Shop Penn

Summer is a time to get out and explore, especially this year. University City is filled with world-class museums, galleries, and performance spaces that are once again opening to visitors. Many unique exhibitions and eye-catching shows are available both in-person and virtually. The “Shop Penn Playlist” is a snapshot of the top events being offered by institutions, organizations, and venues throughout the district this month.

Revivals of Blackness – World Café Live (Virtual)
June 6

Created collaboratively by artists Lela Aisha Jones, Luke Carlos O’Reilly, Alex Shaw, and filmmaker Aidan Un, Revivals of Blackness is an artistic offering to our kindred, honoring the life-giving contributions of global Black folks by staying real and more than well as we navigate legacies of U.S. racial violence. This dynamic virtual ceremony interweaves music, dance, poetry, interviews, and visuals to illustrate the collective lived experiences of diasporic Blackness as effervescent, fluid, infinite, wayward, and always right on time.

Garden Music with Relâche – Penn Museum
June 6

Join Relâche for informal, open-air music in the Penn Museum’s beautiful Warden Garden. Roger Mgrdichian, master of the oud, an ancestor of the European lute, will perform along with Lloyd Shorter (oboe/French horn) and Wes Morton (percussion), exploring global common threads through improvisation of Jim Pepper‘s “Witchi-Tai-To.”  Recognized for its world-class performances of works by leading contemporary composers, Relâche is an international leader in commissioning, presenting, and performing the innovative music of our time.

The Crossing Month of Moderns 2: “we got time.” – Annenberg Center
June 11-13

This performance takes place at The Woodlands, 4000 Woodland Ave, Philadelphia.

With its “gift for lending social activism poetic form,” (The New York Times) the Grammy® Award-winning new music choir The Crossing performs the world premiere of Matana Roberts’ “we got time.” which honors the life of Breonna Taylor. This linear work is experienced via a 1/3-mile self-paced walk through The Woodlands. Entry is timed and the singers and audience are spatially distanced using The Crossing’s Echoes Amplification Kits, which allow an intimate aural performance while observing pandemic-time protocols.

Performance by Filament Baroque Ensemble – Arthur Ross Gallery (Virtual)
June 17

In Music for an Inner World, Filament presents a program inspired by the cosmopolitan musical life of the Netherlands during the 17th century. Demonstrating the boundless possibilities of an ensemble of violin, viola da gamba, and harpsichord, this concert will pair musical works published and collected in Amsterdam with pieces from baroque Germany and Scandinavia, evoking in sound the tender, witty, and richly colored world of Dutch painting. Filament is a chamber ensemble, formed in 2019, of Philadelphia-based period-instrument soloists. Comprising a core trio of violin, viola da gamba, and keyboards, its respective founding members are Evan Few, Elena Smith, and John Walthausen.

Building Monuments, Monumentalizing Buildings – Penn Museum (Virtual)
June 23

What makes a building a monument? Some of the buildings that hold the most meaning for us, including Independence Hall, were not built to be monuments. What monumentalized them? And some of the most ambitious programs to build monuments, like Philadelphia’s City Hall, notably failed to capture contemporary attention. What went wrong? History offers important lessons for us today, as we strive to create monuments that reflect our values and aspirations.

Liminal States Series featuring Loren Connors – The Rotunda (Virtual)

Bowerbird is pleased to present Liminal States, a new series of late night, live streamed concerts intended to be listened to as you fall asleep. Aiming to center and calm, the musicians will seek to lead listeners to that magic space between awake and asleep. Loren Connors has improvised and composed original guitar music for over four decades. His music embraces the underlying aesthetics of blues, Irish airs, blues-based rock and other genres while letting go of rigid forms.