A Remembrance

Performances and works by: aAliy A. Muhammad, Kinan Abou-Afach with Bergamot Quartet & Elisa Sutherland, Jessica Hecht, Alex Stadler, and more

Curated by Alex Stadler

About the Event

The act of remembering is essential to our collective mourning and to strengthening our community. This Pride month, join the New York City AIDS Memorial as we reflect and renew with A Remembrance.

This afternoon of written work, performance, music, and art has been curated by multidisciplinary artist, Alex Stadler. In 2022, Stadler commissioned and selected works from a diverse and accomplished group of living and deceased artists for a memorial and procession entitled Gone and For Ever, created to honor the unclaimed of the early years of the AIDS crisis. Gone and For Ever was the culminating event for an alternative HIV/AIDS memorial, Remembrance, organized by the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia. Stadler brings pieces and variations from this earlier work to the New York City AIDS Memorial for this program.

For this day of remembrance, aAliy A. Muhammad will premier an original essay-poem that is a response to the life and work of Melvin Dixon, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1992. aAliy is a poz poet, writer, journalist, and community organizer born and raised in Philadelphia. Syrian-born composer Kinan Abou-afach will lead members of the Bergamot Quartet and mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland in a performance of Untold Elegy, first created for Stadler’s Philadelphia project. Tony and Emmy Award-nominated actor Jessica Hecht will perform a reading The Simplest Thing, a work by actor and writer Cookie Mueller, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1989. A limited edition print by Stadler, featuring an excerpt from The Simplest Thing, will be given away to the audience as part of the event.

Following these works, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus will appear for the first time since the New York City AIDS Memorial’s 2016 dedication to sing in honor of I Stop Somewhere, Waiting For You, the New York City AIDS Memorial’s new bench dedication program. The program invites the public to remember a friend, a family member, a loved one, a mentor, or a hero, or to honor an activist, organization, ally, or noteworthy community member.