Music and Performance Art

Jazz Age Series

In 2023, with funding from the NC Arts Council Spark the Arts Grant and in partnership with the Durham Center for Senior Life, we presented Jazz Age, a 12-concert series designed with older adults in mind. The Jazz Age Concert Series was curated for older adults and those with disabilities to be accessible and free of cost. Concerts were one hour, during the day, and we provided transportation for residents at DCSL. This performance series honored the generation that brought us Jazz music!

Music is tied to memory and cognition and participation in a live musical experience is an excellent way to spark joy, memory and human connection. Social isolation compounded by Covid has been especially difficult for our most vulnerable seniors.  We are committed to offering high quality programs for audiences regardless of age, physical or cognitive abilities.

Jazz Age is one of our most popular series, and we’ve heard your requests for more. We plan to continue the joy of daytime music at NorthStar with a second series in 2025.

COUNTRY SOUL SONGBOOK

Country Soul Songbook is a Durham artist-driven and -focused media platform and production team that curates performances and facilitates interviews, in-depth conversations and cultural offerings rooted in their mission to amplify historically marginalized voices (BIPOC/LGBTQIA+) in country, Americana, roots and rock music.

NorthStar was proud to collaborate with CSSB to host their Country Soul Songbook Summit and several affiliated events. We provided the space for small, intimate field recordings and CSSB’s Big Sing with musicians Kamara Thomas, Shana Tucker, Alice Gerrard, Rissi Palmer, Phil Cook, Kym Register, Libby Rodenborough and more. Due to the pandemic, many of these events were performed socially distanced and live-streamed. We were honored to innovate alongside CSSB to bring quality music by BIPOC artists to our community. Performances from the first virtual Country Soul Songbook Summit area available to view via CSSB’s YouTube channel.

THEY DO NOT KNOW HARLEM

They Do Not Know Harlem allowed audiences to bear witness to an extraordinary, immersive performance by artist, dancer and storyteller Tristan André, who summons the spirit of James Baldwin in an excavation of a Black and queer life lived in a not always welcoming world.

From the artist, as published by Jacqueline E. Lawton in Playmakers Repertory Company:

It makes absolute sense to have this work be shared with the community at NorthStar. It first began as a collaboration with Mars who is the creator of Young, Gifted & Broke – a pop-up art gallery and creative consultancy. She partnered with NorthStar during the Spring of 2019, and I’ve had this desire to present a half-hour workshop of the piece and all that we had been working on in Tracy’s class with her. It was a leap of faith to see how the work would land with the greater Triangle community and the response was fulfilling for us both. That has now led to my collaboration with PlayMakers, who has received the Spark the Arts grant from the North Carolina Arts Council that allows us to continue to develop the work where we have witnessed eyes on the work that leads us to the March premiere. It’s a way of ensuring that we as artists don’t work in a beleaguered bubble. It’s our way of ensuring that our art, our story, our music, song and dance is in constant conversation with the community. They Do Not Know Harlem is a story that belongs to so many people and to have them act as a witness in the development process is vital. Deeply grateful to Germane James, NaTasha Thompson (Our Community Engagement Liaison), and King who so lovingly blessed our NorthStar partnership as “bearing witness whilst in process”.  

MOTHERWORLD

Northstar Church of the Arts and Conjure Tech collaborated to present motherworld: a choreopoetic experience

An adaptation of Destiny Hemphill's forthcoming manuscript, motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life, five seekers find themselves drawn to a portal to a new world. Along their journey they must shed, peel, grow, transmute and transform to become the world that they need. This piece was an invitation and invocation, inviting us all to manifest a motherworld.

Featuring Destiny Hemphill, Monèt Noelle Marshall, Raafe Purnsley, King Sage, Serayah Silver and Brittany Bennett Weston

From the artists, as published by Dustin K. Britt in Chatham Life and Times:

BRITT: My first time at NorthStar Church of the Arts was in 2019 at Tristan André Parks' workshop of They Do Not Know Harlem: In Communion with James Baldwin. That room was perfect for that piece -- and seems like the obvious choice for motherworld.

SILVER: A repurposed church matches our idea: a repurposed ritual, a repurposed ceremony, a repurposed religion. When you're dealing with ancestral things and Black art, you can't help but think about church. I agree with you -- NorthStar is the only place to do it.

MARSHALL: NorthStar gave us a grant two years ago to produce this work -- we didn't even know what it was going to be. It was just like "we have an idea." They said yes, here you go, here's some support to make that happen. The cast is all Black, predominantly queer, and we're all in the south. This piece is calling us to reach out to find gods that actually look like us and sound like us -- that sound like our mama-n-em.