This and That by JL

ArtsBash, Then and Now

jlangsam — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:35:26 +0000

I remember it well. Our first ArtsBash in our brand new, old historic building in 1999. I thought of this today as preparations got underway for this year’s ArtsBash tomorrow night. We purchased the building at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains in 1998. It had been empty for five years. Our next door neighbor was [...]

A Coming Together of Body and Soul

jlangsam — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:41:50 +0000

The Rivertowns are a hotbed of dancers. I have that from a reliable source. Maxine Sherman, a former principal dancer with Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater and Martha Graham Dance Company told me so…and she should know. With the drop of a tiara, Maxine can reel off the names of dozens of well known ballet [...]

A Feast of Arts this Weekend

artswadmin — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:44:30 +0000

What a weekend there is coming up. It’s a veritable feast of arts happening in the county. Every Tuesday morning at 8:20am, I get on the phone with T.J.McCormack at WVOX (1460AM) for a five minute chat about the arts. There was so much on the docket for this weekend that I couldn’t get it [...]

In Defense of “Hanging Out”

jlangsam — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:17:41 +0000

I never ran the Boston Marathon, but when I moved there years ago to lead the Boston Center for the Arts, I went to every one of them. Marathon Mondays, First Nights on New Years Eve and the concerts on the Commons. These events (and the Red Sox) were the Boston way of life. So [...]

Two Things I Learned From Koch

jlangsam — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:53:11 +0000

I can’t wait to see the movie “Koch” not just because he was a colorful Mayor. But, let’s just say, I knew the man. He was my boss, so to speak. Some time ago…actually a long time ago in the late seventies, I was Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City when Koch [...]

Singing Her Heart Out

jlangsam — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:43:17 +0000

Christine Andreas is Westchester’s “Fair Lady” having appeared in many Broadway revivals including “My Fair Lady,” “On Your Toes” and “Oklahoma.” This Tony-awardee is bringing her newly arranged cabaret show “Bemused” to a Westchester Community College soiree on April 17th at Tappan Hill. It’s all about raising funds for need-based scholarships to give deserving students of [...]

Literacy Gone Visual

jlangsam — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:13:49 +0000

As a child, I remember being so inconsolable watching the wicked queen poison Snow White, that I actually ran out of the movie theater. Steve Apkon would no doubt say: “It was the power of the image.” Apkon, Founder of the Jacob Burns Film Center, explores visual literacy in his book, The Age of the [...]

Heroes of Hurricane Sandy

jlangsam — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:53:03 +0000

When people ask where I’m from, I most often say, “I’m just a kid from the Rockaway’s.” This used to evoke a querulous “Where?” But no longer. Unfortunately, the Rockaway’s are recently famous, but not for the charm and fun I knew riding my bike on the boardwalk on a brisk winter’s day from Beach [...]

Nature is Art

jlangsam — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:48:33 +0000

Beauty, we are told, is in the eye of the beholder. So for some beauty is a sunset. For others, it’s a sports car or a diamond. For Robert Wiener, Chairman of Maxx Properties and ArtsWestchester board member, beauty is a geode. For more than 40 years, Wiener has been collecting geodes, some 2,000 of [...]

Beyond the Bed

jlangsam — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:59:52 +0000

For some reason unbeknownst to me, I have this thing about the arts. Call it an obsession? A calling? It’s hard to explain, but whatever it is, I found myself last week spending a rainy day in Albany asking for a mere $4 million dollars for the arts in a $142 billion state budget. Feeling almost [...]