ThoughtGallery.org > Icons in Ash, Reimagine Death: A Night of Art, Songs, and Spoken Word

Icons in Ash, Reimagine Death: A Night of Art, Songs, and Spoken Word

Icons in Ash, Reimagine Death is a night with art, songs and spoken word about dying, death, grieving, consoling and remembering, and a part of Let’s Reimagine End of Life, a week long festival of exploring death through +300 exhibits, performances, discussions, screenings, and workshops.

All performances at the the Red Room on October 30 are inspired by Heide Hatry’s Icons in Ash memorial portraits made of cremated remains. Hatry wants to reintegrate life and death: to touch death, work with death, to let it speak in its mundanity, its grandeur, its familiarity and its mystery, its uniqueness and its universality, to redeem it from oblivion, to give it its own life again.

Artists, Musicians and spoken word performers include: Queen Esther, Vanisha Gould, John Hudak, John S. Hall, Christine Isherwood, Hot Glue & The Gun (Carrie Klein and Joel McGlynn), Jane LeCroy, Anthony Haden-Guest, Joel Simpson, Sophie Malleret, Taylor Lee Price and the Indiggo Twins.

Vanisha Gould, is a Jazz vocalist and a composer. She has burst onto the New York Jazz scene and, with a voice reminiscent of Billie Holiday, has carved out a fierce reputation for thrilling audiences. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA and finished her Professional Music Degree at Berklee College of Music. She moved to New York in 2015.

Queen Esther, the Grand Prize winner of the 2008 Jazzmobile Vocal Competition, performs internationally and forges her own sonic path with her jazz collective and her Black Americana outfit The Blue Crowns. Released in 2015, her critically acclaimed album The Other Side “…the most exciting Afro-Americana album of the year” is garnering airplay worldwide “…a brutal, original, explosive singer.” (Vanity Fair)

John Hudak has been interested in sound and music from the age of four when he began to play piano. In recent years, he has focused on digital collage and short video pieces (Instagram: possibility_pictures), but has not ceased creating minimalistic sound pieces based on nature (as soundtracks for his videos).

Hot Glue & The Gun (Carrie Klein & Joel McGlynn), a indie duo, work and play with transformation and collaboration in their song, performance and visual art. Since they began writing and performing together in 2014, they have continually sought to sink into the mysteries of human experience: birth, life, death, love, fear, poetry, harmony…

Christine Isherwood is a Voice Movement Therapist, who teaches “Singing The Psyche,” the Voice Movement Therapy Training, and workshops internationally. She has written and performed in political musicals, toured the UK and Europe with theatre groups and bands. Largely silent these past few years, she has been tending to dying family members.

Jane LeCroy is a NYC based poet, singer and performance artist who fronts the avant-pop band, The Icebergs, and the psychedelic experimental music project, Ω▽Ohmslice. She teaches writing, and her book, Signature Play, a multimedia book of lyrical poems, published by Three Rooms Press was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has also released two music albums and is performing at many venues in NY.

Joel Simpson, armed with a PhD in comparative literature he has taught English, French, Italian and jazz history at New Orleans, New Jersey and metro New York area universities. Between his two stints in literary academia, he pursued a career in jazz piano for 22 years. His photographic work has shown in the US as well as in Paris, Tours, Zurich, and Istanbul, and been in numerous publications. He also writes art/photography reviews for a number of publications.

Anthony Haden-Guest is a writer, reporter and cartoonist. 
He was born in Paris and lives in New York and London. He has published in leading magazines in Britain and America. His books include True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World, The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night, and his most recent: In The Mean Time, a book of cartoons and rhymes.

Taylor Lee Price is a writer who currently focuses on poetry as a means of expressing trauma. She studies literature, publishing, and writing at The Evergreen State College and is currently a full time assistant for Heide Hatry.

Sophie Malleret is a poet/performer writes and performs in the US and Europe in English and French.

John S. Hall is an American poet, author, singer and lawyer perhaps best known for his work with King Missile, an avant-garde band, that he co-founded in 1986 and has since led in various incarnations. Hall has published two books with Soft Skull: Jesus Was Way Cool, a collection of 40 poems recorded on King Missile and Hall solo albums, and Daily Negotiations, a dark-humored satire of self-help books.

Indiggo Twins are Gabriela and Mihaela Modorcea, Romanian-American actresses, dancers, singers, writers and the creators and performers of Wicked Clone, a Off Broadway Show, and Cinema Musical.

Heide Hatry is an NYC based German artist, mainly known for her conceptual work using unconventional materials. Her most recent body of work, Icons in Ash, consists of portraits made from the cremated remains of their subjects, a social art project that has made a significant impact on the lives of their survivors and contributed to a re-imagining of our relationship to the dead.

Books and CDs of all performers will be available.

Legendary East Village KGB Bar has a newly created gorgeous and intimate space. The Red Room is a speak easy style club on the 3rd floor at 85 E. 4th Street. The limited occupancy Red Room features gangster inspired libations with names like Wiseguy and Cocksman and antiques from the period, including a copper bath tub as well as proprietor Denis Woychuk’s art and object collections and promotes the feel of days gone by when infamous gangster Lucky Luciano’s Palm Casino inhabited the building. Lori Schwarz is soul of Red Room and is also the contact person for bookings, and press inquiries.











When: Tue., Oct. 30, 2018 at 9:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Where: KGB
85 E. 4th St.
347-441-4481
Price: No cover, two drink minimum
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Icons in Ash, Reimagine Death is a night with art, songs and spoken word about dying, death, grieving, consoling and remembering, and a part of Let’s Reimagine End of Life, a week long festival of exploring death through +300 exhibits, performances, discussions, screenings, and workshops.

All performances at the the Red Room on October 30 are inspired by Heide Hatry’s Icons in Ash memorial portraits made of cremated remains. Hatry wants to reintegrate life and death: to touch death, work with death, to let it speak in its mundanity, its grandeur, its familiarity and its mystery, its uniqueness and its universality, to redeem it from oblivion, to give it its own life again.

Artists, Musicians and spoken word performers include: Queen Esther, Vanisha Gould, John Hudak, John S. Hall, Christine Isherwood, Hot Glue & The Gun (Carrie Klein and Joel McGlynn), Jane LeCroy, Anthony Haden-Guest, Joel Simpson, Sophie Malleret, Taylor Lee Price and the Indiggo Twins.

Vanisha Gould, is a Jazz vocalist and a composer. She has burst onto the New York Jazz scene and, with a voice reminiscent of Billie Holiday, has carved out a fierce reputation for thrilling audiences. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA and finished her Professional Music Degree at Berklee College of Music. She moved to New York in 2015.

Queen Esther, the Grand Prize winner of the 2008 Jazzmobile Vocal Competition, performs internationally and forges her own sonic path with her jazz collective and her Black Americana outfit The Blue Crowns. Released in 2015, her critically acclaimed album The Other Side “…the most exciting Afro-Americana album of the year” is garnering airplay worldwide “…a brutal, original, explosive singer.” (Vanity Fair)

John Hudak has been interested in sound and music from the age of four when he began to play piano. In recent years, he has focused on digital collage and short video pieces (Instagram: possibility_pictures), but has not ceased creating minimalistic sound pieces based on nature (as soundtracks for his videos).

Hot Glue & The Gun (Carrie Klein & Joel McGlynn), a indie duo, work and play with transformation and collaboration in their song, performance and visual art. Since they began writing and performing together in 2014, they have continually sought to sink into the mysteries of human experience: birth, life, death, love, fear, poetry, harmony…

Christine Isherwood is a Voice Movement Therapist, who teaches “Singing The Psyche,” the Voice Movement Therapy Training, and workshops internationally. She has written and performed in political musicals, toured the UK and Europe with theatre groups and bands. Largely silent these past few years, she has been tending to dying family members.

Jane LeCroy is a NYC based poet, singer and performance artist who fronts the avant-pop band, The Icebergs, and the psychedelic experimental music project, Ω▽Ohmslice. She teaches writing, and her book, Signature Play, a multimedia book of lyrical poems, published by Three Rooms Press was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has also released two music albums and is performing at many venues in NY.

Joel Simpson, armed with a PhD in comparative literature he has taught English, French, Italian and jazz history at New Orleans, New Jersey and metro New York area universities. Between his two stints in literary academia, he pursued a career in jazz piano for 22 years. His photographic work has shown in the US as well as in Paris, Tours, Zurich, and Istanbul, and been in numerous publications. He also writes art/photography reviews for a number of publications.

Anthony Haden-Guest is a writer, reporter and cartoonist. 
He was born in Paris and lives in New York and London. He has published in leading magazines in Britain and America. His books include True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World, The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night, and his most recent: In The Mean Time, a book of cartoons and rhymes.

Taylor Lee Price is a writer who currently focuses on poetry as a means of expressing trauma. She studies literature, publishing, and writing at The Evergreen State College and is currently a full time assistant for Heide Hatry.

Sophie Malleret is a poet/performer writes and performs in the US and Europe in English and French.

John S. Hall is an American poet, author, singer and lawyer perhaps best known for his work with King Missile, an avant-garde band, that he co-founded in 1986 and has since led in various incarnations. Hall has published two books with Soft Skull: Jesus Was Way Cool, a collection of 40 poems recorded on King Missile and Hall solo albums, and Daily Negotiations, a dark-humored satire of self-help books.

Indiggo Twins are Gabriela and Mihaela Modorcea, Romanian-American actresses, dancers, singers, writers and the creators and performers of Wicked Clone, a Off Broadway Show, and Cinema Musical.

Heide Hatry is an NYC based German artist, mainly known for her conceptual work using unconventional materials. Her most recent body of work, Icons in Ash, consists of portraits made from the cremated remains of their subjects, a social art project that has made a significant impact on the lives of their survivors and contributed to a re-imagining of our relationship to the dead.

Books and CDs of all performers will be available.

Legendary East Village KGB Bar has a newly created gorgeous and intimate space. The Red Room is a speak easy style club on the 3rd floor at 85 E. 4th Street. The limited occupancy Red Room features gangster inspired libations with names like Wiseguy and Cocksman and antiques from the period, including a copper bath tub as well as proprietor Denis Woychuk’s art and object collections and promotes the feel of days gone by when infamous gangster Lucky Luciano’s Palm Casino inhabited the building. Lori Schwarz is soul of Red Room and is also the contact person for bookings, and press inquiries.

Buy tickets/get more info now