The BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center is proud to partner with host Randy Cohen for his Person Place Thing podcast and radio show in 2017-2018. The third and final guest of the season to be featured at Tribeca PAC is NEA Jazz Master Randy Weston on Tuesday, April 3 at 7p.m. Tickets to the recording are $10 and available online, at the door, and by phone at 212-220-1460.
Person Place Thing is an interview show recorded around New York and based on this idea: people are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves, but about something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result? Surprising stories from great talkers. This show is taped and broadcast at a later date on public radio throughout the Northeast (WNYE, 91.5 FM in NYC), as well made available online at http://personplacething.org/.
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for “Late Night With David Letterman” for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s “TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. In 2010, his first play, “The Punishing Blow,” ran at New York’s Clurman Theater. His most recent book, “Be Good: how to navigate the ethics of everything,” was published by Chronicle. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.
After contributing seven decades of musical direction and genius, Randy Weston remains one of the world’s foremost pianists and composers today, a true innovator and visionary. Encompassing the vast rhythmic heritage of Africa, his global creations musically continue to inform and inspire. “Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk, as well as the richest most inventive beat,” states jazz critic Stanley Crouch, “but his art is more than projection and time; it’s the result of a studious and inspired intelligence…an intelligence that is creating a fresh synthesis of African elements with jazz technique.” Randy Weston’s first recording as a leader came in 1954 on Riverside Records: Randy Weston Plays Cole Porter. It was in the 50’s when Randy Weston played around New York with Cecil Payne and Kenny Dorham that he wrote many of his best loved tunes, “Saucer Eyes,” “Pam’s Waltz,” “Little Niles,” and, “Hi-Fly.” He recently received the “Legends of Jazz” award from the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
In addition, Randy will delight the audience with live piano stylings throughout the show!
BMCC Tribeca PAC is Downtown Manhattan’s premier presenter of the arts, reaching audiences from the college community, downtown residential and business communities, local schools, families, and audiences of all ages. BMCC Tribeca PAC strives to present a broad global perspective through the presentation of high-quality artistic work in music, theatre, dance, film and visual arts. BMCC Tribeca PAC is located on the Borough of Manhattan Community College campus, 199 Chambers Street (betweenGreenwich Avenue & West Street) and is convenient to the 2/3, A/C/E and R/W subway lines and the New Jersey Path Train. For more information please visit our website, www.tribecapac.org.
