Shadow // Yaddo

Success. Fallacy of the one who escaped. The roots of racism and more, with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Andrea Elliott on her new book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, which offers an astonishing account of a homeless family in super-stratified New York City, where those grappling with extreme poverty live side by side with the very wealthy. PLUS: New music from mega-talented singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane. Contributing artist: Joseph Keckler.

As arts venues reopen (hooray!), we asked two brilliant friends to imagine a new paradigm for concert classical music: Venezuelan/American composer, multimedia collaborator and Yaddo Board Member Manuel Sosa in conversation with Saratoga Performing Arts Center President and CEO Elizabeth Sobol on resilience, experimentation and turning our “lost year” into a boon for the next generation of performing arts. Contributing artists: Joseph Keckler, Spike T. Jones, Will T. Bear, Michael Tilson Thomas & San Francisco Symphony, Tania León, Afro Cuban All Stars, Art Tatum.

Dig into the forensics of a new kind of noir, climate crime, with acclaimed novelist and nonfiction writer Nathaniel Rich, author of Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade, and intellectual powerhouse Philip Gourevitch, longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. We’ll also revisit the pioneering sonic composition about rewiring the earth’s atmosphere: Landfall, the genius collaboration—and now a Grammy Award-winning album—between Laurie Anderson, icon, inventor, and NASA’s first artist in residence, and Kronos Quartet. Contributing artist: Joseph Keckler.

Yaddo connections run far and wide! One of these circles is having a red, hot streak in the East Village scene in New York City, where a group of performers with talent to burn—many of them Yaddo artists—have found each other and are creating new, exciting work. Playwright, songwriter and performer David Cale (Harry Clarke, We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time, Lillian) and his friend and sometime-collaborator Sylver Wallace talk about pandemic projects and share new music, with nods to the East Village hotspot Pangea, Sade Adu, and... squirrels! Contributing artists: Joseph Keckler, Plastic Angel of the Month, Matthew Dean Marsh.