Visiting Artists
Roger Bonair-Agard
Biography
Roger Bonair-Agard weaves living, breathing tapestries out of politics and the notion of home; a native of Trinidad and Tobago, Bonair-Agard has lived in Brooklyn for 17 years and his work reflects the struggles of a man in voluntary exile in a conflicted 21st-century America.
A professional performance poet since 1997, Bonair-Agard has appeared three times on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on HBO, performed and facilitated writing and performance workshops at colleges, universities and high schools around the country, and stirred audiences at festivals and concerts from Germany to South Africa to Anchorage, Alaska. He recently opened for calypso legend Shadow for an audience of 2,000 in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
Bonair-Agard aims to blow the hinges off what is considered possible, to create work that discomforts with the truths and lies it exposes down to every forensic detail, and so create a movement of its very own, such that when the poems are read, they birth new mythologies in the reader’s memory.
He is co-author of Burning Down the House (Soft Skull Press, 2000), and author of Tarnish and Masquerade, published by Cypher Press in April 2006. He is co-founder and artistic director of the louderARTS Project, an organization dedicated to the evolution of poetry through the craft of writing and performance.
Bonair-Agard is also a Cave Canem fellow, studying with such luminaries as Yusef Komunyakaa, Marilyn Nelson, and Cornelius Eady. In 1998, he was named the Nuyorican Poets Café “Fresh Poet of the Year.” That same year, he coached the Nuyorican team to victory in the National Poetry Slam over 44 other teams. The following year he earned the title of National Individual Slam Champion while leading and coaching the New York City louderARTS team to the final four of the National Poetry Slam (out of 48 teams), a feat he repeated in 2000.
While managing the louderARTS slam as a forum to nurture new writing within his community, Bonair-Agard continues to perform and teach throughout the world, leading workshops and conducting performances in major universities, including such outposts as University of Alaska at Anchorage, University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and in literary festivals in Heidelberg (Germany), Kingston (Jamaica), Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg (South Africa) and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival (New Jersey). He has also appeared on The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, Air America, Pacifica Radio’s Beneath the Surface and other national radio programs.
He works as a creative writing instructor and teacher trainer with Urban Word NYC (a writing and performance resource for New York City teens), Cooper Union’s outreach program, and the Bronx Writers’ Center, among others. Bonair-Agard’s poetry and research have also earned him invitations to serve as the keynote speaker at the commencement exercises of several high schools, and to serve on panels and lecture on topics including Teaching Poetry to Teens, The Relationship between Media and Hip-Hop, Blues to Hip-Hop: a journey of resistance (New York University) and social responsibility and local activism (as part of Dartmouth College’s SEAD program).
Bonair-Agard’s work has been widely anthologized, and has been commissioned extensively through the multi-disciplinary performance troupe VisionIntoArt. He has also authored a successful one-man show, and chaos congealed (1998) and the acclaimed one-man poetry concert MASQUERADE: poems of calypso and home.
Bonair-Agard was also a featured poet at the 2007 and 2008 White Pine Festivals.
Artist interview
Hear how Roger plans to approach his role as “festival guide” — and much more — in this White Pine Festival artist Q&A.
Events
- MOZART: Sonate in A Major, K. 331
- BEETHOVEN:"Appassionata” Sonata, Op. 57
- SCHUBERT: Sonate in A Major, Op. 120
- SCARLATTI: Sonata, K. 491 in D Major
- SCARLATTI: Sonata, K. 547 in G Major
- LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody #6
Read an interview with Angela Jia Kim.
Mozart: Sonata in A Major
The Sonata in A is the second of three sonatas now established as likely to have been composed during 1783, perhaps during the period Mozart and his wife Constanze spent in Salzburg in the summer months of that year. This was the occasion on which the composer introduced his new bride to his father Leopold. Mozart clearly intended this trio to form a group, numbering them from one to three. They were almost certainly composed with his Viennese pupils in mind, teaching forming one of Mozart’s principal sources of income during his early years in the Austrian capital.
The present sonata has gained particular fame for its last movement, the “Rondo alla turca.” That movement took its inspiration from the popularity of quasi-Turkish music in Vienna, a fashionable form already exploited by Mozart in his German singspiel, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Harem) of the previous year. The Rondo includes a march-like B section in a major key with rolled block chords that evoked the drums of the Turkish Janissary bands, ancestors of the modern marching band. Some commentators have also heard echoes of the opera in the opening movement, which, uniquely among Mozart’s sonatas, is a set of variations. Its lilting theme is one of the composer’s most memorable inventions.
The central movement is a Minuetto in the tonic key of A, with a central trio section in D, making the sonata also unique in Mozart’s output in that none of the three movements is in sonata form.
Along with its two companions, the A major Sonata was published in Vienna by Artaria in 1784, rapidly attaining a popularity that has persisted until the present day. As with so many of Mozart’s works, it offers much for both Kenner and Liebhaber, connoisseurs and mere lovers. Its Turkish element places it among the first pieces of music in the European tradition to show any kind of non-Western influence. Beyond that, it offers a greater-than-usual complement of unforgettable Mozartian melodies.
Brian Robins
All Music Guide
Beethoven: Appassionata Sonata
From the writing of his Heiligenstadt Testament in 1802 up to the composition of the “Appassionata” in 1804-05, Beethoven produced some of his most pivotal works, music that foreshadows and heralds the arrival of what is commonly identified as the “second” period of his creativity. Beethoven, it seemed, had turned inward and begun to produce music only he could fully understand. If he had resigned himself to the futility of his cosmic anger, he also determined to thrust his immense genius in the face of God and Man alike, accepting no limitations upon the magnitude or trajectory of his creativity. It was the Beethoven of these works who unleashed the “Appassionata” Sonata in 1805.
Opening with a dark, enigmatic theme — one of the most striking curtain-raisers in any of Beethoven’s sonatas — the work abruptly explodes with what some have called shrieks of rage. The work makes immediate, fearsome demands upon the pianist, calling both for percussive handfuls of chords and accompanimental figuration demanding the utmost delicacy. The movement is driven forward with a demonic intensity and a daring harmonic sense; the opening phrase, as one example, is repeated a half-step higher in the second phrase, momentarily shrouding the tonal center in a strange, unsettling ambiguity. Prefiguring the dot-dot-dot-dash motive of the Fifth Symphony among its rhythmic materials, the “Appassionata” unfolds with a volatile, start-and-stop rhythmic scheme that lends it a particular sense of conflict and urgency. In one of the classic examples of Beethoven’s organic motivic sense, the second theme of the first movement makes clear reference to the first; while the genesis of its rhythm and contour is obvious, Beethoven here transforms it into a lyrical and yearning if brief moment of respite.
The second movement, a relaxed andante, is a set of variations on a simple, chorale-like theme that retains a shade of the dotted rhythms of the first movement. The variations gradually increase in activity; a sudden reprise of the more sedate original theme and leads without pause to a savage, impassioned finale. Here, Beethoven makes formidable demands upon both instrument (especially the pianos of his own day) and player; the Presto finale is nothing so much as a pounding blur of fury. The sonata’s “Appassionata” subtitle is not Beethoven’s own; it was first applied by a Hamburg publisher in 1838.
Michael Morrison
All Music Guide
Schubert: Sonata in A major
It was long assumed that Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A major, D. 664 was composed during the middle months of 1825, but more recent thinking has relocated the piece in the summer of 1819, which Schubert spent vacationing with a close friend in Steyr, some hundred miles to the west of Vienna.
Schubert makes reference in a personal letter written during that summer to having composed a new sonata; stylistically speaking, this delightful and, compared to the other pre-1826 sonatas, well-known A major Sonata fits the bill quite nicely. It is composed not in the Classical four movements but rather in just three; there is no minuet/scherzo movement.
The leisurely and melodious opening movement (Allegro moderato) has several outstanding features, not the least of which is a gentle second theme that pays rhythmic homage to the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (neither the first nor the last time Schubert would pay such tribute to that movement). The harmonies surrounding the opening theme are rich and full, but the tune itself is crafted from translucent material. Schubert calls for the entirety of the development and recapitulation to be repeated, something common in the eighteenth century but almost unheard of in Schubert’s music.
The central Andante has an almost obsessive aspect to it, not reduced in any way by the absolute saturation of the movement with a single rhythmic thought; as the opening music is reprised in the second half of the movement, Schubert allows the two hands to play in canon with one another. Humor, or at least playfulness, is a key ingredient of the finale — just listen to the stop and go rhythm of the second subject, and to the way that the forzando chords of the coda briefly get lost within their own chromatic sphere. The final bars of the Sonata are as tender a recount of the opening melody, pianissimo and molto legato, as one can imagine.
Blair Johnston
All Music Guide
Scarlatti: piano sonatas
Domenico Scarlatti began his compositional career following in the footsteps of his father Alessandro Scarlatti by writing operas, chamber cantatas, and other vocal music, but he is most remembered for his 555 keyboard sonatas, written between approximately 1719 and 1757.
These one-movement sonatas are recognized as cornerstones of the keyboard repertoire, a bridge between the Baroque and the galant styles of keyboard writing. They demonstrate his facility in adapting rhythms found in contemporary Iberian popular music and his inventiveness in creating themes and developing interesting harmonies.
The Sonata in D major K. 491 is a stately triple-metered keyboard sonata in which lyrically gliding material offsets a predominantly stately procession that includes some elegant runs. The texture at the beginning is imitative.
Patsy Morita & Aaron Rabushka
All Music Guide
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6
Liszt was among the first major composers to collect and use folk music in his compositions. He believed all of the melodies he assembled for the 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies were of Gypsy origin, though later research, largely by Bartók and Kodály, proved their sources were spread across Hungary with Gypsy styles still imbuing the themes.
The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 is among the more varied and popular of the 19, featuring the pompous and the playful, the exotic and the flashy. In a sense, this work — good though it is in its catchy, light manner — is precisely the kind of piece that had wrongly tagged Liszt as shallow and virtuosic.
It opens with a bold march-like melody, marked Tempo giusto, whose robust mixture of grandeur and glee imparts a celebratory mood. The ensuing theme (Presto) is playful and also somewhat festive. Only the next melody (Andante — quasi improvisato) has a particularly exotic character in its dark, Gypsy-like music. The closing section features a lively theme (Allegro) that first takes on a playful manner and then, as rapid octaves hammer out the theme with driving vehemence (Presto), the mood turns rollicking and the music challenging to the pianist.
Robert Cummings
All Music Guide
Poets of all experience levels are invited to learn from Roger Bonair-Agard in this three-hour workshop. A gifted teacher, Bonair-Agard has made it a priority to help other poets develop their art. When not writing or performing his own poetry, Bonair-Agard works with several writing centers in New York City, including Urban Word NYC, a writing and performance resource center for teens, where he is a writing instructor and teacher trainer.
Join Roger Bonair-Agard for a lecture and discussion exploring memory’s role in artistic creation. “Right now, my artistic obsessions are memory, the role of memory in the creation of art, and the role of patience in the creation of individual pieces of work, both in terms of the writing of a poem and the crafting of a performance,” he says. “I am finding that performances and compositions are born from a certain kind of desperation to either remember or recapture something that someone understands or feels.”
BLOCH: SONATA NO. 1 FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO
The Minnesota Orchestra’s departing concertmaster and friends will discuss and perform this emotionally stirring work for violin and piano, looking at it through the lenses of both music and poetry.
POEMS:
Wilfred Owen: The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
Carl Dennis: At the Border
Wisława Szymborska: Parable
Stephen Dunn: Happiness
Wisława Szymborska: Photographs of September 11
Lisel Mueller: Place and Time
Thomas Hardy: The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the loss of the ‘Titanic’)
Unknown: Psalm 19
Jane Kenyon: Otherwise
Roger Bonair-Agard: The Violence of Memory (world premiere)
MUSIC:
Ernest Bloch: Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 1
Bloch: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano
The first movement’s tempo marking is Agitato and the opening of Bloch’s First Violin Sonata is a perfect musical depiction of that condition. In fact the music is in turn turbulent and aggressive, passionate and sorrowful, but the prevailing mood is one of grave disquiet.
To those who know his Judeo-centric music, the above named qualities are not strangers, but in this piece he achieves the same emotional aims without resorting to his familiar Jewish musical dialect.
Bloch had read a book on Tibet prior to writing the second movement marked Molto quieto. This might well explain the bell like figures in the piano part. This movement may be mostly contemplative, but there is unrest in the music also.
The last movement begins with the tolling of bells in the piano part. The violin once more is assertive although less aggressive than it was in the first movement. Central to this movement is a somewhat macabre processional which leads into short reminiscences of many of the themes that have gone before.
The piece ends with a tender epilogue which dies away peacefully.
This work was written in 1920 at a time when Bloch was living in the United States. The music he created in this era tended to be ecumenical in outlook.
A rather poetic interpretation of this work was offered by Alex Cohen, the once director of the Ernest Bloch Society, who said: “...this tremendous Sonata gives an overwhelming impression of the play of elemental and ruthless forces.”
It is a pity that this work has not established itself in the repertoires of more violinists since it is a challenging but extremely rewarding work that deserves many more performances.
Eric Goldberg
All Music Guide
Join master painter Kami Polzin and poet Roger Bonair-Agard for a fascinating look at how different types of artists approach the creative process. In the months before the festival, the artists created new pieces inspired by the other's work and artistic process. Much of the conversation will revolve around the resulting works and what they learned in the process of making them.
PERFORMERS
Charles Lazarus — trumpet
Tommy Barbarella — keyboards
Jeff Bailey — bass
Craig Hara — drums
Roger Bonair-Agard, poet
SET LIST
Lazarus: Kilauea’s Fountains
Lazarus: Waves
Lazarus: Dance Honu
Lazarus: Now Is Leaving (featuring Roger Bonair-Agard)
Lazarus: Dancing Gypsy
Carrillo: Dos Gardenias
Lazarus: Congo
Lazarus & Hara: Redeye
Ellington: Caravan
