This music performance is based on the artist Alberto Checa’s new solo exhibition “Amidst Twin Suns”

Location: Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE 2nd Ave, Miami Shores, FL 33138
Date: Sunday, March 10, 2024
Time: 3:00 p.m. Performance
Tickets: Free
Website: https://niceworkifyoucangetit.eventbrite.com
Media Kit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16k21HcNTcTK_erpVPGHQorpxa_9B_Vny?usp=sharing

(MIAMI) Feb. 5, 2024 – On March 10, IlluminArts and Oolite Arts will present a musical performance inspired by “Amidst Twin Suns,” a solo exhibition by Oolite Arts resident artist Alberto Checa. This event marks the sixth year of IlluminArts’ partnership with Oolite Arts and will include music performed by vocalist Jamal Moore, an internationally-acclaimed singer, songwriter, and recording artist, and the Amernet String Quartet, Florida International University’s Artists-in-Residence Ensemble.

The performance, entitled “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” will take audiences on a deep dive into the themes of love and labor that Checa’s art explores. Acclaimed bass-baritone Jamal Moore, who, in addition to his work in the operatic and choral worlds is a frequent collaborator with artists like Beyoncé, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Kanye West, will take center stage. He will perform a collection of deeply moving spirituals set by Harry T. Burleigh alongside lush and captivating works of Margaret Bonds, George Gershwin and more. In addition, the musical program curated by IlluminArts’ Artistic Director Chad Goodman, will include the world-premiere performance of a stunning new piece for String Quartet and Electronics from GRAMMY Award-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart, and works from Frederic Rzewski and Mason Bates.

The event will begin with a conversation about Alberto Checa’s new solo exhibition, “Amidst Twin Suns,” between the artist and Chad Goodman, IlluminArts’ Artistic Director. Multi-disciplinary artist Alberto Checa moved from Cuba to Miami with his mother in 2008, where they lived for years in efficiency apartments as his mother performed back-breaking factory work to make ends meet. On Feb. 7, Checa opened his first solo exhibition at Oolite Arts on Miami Beach rooted in his experience as a Cuban immigrant living in Miami. Inspired by a desire to empathize with his mother’s repetitive and seemingly endless work, “Amidst Twin Suns” is both a labor of love and an exploration of labor, where Checa critiques the American economic system and working class Latinos’ relationship to it through art and performance. “My work allows me to address the everyday labor endured by the Latino community that is often dismissed,” said Checa, who is a resident artist at Oolite Arts. “For instance, sound is a key element in my work that motivates movement, much like music does at job sites. These everyday experiences and objects are growing footnotes for my work.”

About Alberto Checa
Alberto Checa is a multidisciplinary artist who immigrated to Miami from Cuba in 2008. Seeking to recontextualize the labor of the Latino working class within the American landscape through empathy, obsession and process, Checa utilizes abstract world building and DIY systems that reveal the exploitative and futile nature of the work employed by Brown bodies. Drawing directly from the Cuban legacies of object improvisations, and influenced by the writing in Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos, Checa engages with utilitarian materials – such as PVC pipes, water vacuums and plaster – as foundation to his practice, building structural and instrumental sculptures that later, when combined with designated garments and curated sounds, activates as performance. In these processes, Checa complicates the birthing of a “final product” while fulfilling a “function”, often an arduous task, bringing to light the hidden labor and futile loop that exists in the process of Capitalist modes of production.

Checa received a BFA from Tufts University and a BA from University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins. Checa has exhibited and performed both locally and internationally, including at Satellite Art Show Performance is Alive (Miami), Central Saint Martins (London), and Anderson Gallery (Boston. Additionally, Checa was awarded Oolite Arts’ “Ellies” Creator Award as well as the Dean’s Research Award from Tufts University.

About Jamal Moore
Jamal Moore is an internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter, and recording artist. Known for his smooth, rich tone and his cross-style versatility, Jamal brings a captivating artistry to everything he touches, be it pop, classical, gospel, or jazz. A regular collaborator with Beyoncé, Jamal has performed at Coachella Festival, the Kobe & Gianna Bryant Memorial service, on Disney’s new The Lion King soundtrack, and on Beyoncé’s Grammy nominated single, “Break My Soul.” He has also toured globally with Kanye West as a member of gospel sensations, Sunday Service Collective. On screen, Jamal has performed on The Academy Awards (with Rihanna), BET Awards (with Kirk Franklin), Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and Netflix documentaries, Beyoncé Homecoming and Black is King. Jamal was also a finalist on NBC’s The Sing-Off and can be heard as the singing voice of “Synth” on Dreamworks/Hulu series, Trolls.

With a degree in Opera from New York’s Eastman School of Music, Jamal remains active in the classical music space, having recently been featured as the soloist the Pasadena Symphony Pops Holiday Candlelight Concert. In 2022, Jamal made his solo symphonic debut with the LA Philharmonic, performing solo Duke Ellington selections at Walt Disney Concert Hall and since then has been featured as soloist with both the Seattle and Milwaukee Symphony. Jamal has toured extensively as a featured soloist with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, including most recently, as a soloist in Marsalis’ “All Rise Symphony” in commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

About Amernet String Quartet
The Amernet String Quartet (Misha Vitenson and Avi Nagin, violins, Michael Klotz, viola, and Jason Calloway, cello) has garnered recognition as one of today’s exceptional string quartets. Their sound has been called “complex” but with an “old world flavor.” Strad Magazine described the Amernet as “…a group of exceptional technical ability.” The Amernet’s performance schedule has taken the quartet across the Americas and to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and they have collaborated with many of today’s most prominent artists and ensembles including the Tokyo and Ying quartets as well as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Robert deMaine, Roberto Diaz, Alexander Fiterstein, Gary Hoffman, Anthony McGill, Sherrill Milnes, and Michael Tree.

Internationally, the quartet has appeared at major festivals around the world, including Cervantino, San Miguel de Allende, Aviv (Israel), and Colima (Mexico), while the Nürnberger Nachrichten commented that their playing was “fascinating, with flawless intonation, extraordinary beauty of sound, virtuosic brilliance, and homogeneity of ensemble.” The Amernet’s U.S. engagements have included the Kennedy Center, the Tilles Center, Caramoor, the Great Lakes Festival, Newport, Friends of Chamber Music in Arizona and in Syracuse, LPR in New York City, Chamber Music Society of Louisville, Music on the Edge in Pittsburgh, the University of Maine – Collins Center, and Market Square Concerts.

IlluminArts
Music and Art in unison. Concerts in a new light. Founded in 2013 by Artistic Director, Amanda Crider, IlluminArts understands Miami’s desire to experience innovation in the arts. IlluminArts collaborates with museums and galleries to present world class, site specific, curated programs of music that are inspired by the current exhibitions of visual art. Following a desire in our programming to highlight social issues, we recognize the power of the arts to inspire thought, dialogue, and action by exposing audiences to performances that not only entertain, but also engage. IlluminArts has collaborated with the de la Cruz Collection, Oolite Arts, ICA Miami, Pèrez Art Museum Miami, Lowe Art Museum and the Bakehouse Art Complex among others, and has received funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Miami Dade County, Awesome Foundation, City of Coral Gables, Miami Salon Group and New Music USA to support our work.

For more information visit: www.illuminarts.org. Follow @illuminartsmia on social media.

Oolite Arts
Oolite Arts strives to empower Miami -based artists and enrich communities. Established in 1984, Oolite’s mission is to support artists and advance the knowledge and practice of contemporary visual arts. Oolite Arts creates opportunities for experimentation and innovation and encourages the exchange of ideas across diverse cultures through residencies, exhibitions, public programs, education and outreach.

Exhibitions and programs at Oolite Arts are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation at the Miami Foundation; the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation; and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

For more information, visit oolitearts.org. Follow @oolitearts on social media.