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Wednesday Lemonade

May 27, 2020

Welcome back to Wednesday Lemonade, a community newsletter focused on keeping VCCA Fellows, staff, and supporters connected.

In this issue, we're happy to share some updates directed at the more musical among us. Right now on YouTube, we're premiering a brief video conversation featuring composer Robert Normandeau, the most recent recipient of VCCA's Wachtmeister Award for Excellence in the Arts. Plus, we announce a new project to create playlists of composer-Fellows' work. And today's resources come from ASCAP's "Music Unites Us."

Tomorrow evening, we'll hold the second virtual event in our Fireplace Series. This time, poet Nandi Comer and nonfiction writer Sandell Morse will read from their new books on Facebook Live with host Lex Williford. After this week, you'll start seeing more mashups of genres as we add visual artists and composers into these biweekly presentations of new work.

Today's Fellow Messages come from Caroline Keys, Jennifer D Printz, and Perdita Buchan.

Cheers to those who Zoomed in to our first virtual VC CA Happy Hour last week. We hope to host another of these events next month.

Happy Wednesday.
happening now
Composers in Conversation
Head to YouTube to enjoy a new video featuring composer Robert Normandeau.

Thanks to composer and VCCA Fellows Council member Judith Shatin for striking up this conversation about Robert's creative process and the work he produced during his month-long fully-funded residency at VCCA as the recipient of the 2019 Wachtme ister Award.

Robert Normandeau is a Canadian composer of primarily acousmatic music. He has been a professor of electroacoustic music composition at the Université de Montréal since 1999.
Photo by Bernard Préfontaine

The 2021 Wachtmeister Award will go to an established visual artist working in any discipline or in a cross-disciplinary way. Applicants must not have had a previous residency at VCCA. Applications will open June 15, 2020.
in the works
VCCA Playlists: A Call for Composer-Fellows' Music
Two composers on the VCCA Fellows Council — Judith Shatin and Shawn Qaissaunee — are starting a project to create playlists featuring the music of composers who are part of the VCCA community.

To get started, Judith and Shawn are inviting composer-Fellows to submit an agreement form with a suggestion of one piece that's available on streaming media (e.g., Spotify, YouTube, etc.). We look forward to sharing your music!
join us tomorrow
 VCCA Fireplace Series 02: Nandi Comer and Sandell Morse
Gather around the virtual fireplace tomorrow evening on Facebook Live. Starting at 7:30 p.m. ET, we'll hear new work from poet Nandi Comer and nonfiction writer Sandell Morse.

Nandi Comer's new poetry collection Tapping Out is av ailable from Northwestern University Press (get a 25% discount with code NUP2020 ). Find links to order Sandell Morse's new memoir The Spiral Shell on her website.

Writer and Fellows Council member Lex Williford will host. His recent novella Balsa and Tissue Paper , which he wrote at VCCA two summers ago, was released as a Ploughshares Solo in Fall 2019.
fellow messages
Below are just a few of the many lovely messages from Fellows we've collected so far. Keep them coming! And keep an eye out for more messages from Fellows elsewhere.
Caroline Keys
"Please enjoy the music video for Goddamnit , an unsentimental Western prayer by my band Junior, and consider supporting our project by pre-ordering our album on Bandcamp ."

Caroline's Missoula, Montana-based band, Junior, planned to host a series of fundraising concerts this spring in order to finance post-production of their album "Warm Buildings." Instead of hosting the live shows, they played one online event and invested the proceeds into a music video that incorporates Memphis photographer Jamie Harmon's Quarantine Portraits (featured on CBS Sunday Morning) with their song "Goddamnit." The music video, single, and album pre-sale were released May 15.
Caroline Keys
Jennifer D Printz
"Let your art be your guide. The goal for my practice has always been to create a beautiful meditative moment for me in making and for my viewers. I feel this is more crucial now than ever. This situation is so unsure and is reminding me as a human all that I cannot control, but I can go to my table and draw and so I do. There the world fades away at least for a little while and I feel at peace. I wish the same for you."

Jennifer's research residency to Paris was canceled due to COVID-19, and several upcoming and current exhibitions are on hold.
Perdita Buchan
"I am lucky to have my garden and the ocean — also music and poetry, more appealing now than prose. It's what I always said I'd want on a desert island. You never get to the end of a good poem. I have returned to some old favorites like Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age , memories of an English childhood pre-WWI — and my own memories of being a small child in my grandmother's garden in England during WWII. I would also recommend the Moomin books (Tove Jansson) which deal often with fear and uncertainty in an oddly comforting way. And, of course, tea, always a first resort in times of trouble. Sometimes it's hard to feel that one's own writing matters — but it is an escape into another world. So one keeps on."

A number of signings and talks for Perdita's new historical novel, The Carousel Carver, have been canceled.
vcca happy hours
Cheers!
Thanks again to Richmond-based visual artist and Fellows Council executive committee member Amie Oliver for hosting the first virtual VCCA Happy Hour last Thursday.

And thanks to everyone else who dropped by! It was a small but intimate gathering with several folks sticking around for the full hour. Let's do it again sometime. Stay tuned.
covid-19 resources
From the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
ASCAP's " Music Unites Us" page offers a collection of coronavirus resources for music creators, including a section on financial assistance .
standing invitations
Buy New Books by Fellows
Keep in Touch
🧡 Stay safe, and be well.