New York Arts' Inaugural Event, a Concert of Baroque Chamber Music and an Exhibition of Old Master Drawings at the Fabbri Mansion

Kenneth Cooper, Roza Tulyaganova, Paula Robison, and Frederick Zlotkin take their bows in the library of the House of the Redeemer, Jan. 29, 2013. Photo Joanna Gabler

New York Arts—a presenting organization, as well as a continually updated (2 to 5 or more times a week) online arts journal—began life in the spring of 2011 as the sister magazine of The Berkshire Review for the Arts, which itself was launched in 2007. The Berkshire Review was a response to the superb music, theater, dance, and art in North America’s oldest and finest cultural resort and the need for more acute and engaging critical voices in the region.

I am very pleased to announce some exciting changes at New York Arts—or, rather, the restoration of a program included in our initial mission statement. There it said that New York Arts would “no longer be only a critical arts journal, but a sponsor of exhibitions, concerts, and other performances.” This began with an invitational event combining a showing of old master drawings and a concert of baroque music (Bach, Handel, Telemann, et. al.) played by Paula Robison, Kenneth Cooper and others in the Fabbri Mansion (House of the Redeemer) on the Upper East Side. There followed another multi-disciplinary event, a reading of poems by W. B. Yeats, Lloyd Schwartz, Senior Editor at New York Arts, one of America’s outstanding poets, who has done extensive research on Yeats, with traditional Irish music for flute and fiddle in conjunction with an exhibition of Michael Miller’s views of the Irish landscape, monuments, and people at the Centerpoint Gallery in Chelsea. Back at the Fabbri Mansion, there was an admirable recital by Stephen Porter on the mansion’s Grotrian-Steinweg (ca. 1900), entitled “Late Style,” with works by Debussy, Beethoven, Chopin, and Schubert.

For a variety of reasons, there has been a gap in these presentations, but now they will begin again with increased frequency and energy. In addition to the diverse events—in some cases combining different arts, following the interests of the magazine: music, opera, theater, dance, art, photography, architecture and urban design, local history, and food and drink—there will also be traditional concerts like Stephen Porter’s, theatrical performances, readings, exhibitions, and symposia. Our publication will offer articles amplifying these events and the issues they raise, as well as the familiar reviews and interviews related to local as well as national and international performances and exhibitions.

With this double mission, we at New York Arts hope to to play a vital role in the arts community in the city, second to none in its energy, diversity, and level of achievement.