Symphony Space

Description

ORGANIZATION PROFILE: Founded in 1978 in an abandoned movie theatre on New York City’s Upper West Side, SYMPHONY SPACE has become known for presenting an annual calendar of free and low-cost artistic programs presenting a variety of performing arts from the City’s many cultures. Symphony Space builds each season around a diverse array of presentations, which include the annual free Wall to Wall music marathons, each celebrating an individual composer or musical genre; the literary series Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story; the Tuesday Night Repertory Film Series; Bloomsday on Broadway, the annual James Joyce tribute; Just Kidding!, the Saturday-morning performing arts series for children ages four and older; the New York Autumn Blues Festival; the new dance series comprised of Triple Play Dance, Face the Music & Dance, and Dance Sampler, original programs that feature a broad selection of contemporary choreography; the Selected Shorts: All Write! adult literacy outreach program; and the Curriculum Arts Project, which integrates the arts into the social studies curriculum in New York Citys public schools.
In addition to Symphony Spaces own annual calendar of performances, an average of 40 not-for-profit organizations present 125 performances at Symphony Space each year. Many of these events are made possible through Symphony Spaces Performance Subsidy Program, which assists selected performance groups by providing subsidized rental rates and a host of marketing and production services. Groups appearing regularly through the program include the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, the World Music Institute, the New Amsterdam Symphony, Ballet for Young Audiences, Shadow Box Theatre, and the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra.
LITERARY SERIES PROFILE:
SELECTED SHORTS: A CELEBRATION OF THE SHORT STORY
The Selected Shorts series of live readings will run for twelve Wednesday evenings from January 31 through June 6, 2001. For this, its seventeenth season, the program will again focus on short stories in three categories: classical literary works, contemporary fiction by established authors, and brand-new stories by the most exciting writers around. Among the writers whose stories are being read are Flannery O’Connor, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, W. Somerset Maugham, Zadie Smith, Melissa Bank, Amy Tan, André Aciman, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Julia Alvarez, Raymond Carver, Larry McMurty, and Sandra Cisneros. Actors scheduled to read include Kate Burton, David Strathairn, Robert Sean Leonard, Lili Taylor, Hector Elizondo, Steven Lang, Cherry Jones, and Stockard Channing. Special guest hosts include E.L. Doctorow presenting selections from The Best American Short Stories 2000 and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham, as well as top young fiction writer Sherman Alexie.