The writer Greil Marcus has referred in recent years to the "old, weird America" that is summoned in the traditional music of the Appalachian Mountains, especially as catalogued in Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. The folk tradition has the capacity to bypass some of the constraints of modernity and postmodernity and to give us access to cultures and ways of seeing the world that are alien to the way we live now.

The Wingdale Community Singers is a group of musicians that wears many hats. Nina Katchadourian is a highly regarded conceptual artist and a curator at the Drawing Center in New York City. Rick Moody is a novelist, essayist, and short story writer, and Hannah Marcus records in a great variety of idioms as a solo artist. They are joined at this show by Randy Polumbo, a sculptor and constructor of large-scale forms, and Elissa Moser-Linowes, bass player extraordinaire. The group investigates older folk music forms, looking for ways to borrow from these forms and to adapt them to the tempos and themes of urban life. The band writes original songs, and plays some traditional folk songs, and creates a context in which an urban version of Old Time music can continue to thrive.

This event is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Nina Katchadourian's artwork has been exhibited domestically and internationally at PS1/MoMA, the Serpentine Gallery, New Langton Arts, Artists Space, SculptureCenter, and the Palais de Tokyo. The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presented a solo show of recent video installation works in July 2008. Katchadourian has also had a long engagement with music that runs parallel to her visual art practice. She has played in Balinese and Javanese music ensembles periodically, and spent five months in Bali studying gender wayang, the instrument that accompanies the Balinese shadow plays. In 2008 she released a solo CD entitled The Marfa Jingles—a song portrait of the small west Texas town of Marfa and its citizenry. She has played with the Wingdale Community Singers since 2005 and is currently also at work on a new solo record.

Hannah Marcus comes from a long line of composers, and studied music at Wesleyan. In addition to her work with the Wingdale Community Singers, she has had a long and fertile career that includes five solo albums—Weeds and Lillies and River of Darkness (both produced by Mark Kozelek), Faith Burns, Black Hole Heaven, and Desert Farmers, which was recorded in Montreal with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Her numerous side projects include music for the PBS documentary Refrigerator Mothers. She is also a student of the traditional fiddle, and has played at folk festivals here and abroad. At present, she's at work on a new solo album, recorded in Montreal and in New York City, entitled From English Planes.

Rick Moody is the author of four novels, including The Ice Storm and The Diviners, three collections of stories, and a memoir, The Black Veil. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Esquire, The Atlantic, Harper's, and many other publications. As a musician, his releases include Rick Moody and One Ring Zero, and two albums with The Wingdale Community Singers—the eponymously titled first album, and its recent follow-up, Spirit Duplicator. His new novel, The Four Fingers of Death, will be published by Little Brown in July 2010.

Randy Polumbo is a sculptor, master builder, and primitive guitar enthusiast. He works and lives in Joshua Tree and New York City, and can often be found fishing stuff out of dumpsters and/or trying to play slide guitar with a pipe wrench.

This program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.