Brian Slattery Photos
Thabisa’s band, augmented by members of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, was in the full flower of the music it was making. Thabisa herself took a moment to pause in her singing and instead turn and dance intricate, powerful steps on the Edgewood Park stage set up for ArtWalk.
The people on the ground in front of her followed suit.
Friday night’s concert, uniting two institutions of New Haven’s music scene, kicked off the annual ArtWalk fest in Westville. It set the mood for Saturday’s events, a celebration of the ability of people to gather again, as the weather warmed, vaccinations continue, and masks were ubiquitous.
Last year the Covid-19 pandemic made ArtWalk an all-virtual event, as information about how to stay safe from the virus was considerably fuzzier and shutdown guidelines were at their strictest.
This year, with greater clarity and better protection, gathering became a possibility — and, in the case of ArtWalk, an opportunity that Westville seized upon.
In addition to Thabisa and the NHSO, Friday night’s line-up included DJ Dooley‑O and Alisa Bowens-Mercado from Alisa’s House of Salsa and Rhythm Lager.
Concertgoers were greeted by an array of circles spray-painted on the Edgewood Park lawn in front of the bandstand, delineating how a group could keep its social distance from other seated groups. As families and friends settled in, NHSO percussionists Aya Kaminaguchi and Michael Singer started off with a set of pieces on xylophone, marimba, and djembe that set the mood for a night of cascading melodies and driving rhythms.
NHSO CEO Elaine Carroll thanked the audience for standing by the symphony during the pandemic, noting that “this is our first time having more than two people play together in over a year.”
Thabisa’s set was a model for how to build energy, song by song. Beginning with accompaniment from Clifford Schloss on guitar, Thabisa moved through the audience, blowing kisses. The rest of the band — Sam Oliver on drums, Jim Lawson on bass, and Dylan McDonnell on flute and saxophone — dropped in as Thabisa ascended to the stage.
“Are you ready for tonight?” she said. “Wake up! Wake up!” It felt as much like a call to social action as an exhortation to an audience for a musical performance — a theme she would return to several times, as she mixed the urgent messages of the need for justice and compassion and love for others. “We need this now,” Thabisa said, as the band continued to heat up and she pointed to the small Band-Aid on her shoulder. “Get vaccinated so we can do this more often.”
A few older men and children approached the open space in front of the stage and began to dance. Other kids, masked, chased each other through the crowd, threading their way among the pods.
A Miriam Makeba song was an opportunity for Oliver to double-time the rhythm, kicking the energy up another notch. Thabisa left the stage to wander among the crowd, serenading people in the audience. “She’s a teacher!” Thabisa said of one serenade recipient. “Give it up for all the teachers who are here, doing a great job teaching our children.” She also spoke of how grateful she was to have made New Haven her home after immigrating from South Africa. “This is truly a haven,” she said, “I am blessed to be here.”
Back on stage, she welcomed members of the NHSO to join her, with a small string section now augmenting the percussion. By then a small crowd had gathered in front of the stage to dance in proximity to one another. Thabisa quoted a South African proverb that “a person is human because of others. So thank you for making me human.”
Driven by irresistible rhythm from Oliver and Singer on kit and djembe, the ensemble made a big sound. The dancers form a loose ring for children and adults to cartwheel through. Others showed off their African dance moves, giving those who didn’t know a chance to emulate.
“This is what community looks like,” Thabisa said. “What’s important is showing up with the occasion demands it.”
And on Saturday, people showed up. The day’s festivities began with a pet parade through Edgewood Park, flanked by three musical groups stationed along the route. The art market in the center of Westville was bustling, yet even then, distanced, as people abided by the one-way lanes to go up and down the street amid the booths. Music came from Elm City Sounds spinning old-school reggae and other styles from their vinyl collection.
The upstairs studios at West River arts received a steady trickle of visitors, but most people stayed outside in Edgewood Park, where a slight drizzle in the air didn’t dampen the activity and the bandstand allowed musical groups to continue to entertain.
The spin-art booth remained as popular as in years past, with a line of participants and rows of paintings on the ground nearby as evidence.
A T‑shirt tie-dying booth set up by Westville Community Nursery School was equally popular, as spaced-out buckets of dye let participants realize their sartorial visions at a distance from one another.
The New Haven Free Public Library’s Readmobile got an attentive audience for its story hour.
This year ArtWalk also took advantage of the guideline to keep people mostly outside by bringing artists to the park to practice their craft. One artist was Frank Bruckmann, who worked on a plein-air painting of children climbing a particular tree in the park as actual children climbed that very tree.
“I usually have my studio open, but this is much nicer,” Bruckmann said. He said his original plan had been to paint the facade of Lyric Hall from across the street, but the position of the bandstand had made that impossible. But “this is even better. This tree is known for kids climbing it. I had to paint it.” The painting will be up for sale, with the proceeds donated to the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the center of Westville, New Haven artist Heather Gendron was finishing a WVRA-sponsored project on the closed-off section of Central Avenue between Whalley Avenue and Fountain Street. For WVRA project manager Noé Jimenez, the mural was part of a larger, community-oriented vision.
“We haven’t done public art in a few years, so we thought it would be a great way to lean into this plaza idea,” he said of the closed section of street, which created a plaza in the center of the neighborhood. The plan was to be able to close the street to hold events there, which Jimenez said has received plenty of support from neighbors. WVRA has acquired benches and tables to provide seating and places to eat and drink. Closing the street, Jimenez, “changes everything — it just makes more sense. And we’ll do more — we have more asphalt to cover.”
WVRA got a grant to do the mural and reached out to Gendron to design and paint it. In thinking about what to put on the street, she thought “it should be something hopeful and bright, but everybody’s had a rough year.” At the same time, there was reason for hope, as “people are getting vaccinated and things are looking up.”
The spark of inspiration came from a friend in Virginia who had begun spending much more time outside, “coping in nature,” Gendron thus grew from plants and animals for her images, though in choosing how to represent them, she found herself drawing from her youth in southern New Mexico. Thus shorter trees, hills, and a snake, rendered in colors of turquoise and adobe, “even the pinks of the sunsets,” she said. “It’s in my blood.”
Gendron said the offer from WVRA was “a total surprise” and “I was excited to do it, because I’d wanted to do larger pieces” — and public art rather than pieces in a gallery. The piece was not without its difficulties. Between rain last week and her work schedule, she outlined the shapes on the street with help from her husband in between passing storms. She also got help from neighborhood kids and volunteers to put down paint, and as of Saturday afternoon, the mural was nearly complete.
“I like to inspire kids,” Gendron said, “especially young girls, about making larger work.” The mural and quality of the paint were designed to handle traffic, she said, but “fingers crossed, we can keep it closed off.”