Artists Studio: Miya Masaoka

ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO “And in a sense, the Veterans Room, of all the Armory’s opulent reception rooms, has the deepest spiritual kinship with a work of contemporary art, the feel of an installation by a young collective whose members were reacting to one another and making it all up as they went along.”

—The New York Times Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran, this series of interventions in the Veterans Room includes a diverse mix of artists and musicians whose practices defy categorization and expressly mirror the innovative spirit of the exceptional young artists present at the room’s inception.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

MALIK GAINES & ALEXANDRO SEGADE

ROSA BARBA

Malik Gaines & Alexandro Segade, founders of the collective My Barbarian, create and perform a new work, Star Choir, which was developed while serving as Armory artists-inresidence.

Rosa Barba comes to the Armory with percussionist Chad Taylor to present a live work performed within an enigmatic installation on display in several of the historic rooms and spaces, including the Veterans Room.

May 23, 2019

Cover photo: James Ewing

September 16–21, 2019

2019 ARTISTS STUDIO IN THE NEWLY RESTORED VETERANS ROOM

MIYA MASAOKA Wednesday, March 13 at 7:00pm & 9:00pm Veterans Room at Park Avenue Armory

This performance is approximately 60 minutes, performed without intermission.

The Artists Studio is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council.

SEASON SPONSORS

SERIES SPONSOR

PROGRAM WORKS BY MIYA MASAOKA Four Moons of Pluto James Ilgenfritz, bass Robert Black, bass Shayna Dulberger, bass Zach Rowden, bass Don’t Kill Plants Miya Masaoka (Leaves are Murder, Meat is Murder)

Survival Momenta Quartet with guest violinist Clara Kim Alex Shiozaki, violin 1 Clara Kim, guest violin 2 Stephanie Griffin, viola Michael Haas, cello Songs of Lost Dreams Kamala Sankaram, soprano Chris Nappi, percussion States of Being, States of Becoming S.E.M. Ensemble Petr Kotik, conductor Anna Urrey, flute Leo Sussman, flute Ben Neill, trumpet Theodore Van Dyck, trumpet Chris Nappi, percussion Juan Herrera, percussion Gergana Haralampieva, violin Maren Rothfritz, viola Caleb van der Swaagh, cello

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Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

ABOUT MIYA MASOKA Miya Masaoka lives in New York City and is a classically trained composer and sound artist. Her work encompasses notated scores for orchestras, ensembles, live interactive performance, spatialization, gallery installations, film and critical writing. Her body of work spans decades and represents deep inquiries into the body, plants, insects, ways of listening, creating, and experiencing sound. Her background is a study of the contradictions of America, as both her parents were in the Japanese American prison camps during World War II. Her deep engagement with Japanese music, sound, and movement and her artistic creations are wrought from these traditional forms of Japanese court music—gagaku, Noh, the koto, and the bareness of the ichigen-kin (one string koto).

She has been commissioned by and presented work with Bang On a Can, So Percussion, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Glasgow Chamber Choir, The La Jolla Symphony, Either/Or Ensemble, Volti, Del Sol, SEM Ensemble, the Jack Quartet, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) and an outdoor installation by Sonic Innovations at the Caramoors.

Her works have been presented internationally including: the Venice Biennale; MoMA PS1; KunstmuseumBonn, Germany; IRCAM, Paris; SIGGRAPH; ICA Pennsylvania; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, among others, She has been the recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Alpert Award in the Arts, Gerbode Foundation Special Award in the Arts, the MAP Fund, and others.

As an improviser, she has collaborated and worked with Pharoah Sanders, Pauline Oliveros, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Joelle Leandre, Steve Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Fred Frith, Henry Brandt, Andrew Cyrille, Vijay Iyer, Reggie Workman, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins, and Anthony Braxton. Oliveros and Akiyoshi have both written pieces for Masaoka. She was a Fulbright Fellow for Japan 2016 and is an Associate Professor and director of the Sound Art program at Columbia University.

SPECIAL THANKS to Elisabeth Beaird and Circuit Network for their generous support for this project. Deep thanks to Jason Moran for his support and willingness to nurture this new and very fragile thing, and to my Noh teacher Hisa Uzawa of the Kanze School who continually supports me to new ventures in Noh, and the amazing and patient souls at the Armory, Nataliya Vasilyeva and my long-time associate Sascha von Oertzen.

Production Acknowledgements Sascha von Oertzen, Sound Designer John Chrils, Audio Technician Wei-Lin Chang, Production Assistant

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory

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ABOUT THE ARMORY Part American palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory is dedicated to supporting unconventional works in the visual and performing arts that need non-traditional spaces for their full realization, enabling artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to consume epic and adventurous presentations that cannot be mounted elsewhere in New York City. Since its first production in September 2007, the Armory has organized and commissioned immersive performances, installations, and cross-disciplinary collaborations by visionary artists, directors, and impresarios in its vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall that defy traditional categorization and push the boundaries of their practice. In its historic period rooms, the Armory presents small-scale performances and programs, including its acclaimed Recital Series in the intimate salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; the Artists Studio series in the newly restored Veterans Room; and Interrogations of Form, a series of conversations and performances featuring artists, scholars, activists, and cultural trailblazers encouraging us to think beyond conventional interpretations of and perspectives on art. The Armory also offers robust arts education programs at no cost to underserved New York City public school students, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and the building’s history and architecture.

Built between 1877 and 1881, Park Avenue Armory has been hailed as containing “the single most important collection of nineteenth century interiors to survive intact in one building” by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, with an 80-foot-high barrel vaulted roof, is one of the largest unobstructed spaces in New York City. The Armory’s magnificent reception rooms were designed by leaders of the American Aesthetic Movement, among them Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Candace Wheeler, and Herter Brothers. The building is currently undergoing a $215-million renovation designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Platt Byard Dovell White Architects as Executive Architects.

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Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Co-Chairs Adam R. Flatto Elihu Rose, PhD. Vice Chairs Wendy Belzberg Amanda J.T. Riegel President Rebecca Robertson Vice Presidents Ken Kuchin Pablo Legorreta Emanuel Stern Secretary Gwendolyn Adams Norton

Marina Abramović Emma Bloomberg Martin Brand Cora Cahan Hélène Comfort Paul Cronson Tina R. Davis Emme Levin Deland Thomas J. DeRosa Sanford B. Ehrenkranz David Fox Andrew Gundlach Marjorie L. Hart Edward G. Klein, Major General NYNG (Ret.) Mary T. Kush

Ralph Lemon Heidi McWilliams David S. Moross Joel Press Genie H. Rice Janet C. Ross Joan Steinberg Mimi Klein Sternlicht Angela E. Thompson Deborah C. van Eck Peter Zhou Wade F.B. Thompson, Founding Chairman, 2000–2009

Treasurer Harrison M. Bains Marina Kellen French Artistic Director Pierre Audi

ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. This newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artisans was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian and the Japanese in the appropriate places.”

A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18).

The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.

The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic material and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design.

The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $215-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.

The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Emanuel Stern, Adam R. Flatto, Olivia Tournay Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2).