Millpond Live: Claudia Acuña | Break the Silence

INTERACTIVE ZOOM AUDIENCE

BUY TICKETS HERE

This week, we are delighted to welcome renowned jazz vocalist Claudia Acuña. Acuña is a true Cinderella story of jazz – starting off with no training in English or in jazz and emerging as one of the most intriguing and original vocalists on the scene. Abbey Lincoln remarked of Acuña, “She sings in the tradition of the great ones. Her sound is her own.” She will be joined onstage by special guests Tim Eriksen, Darryl Harper, and Mtali Banda.

At the apex of her career, events in Acuña’s personal life forced her from the stage. Saturday’s performance at the Academy will serve as a coming out party – a moment for her to reassert herself, provide context for disappearance, and to offer support to victims for domestic abuse, many of whom are suffering more frequent and severe levels of violence as a result of the Covid-19 crisis. We are please to partner with the Violence Intervention Project (VIP), a Latina-led organization that provides healing, housing, and economic justice to thousands of survivors of domestic and sexual violence in NYC

SUMMARY
The world has been turned upside down but we continue to make magic. The Millpond.Live summer festivals have been reimagined as a series of residencies that make space for artists to collaborate, generate new work, and reconnect with audiences in creative ways. We come together to celebrate and to rally around issues that touch our lives and shape our communities. Tune in on Saturday nights in August for our live broadcasts from the stage of the historic Academy of Music Theatre.

THE FORMAT
Each week, artists will come for a creative retreat at Valley View Farm, where they will be joined by band members and special guests to rehearse and collaborate safely in open-air spaces. On Fridays, they will perform for an intimate audience outdoors in the Hemenway Barn and on Saturdays, they will take the stage at the historic Academy of Music Theatre for a live streamed broadcast with no physical audience.

INTERACTIVE AUDIENCE
While we can’t come together in the theater, we’ve pioneered the next best thing. Purchase a ticket to join our interactive audience via Zoom, where you get to “be seen” by the artists and “see” everyone else who is sharing the experience with you. We setup a video wall at the front of the stage so that the performers can literally look out at the audience and see hundreds of people listening, dancing, clapping, and enjoying the show. Tickets will be available as a sliding-scale donation and net proceeds will benefit the artists, the venue, as well as our partner organizations.

Laudable Productions pioneered this “interactive audience” format earlier this summer, when we produced “Juneteenth: A Day of Remembrance” with Sweet Honey In The Rock, which was broadcast live from The Lincoln Theater in Washington, DC to an empty hall. Special guests included Bryan Stevenson, Danny Glover, Gina Belafonte, Sonia Sanchez, Debbie Allen, Christian McBride, Aloe Blacc, William Barber III, Kiki Shepard, Jenifer Lewis, Jordan Waré, and Sophia Dawson. One thousand people bought tickets to the interactive Zoom audience and over 100k viewers tuned in to watch the live-streamed show. The event raised over $80k in donations for the Equal Justice Initiative.