Past Events

  • Artists Studio

    Jasper Marsalis / Slauson Malone 1

    March 27, 2024 - March 28, 2024

    Jasper Marsalis is an artist and musician who explores the intersections of popular music and avant-garde performance by working across painting, sculpture, sound, and text. The son of jazz impresario Wynton Marsalis, the multifaceted artist has made a name for himself in his own right with releases under his own name and the moniker Slauson Malone 1 that are deeply ambitious, eccentrically engaging, and play with myriad genres and styles. He comes to the Armory to perform a set inspired by the Veterans Room, layering dissonant sounds on top of one another to create a dense and dizzying suite of sonic collages that invite close listening.

  • Artists Studio

    Moor Mother & Irreversible Entanglements (IE)

    May 18, 2024

    Camae Ayewa, better known by her stage name Moor Mother, is an American poet, musician, and activist who focuses on the recovery and preservation of communal memories and histories that are often missing from mainstream narratives as a way to honor the present and its historic connections to a multitude of past realities and future outcomes. Having spent years organizing and performing in Philadelphia’s underground music community, she has gone on to tour nationally and internationally to develop a career spent in close proximity to what could nominally be described as jazz, rap, and experimental music.

    She comes to the Veterans Room with two distinct programs that spotlight her work as a solo artist and her collaborations with other musicians who share her drive to dig up the untold. Following a solo set of fringe and avant-garde sonic landscapes rooted in industrial, electronic, noise, punk, and hip hop, she is joined by Irreversible Entanglements (IE), a free-jazz quintet with an experimental punk mentality that plays deeply improvised, rhythm music full of love and social commitment.

  • Artists Studio

    EJ Hill

    September 20, 2024 - September 21, 2024

    Through a practice that includes writing, music, painting, and sculpture, EJ Hill tells untold stories and provides visibility for those who have been historically ignored, focusing on everyday experiences that intermingle public struggle, endurance, trauma, joy, and resilience. His work interrogates how society’s deeply held prejudices and inequalities continue to position Black, brown, and queer bodies as targets of violence. The performance artist comes to the Veterans Room with a team of his primary collaborators to create an evening of song, storytelling, and sonic exploration. Collectively, they weave together their individual influences and practices to offer musical constellations which sprawl the space between disaster and desire.

    With [jef]Frey Michael Austin, Carson Childs, and Quincie Mychelle Lewis

  • Artists Studio

    Maori Karmael Holmes

    November 18, 2024 - November 19, 2024

    Multi-hyphenate Maori Karmael Holmes is a creative force working to uplift the fullness of Black, Brown, and Indigenous expression. As founder of the BlackStar Film Festival and Chief Executive & Artistic Officer of BlackStar Projects, she has organized film programs at Anthology Film Archives, MOCA, and Whitney Museum. She has directed and produced film projects that have been screened internationally, as well as music videos for a wide range of musical voices, and hosts the culture podcast Many Lumens. All of these artistic happenings have led to her inclusion in Essence Magazine‘s Woke 100 List and named one of the Kennedy Center’s #Next50.

    The filmmaker, writer, and curator hosts a talented mix of artists with whom she has worked throughout her career in two unique evenings of screenings, performances, and talkbacks presented in the style of a variety show. With DJ lil’dave spinning beats throughout each night, Holmes is joined by special guests including GRAMMY-nominated singer, writer, and actress Wayna; MacArthur Fellow, founder of Scribe Video Center, and documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah; Guggenheim Fellow, bass player, composer, and music producer Anthony Tidd; filmmaker and artist Rashid Zakat; and hip-hop artist and a motivational speaker Mike Africa, Jr.