The Contemporary Arts Center has announced that tickets are now on sale for The Prison Music Project hosted by Zoe Boekbinder. This will be a streamed concert of music from Boekbinder’s album Long Time Gone, which will be available for streaming on March 26, 27, and 28, 2021 on the Eventive platform, featuring Ani DiFranco, Princess Shaw, BL Shirelle, and more. The album released in 2020 on Righteous Babe and was produced in collaboration with Ani Di Franco. It features work by nine incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated writers.
In May 2010, Zoe Boekbinder paid their first visit to New Folsom Prison, a maximum-security penitentiary outside Sacramento, California. What they thought would be one interesting day turned into a decade-long collaborative project. Boekbinder visited the prison often over the next five years; performing and teaching music workshops quickly turned into the beginnings of collaborations with writers and musicians who were incarcerated within New Folsom’s walls. Boekbinder collaborated on the first of these songs with Alex Batriz, and following that, was approached by many more writers about collaborations. This was the seed for the Prison Music Project and the culminating album, Long Time Gone, produced by Ani DiFranco.
The Prison Music Project is part of Inter[SECTOR], the CAC’s three-year multidisciplinary arts programming centering cross-sector engagements with the fields of carceral justice, healthcare, and the environment. During the 20-21 season, Inter[SECTOR] examines the impact of mass incarceration on the community through performances, workshops, and virtual conversations created and led by women and non-binary artists alongside individuals impacted by the injustices in the prison system.
“As we confront the magnitude of more than two million humans incarcerated in the nation’s prisons, severe health disparities in our community, and environmental conditions that impact our livelihoods, the CAC seeks to amplify those artistic voices willing to challenge our perceptions. With these artists, we are fostering a place enriched by collaboration between artists, civic institutions, and activist communities in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the nation,” states George Scheer, Executive Director of the CAC.
Funded by a multi-year $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Inter[SECTOR] supports the development of new work and multidisciplinary programs in visual and performing arts that fosters cross-sector engagement and learning.
After the cancellation of its 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CAC has delivered artistic content in new and accessible ways online to art and music-loving members of the CAC community. By streaming the Prison Music Project, the CAC is investing in a distribution method that allows for deeper engagement with audiences throughout the New Orleans region and the nation.
In the Fall of 2021, the CAC will continue its Inter[SECTOR] programs with an artist residency featuring The Graduates, a performing ensemble of formerly incarcerated women from the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) Drama Club, including Taece Defillo, Carry Emerson, Fox Rich, and Ivy Mathis. The CAC will also present “The Wait Room” by San Francisco-based artist Jo Kreiter and Flyaway Productions, a site-specific dance and aerial performance based on the stories and experience of incarceration. To facilitate community dialogue around the issues presented by these performances, the CAC will continue to present Decarceration and the Arts, an ongoing series of virtual conversations between artists and activists on the front lines of ending mass incarceration, streamed to Facebook Live.
Advance tickets for The Prison Music Project are available on Eventive. Tickets are $30 for general admission and $25 for CAC members. For tickets and more information, click here.
