Meany Center Feature

After almost 19 months spent alone in our zoom boxes, what was it like coming back to live performances at Meany Center? In the words of pianist Conrad Tao: “A dream experience.”

In 2019, Singer-song-writer-composer and Mellon Creative Fellow Gabriel Kahane decided he would spend a year without the internet to see how his life might change away from technology. His year offline coincided with the worst of the pandemic — and led to a new kind of writing and recording. 

“Are artists powerful catalysts for social change?” That was the question up for discussion on the campus of Harvard University, where Michelle Witt hosted a lively conversation on the topic with four panelists who are intimately connected to the arts.

When Meany Center’s Marketing and Communications Manager, Cynthia Mullis, was growing up in Albuquerque, she discovered the saxophone. The “Analog Honking Device” (as she jokingly calls it) has directed the winding path her life has followed ever since.

You’ve probably missed live performances on the Meany stage as much as we have, but now we have even more to look forward to: over the next year, the theater will be undergoing some significant upgrades.

We asked local artist Kristen Kosmas—and Meany Center’s Creative Fellowships Coordinator—to describe her own creative process. 

Meany Center stands in solidarity with our Black colleagues, students and community members in the fight for justice and against the endemic structural racism that underlies social, economic and educational inequity.