Full Lineup Revealed For BAM's 2024 Benefit

An all-female and trans lineup will perform on May 1 as BAM honors two iconic trailblazers; the multi-hyphenate artist, Solange Knowles, and legendary arts producer and advocate, Mikki Shepard, for their indelible influence, inspiration, and contributions to the performing arts. 

Taking place at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, the enchanting multi-genre evening will stage intimate performances from Alva Puppet Theater; pianist, vocalist and activist, Beverly Glenn-Copeland; and transformative harpist Nailah Hunter. The night will be capped off by an afterparty in the Adam Space featuring the sonic talents of DJ Lovie. 

Funds generated by this event help secure a sustainable future for BAM as it continues its mission to be a home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas. BAM’s President Gina Duncan, BAM Interim Artistic Director Amy Cassello, and BAM Board Chair Diane Max, are the evening’s hosts. Richard E. Feldman and Jon C. Nathanson, and George C. Wolfe are the Benefit Chairs. Benefit Committee members include Kabir Ahuja, Bloomberg Philanthropies, William I. Campbell & Christine Wächter Campbell, Janel Callon, Natasha Chefer, Richard Feldman, Steven Felsher, Rita & Alex, Hillman Foundation, Darnell-Moser Charitable Fund, Diane Max, Depelsha McGruder, Robin Maxwell and James Wilentz, Scott McDonald, Joseph Stern, Alexa & Marc Suskin, Brigitte Vosse and Nora Ann Wallace. Honorary Committee members include Hanif Abdurraqib, Camille, Brown, Peter Born, Paul Lazar, Spike Lee, Mark Morris, Ruth Negga, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Okwui Okpokwasili, Annie-B. Parson, Huang Ruo, Abdel R. Salaam, Whitney White and Jacqueline Woodson.

 About the performers:

Beverly Glenn-Copeland is a singer and songwriter who was born in Philadelphia and moved to Canada in 1961. Glenn-Copeland began his musical career in the 1960s, when he studied classical singing at Montreal's McGill University and performed at Expo 67. A classically-trained vocalist, he started his career making folk music, while composing and acting on children’s television series including Mr. Dressup and Sesame Street. For more than 40 years Copeland wrote plays, composed soundtracks and wrote music that channels and celebrates the varied cultural influences of his own background. Glenn-Copeland’s 1984 self-released electronic album Keyboard Fantasies was reissued in 2016, its visionary approach resonating with the ears of a new generation. A documentary about his life directed by Posy Dixon, Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story, was released in 2020. He’s performed at MoMA PS1, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and ISSUE Project Room among others around the world. 

Nailah Hunter is an LA-based multi-instrumentalist and composer who has been recording mystical folk and ambient-inspired music since 2019, releasing a series of singles and two EPs: Spells and, most recently, Quietude. Now signed to Fat Possum, Lovegaze is Hunter’s debut full-length, an enthralling album that draws listeners into her enchanting cosmology. As the daughter of a Belizean pastor, Hunter began her musical journey in the church where she played drums, guitar and sang in the choir. She continued to study music at CalArts, where she studied vocal performance and was given her first harp lesson. Associating the instrument with fantasy, psychedelia, and dream worlds, Hunter became an immediate devotee, locking herself in a room for six hours a day to practice the instrument. 

To make Lovegaze, Hunter decamped to a small coastal city along the English Channel where she began recording demos with a borrowed celtic harp.  After being introduced to London-based producer Cicely Goulder, Hunter returned to England a year later to further develop the songs. The resulting collection, Lovegaze, is a bewitching testament to the resiliency of the natural world.

Alva Rogers, Artistic Director of ALVA PUPPET THEATER, is a dramatist, puppeteer, and multi-disciplinary artist. Rogers’ most recent work, Topsy-Turvy, an installation and performance featuring puppetry and music was presented at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in February 2023.  Rogers began inventing worlds at Just Above Midtown, where she performed with Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris and in Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees’s ...And He Had Six Sisters (1984). She has written plays and musicals; has participated in several collaborations, including work with the performance collective Rodeo Caldonia; and has been a muse/model for visual artists including Whitfield Lovell, Fred Wilson, Lorna Simpson, Dawoud Bey, Tina Barney, Lona Foote, Daryl Turner, Coreen Simpson, and Julie Dash, among others. Born and raised in New York City, she has received degrees from Brown University (MFA), New York University (MFA), and Bard (MAT).

Lovie's music discovery was born in the digital music age: a young lover of local radio and after-school MTV marathons, her early mixes took shape in the form of burned CDs she composed for friends. In relocating from her hometown of Washington, D.C. to New York in August of 2020, Lovie's unique selection swiftly ushered her into New York's local music scene; she had yet to play beyond the confines of her bedroom when she pitched a show to The Lot Radio, and her show Summer School Radio quickly garnered a devoted following amongst music lovers and local DJs alike. Within a year, she'd earned a Lot Radio residency; and has since become a regular at notable venues throughout the city, a resident of the beloved Coloring Lessons party by musclecars, and a cofounder of Soul Connection. Lovie's sets guarantee a sweet, soulful, and spiritual selection, as she interweaves soul, disco, and house into a sound that creates warmth, and makes you move.

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