Twenty Summers

Syrian-born, Los Angeles-based songstress Azniv Korkejian, known onstage as Bedouine, performed in the Hawthorne Barn on June 15, 2018, sharing her modernized take on sixties folk and an arsenal of beautiful songs.

Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky joined poet Monica Youn to share recent work and exchange ideas, along with moderator Elizabeth Bradfield, local poet and naturalist on June 9, 2018 in the Hawthorne Barn.

Robert Pinsky‘s recent book is At the Foundling Hospital, nominated for the Nation Book Critics Award in poetry. As Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000), he founded the Favorite Poem Project, featuring the videos at www.favoritepoem.org. His best-selling translation The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Harold Morton Landon translation prize. His other awards include the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Korean Manhae Prize, the Italian Premio Capri and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pen American Center. He performs with pianist Laurence Hobgood on CDs PoemJazz and House Hour, from Circumstantial Productions.

Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press 2016), which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award, longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the best poetry books of 2016 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and BuzzFeed. Her previous book Ignatz(Four Way Books 2010) was a finalist for the National Book Award. A former lawyer, she currently teaches at Princeton University and in the Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University MFA programs.

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of the poetry collections Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work and the forthcoming Toward Antarctica. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, West Branch, Orion and her awards include a Stegner Fellowship and the Audre Lorde Prize. Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she lives on Cape Cod, works as a naturalist locally as well as on ships around the globe, and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.

Iconic singer-songwriter John Gorka raised the rafters on May 18, 2018 in the Hawthorne Barn with his spirited acoustic guitar playing, insightful lyrics, and wry, witty storytelling. Veteran of countless world tours and collaborations with the likes of Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Ani DiFranco, Gorka released his fifteenth album, True in Time, in January 2018. We were proud to be a stop on his album release tour, where he performed a solo set of songs that, according to the Huffington Post, “reconnect us with what really matters most in music: honesty.” This concert was part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival.

Pollock: A Staged Reading featuring Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch

We were pleased to present a theatrical reading of Pollock on June 16, 2018, featuring the original actors, Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch, in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. French playwright Fabrice Melquiot's drama, translated into English by Kenneth Casler and Miriam Heard, and directed by Paul Desvaux, illuminates the profound connection between the brilliant madness of Jackson Pollock and his marriage to artist Lee Krasner, exploring the charged space between his genius and her spirit, his inhibitions and her frustrations. It was our honor to shine a spotlight on these two important artists, both of whom spent time in the Hawthorne Barn.

This performance was made possible through the support of The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which promotes the best of French arts, literature, cinema, digital innovation, language, and higher education across the U.S.

Singer-songwriter Kevin Morby performed solo in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass. as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. Morby rose to prominence as bassist in the band Woods; he also formed The Babies with Cassie Ramone of Vivian Girls. He describes his latest album, City Music, as "a mix-tape, a fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities that are all inside of me.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham and the internationally best-selling essayist, critic, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn discussed how writers turn consciously to literature itself as a way of broadening their own horizons on Sunday, May 27, 2018 in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), The Snow Queen, Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the nonfiction book Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. His most recent book is A Wild Swan and Other Tales (illustrated by Yuko Shimizu). He is a senior lecturer at Yale and lives in New York.

Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. His books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize (U.K.) and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Newsday, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus, and The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006), which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France, among many other honors. A member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association, he teaches literature at Bard College.

On Sunday, June 10, 2018 Overcoats joined us for an intimate concert. The New York-based female electronic-pop duo of Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell, performed in the historic Hofmann Studio in Provincetown, the former West End home and studio of artist Hans Hofmann, as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival.

The talented best friends’ debut, Young, released in 2017, was praised as a “memorable album” in a rave review by critic Bob Boilen. In a vocal style that is minimalist yet rich in melody, they deliver songs of connection and tension, on the depths of love and the challenges of family.

We were delighted to host award-winning performer and author Alan Cumming interviewing the outrageously versatile Isaac Mizrahi, fashion legend turned actor–director–TV host on Saturday, May 19, 2018 in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn. Their conversation featured tales from the upbringing and prolific careers of both men, each a unique persona in his field, focusing on Mizrahi's second-act success in the entertainment industry.

Some two decades after his autobiographical documentary Unzipped won him countless fans and a prize or two, Mizrahi has since hosted his eponymous TV show, is working on his third book, has directed two operas, and performs cabaret in venues as prestigious as Café Carlyle and Joe's Pub. Alan Cumming is a Tony Award–winning actor whose own highly versatile talents have landed him in films with everyone from Stanley Kubrick to the Spice Girls, onstage with Jay Z and Liza, as host of the Tony Awards, and even at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for his memoir, Not My Father's Son.

You can watch the full video of this event and more at https://www.20summers.org/videos.

On Saturday, May 19, 2018, performer and songwriter Martha Wainwright shared her distinctive voice and arsenal of powerful songs in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass. The solo performance featured her on an acoustic guitar, performing new and old material, including fan favorites "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" and "Proserpina," and telling intimate stories along the way. Martha, who is the daughter of folk legends Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, is currently finishing up a book titled Stories I Might Regret Telling You, which, like her songs, is a window into her life without artifice, pretension, or fakery.

You can watch the full video of this event and more at https://www.20summers.org/videos.

Grammy and Tony award-winning singer-songwriter and Broadway composer Duncan Sheik joined us in the Hawthorne Barn as a resident artist during the week leading up to his performance. On the final night of his stay, he shared music from his compositions for Spring Awakening, American Psycho, and off his many albums (including his hit 'Barely Breathing'). Sheik shared the stage with special guest Micky Blue, who collaborated with him during his week-long residency in the Barn. This event took place on June 10, 2017.