Concert: Aristides Rivas & Meena Malik, “Remembering”
On Wednesday, August 3rd, at 4pm, come to the West Tisbury Library for an in-person cello and voice concert titled, “Remembering: A Story of Immigration, Family, and the Search for Identity Through Music.” Arts and soul mates Aristides Rivas and Meena Malik bring an intimate program that explores their journeys as professional musicians, immigrants, and parents, through reconnecting with folk and pop songs that marked their youth before leaving their native Venezuela and Japan to classical music repertoire. The program will explore how music has not only been a career for these artists, but also a source of healing.
This concert is free, open to the public, and sponsored by the Friends of the West Tisbury Library and the West Tisbury Library Foundation. There’s no sign up needed to attend.
Meena Malik wears many hats. As a singer, Meena has performed with Opera Providence, MassOpera, Boston Opera Collaborative, New England Orchestra among others. She was a founding member and performer with Voci Angelica Trio, an international band that created a musical fusion of world folk and classical music, for 14 years. With Voci Angelica, Meena toured to the USA’s East Coast, Midwest and Southern regions, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Meena is also an arts consultant and cultural organizer who is known as a mover and shaker re-defining what equity in the arts look like. Formerly as the Senior Program Manager of Theater at the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), she managed the National Theater Project (NTP), a grant program that supports the creation and touring of devised ensemble theater work. Meena organized and led “Beyond Orientalism: The Boston Forum” in October 2017 and is a co-founder and steering committee member of Boston’s first API (Asian Pacific Islander) Arts Network.
Aristides Rivas is a concert cellist, recording musician, music educator and speaker. He has performed at a wide range of international music venues and festivals such as Caramoor Music Festival, Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall, Newport Jazz Festival, the Barbican in England, Sejong Center in South Korea, and Teatro Colon in Argentina, among others. He was nominated to the Grammys in 2010 for his participation in the album Sounding Point and in 2018, he released his own album Laberintus, featuring classical music for cello and piano by Latin American composers. Rivas is a passionate music educator and a specialist in El Sistema-inspired youth music programs. He has presented at international conferences such as South Korea’s state run El Sistema conference, the ITAC4 at Carnegie Hall, and the El Sistema USA Symposium in 2019. In 2015 he gave a TEDxTalk (available on YouTube under “Saved by the Angels of Music) where he describes how music saved him from the slums in Venezuela. Rivas is a cello faculty at California Baptist University.