Jed Distler is a Composer, pianist , music writer, arts presenter based in New York City.
ASCAP award winner Jed Distler’s compositions are characterized by audacity, subtle craftsmanship, fresh harmonic ideas, agile counterpoint and a rare sense of humor.
Called “an altogether extraordinary pianist” in the Newark Star-Ledger and “the downtown keyboard magus” in the New Yorker, Jed Distler’s new music recitals have taken him across the United States and Europe and feature many composers who have written works especially for him.
He is one of the most widely read and highly regarded reviewers of classical piano recordings, who regularly contributes to Gramophone and Classicstoday.com.
In 2015 The Classical Network WWFM.org invited Jed to be their first Artist-in-Residence, and host for Between the Keys, a weekly program that airs Tuesdays at 10:00 PM, with a repeat broadcast Wednesdays at 1:00 PM. In 2017 Jed won an ASCAP award for his radio show Between the Keys.
https://stmarksbowery.org/events/2019/10/13/tools-jed-distler-and-company
Luigi Ballerini Poet, essayst, and translator, Luigi Ballerini was born in Italy in 1940, and lives in New York and Milan. He has taught Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature at New York University (1984-1990) and the University of California at Los Angeles (1991-2010), and is the author of numerous essays on Italian Futurism, Avant-garde Literature and Poetry, Medieval Poetry, Historical Gastronomy, and Contemporary Sculpture, He has also edited several bilingual anthologies of Italian and American Poetry and translated into Italian a variety of American authors ranging from Melville to William Carlos Williams, Edgar Lee Masters, and Gertrude Stein. His poetry has appeared under the following titles: eccetera. E (1972), Che figurato muore (1988), Che oror l’orient (1991), Il terzo gode (1994, English edition published as The Cadence of a Neighboring Tribe in 1997) Stracci shakespeariani (1996), Uscita senza strada (2000), Uno monta la luna (2001), Cefalonia (Mondadori 2005), Se il tempo è matto(Mondadori, 2010), Una dozzina + 3, Danilo Montanari Editore, 2012. A Spanish language edition of Cefalonia was published in 2013, followed by an American edition (2016). His Collected Poems (1972-2015) was published in May 2016. Hots off the press is his Apollo, figio di Apelle, a book length essay on 4 contemporary sculptors: Marco Gastini, Paolo Icaro, Eliseo Mattiacci, Lawrence Fane.
Born in Milan, Maria Mimma Scarpini is a painter and an art conservator living and working in New York City.
She attended the Art High School in Milan and in graduated from Universita` Internazinale dell'Arte in Florence with a Diploma in Conservation of artworks.
She began her restoration career in Milan in 1983 with frescoes and large-scale altar paintings on canvas. She further expanded her work experience in Rome in a variety of media: from monuments and frescoes to paintings on canvas and panel. In 1997 she moved to work in New York City and 2003 she established Scarpinistudio Fine Art Conservation and Restoration.
She is a self taught painter and she has shown in solo and collective shows. In 2019 she was featured in Between a Rock and an Hard Place, a solo show at American University in Paris and in 2013 at The Governor’s Island Art Fair. She participated in collective shows such as Fever Songs, a three person show at the BronxArtSpace, NY, and in 2023 in Bronx Five Folds: Harmonious Convergence a Five persons show at Roeder Gallery, New York, NY. She was the 1st Prize winner, for the BWAC 2011 show Black and White! She collaborated with composer Jed Distler designing the scenography for the project Broken Records a 175 Keyboard project playing simultaneously in Cornelia Street for the 2013 Make Music New York Festival.