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You are invited to the Intersections Concert Series featuring Slavic Soul Party: Balkan Brass Beats & Beyond, an exploration of Balkan Folk Music (12.07.23). Join UC San Diego for our Intersections Concert Series at Park & Market in the Guggenheim Theatre hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world’s leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history. Fiery Balkan brass, throbbing funk grooves, Roma (Gypsy) accordion wizardry, and virtuoso jazz chops make Slavic Soul Party! NYC’s official #1 brass band for BalkanSoul GypsyFunk. SSP! pumps a strong Balkan brass sound through the filter of life in New York’s outer boroughs, making new music out of the unplanned results of immigration, proximity, and globalization. Over the past 15 years the band has released 7 full-length albums, and toured in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Turkey, and Zimbabwe, from pasha’s palaces to dive bars, Carnegie Hall to Serbian schoolyards, festival stages to prison courtyards. The band’s music has fans on both sides of the Atlantic, and their tunes have been covered by Serbian brass stars, New Orleans funk stalwarts, and legendary street bands. SSP!’s Tuesday night residency in Brooklyn has become a destination for music fans from around the world, and is famous for “delivering a great time.” (New York Times) In September 2016 Ropeadope Records released "Slavic Soul Party! Plays Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite." SSP! re-imagines Duke Ellington’s iconic Far East Suite as an Eastern European brass band discovering an exotic American sound, reversing the “exotic tinge” and reveling in this subtle, funky, and brilliant music. Ellington’s suite (created with Billy Strayhorn) was inspired by a 1963 State Department tour that was cut short – they didn’t make it to the “Far East” – and serves as a perfect foil for SSP!’s blend of East European, Romani, and American sounds. Critics call it “a pretty heavenly match” (TimeOut NY) and say “parts of SSP’s reinterpretation sounds like a Bulgarian wedding, others like a gypsy jazz funeral in New Orleans. And yet… it all sounds like Duke Ellington.” (Wall St Journal). “Of all the NYC dance bands that draw on Eastern European music, Slavic Soul Party! is the coolest…. SSP! jumps from traditional songs to contemporary covers and originals, connecting the dots of a number of folk schools with surprising finesse… Its members seem acutely aware of the common principle that unites the traditions they borrow from: Music ought to move you.”—Cristina Black, TimeOut NY “Anytime musicians study traditions deeply, and then free themselves to follow their own whims, it’s a beautiful thing. But when it comes to the brass band fusion of Slavic Soul Party! that’s just the beginning. With razor-sharp precision, juggernaut force, and a healthy dose of playfulness, these guys start out in overdrive and never let up… Slavic Soul Party! offers a gutpunch to preconceptions about traditional music, world music, pop music, dance music, but I’ll tell you, this is one gutpunch you’ll enjoy.”—Banning Eyre, NPR’s All Things Considered More info: The Intersections Concert is a new interdisciplinary event series, presented by UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies, taking place at the multi-tenant, mixed-use business, arts, and educational office building in downtown San Diego’s East Village. Intersections offers new, diverse takes on traditional ideas and forms in a variety of disciplines, from artistic performances to educational lectures will take place at Park & Market’s state-of-the-art Guggenheim Theatre. Hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world's leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history.

This month, the network debuts Loveuary, a quartet of films inspired by the creativity and fandom of Regency-era novelist Jane Austen, including Sense and Sensibility with a mostly Black lead cast.

From the KPBS/Arts newsletter: I checked out the de la Torre Brothers' "Post-Columbian Futurism" last weekend at Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego in Balboa Park. I knew what to expect: the massive, immersive lunar lander of "Colonial Atmospheres" (pictured), which had recently been installed at The Cheech in Riverside. To be fair to my expectations, it really is an astonishing piece of art. It's massive in scale, with so many details and so much humor, meaning and history, and it's the first thing you see as you descend the stairs into the museum. The entire exhibit imagines a battle between Aztec gods, anchored by two lenticular pieces of Coatlicue (the mother of the gods) and Mictlantecuhtli (the god of the dead). It's also an imagined future of what would happen if humanity consumed itself to death. My favorite: the dining table installation around the corner. An intricate feast is set at a lavish, antique table, but something is wrong, something is amiss about the whole scene and I could have spent an hour just trying to understand every dish. With tipped over chairs and the weirdest glass food ever, it's ominous and beguiling. ICA San Diego-Central is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and admission is free. —Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS From the museum: In Post-Columbian Futurism, one of their largest and most ambitious projects to date, brothers Jamex and Einar de la Torre (b.1960 & 1963, Guadalajara; live and work in San Diego/Baja California) transform the ICA’s Central campus into the site of an epic battle for the future of humankind. Through a fusion of Mexican, American, and Indigenous cultural iconographies, the de la Torre brothers engage with our seasonal theme “Limitless Growth, Limited World,” by relaying a cautionary tale about the dangers of overconsumption in all its forms. Post-Columbian Futurism imagines a battle between the Aztec gods Coatlicue, who represents Mother Earth, and Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the dead. In the brothers’ current conceptualization, Coatlicue morphs into “Coatzilla,” a savage creature wreaking destructive havoc on urban infrastructure, while the transformed “Miclantiputin” continually releases new traffic-filled highways in entrail-like ribbons that spill from his rib cage. We humans are caught in the middle…or perhaps we’re on both sides? Much like the brothers’ lenticular paintings, which reveal different images depending on the viewing angle, the resolution of this conflict may depend on one’s perspective. Post-Columbian Futurism includes newly commissioned work to fill over 6,000 square feet of exhibition space.Two massive lenticular paintings of the gods will confront each other in the gallery, surrounded by a series of projections, floor coverings, and related glass sculpture. “Colonial Atmosphere” (2002), an installation of a lunar lander in the shape of a massive stone Olmec head, will anchor the space, inviting us to consider how far we are willing to go, and how long we are willing to fight, for the juggernaut of humanity. Related links:

A heist with a social conscience, a father using magic for questionable work, an urban legend turned sleepover dare: These new releases explore protagonists embracing the magic within themselves.

This event is free to attend and will be held at DIESEL, A Bookstore in Del Mar. Free seating is limited. To reserve a seat, please purchase one copy of a book for one seat. In her galvanizing sixth collection of poems, Marilyn Chin once again turns moral outrage into unforgettable art. A rambunctious take on our contemporary condition, Sage shifts skillfully in tone and register from powerful poems on social justice and the pandemic to Daoist wild girl satire. A self-described "activist-subversive-radical-immigrant-feminist-transnational-Buddhist-neoclassical-nerd poet," Chin is always reinventing herself. In Sage, she sings fearless identity anthems, pulls farcical details from an old diary, and confronts the disturbing rise in violence against Asian Americans. Leaping between colloquialisms and vivid imagery, anger and humor, she merges the personal and political with singular, resilient spirit. Whether she is spinning tall tales, mixing Chinese poems with hip-hop rhymes, reinventing lovelorn folk songs with a new-world anxiety, or penning a raucous birthday poem, a heartrending elegy, or an "un-gratitude" prayer, Chin offers dazzling surprises at every turn Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of five previous poetry collections and a novel. Her work has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, and Best American Poetry, among other publications. She is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and fellowships from the United States Artists Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, among other honors. A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she lives in San Diego, California. Stay Connected on Social Media: Twitter + Linkedin

As the jolt of adrenaline lit by the clash between the two biggest rappers of a generation fades, it's worth holding onto the possibility — however slim — that something new can grow from the chaos.

The Gaza Strip's Rafah border crossing with Egypt has been a key lifeline for people in the Palestinian enclave. Here is a timeline of events since Oct. 7, 2023, leading up to Israel's offensive.

Adena Varner will assume the role of director of arts engagement in August.

A London barrister in Henry VIII's England finds himself investigating a murder in a monastery. Hulu's new four-part series, based on C.J. Sansom's 2003 novel, feels strikingly contemporary.

In a recording, the group's leader declared: "We will flog the women ... we will stone them to death in public [for crimes]." What does Islamic law say on the matter? And have stonings taken place?