio show. The piece is a composed “playlist” that presents a progression of recordings from Anti-Fascist workers songs from the early 20th century, eventually charting the assimilation into the capitalist and white supremacist Americanization of Italian American identities: charting the music of Louis Prima, Frank Sinatra, Italo Disco, the Sicilian and Southern Italian heritage of last names like “Mancuso” and “Frusciante,” and eventually various stylized EDM, subgenres as its imprint. Mobster voice actors and a very familiar Italian plumber also make regular appearances as a kind of “chorus” throughout. Friday Night Is Music Night!
Friday September 18
Umfang
Bookworms
Syanide
Saturday September 19
DeForrest Brown Jr.
Voice Training
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Drumloop