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Ishinomaki Reborn (April 12, 2024)
Photo © by Christopher PelhamThis large sign, emblazoned with the words がんばろう！石巻 meaning Let's Go, Ishinomaki, was found placed in the ruins of downtown Ishinomaki just beyond the seashore shortly after the disaster to rally the community. It was preserved and is now displayed in the Kadonowaki Elementary School's restored gymnasium. I am so grateful that at the last minute I was able to arrange a visit with composer Aya Nishina (I'll have more on that visit with her in another article!) in her hometown of Sendai, the largest city in the north-eastern region of Tohoku. At her suggestion, I took a day to visit...
Nikko (April 11, 2024)
Photo © by Christopher PelhamThe dragon fountain in front of Rinnouji Temple Since the founding of Shihonryuji Temple (which later became Nikkosan Rinnoji Temple) by the Buddhist monk Shodo in 766, Nikko, a small town about 90 miles north of Tokyo in Tochigi Prefecture, became known as a sacred place where Buddhism was brought into harmony with the older Shinto worship of the mountain gods. Eight centuries later, Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu's mausoleum was constructed in Nikko, 208 steep stone steps up the mountainside above the other temple buildings. So great were his accomplishments — the dynasty he founded ruled Japan...
Imaishi — April 10, 2024
Photo © by Christopher PelhamAfter one night in Tokyo and a quick lunch (inexpensive but outstanding chirashi-sushi with a photographer friend in Tsukuji), I took the Tohoku Shinkansen train from Ueno Station to Utsunomiya and transferred to the JR Nikko line but got off one stop early at Imaishi. Imaishi is the little town just to the east of the popular and historic temple town of Nikko, which was where I was heading, but Imaishi has its own famous cedar road and sakura road and I thought I would check it out on the way. Just outside the station, the sun already much stronger than I had expected in early April, I...
When the Sun Comes
Photo © by Alex JosephMaya Keren's five-piece band Careful in the Sun is about to embark on its first mini tour, with support from CRS, and I reached out to Maya to learn more about their music and vision, which fuses elements of jazz and pop and draws inspiration from black queer liberation literature.
I first saw them in June 2022 at the M³ Festival, produced by Mutual Mentorship for Musicians. While still an undergrad at Princeton University, Maya (they/them) had participated in M³'s first cohort of duo commission grantees back in the summer of 2020. In this concert, Maya led the band from the piano, and I was struck by their dreamy sound, camaraderie, and joie de vivre onstage. I found myself exhaling, expanding, drawn in and drawn inward. I softened.
Alix Bailey Reminds Us That Painting Is Light and So Are We
Photo © by Alix Bailey 2022, “Alex and Pink” 42” x 60”On November 25, 2023 I had the pleasure of attending the closing reception for "Alix Bailey: Recent Paintings" at The Painting Center in Chelsea. The show, her fourth at The Painting Center, consisted mostly of large paintings of one particular model whom Bailey painted repeatedly throughout the years of the pandemic in the indirect light of her home studio.
The gallery indicated that Bailey began bringing only one model into her home during this time in order to limit the possibility for exposure to COVID during the pandemic. I noted that at least one visiter to her exhibition speculated that her work might have suffered from this limitation. However, I believe that Bailey chose to see it as an opportunity. She stated, "One of the rewards of working so closely with the same model over the years is that I come to know them in a way that adds another layer of meaning to the painting. Observing a person over long periods of time, really seeing them is a way of putting them in the light." As it happened, during this time the model appears to have undergone gender-affirming surgery and, posing nude, allowed Bailey to illustrate the transformation.
But what is even more interesting about these portraits for me — and, I suspect, for Bailey — is not the model’s physical changes but rather Bailey’s ability to evoke the inner light of the model while at the same time capturing the diffuse natural light of her studio and the way that it illuminates everything in the frame.
M³ Festival Demonstrates the Power of Inclusivity
Photo © by Christopher PelhamFrom Sept 21 – 23, Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³) held its 2nd annual M³ Festival at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, NY. The event brought together musicians from around the world from M³'s 3rd and 4th cohorts, many of them meeting and performing together in person for the first time. One of two public events that M³ held this year, the festival provides a platform both for its cohort participants and for the organization itself and its mission.
The 2023 M³ Festival boasted an exceptional roster of 21 M³ cohort artists plus numerous ensemble members, each contributing their unique talents and artistic vision. In the relentless pursuit of balance and diversity, this lineup of composer-performers was thoughtfully curated to embody innovation across genres.
“This year’s festival musicians from M³’s third and fourth cohorts are hands down some of the most groundbreaking composer-performers in the world today, each with a stunning clarity of vision that you’ll rarely if ever find gathered together in one place,” said Shyu. Indeed, the Festival’s many musical collaborations were dizzying in variety and dazzling in quality.
When My Exile Sees Me
Photo © by Christopher PelhamThrough music, dance, and conscious exploration, Sita Chay’s “When My Exile Sees Me,” presented May 20, 2023 at Joe’s Pub, creates a loving and accepting space to invite healing and acceptance of all our inner exiled parts.
Moonlight Refugee
travel stories from Hai Yen Ho
An inveterate explorer, Vietnam-based writer Hai Yen Ho moves effortlessly between rural and urban, wealthy and poor, fearlessly following her intuition. Her journeys and resulting stories chart the conflict between traditional and modern ways of life, spotlighting marginalized voices and finding beauty in unexpected places.
Moonlight Refugee
Ever since I was a child, I have always known that the world around me was much larger, that it was not limited to a small market, a moldering temple with a desolate courtyard, a solid church that I had not entered, rows of houses, schools, and a highway. That poor and ragged landscape never limited my imagination. I did not know how I got there, but I always knew that one day I would leave it. I knew I would travel to other vast places, reach the tops of mountains, dive to the bottom of the sea, and talk to people in every corner of the world.
Singapore
I don’t know why I came here. Waking at four in the morning, inside this airtight dormitory room with no windows, I can only tell the time from the screen of my phone. Below my bed, the Afghan girl is snoring softly. I imagine her bed, surrounded by piles of stuff hung haphazardly like a rumpled bed curtain. She’s been here for two weeks; the items hanging around the bed are a way for her to assert her attachment, her sovereignty, and to establish herself more firmly than the others, which currently consist of me, a Cambodian girl, and an Indonesian girl.
Moscow: Snow will melt when the sun rises
The previous night, the snow fell heavily. The snowflakes fell gently yet fiercely, floating through the night like magical creatures. The cold crashed on me suddenly as soon as I stepped outside, aggressively occupying all the corners in my body, sneaking into every inch of carelessly exposed skin. The cold froze on the skin, piercing my brain, aching with every breath. On cold winter nights like this, the best thing to do is to stay in a cozy room, drink a cup of ginger tea, and talk about everything — except politics, of course. Politics in Russia these days is taboo. Russians avoided the subject like a terminal illness. “War in Ukraine? No, don’t worry, we are fine.” They changed the subject. Except Varf Labec.
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Photo © by Dirk VerheListening to Stillness: Nguyen Tuan Cuong and the Art of Vietnamese Lacquer Painting
The first time I encountered one of Nguyễn Tuấn Cường's works, I found myself stunned before a canvas not characterized by richness, but by solidity. It was a painting of a bowl — an ordinary, creased enamel bowl — so realistically rendered it seemed to be living. Not polished, not idealized. It just was. Its rim chipped, its pale blue faded to something almost ghostly, the bowl rested ever so slightly askew on a darkened ground, emanating not surface light but a glow from deep within the layers of lacquer. It didn’t proclaim beauty; it remembered it — the kind of remembering carried in your bones, like a scent from childhood. Standing before it, I felt like I was the one seen rather than the one seeing. Something stirred inside me.
Photo © by Nguyễn Tuấn CườngMoscow: Snow will melt when the sun rises
The previous night, the snow fell heavily. The snowflakes fell gently yet fiercely, floating through the night like magical creatures. The cold crashed on me suddenly as soon as I stepped outside, aggressively occupying all the corners in my body, sneaking into every inch of carelessly exposed skin. The cold froze on the skin, piercing my brain, aching with every breath. On cold winter nights like this, the best thing to do is to stay in a cozy room, drink a cup of ginger tea, and talk about everything — except politics, of course. Politics in Russia these days is taboo. Russians avoided the subject like a terminal illness. “War in Ukraine? No, don’t worry, we are fine.” They changed the subject. Except Varf Labec.
Photo © by Hai Yen HoSingapore
I don’t know why I came here. Waking at four in the morning, inside this airtight dormitory room with no windows, I can only tell the time from the screen of my phone. Below my bed, the Afghan girl is snoring softly. I imagine her bed, surrounded by piles of stuff hung haphazardly like a rumpled bed curtain. She’s been here for two weeks; the items hanging around the bed are a way for her to assert her attachment, her sovereignty, and to establish herself more firmly than the others, which currently consist of me, a Cambodian girl, and an Indonesian girl.
Photo © by Hai Yen HoMoonlight Refugee
Ever since I was a child, I have always known that the world around me was much larger, that it was not limited to a small market, a moldering temple with a desolate courtyard, a solid church that I had not entered, rows of houses, schools, and a highway. That poor and ragged landscape never limited my imagination. I did not know how I got there, but I always knew that one day I would leave it. I knew I would travel to other vast places, reach the tops of mountains, dive to the bottom of the sea, and talk to people in every corner of the world.
Photo © by Hai Yen Ho「すべての作品には複数の顔がある——書くことと翻訳をめぐる多和田葉子との対話」
「すべての作品には複数の顔がある——書くことと翻訳をめぐる多和田葉子との対話」 by Tracy Shi | June 10, 2025 | Literature Yoko Tawada, Professor Rivka Galchen, Susan Bernofsky...
Photo © by Christopher PelhamTrà My “Emmy” Truong: The Constant Gardener
I initially knew Emmy only as one of the friendly baristas at Lê Phin, the lovely little Vietnamese cafe in the East Village that I stop by nearly every day to work, meet people, and enjoy their exquisite pandan matcha lattes and coffees. One moment, the person seated across from me at their communal table is a fellow customer and stranger; the next, I learn he/she/they is an immigration lawyer or a literature professor or an artist, a wellspring of stories and inspiration, and, by the time our cups are empty, a friend. Encouraged by curiosity, they blossom.
So it was with Emmy. She appeared to me in full bloom. Literally. I don’t usually see spiritual visions unless I invite them, but her aura seemed to appear to me of its own accord, lushly framing her with red petals. I thought this must be meaningful, but it wasn’t until I told her this that I learned who she is and why her aura makes sense.
For one thing, Emmy’s Vietnamese name, Trà My Trương, is taken from the Vietnamese word for camellia, cây hoa trà. “Emmy” is a simplified name she chose for Americans, but it still honors her roots. “My” comes from her first name, and “Em” is a sweet Vietnamese term of affection.
As soon as we started talking, I realized she was intelligent, confident, and mature. She was actually a working artist dedicated to bringing more beauty into the world and chose to work at the cafe occasionally to learn more about the food/hospitality industry. As I became more familiar with her work, I found that I loved her artist eye, her color sense, and her approach to life and art.
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Finding Freedom in Music & Motherhood — Yukari Sekiya 関谷 友加里 at Studio T-Bone, Osaka (4/19/24)
While struggling to find contemporary jazz venues in Osaka, I stumbled upon Studio T-Bone, a venue supporting both live jazz and photography and decided to visit. Pianist Yukari Sekiya 関谷 友加里 and percussionist Naoto Yamagishi 山㟁直人 やまぎしなおと were improvising together. While I didn't manage to get to know them well on that occasion, I was delighted to spend time with the creative family members running the studio. A chance encounter months later unexpectedly brought Yukari back into my mind. When I reached out to her, she responded, and I've now learned what a deep and inspiring artist and person she is, opening the door to possible future collaborations. It was a powerful reminder that we can't always see right away why our intuition speaks to us. Sometimes, it may be setting something in motion far in the future or for a purpose quite different from what we imagine.
Photo © by Christopher Pelham
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