The Bronx Arts Ensemble presents the Irish and Italian Tenors, Neil Farrell and Joseph Addeo, in an afternoon of Irish and Italian favorites as part of SummerMusic 2009 on Sun., Aug. 2. Concerts are scheduled for 2 pm at Rockwood Drive Circle, Van Cortlandt Park, near Broadway and Mosholu Avenue in Riverdale and repeated at 4 pm in the McGinley Center Ballroom at Fordham University, on the Bronx Rose Hill Campus at Southern Boulevard. Come sing along to favorites such as “My Wild Irish Rose”, “Danny Boy”, “Kerry Dance”, “O Sole Mio”, “Torna a Surriento”, “Ah! Marie” and more.
Joseph Addeo possesses a full lyric tenor that shines in opera, orchestral and song literature. He performs leading tenor roles in most of the standard operatic repertoire including “La Bohème”, “Cavalleria Rusticana”, “Lucia di Lammermoor”, “Rigoletto”, “Tosca”, “Carmen”, “Die Fledermaus”, “Martha”, “La Traviata”, “Madama Butterfly” and “Don Giovanni”. Mr. Addeo is a frequent guest soloist with orchestras and music festivals including Italian music festivals and galas throughout the country. His operatic debut was made in 1991 as Don José in “Carmen” with Lake George Opera followed by his European debut in 1993 with the Rome Festival Opera when he sang Ferrando in Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte”.
Neil Farrell works frequently in music of all periods from the middle ages through the 20th century, including popular and folk styles. A regular soloist with the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, he has been acclaimed as the Evangelist in Bach’s “St. John Passion”, and has appeared there in Bach’s “Mass in B Minor”, “Magnificat”, and “St. Matthew Passion”. He is a member of Equal Voices, a six-voice professional a cappella ensemble and the Grammy-nominated Renaissance vocal ensemble, Pomerium, among others.
In case of rain, the Van Cortlandt concert will be moved to Vladeck Hall in the Amalgamated Houses at Hillman Avenue and Van Cortlandt Park South. Seating is provided in Van Cortlandt Park but the audience is urged to bring folding chairs.
The final SummerMusic 2009 concert features bandoneon, Raul Jaurena and vocalist, Marga Mitchell for an afternoon of Tango Y Bolero on Sun., Aug. 9.
SummerMusic 2009 is made possible with the support of Assembly Jeffrey Dinowitz. For further information call (718) 601-7399.
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The Bronx Council on the Arts and the Bronx Library Center present a reading by author and BRIO winner Joe Flood at the Bronx Library Center, 310 East Kingsbridge Road, on Sat., Aug. 15 from 6 to 7:3pm. Joe will read excerpts from his upcoming book The Fires (Riverhead Books, 2010) for which he won his BRIO award for non-fiction. The reading, a segment of BCA’s Bronx Indie Artist Series, is open to the public and admission is free. The library center is wheelchair accessible.
The Fires: The RAND Corporation had an alluring proposal for a city on the brink of economic collapse: Using their computer models—which had been developed for and successfully implemented in military operations—New York City could save millions of dollars by streamlining public services. The RAND boys were the best and brightest, and bore all the sheen of post-War American success. Meanwhile, New York City seemed old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt—and the new mayor was eager for outside help, especially something as new and infallible as “computer modeling.” A deal was struck: RAND would begin their first civilian effort with the FDNY.
Throughout the 1970s, a series of fires swept through the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn, displacing over 600,000 people and killing over 2,000 citizens and dozens of firefighters. Conventional wisdom would blame arson, but intentionally set fires were only a tiny fraction of the destruction. This was the result of something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal of fire protection from the City’s poorest neighborhoods—all based on RAND’s computer modeling techniques.
The Fires tells the story of how the good intentions of an ambitious, working class fire chief, a charismatic mayor and his technocratic successor, and the RAND Corporation went so disastrously wrong—and also reveals how RAND’s formulas were inextricably woven into the fabric of the late 20th and 21st century city. At a time when our country faces an economic climate not seen since the 1970s, and looks for new solutions, new heroes, and new cityscapes, The Fires could not be a more salient book.
For more information call (718) 579-4244.
