This month, Flushing Town Hall is bringing its Global Mashup series to the stage for the first time in three years, followed by its popular monthly Jazz Jams and special concerts, including a performance by the Queens Symphony Orchestra.
Saturday, May 6, 7 p.m.
Global Mashup: Colombia Meets Klezmer
In-Person Tickets: $20 General Admission / $15 Members, Seniors, & Students with ID
Virtual Tickets: Watch with Culture Stream subscription ($5/month – cancel anytime)
The global mashup features two cultures on one stage with an open dance floor. Starting with dance lessons, each band plays a set, then the two meet and jam. Bring your dancing shoes. The first mashup concert will feature the Cumbia River Band and Klezmer all-star band Di Shikere Kapelye, known in English as The Inebriated Orchestra.
Wednesday, May 10, 7 p.m.
Louis Armstrong Legacy Monthly Jazz Jam (MAY. 2023)
In-Person Tickets: $10/FREE for Members, Students, & Jamming Musicians
Monthly Jazz Jams return live at Flushing Town Hall the second Wednesday of every month. Open to professional jazz musicians, graduate students studying jazz, music educators and serious hobbyists, Louis Armstrong Legacy Monthly Jazz Jams invites musicians to perform at Flushing Town Hall.
All are welcome, regardless of instrument (vocalists, too). The Steinway baby grand and drum kit are available at each Jam. Health and safety protocols will be in place so bring a mask, and feel free to bring your own microphone. House Band and Jam Sessions are led by Carol Sudhalter, with Joe Vincent Tranchina, Scott Neumann and Eric Lemon. Don’t play, but love Jazz? Come listen!
FTH’s Jazz Jam house band leader, Carol Sudhalter, plays flute, baritone and tenor sax and has been running our Louis Armstrong Legacy Monthly Jazz Jams for the last four years. And for the last 17 months since March 2020, more than 200 musicians from over a dozen countries as far as New Zealand, Italy and South Africa, have participated in the virtual monthly jams. Over 7,000 viewers from across the globe have enjoyed the music and tuned in to the monthly jams to listen as the venue moved its programming online.
This program is supported in part by a grant from The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc.
Friday, May 12, 7:30 p.m.
CrossCurrent X Presented by Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company
In-Person Tickets: $20 General Admission / $15 Members, Seniors, & Students with ID
Virtual Tickets: Watch with Culture Stream subscription ($5/month – cancel anytime)
This year is the 10th anniversary of the CrossCurrent Dance Festival, a time for the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company and Flushing Town Hall to reflect on the years past and pay tribute to the festival founder, Nai-Ni Chen. The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will celebrate its own history of cross-cultural collaboration by featuring the preview of a new work in progress by Polish master Jacek Luminski, a pioneer of Polish Contemporary Dance, and PeiJu Chien-Pott 簡珮如 the Company’s Director of New and Contemporary Dance.
In this CrossCurrent Dance Festival, the Company will also be showing the following work, as well as another dance by Jacek Luminski.
- Ashes of a Dead Frog (2008)
- Lullaby for My Favorite Insomniac
- Introspection
- Neptune’s Dialog (1993)
Saturday, MAY 13, 8 p.m.
Nation Beat – Concert, Workshop, & Food Drive
In-Person Tickets: $18 General Admission / $12 Members, Seniors, & Students with ID
Nation Beat will grace the Flushing Town Hall stage in a funky, explosive concert, preceded by an interactive percussion & movement workshop. The evening at Flushing Town Hall will kick off at 7 p.m. with an interactive workshop, introducing audiences to body percussion and movement rhythm techniques and continues with a lively concert at 8 p.m.
Nation Beat’s live shows have taken on an almost mythological aura for their ability to lift the souls, and the feet, of their growing cross-cultural audience. Band leader, drummer/percussionist Scott Kettner, has long been at the forefront of merging different musical elements together, from the earliest days of Nation Beat’s Brazil meets North American music. Nation Beat, where maracatu, Big Easy’s funk, forró, swinging jazz all dance together. Nation Beat exemplifies how music crosses borders and that similarities more often than not outweigh differences, not just in music but in life.
Sunday, May 14, 2 p.m.
In-Person Tickets: FREE with online RSVP
Hayoung Choi is one of the hottest cellists in the world today. She just won the first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, and has appeared in major Korean media outlets JoongAng Daily, KBS, and Yonhap. Come listen to this prodigy and NYCP play some audience favorites heard in Belgium, including Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Tchaikovsky’s Rocco Variations.
Friday, May. 19, 7 p.m.
Global Mashup: Ireland Meets Mexico
In-Person Tickets: $20 General Admission / $15 Members, Seniors, & Students with ID
Virtual Tickets: Watch with Culture Stream subscription ($5/month – cancel anytime)
This mashup concert will feature Irish musician Cillian Vallely, who will bring the pipes and whistles of the Emerald Isle to the stage, and Mexican band Jarana Beat.
Sunday, May 21, 1 p.m.
Mini-Global Mashup: Stride Piano Meets Guinea
In-Person Tickets: $10/$12 Members, Seniors, & Students w/ ID
Virtual Tickets: Watch with Culture Stream subscription ($5/month – cancel anytime)
Flushing Town Hall’s Mini-Global Mashup series continues through June 2023. Curated by acclaimed trumpeter and composer Frank London (The Klezmatics), the mini global mashup series brings together two amazing global music artists along with accompanists for an afternoon of music, conversation, and exploration.
In May’s installment in the series, renowned jazz pianist Anthony Coleman and the globally recognized balafonist Famoro Dioubaté.
There will be a Q&A dialogue after the performance for audience members to engage with the artists.
The Mini-Global Mashup concert series is made possible thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Center For Cultural Vibrancy.
Friday, May 26, 7:30 p.m.
In-Person Tickets: FREE w/ online RSVP
Virtual Tickets: Watch with Culture Stream subscription ($5/month – cancel anytime)
The Queens Symphony Orchestra will be performing at Flushing Town Hall. The orchestra brings the best in classical concerts, as well as educational programming, chorale concerts, operas-in-concert, and world premiere pieces performed by the nation’s best musicians and accessible to all.
