About this Event
You're invited
Join the Napkin Poetry Review for an evening of poetry, music, refreshments, and connection.
The link between music and poetry runs back to our earliest forms of oral storytelling and, as tools for reflection and expression, both can help us connect more deeply with ourselves and our communities.
Our lineup will feature a combination of solo performances and collaborations by award-winning artists Taylor Beidler, Aaron Wolff, Aliyata Foon-Dancoes, Francis Wong, and Napkin co-founder Caroline King.
RSVP deadline
To reserve your seat, purchase your ticket by June 1, 2024.
There will be a two-drink minimum, and suggested donations begin at $10 to help us fund the evening.
This is a private event, so contact [email protected] if you'd like to ask about sharing the invitation.
Accessibility
For any and all accessibility requests, reach out to [email protected].
Dress code
Dress to feel your best, however you define it.
About the performers
Aaron Wolff is a New York City-based cellist and performer active in solo, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary capacities. As the winner of the Leo B. Ruiz Memorial Recital, he gave his Carnegie Hall debut in December 2023. Other recent performances include collaboration with eighth blackbird and Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Argus Quartet, and composer Anna Heflin, whose forthcoming monodrama The Incomplete Cosmicomics for vocalizing cellist and looper will feature Aaron as the lone performer. Aaron has found creative outlets in acting – most notably in a lead role in the Coen brothers’ film A Serious Man – and in arranging and writing about music: he has provided string arrangements for Comedy Central’s Broad City and covered New York’s new music scene for I Care If You Listen. Aaron holds degrees from Juilliard and Oberlin, where he also majored in comparative literature. Aaron plays an 1813 Thomas Kennedy cello made in London.
Aliayta Foon-Dancoes is an award-winning Canadian violinist, composer and interdisciplinary collaborator. She regularly works with the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC NOW and 12 Ensemble, and has performed at the Musikverein, Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Philharmonie de Paris. As a former member of the Echea Quartet, Aliayta has been aired on BBC, CBC and NPR, and won prizes including the International Anton Rubinstein Competition, the Paris Biennale’s ‘Tremplin’, and the Royal Overseas League. Aliayta’s recent work includes the BBC Proms, a collaboration with Patti Smith and Pathway to Paris, work with Max Richter at the Barbican Centre, and performances alongside Patrick Watson at Live At Lost River. Aliayta holds a Master's degree from the Royal Academy of Music and has completed Chamber Music Fellowships at both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. This Fall, she will be starting a PhD in Composition at Princeton University.
Caroline King is an interdisciplinary writer currently working in the FemTech and AI spaces. Most recently, she was a finalist for the WB Yeats prize and her poems and peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Southwest Review, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, Poetry Quarterly, Entropy, and South Central Review among others. For her work as the co-founder of the Napkin Poetry Review, she received Louis Vuitton’s Visionary award in 2021. A past master’s fellow in comparative literature at Dartmouth College, she holds a master’s in creative writing from the University of Oxford as well as bachelor’s degrees in psychology, writing seminars, and Spanish from Johns Hopkins University. In fall 2024, she will be entering Stanford Law School.
Francis Imperial Wong has been playing the violin since the age of 6. He has performed throughout the United States and Europe at concert halls including the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, Smetana Hall in Prague, Czech Republic, and the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. He has served as Principal Second for the New Jersey Youth Symphony and Concertmaster for the Westfield High School Chamber Orchestra, the UCLA Symphony, and currently, the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. He also freelances throughout the tri-state area and is excited for an upcoming chamber music residency in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He holds a B.S. in Financial Actuarial Mathematics from UCLA and also plays the piano, pipe organ, and ukulele while living with his cat, Cashew, in Chinatown where he works as a Data Engineer.
A byproduct of the American Midwest, Taylor Beidler is a London-based playwright, prose, and performance artist. Taylor is the inaugural recipient of the 2020 UEA New Forms Award through the National Centre for Writing. They hold an MA (Distinction) in Scriptwriting from the University of East Anglia. Taylor provided written material for AMC, and was recently commissioned to co-write an original pilot for Silverprint Pictures/ITV2. They worked with the UN High Level Champions Team to present a poem to launch the 2020 Race to Zero November Youth Dialogues in lieu of COP26, focusing on the fashion and textile industry. They’ve taught and facilitated writing workshops with the University of East Anglia, University of Oxford Poetry Society, Shakespeare in Italy, and Norwich Theatre through the Royal Shakespeare Company's 37 Plays Climate Writing Project. They recently completed a lyric essay collection under the mentorship of Max Porter, and are working on their first novel.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Red Room at KGB, 85 East 4th Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00
