NYU Wordpress Theme

Month: May 2016

NYU Prague Students Learn from Former Political Prisoners

Posted on , modified on by Martha J Bekink
20160422_124236
NYU Prague students recently visited uranium mines and labor camps in Jachymov- a small town in Western Bohemia –  where they met two Czechoslovak political prisoners who had been incarcerated there by the Communist regime in the 1950s.

NYU Prague worked closely with a nonprofit organization that is archiving the former prisoners’ stories.  One of the prisoners hadn’t been back to the camp since 1955 when he attempted to escape by digging a tunnel.  Hearing his first-hand testimonial was an eye-opening and emotional experience.

One NYU Prague student, Emily Bertha, wrote about the trip on the blog NYU Prague Now!  You can read an excerpt below.

When I signed up for the Political Prisoners trip to Jachymov, I knew it was not going to be a weekend full of lighthearted laughs and unicorns. Yet I also knew meeting with former political prisoners imprisoned during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia was going to be an experience I wanted, and needed, to have.

We began the first day by visiting an old uranium mine where prisoners were made to work which quite frankly blew my mine. We hiked up a replica of horribly steep steps afterwards to visit the nearby site of one of the political camps.  … We hiked past the lake to another political prisoner camp where a former prisoner,  Mr. Tomík, was waiting to talk to us about his time in the camp.

 Mr. Tomik had not been back to the camp since his escape in 1955. He dug a tunnel over the course of three months and escaped with nine other prisoners in November of that year. In order to keep the tunnel undiscovered by guards, they covered it with wood shavings since they dug it in a workshop in the camp. When they escaped, they sprinkled spices to hide their scent from the guards’ dogs. The escaped prisoners made it the woods, but eventually the group split. Mr. Tomik passionately told us how he was shot while trying to cross over to his next destination. He ran until he passed out; he woke up to a dog sniffing him. Mr. Tomik was taken to a prison in Slovakia where he was held until the prisoners were eventually liberated. His original crime? He was simply part of Catholic affiliated sports teams. He also was found playing with unloaded guns he discovered left behind by soldiers during World War II,and communists claimed he was attempting to protest the regime.

This is the fourth semester NYU Prague has organized this trip with an NGO called politicalprisoners.eu to educate the public about a little-known period of history whose victims are becoming fewer and fewer.  The goal of the organization is to collect oral histories of those persecuted; NYU Prague students have also been working as interns to help collect the stories.

20160423_132556 20160423_124035 20160423_124531 20160423_095818 20160422_122406

NYU Washington, DC hosts Jazz Concert & Conversation with Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

Posted on , modified on by Martha J Bekink

1459785264237

There’s no more exciting act in jazz right now than the duo of pianist Vijay Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. Their new ECM recording, A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke, is already a highlight of this relatively new year—a spacious, tensile, brilliantly unfolding work of exploratory trust. It’s received accolades from sources as varied as The Guardian and Pitchfork. On April 23, they arrived in D.C. for the final stop on their debut national tour and performed at NYU Washington, DC. The concert was a rare appearance from two of the most renowned musicians of our time.

The show was preceded by an opening set from Jamal Moore. A saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist, Moore is the leader of Organix Trio, which brought down the house at NYU Washington, DC’s DC Jazz Loft Series at the DC Jazz Festival last year, during our evening of tribute to the AACM. He also happens to be one of Wadada Leo Smith’s students and proteges, from his time receiving a master’s degree at Cal Arts, where Smith teaches. He performed a solo set at 8 p.m. to kick things into gear. Iyer and Smith participated in an interactive question-and-answer following their set.

Vijay_Wadada_05 Vijay_Wadada_04 Vijay_Wadada_01 Vijay_Wadada_02 Vijay_Wadada_03Vijay Iyer, a Harvard professor and MacArthur “genius” grantee, is currently the artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Breuer building, in New York City. With his trio, the self-taught pianist makes some of the most interleaved and adventurous, yet resoundingly accessible, music in jazz. In other projects, he’s united poetry, video art and activism with improvised music (in Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project), and has composed long-form pieces for string quartet, piano and electronics (on Mutations, another recent ECM release).

Wadado Leo Smith’s stout, resolute trumpet sound has trounced across jazz’s avant-garde landscape for the past 50 years. An early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, he was on the front lines of the free jazz movement in the 1960s. Smith is equally accomplished as a composer and a trumpeter, and recently became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his suite Ten Freedom Summers, dedicated to the justice warriors of the mid-century Civil Rights Movement.

Iyer has been a member of Smith’s storied Golden Quartet since 2008, and in the years since the two have developed a way of communicating in real time with depth and a mutual sense of vision. That much is clear on A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke.