Twenty Summers

Join Rebecca Orchant & Bill Hough for a conversation celebrating Rebecca’s new book Simmering, A Kitchen Memoir .

“There are somethings that you just can’t do in front of other people. You can’t look at magazines with boobs in them; you can’t eat condoms on your mom’s nightstand; and you most certainly can’t stick your finger into the Duncan-Hines vanilla frosting tub. And so I waited.”

A powerfully gifted musician and a scholar of Black American music, Jake Blount speaks ardently about the African roots of the banjo and the subtle, yet profound ways African Americans have shaped and defined the amorphous categories of roots music and Americana. His 2020 album Spider Tales (named one of the year’s best albums by NPR and The New Yorker, earned a perfect 5-star review from The Guardian) highlighted the Black and Indigenous histories of popular American folk tunes, as well as revived songs unjustly forgotten in the whitewashing of the canon.

Jake Blount’s music is rooted in care and confrontation. On stage, each song he and his band play is chosen for a reason - because it highlights important elements about the stories we tell ourselves of our shared history and our endlessly complicated present moment. The more we learn about where we’ve been, the better equipped we are to face the future.

Journalism informs. It investigates. It holds the powerful accountable. But can it also be art? Adam Moss makes that case in his new book, The Work of Art, featuring visual artists, novelists, poets, musicians, and journalists like Gay Talese, Ira Glass, and the front-page editors of the New York Times. Join Moss and Provincetown Independent editor Ed Miller, along with journalist and historian Dan Okrent, journalist and podcaster Andrew Sullivan, and journalist and artist Tessera C. Knowles, as they discuss the creative side of journalism — as it is practiced now, as it has flourished historically, and as it takes ever-new forms on the way to an indefinite future.

This event benefited the Local Journalism Project — the nonprofit organization that supports next-generation journalists at the Provincetown Independent.

This sonically-innovative harpist is revolutionizing her instrument for the digital era. Over the past 15 years, she has worked relentlessly to stretch boundaries and limitations for harpists. In 2022, she made history by becoming the first black woman to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition. That same year, she was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

“No harpist thus far has been more capable of combining all of the modern harp traditions—from Salzedo, through Dorothy Ashby, through Alice Coltrane—with such strength, grace and commitment.”

—saxophonist Ravi Coltrane

Over the past six or seven years I have focused on cutting away certain areas of maps, creating lace-like pages of roads, rivers, and other geographical features. These are then protected between sheets of acrylic, in boxes, or safely mounted on panels.

For my site-specific installation at Twenty Summers, I embraced the fragility of the pages, leaving them unprotected and open to whatever might happen when people also enter the space. I envisioned hundreds of cut maps hanging from the beams, perhaps randomly, perhaps in a specific layout.

I have a sense of the installation being somewhat representative of the world, in particular the fragility of the planet and how we are failing to take care of it. But I also like the idea that it spreads through the community and parts of it live on wherever people put the pieces that they take. I see the whole as ephemeral and removing some of the individual elements does not diminish it. And maybe, during future iterations of the installation, more will be added, and it will continually evolve; perhaps becoming a permanent part of my art practice.

All life once rose from the ocean, and all life still depends on it today. From melting glaciers and rising sea levels to plastic pollution and overfishing, our common origin is in danger. This group of marine biologists, ocean advocates, and researchers of the local coastal ecosystem venture into a discussion about how the ocean connects us—and what we can do to protect it.

Fabiola Méndez is a Puerto Rican cuatrista, singer, Emmy-nominated composer, and educator that has taken part in a musical and cultural movement, crossing over the lines of genres such as folk, jazz & Afro-Caribbean and taking the listener on a journey through identities, cultures, and roots.

A chance meeting with a stranger on the side of the road led artist, Michael Joseph down a decade-long journey photographing and documenting an American subculture, called Travelers. Travelers are the most contemporary of non-conformists, having evolved from the 1930s Dustbowl Hobo, '50s Kerouac Beatnik, and the '90s East Village Squatter. Michael presents his work and new book, "Lost and Found: A Portrait of American Wanderlust" through visuals and audio. His portrait project set in Provincetown, called "Wild West of the East" will be discussed. Topics common to both projects include identity formation, found family, wanderlust, the human journey and the search for equality and human authenticity.

Introduce yourself to the nettle plant through an immersion of flavor, texture, sensations and experiences. Nicole Cormier RD, LDN offers connections to Urtica dioica with a tasting of various preparations of the plant to eat, sip and feel.

“I am passionate about helping people...improving whole health ... mental and physical ...educating ... I believe in the power connecting farmers and consumers.”

The Weather Station is the project of Toronto based songwriter Tamara Lindeman. The last few years have seen The Weather Station release two albums: the career defining Ignorance (2021) and its ethereal, mostly live recording companion piece, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars (2022). In that time, The Weather Station have gone on to headline tours across North America and Europe, play major festivals, and perform on the televised Austin City Limits as well as Jimmy Kimmel Live. Ignorance was named Best New Music (Pitchfork), and landed in year-end Top 10 lists from The New Yorker (#1), Spin, New York Times, Uncut, Pitchfork, The Guardian, and many others. Called "a heartbroken masterpiece" in The Guardian, the record was a complex evocation of climate grief that struck a chord worldwide.

As a writer, Lindeman is known for her detail. “Her writing can feel … like the collected epiphanies from a lifetime of observing” (Pitchfork). Over the course of six albums, her music has moved from home recorded, mostly acoustic folk to the “ornate act of world building” (New Yorker) that was Ignorance. The throughline, though, is a focus on ideas; her lyrics walk the line between the personal and the conceptual, forever tying small moments to larger metaphysical quandaries. Nominated for three Juno Awards, a Socan Songwriting Award, and the Polaris Prize, her albums have made a mark both critically and conceptually.