#Lewisohn Stadium

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Michael Loew, Concert, 1928. Oil on canvas.

The scene is Lewisohn Stadium, which was on the campus of CCNY (City College of New York) between 136th and 138th Sts. and Amsterdam and Convent Aves. For years, the open-air venue hosted musical and theatrical performances and athletic events and was called "the city's summer cultural center." It was demolished in 1973 to expand the college's academic facilities.

Photo: 1st Dibs

[ultraozzie3000]

The Happy Warrior

Above: Al Smith waving to crowds on arrival at Chattanooga, Tennessee during his presidential campaign in 1928. (Museum of the City of New York) It’s hard to not like Al Smith, the governor of New York from 1923 to 1928, a man who avoided the temptations of political power and stayed true to his working class roots of the Lower East Side. July 14, 1934 cover by Rea Irvin. The son of Irish,…

[citizenscreen]

Frank Sinatra rehearsing at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York on August 3, 1943. Near him is Max Steiner conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

[lboogie1906]

André Watts (born June 20, 1946) is a classical pianist and professor at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University.

His performance of the Liszt Piano Concerto #1 in E-flat at a Young People’s Concert was videotaped and nationally televised. Before the concert, Bernstein introduced him to the national television audience, stating that he “flipped” when he first heard him play.

He enrolled at the Peabody Institute, where he studied part-time for a BM. He appeared at New York City’s Lewisohn Stadium with conductor Seiji Ozawa, and the New York Philharmonic, performing Camille Saint-Saëns’ Concerto #2 in G minor. He performed the Liszt concerto at the Hollywood Bowl. He opened the 1964-65 season of the National Symphony Orchestra in DC, again performing the Saint-Saëns concerto. He returned to New York to perform Chopin’s Concerto #2 in F minor. He made his European debut in a London performance with the London Symphony Orchestra.

He was on a full-scale concert schedule, booked three years in advance. He made his Boston debut for the Peabody Mason Concert series. He graduated from the Peabody Institute.

He was selected as Musical America’s Musician of the Month. Other honors and awards include doctor honoris causa from Albright College and Yale University, the Order of Zaire, a University of the Arts Medal from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the National Medal of Arts. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[joansutherlandfan]

#tbt On this day, back in 1962, Joan sang at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York for an audience of 20000 people! *I synced the aria 'Al tuo seno fortunato' from the Hollywood Bown concert in 1969 with the video.

[tumbling-dyce]

Ruth Orkin, Leonard Bernstein and Marian Anderson, Lewisohn Stadium, 1947 

[semioticapocalypse]

Ruth Orkin. Marian Anderson and Leonard Bernstein. Lewisohn Stadium, New York. June 1947

[::SemAp Twitter || SemAp::]

[jazzplusplus]

1966 - The Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Miles Davis Quintet - Lewisohn Stadium - Campus of the City College of New York

[dk-thrive]

That is why I like artists best, because their eyes are open and their brains stirring, because they see and hear and feel suddenly man in new form

8/11/42. ...With myself, I had to ask a long while what I loved best, what sort of life I wanted, what rate of speed, what environs, what goal, what amusements and what labors. I like a room of my own, with long evenings in summer, in snowy winter, in the exciting fall and the spring. I like to read my books when the radio is playing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, or Bach sonatas or Boccherini concertos. Yes and I like the lives of the people I don’t know: of the rich old gentleman whose daughter brings his hot chocolate up the stairs to him at four on the dot, when he is finishing his after-lunch pasting in stamp collections. I like the lives of the mechanics of Detroit, who read Dickens on Sunday afternoons because they love him, and because, too, they think they are absorbing culture. I like the farm boys who come to town once a month to see movies and sleep with a girl and buy themselves ten-a-shot drinks. I like the artists, the painters, photographers, window designers, copywriters, playwrights, novelists and short story writers who live with a mildness in their eyes and a calmness in their hands, who do not remember what they had for breakfast, and who do not know what they will have for dinner. I like the poor Jewish family who sits next to me at the Lewisohn Stadium, the sailor in glasses who reads beside me in the Public Library, the good Chinaman who washes my shirts. I like my Sunday mornings with marmalade from England, the paper at my door, the symphonies in the afternoon, and the toasted marshmallows in the evening. Best of all I like the artists, professed & unprofessed, who of all people, live closest by the belief that man is the most wonderful creation in the world, most wonderful of animals and more wonderful than all creatures of his own brain. That is why I like artists best, because their eyes are open and their brains stirring, because they see and hear and feel suddenly man in new form, and, having captured it, have contributed so much to the great mosaic of wonderful man, which will never be done, and yet never be destroyed.

— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021) 

[96thdayofrage]

Writer-director Jamila Ephron’s new PBS film The Blinding of Isaac Woodard shows how great consequences can be ignited by smaller acts. In this case, the small act was one of a history of cruel injustices. The consequence was a sea change in public opinion and a movement which shaped the future of a country.

On Feb. 12, 1946, a group of recently discharged soldiers was taking a Greyhound Bus through the Deep South back home. The GIs were excited. They had just finished fighting in WWII and were on the verge of reuniting with their families.

Isaac Woodard (1919-1992) was an Army sergeant decorated for bravery under fire. He would be seeing his young wife for the first time in several years. Though subject to intense discrimination at home in the U.S., over 900,000 Black Americans had fought to protect the country which refused to allow them to vote or to receive an education and subjected them to unequal harsh justice.

Sgt. Woodard had complained on the trip home that the bus driver had refused him a rest stop to use the bathroom. Because he had complained, when the Greyhound stopped in Batesburg, S.C., Woodard was pulled off the bus by the local Police Chief Lynwood Shull. Shull and his deputies arrested Woodard, dragged him into a back alley, held him down, beat him severely, and gouged out his eyes. They then poured liquor over Woodard, claimed he was drunk and disorderly, fined him $50, and dumped him in a local hospital.



The Daily Worker newspaper, predecessor of People’s World, was among the first media outlets to report the attack on Woodard and played an important role in bringing the case to wider national attention. In its July 13, 1946, edition, a Worker reporter wrote: “Woodard tells a story in sworn affidavits matching tales of horror from Nazi torture chambers…sheer brutality and fascist terror….”

But the case might have been forgotten were it not for the intervention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and America’s leading actor at the time, Orson Welles. The NAACP took the case to Welles. Week after week, Welles hammered away at this outrage on his nationwide ABC show “Orson Welles Commentaries,” even hiring private detectives to research what had transpired. Celebrities Billie Holiday, Joe Louis, Woody Guthrie, and Duke Ellington staged concerts and raised funds for Woodard.

Walter White, the NAACP’s Executive Secretary, met with President Truman in the Oval Office to review what had happened. Truman was moved by the injustice and pledged to address it.

But when Woodard’s case went to trial, it was grossly mishandled. The local U.S. Attorney only interviewed one person—the antagonistic bus driver. The defense attorney assigned to Woodard started shouting racial epithets against him. Presiding Judge Julius Waties Waring (1880-1968) had to stop him. Shull admitted to the blinding but was still acquitted by an all-white jury in only 30 minutes of deliberations.

The decision outraged Judge Waring. Despite coming from a Confederate, slave-owning family, the judge questioned the Jim Crow system. His experiences made him partial toward Civil Rights.

Although he risked alienating Southern political support (and in those days the Deep South was solidly Democratic), President Truman took action. He established a Presidential Committee on Civil Rights on Dec. 5, 1946. In June of the following year, he took the unprecedented step of personally addressing the NAACP’s national meeting. “There is no justifiable reason for discriminating because of race, color, or religion,” he told the assemblage.

Truman and Judge Waring’s pursuit of this principle became a turning point in guaranteeing rights to all American citizens. The government and the NAACP under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall worked to overthrow restrictions on voting and the separate but equal laws that resulted in discrimination against Blacks in education, transportation, and services throughout the South. Their actions culminated in the landmark Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka case in 1954, which helped open the doors to greater justice.

Famed left-wing singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie composed “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard” and sang it at New York City’s Lewisohn Stadium in front of over 36,000 people. He later recalled, “I got the loudest applause I’ve ever got in my whole life.”

Woodard’s “drunk and disorderly” conviction was vacated in 2018. In 2019, a new book about the Woodard story and its aftermath appeared, authored by Federal Judge Richard Gergel, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring.

Also in 2019, a group of public-minded citizens received permission from the state of South Carolina to erect a historical marker unveiled that year regarding Woodard in Batesburg-Leesville. The bottom part of the marker was written in Braille.

Director Ephron, co-writer Mark Zwonitzer and narrator Andre Holland stitch together historians’ analyses, participants’ testimony, and vintage archival footage to provide a rich tapestry of the crucial historical battles that are being fought anew as Southern state legislatures again seek to take away voting rights primarily of African Americans.

The Blinding of Isaac Woodard premieres Tues., March 30 on PBS American Experience.

[joeinct]

Leonard Bernstein and Marian Anderson, Lewisohn Stadium, Photo by Ruth Orkin, 1947

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ruth Orkin (September 3, 1921–January 16, 1985), one of the finest 20th century photographers. She was born in Hollywood, the daughter of a toy manufacturer and a silent film actress, and received her first camera at age 10. At 17, she biked across the country to New York to see the 1939-40 World’s Fair, photographing along the way.

She moved to New York permanently in 1943, where she worked as a nightclub photographer and shot baby pictures by day.  Pretty soon she was working for all the major magazines. She married the photographer Morris Engel and they produced two feature films, including the classic “Little Fugitive,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953, as well as two children. She died in 1985 after a long struggle with cancer.

Above: Orkin’s friend Leonard Bernstein, who spoke at her funeral, playing the piano at a concert at Lewisohn Stadium in 1947. Click to enlarge.

More Orkin photos can be found here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

[monkberries]

I mean, that hardly counts as a verified source, it's just the mclennonwasreal blog stuff. There are videos on youtube that show the whole pre-show video, and the photo is nowhere in sight. It doesn't look like it was photographed from a stadium screen either, and how would they know Paul took it in Paris, or that it "hangs in his house".

okay, fine. obviously i tried to answer too fast to get back to the thing i was actually working on and didn’t consider the source as alec baldwin so smartly reminds us to do. happens to the best of us. i deleted the post.

however, i still think it’s probably genuine based on some circumstantial evidence:

-paul has used several different pre-show films/photo reels/what have you. i found three distinct ones on youtube (and one of those was only the post-beatles part of it), from three different tours - one from 1993, one from 2005, and one from 2013. There’s a very short video that shows tiny pieces of his pre-show video from 2019 as well, but it’s literally only maybe a minute or two of very shaky footage. according to wikipedia he has done 16 separate solo tours since 1989. if he has a separate video done for each tour (who knows if that’s true but let’s assume it is) that would mean youtube only has 2.5 out of 16 different videos. (as a sidenote, i don’t know where the “it hangs in his house” thing came from either - i’m absolutely willing to believe that’s one of those things that got added onto it after the fact by the internet rumor mill. i’m also willing to believe it’s not from his pre-show videos at all; it could have come from anywhere.)

-there are a lot of beatles photos we know of where the source has been lost to time. we don’t have a centralized archive (though lewisohn seems to be working on that). no one has everything. there are so many things that have been auctioned off to private collectors that were once publicly available; that video of the beatles in wales comes to mind, and the only reason we know about it is because someone made a series of 4 screenshots of paul in it. there’s only like one photo of john in paris in anthology (at least in the section of the book where paul talks about it, tbf i have not read the entire book because it’s the size of a house); where did the other dozen or so come from? magazines? newspapers? other photo books? auctions? paul’s personal collection? 

-i’ve reverse-image searched several of the photographs from paris. one showed up first online in 2008, another in 2010, one in 2012, another couple in march 2014 and yet another in october 2014 on the same day and page as the john-in-bed photo. because the website is now gone, i can’t check that source. but the other photograph posted originally on that page at that time (this one) is unquestionably genuine.

-it looks like john to me. idk why it doesn’t to you.

anyway, i’m not gonna be able to convince you and you’re not gonna convince me. i think it’s real and you don’t and that’s fine.

photo for ref: 

[ravnlghtft]

Alvin Ailey born on January 5th 1931, in Rogers, Texas, at the height of the Great Depression in the violently racist and segregated south, during his youth Ailey was barred from interacting with mainstream society. Abandoned by his father when he was three months old, Ailey and his mother were forced to work in cotton fields and as domestics in white homes—the only employment available to them. As an escape, Ailey found refuge in the church, sneaking out at night to watch adults dance, and in writing a journal, a practice that he maintained his entire life. Even this could not shield him from a shiftless childhood spent moving from town to town as his mother sought employment, being abandoned with relatives whenever she took off on her own, or watching her get raped at the hands of a white man when he was five years old.

Looking for greater job prospects, Ailey’s mother departed for Los Angeles in 1941. He arrived a year later, enrolling at George Washington Carver Junior High School, and then graduating into Thomas Jefferson High School. In 1946 he had his first experience with concert dance when he saw the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo perform at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium. This awakened an until then unknown spark of joy within him, though he did not become serious about dance until 1949 when his classmate and friend Carmen De Lavallade dragged him to the Melrose Avenue studio of Lester Horton.

Ailey studied a wide range of dance styles and techniques—from ballet to Native American inspired movement studies—at Horton’s school, which was one of the first racially integrated dance schools in the United States. Though Horton became his mentor, Ailey did not commit to dancing full-time; instead he pursued academic courses, studying romance languages and writing at UCLA. He continued these studies at San Francisco State in 1951. Living in San Francisco he met Maya Angelou, then known as Marguerite Johnson, with whom he formed a nightclub act called “Al and Rita”. Eventually, he returned to study dance with Horton in Los Angeles.

He joined Horton’s dance company in 1953, making his debut in Horton’s Revue Le Bal Caribe. Horton died suddenly that same year in November from a heart attack, leaving the company without leadership. In order to complete the organization’s pressing professional engagements, and because no one else was willing to, Ailey took over as artistic director and choreographer.

In 1954 De Lavallade and Ailey were recruited by Herbert Ross to join the Broadway show, House of Flowers. Ross had been hired to replace George Balanchine as the show’s choreographer and he wanted to use the pair, who had become known as a famous dance team in Los Angeles, as featured dancers. The show’s book was written and adapted by Truman Capote from one of his novellas with music from Harold Arlen and starred Pearl Bailey and Diahann Carroll. Ailey and De Lavallade met Geoffrey Holder, who performed alongside them in the chorus, during the production. Holder married De Lavallade and became a life-long artistic collaborator with Ailey. After House of Flowers closed, Ailey appeared in Harry Belafonte’s touring revue Sing, Man, Sing with Mary Hinkson as his dance partner, and the 1957 Broadway musical Jamaica, which starred Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalbán. Drawn to dance, but unable to find a choreographer whose work fulfilled him, Ailey started gathering dancers to perform his own unique vision of dance.

Alvin Ailey, a.k.a. Alvin Ailey Jr., founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Ailey School as havens for nurturing black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance. His work fused theatre, modern dance, ballet, and jazz with black vernacular, creating hope-fueled choreography that continues to spread global awareness of black life in America. Ailey’s choreographic masterpiece Revelations is recognized as one of the most popular and most performed ballets in the world. In this work he blended primitive, modern and jazz elements of dance with a concern for black rural America. On July 15, 2008, the United States Congress passed a resolution designating AAADT a “vital American cultural ambassador to the World.” That same year, in recognition of AAADT’s 50th anniversary, then Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared December 4 “Alvin Ailey Day” in New York City while then Governor David Paterson honoured the organization on behalf of New York State.

Ailey loathed the label “black choreographer” and preferred being known simply as a choreographer. He was notoriously private about his life. Though gay, he kept his romantic affairs in the closet. Following the death of his friend Joyce Trisler, a failed relationship, and bouts of heavy drinking and cocaine use, Ailey suffered a mental breakdown in 1980. He was diagnosed as manic depressive, known today as bipolar disorder. During his rehabilitation, Judith Jamison served as co-director of AAADT.

Ailey died from an AIDS related illness on December 1, 1989, at the age of 58. He asked his doctor to announce that his death was caused by terminal blood dyscrasia in order to shield his mother from the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.

Choreography

Cinco Latinos, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Kaufmann Concert Hall, New York City, 1958.

Blues Suite (also see below), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1958.

Revelations, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Kaufmann ConcertHall, 1960

Three for Now, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Clark Center, New York City, 1960.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Clark Center, 1960.

(With Carmen De Lavallade) Roots of the Blues, Lewisohn Stadium, New York City, 1961.

Hermit Songs, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963.

Ariadne, Harkness Ballet, Opera Comique, Paris, 1965.

Macumba, Harkness Ballet, Gran Teatro del Liceo, Barcelona, Spain,1966, then produced as Yemanja, Chicago Opera House, 1967.

Quintet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, Scotland, 1968, then Billy Rose Theatre, New York City, 1969.

Masekela Langage, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, American Dance Festival, New London, Connecticut, 1969, then Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City, 1969.

Streams, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1970.

Gymnopedies, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1970.

The River, American Ballet Theatre, New York State Theater, 1970.

Flowers, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, ANTA Theatre, 1971.

Myth, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York City Center, 1971.

Choral Dances, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York City Center, 1971.

Cry, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York City Center, 1971.

Mingus Dances, Robert Joffrey Company, New York City Center, 1971.

Mary Lou’s Mass, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York City Center, 1971.

Song for You, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York City Center, 1972.

The Lark Ascending, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York City Center, 1972.

Love Songs, Alvin Ailey City Center Dance Theater, New York City Center, 1972.

Shaken Angels, 10th New York Dance Festival, Delacorte Theatre, New York City, 1972.

Sea Change, American Ballet Theatre, Kennedy Center Opera House, Washington, D.C., 1972, then New York City Center, 1973.

Hidden Rites, Alvin Ailey City Center Dance Theater, New York City Center, 1973.

Archipelago, 1971,

The Mooche, 1975,

Night Creature, 1975,

Pas de “Duke”, 1976,

Memoria, 1979,

Phases, 1980

Landscape, 1981.

Stage

Acting and dancing

(Broadway debut) House of Flowers, Alvin Theatre, New York City, 1954 – Actor and dancer.

The Carefree Tree, 1955 – Actor and dancer.

Sing, Man, Sing, 1956 – Actor and dancer.

Show Boat, Marine Theatre, Jones Beach, New York, 1957 – Actor and dancer.

Jamaica, Imperial Theatre, New York City, 1957 – Actor and lead dance.

Call Me By My Rightful Name, One Sheridan Square Theatre, 1961 – Paul.

Ding Dong Bell, Westport Country Playhouse, 1961 – Negro Political Leader.

Blackstone Boulevard, Talking to You, produced as double-bill in 2 by Saroyan, East End Theatre, New York City, 1961-62.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright, Booth Theatre, 1962 – Clarence Morris.

Stage choreography

Carmen Jones, Theatre in the Park, 1959.

Jamaica, Music Circus, Lambertville, New Jersey, 1959.

Dark of the Moon, Lenox Hill Playhouse, 1960.

(And director) African Holiday (musical), Apollo Theatre, New York City, 1960, then produced at Howard Theatre, Washington, D.C., 1960.

Feast of Ashes (ballet), Robert Joffrey Company, Teatro San Carlos, Lisbon, Portugal, 1962, then produced at New York City Center, 1971.

Antony and Cleopatra (opera), Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York City, 1966.

La Strada, first produced at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1969.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, Metropolitan Opera House, 1972, then John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia Academy of Music, both 1972.

Carmen, Metropolitan Opera, 1972.

Choreographed ballet, Lord Byron (opera; also see below), Juilliard School of Music, New York City, 1972.

Four Saints in Three Acts, Piccolo Met, New York City, 1973.

Director

(With William Hairston) Jerico-Jim Crow, The Sanctuary, New York City, 1964, then Greenwich Mews Theatre, 1968.

In 1968 Ailey was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada. In 1977 he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988, was inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame in 1992, inducted into the Legacy Walk in 2012, and posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2014.

In August 2019, Ailey was one of the honorees inducted in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have “made significant contributions in their fields.”

A crater on Mercury was named in his honor in 2012.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[pierreism]

‘Gershwin: Ouverture cubaine’ performed by L’Orchestre National de France

Le 16 août 1932, Gershwin présentait sa Cuban Ouverture (d’abord simplement intitulée Rumba) au Lewisohn Stadium : Albert Coates y dirige le New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Longtemps connue sous le titre de Rumba, l’œuvre résulte de vacances passées à La Havane : Gershwin y aurait mené « la grande vie » en compagnie d’un ami, Emil Mosbacher, et un orchestre de rumba serait venu jouer sous les fenêtres de sa suite à l’Hôtel Almendares, ce qui aurait fasciné le compositeur, comme on peut en entendre l’écho dans cette Ouverture cubaine : variété des percussions (maracas, bongos, etc.) et efficacité rythmique éblouissante.

via France Musique

[musicainextenso]

Let’s continue our exclusive Famous Overtures Week, here at Musica in Extenso! Through the whole series, we shared some really fantastic masterpieces; today as well we prepared some jazzy melodies, an impressive symphonic overture from the famous american composer, George Gershwin.

The Cuban Overture - originally titled Rumba - it was a result of a two-week holiday which Gershwin took in Havana, Cuba in February 1932. Gershwin composed the piece in July and August 1932. The work under the title Rumba received its premiere at New York's now-demolished Lewisohn Stadium in 16 August 1932, as part of an all-Gershwin programme held by New York Philharmonic. 

Today on Musica in Extenso:

George Gershwin

Cuban Overture

Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

 Conductor: Richard Hayman 

Enjoy! - Editor-in-Chief