We're Twenty Summers, an arts-based nonprofit organization in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This is our story.
Season Four Trailer
Watch the teaser for Twenty Summers' full length videos from the 2017 season of concerts and conversations. Season Four features concerts with David Wax Museum, Aurea Ensemble, Emily Wells, Lucy Kaplansky, and Duncan Sheik; and the following conversations: authors Alysia Abbott and Joan Wickersham, architects Peter Bohlin and William Rawn, authors Junot Diaz and Jacqueline Woodson, poets Sharon Olds and Mark Doty, authors Hannah Tinti and Richard Russo, art critics and scholars Karen Wilkin and Marcelle Polednik, and filmmaker David France with political commentator Andrew Sullivan.
Our month-long festival takes place in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass, each year in May and June. Learn more at 20summers.org.
Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow, Lise King, Matt Suter, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy
Junot Díaz & Jacqueline Woodson in Conversation
Authors Junot Díaz and Jacqueline Woodson join us for a conversation in the Barn that delves into the divisive politics of our age and what it means to be an American fiction writer of color today. Junot Díaz, whose work has been honored with a Pulitzer and a MacArthur, joins Jacqueline Woodson, whose books for readers of all ages have won prizes including a National Book Award and a Coretta Scott King Award. From his Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to her Brown Girl Dreaming, from his activist work in the Dominican-American community to her stories for teenage readers about what it means to grow up black and gay, Diaz and Woodson are writers who know how to raise their voices when it counts.
WCAI was a media sponsor for this event.
Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy
Melville and the Great White Whale: Aurea Ensemble in Concert
Classical string quartet Aurea Ensemble play their own tribute to Moby-Dick, “Melville and the Great White Whale,” which features Beethoven, Webern, sea shanties, and other nautically evocative music along with readings from the novel and from Melville’s correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated his masterpiece.
Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy
David Wax Museum (Duo) in Concert
Husband-and-wife duo David Wax and Suz Slezak, known as David Wax Museum, returned to the Barn for the second time to share their rousing Latin-folk-inspired indie rock. They performed a stripped down set of songs from their latest EP A La Rumba Rumba, a celebration of the Latin folk music that inspires them most, as well as tunes from their fourth full length album, Guesthouse.
Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy
John Boutté in Concert and Conversation
From New Orleans, jazz vocalist and songwriter John Boutté joins us for a conversation and performance. Boutté is a celebrated interpreter of the American songbook who rose to national attention when one of his own melodies became the theme to the HBO series “Treme.” His repertoire includes contemporary classics in popular music as well as traditional jazz and gospel. Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame producer Allen Toussaint called Boutté “one of the very best singers in New Orleans.” Over a twenty-year career, Boutté has performed across the U.S. and Europe and released a number of solo albums, including Jambalaya, Good Neighbor, and All About Everything. He has also recorded with Cubanismo! and the funk band Galactic.
Joining him will be Gwen Thompkins, NPR contributor and host of “Music Inside Out,” which airs on WWNO.