A-Kavousian Photography

21/05/2024

25/04/2024

The singer-songwriter’s debut collection, ‘When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance,’ marks the first time she’s sharing her poetry publicly, the culmination of decades spent chronicling her life.

14/02/2024

29/01/2024

Vivian Maier

29/01/2024

In my young life, before there was Pete Seeger, before there was Odetta, before there was the Kingston Trio…

there was Harry Belafonte.

And there sat mom and I, gazing at an album cover of the handsomest man we’d ever seen, and listening to “Scarlet Ribbons.” Harry’s voice was scratchy and smooth at the same time, and I would listen to nothing else.

I had recently switched from ukulele to guitar, and proceeded to memorize every song in his repertoire. My singing was wobbly, but hidden in my throat was “the voice.” I found myself in an ever so amateur studio, where I donned large uncomfortable headphones and poked at the large intimidating microphone. Out of the twelve songs I recorded, six were Belafonte’s.

I could not have known then that the man with the scratchy/smooth voice and the face of brown velvet would be there ten years later walking side by side with Dr. King and myself in Montgomery, Alabama. Or that his commitment to nonviolence and civil rights was unshakable, and that as he was lifted up by the movement, he lifted up the movement with his eloquent voice, both singing and speaking.

The last time I saw Harry he was in his nineties and proud of it. His beautiful wife Pam explained to him whatever he didn’t quite hear. He looked like a sage, or a prophet, or a royal. He was virtually blind, but smiled broadly and punctuated the conversation with mischievous comments. He was all there.

When my son and I left the apartment we were verging on tears.

Gabe said, “It’s like we’ve just been in the presence of a fu***ng prophet.”

We had been.

(photo by Bob Fitch, The Bob Fitch Photography Archive at Stanford)

29/01/2024

Egon Schiele
Seated Woman with Legs Drawn Up (Adele Herms)
1917

10/09/2023

08/09/2023

All of our Ella Fitzgerald Memorial Scholars are back in school, singing and playing & studying. While Ella never was able to go to college, there are over 30 college students being supported by Ella’s charitable legacy.

www.ellafitzgerald.com

08/09/2023

Henri Matisse
Blue N**e II

24/08/2023