Jazz and Vocal Improvisation with the Lithuanian kanklės
Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by accomplished musicians and composers. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our “On Demand” page.
Simona Smirnova
Simona Smirnova is a Lithuanian born jazz vocalist, composer and kanklės player based in New York City. She’s a fixture in the New York live scene with her quartet when she’s not touring the world, including Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
Simona’s genre-bending style has a unique theatrical flavor and uncanny vocal improvisation techniques. She deftly implements chamber music, Lithuanian zither – kanklės – and folkloric chants into foundations of jazz and rock.
Simona’s latest album, Joan of Arc, for String Quartet, is an original composition written as a soundtrack for the classic Carl Dreyer silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). The album is a cinematic landscape of chamber pop, jazz and folklore.
Classically trained on the kanklės, Simona earned her BA in jazz vocals at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater. Shortly after receiving the European Touring Scholarship, she moved to the United States to study at Berklee College of Music where she earned a degree in Contemporary Composition and Production.
Our thanks to Giedrė Elekšytė-Knieža, Chair of Lithuanian American Community Cultural Affairs, for her help in connecting us with Simona’s work.
Registration for symposium recordings is now available to the public! Register here.
To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, until the end of July 2022.
“Wisdom Across the Ages: An International Women’s Art Exhibition”
July 7 – December 31 2021
ASWM Online Art Gallery
Association for the Study of Women and Mythology
Artemisia Gentileschi Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting
We are delighted to announce the opening of our inaugural juried exhibition in ASWM’s new online art gallery. This exhibition of works by 45 artists and filmmakers from around the world was created in concert with our 2021 online symposium, “Wisdom Across the Ages: A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas.”
Our organization was founded by women who appreciated the essential role of the arts in developing, promoting, and inspiring scholarship and research.
Patricia Monaghan
Patricia Monaghan was not only the author and editor of many books about goddess scholarship; she was also an internationally recognized poet. Pat’s well-crafted words continue to find their way into performances, ceremonies and women’s life passages. Sid Reger is a visual artist with a happy background in feminist theatre. She has also created and promoted festivals and arts events on local, national, and international stages.
Sid says, “We understood from the beginning that all of the arts were essential sources of inspiration and collaboration for scholarship. Many artists are scholars, and vice versa, and we were always excited to see what happens when they meet in the same room. We were guided by one simple idea: Change the images (or words or dances), and you can change the world.”
Mary B Kelly, 2011 Keynote
We dedicate this exhibition and the gallery itself to our beloved artist-foremothers, Mary B. Kelly and Lydia Ruyle.
Lydia Ruyle, Aloha!
The exhibition runs from July 7 to December 31 in our gallery and is open to the general public.
To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, for twelve months following the event.
Recently we invited our advisory board members to tell us what is on their minds these days, to share their current projects, milestones, and emerging collaborations. Vicki’s report is the fourth in this series.
Vicki Noble
The Covid isolation period has allowed sustained time for research and writing, which I have appreciated enormously. I’m excited about the Primordial Goddess collaborative book project I’m involved in with Miriam Robbins Dexter (see her blog for more details) and Laura Amazzone. We started this ambitious project more than ten years ago, mainly with the idea of meeting occasionally for fun and inspiration. Our decade of feminist scholarly synergy has produced an almost-finished manuscript investigating the roots of Goddess worship in India in the Bronze Age Indus Sarasvati Valley, comparing it with the development of civilization in Old Europe (the Danube Culture), and linking the two through millennia of cultural exchange and migration across Eurasia. For images, see the Home page of my website: vickinoble.com.
Motherpeace-inspired fashion from Dior
I am gestating a book that tells the story of Motherpeace Tarot, the project I co-created with Karen Vogel forty years ago in Berkeley, and which was licensed in 2017 by Maria Grazia Chiuri, the first woman artistic director at Christian Dior, for a special line of clothing and accessories in one of their Cruisewear collections. Through this fateful collaboration, the matriarchal and Goddess imagery that Karen and I so lovingly embedded in our drawings of the late 1970s were taken to a whole new level by artisans and craftspersons at Dior, who turned them into elegant high fashion dresses, bags, shirts, and shoes worn by women in every cosmopolitan center in the world. I want to track the history (“herstory”) of women’s sacred imagery and textile production from nine thousand years ago through all the subsequent millennia until now, culminating in the extraordinary global feminist vision of Maria Grazia, who agreed with the premise in my 1991 book, Shakti Woman, that women (and female expression) belong at the center of culture and civilization.
I’ve also been making podcasts during the pandemic with two interesting hosts, Sean Marlon Newcombe and Dawn (“Sam”) Alden, who produce “Making Matriarchy Great Again.” They have done numerous interviews with me presenting my research on Gimbutas, Old Europe, and most recently, “The War Against the Goddess,” as well as shows featuring many other interesting guests.
Songs in Honor of Goddesses and Amazons by Ruth Barrett
Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by a variety of accomplished musicians and composers with connections to the work of Marija Gimbutas. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our “On Demand” page.
Ruth Barrett
A foremother of feminist spirituality in the US, Ruth is the author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries, and has contributed to several other anthologies celebrating goddess spirituality. Ruth, who calls herself a “musician/priestess,” is also a songwriter and is internationally known as a mountain dulcimer recording artist and singer.
Ruth is best known for works that focus on magically themed traditional folk songs inspired by folklore, goddess mythology, celebration of women, and the spirituality innate in the natural world. Her most recent album, Once And Future Amazons(2020), incorporates African, Middle Eastern and Celtic folk rhythms in a “powerful celebration of women’s embodied mysteries, ancient sovereign goddesses, and the seasonal cycle of Mother Nature.” Learn more about Ruth at Dancing Tree.
To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, for twelve months following the event.
New Compositions Inspired by Lithuanian Folk Music
Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by accomplished musicians and composers. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our “On Demand” page.
We are pleased to be able to present new works performed by the Kalnas Ensemble. The Ensemble, which began performing right before the pandemic shutdowns, has happily recovered from that hiatus to be able to record recent concerts. The Ensemble is a string quartet focusing on Lithuanian musical roots, exploring compositions of Stanley Chepaitis with improvisatory overtones, as well as performing standard quartet repertoire. The ensemble is a diverse group of multi-talented individuals with a commitment to engaging audiences with a dynamic approach to live performance. In addition their wide spectrum of knowledge and interests allows them offer workshops and other interactive presentations that enhance the meaning and experience of the music they perform.
The Kalnas Ensemble, 2021
Dr. Chepaitis has provided these original folksongs that inspired his compositions:
Dr. Stanley Chepaitis, founder, composer, and Violinist, holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree and a Master of Music, as well as a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. He is a versatile performing and recording artist who is at home in a classical string quartet, a jazz band, and anything in between. His career spans fifty years in which time he has performed nationally and internationally, composed and premiered his own works, and recorded seven CD’s mostly of original music. Dr. Chepaitis has been at the forefront of the Alternative Styles Movement having had a leading role in ASTA Alternative Styles Conferences.
Swana Chepaitis, Violinist, received a diploma in Violin Performance and Pedagogy from the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen Germany. She studied with Maria Grevesmühl and Baroque violin specialist Christoph Heidemann. She has been a member of L’arco (a professional Baroque orchestra based in Hanover, Germany), the Litton String Quartet. Mrs. Chepaitis currently performs with the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, does freelance performance as a baroque violinist in the Pittsburgh area, and maintains a studio of 20+ violin students in Indiana, PA.
Simon Maurer, Violin, Baroque Violin, Viola ,studied violin at the Conservatory in Biel, and continued his studies in the U.S. with Geoffrey Michaels, Joyce Robbins and Claire Hodkins. He is the founder and artistic director of Sunday Sinfonia, a String Orchestra of enthusiastic amateur string players, based in Lancaster, Pa. Mr. Maurer is the artistic director of the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble, a group that takes pride in bringing classical music to underserved areas. In 2010 the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble took over the leadership of the Schuyllkill Youth Orchestra, newly renamed Gabriel Youth Orchestra. Mr. Maurer also ventures in the practice of jazz and freestyle improvisation. He has been a featured soloist in Philadelphia area jazz clubs, has performed at “Jazzfest” in Schuylkill County and Reading Pa.
Nancy Baun, Cellist, has performed over 1,000 events throughout the United States, including three appearances at Carnegie’s Weil Hall, as well as in Switzerland, France, Italy, Iceland, and Canada. She appears on nine piano trio recordings, including a series on the Naxos International label “Home for the Holidays”, a favorite of Public Radio audiences. Her favorite highlights also include judging the semifinals of the renowned Koussevitzky Competition in New York City, and performing in a World Music Institute event at Merkin Concert Hall. She has been an elementary music teacher for over 10 years in urban Buffalo, where she designed curriculum for her passion, “collaborative connections with music”. She has received a national Young Audiences grant for her education workshops integrating music with drawing. She currently presents S. T. E. A. M. training to elementary teachers, as well as using music to teach life skills to formerly incarcerated.
Registration for symposium recordings is now available to the public! Register here.
To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, until the end of July 2022.
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