Basilica Green Benefit Dinner
JOIN US for:
Private Donor Dinner
Saturday, September 10, 2022 in Basilica Hudson’s North Hall
Cocktail Reception, 5PM – 6PM
Dinner by Local 111, 6PM – 8PM
After-Dinner Celebration:
BASILICA GREEN Benefit Concert
in Collaboration with Pathway to Paris
*VIP Seating for Dinner Attendees*
8PM – 10PM
“A coming together of creative humans to inspire and be part of the healing solutions already within reach.” — Melissa Auf der Maur
BENEFIT HOST COMMITTEE
John Bowermaster, Leila Conners & Matthew F. Schmid, Bill Covell & Sonia Skindrud, Cathryn Dwyre & Chris Perry, Ben Fain, Benedikta Karaisl von Karais & Matthew Stinchcomb, Sotirios Kotoulas & Karline Moeller, Christopher Lindstrom, Stacy Morrison, Jennifer Venditti
ARTIST HOST COMMITTEE
Melissa Auf der Maur, CAConrad, Devesh and Veena Chandra, Rebecca Foon, Jim Krewson, Rudy Shepherd, Jesse Paris Smith, TROUBLE, Patrick Watson
Join us before the BASILICA GREEN Benefit Concert for a private benefit dinner to fundraise for BASILICA GREEN, Basilica Hudson’s initiative that harnesses the power of art and people to lead the necessary advocacy and actions our planet needs now.
BASILICA GREEN IS:
- Art and public programming that raises awareness and creates public engagement around the environmental issues we face
- The Net Zero Campus Renovation Project, which will transform Basilica’s reclaimed industrial building and surrounding campus into a leading carbon-neutral destination, where “the building becomes the teacher”
- Community focused green jobs training opportunities
- Localized green initiatives and strategic partnerships to foster equity, environmental stewardship and sustainable community development in the City of Hudson and the region
On September 10, Basilica Hudson joins in shared mission and collaboration with Pathway to Paris, a nonprofit co-founded by Rebecca Foon (Basilica Hudson Board Member) and Jesse Paris Smith that actualizes the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement through large-scale musical showcases that connect musicians and artists with scientists and leading thinkers, and delivers a call-to-action attendees can engage in on site.
Please support our BASILICA GREEN public programs by attending our VIP benefit dinner before the concert, which features a range of internationally known artists (for details on the concert, click HERE).. Dinner attendees will be provided with VIP seating for the concert after the dinner.
If you are unable to attend the private dinner, we hope you’ll join us for the public concert (tickets here).
BASILICA GREEN PILLARS
Table for 10
Acknowledgment as “Anchor Supporter” in Program
Seated with an evening’s performer
Thank you from stage
$5,000
BASILICA GREEN PATRONS
6 Tickets seated together
Acknowledgment in Program
$2,500
BASILICA GREEN SUPPORTERS
Individual tickets $300
ALL TICKETS TO DINNER INCLUDE VIP SEATING FOR BASILICA GREEN BENEFIT CONCERT FOLLOWING DINNER
BASILICA GREEN Benefit Concert Artists: Performance

Rebecca Foon & Jesse Paris Smith
Pathway to Paris co-founders Rebecca Foon and Jesse Paris Smith will perform together. Foon is an acclaimed Montreal-based cellist and former member of Silver Mount Zion Constellation Records recording artist. Paris Smith will join her on piano, joined by Melissa Auf der Maur for some spoken word poetry.
More about Rebecca Foon and Jesse Paris Smith
Rebecca Foon
Rebecca Foon is a musician, activist, producer, and co-founder of Pathway to Paris. In 2014, Jesse Paris Smith and Foon founded Pathway to Paris, a non-profit organization dedicated to turning the Paris Agreement into reality. Together they launched the 1000 Cities Initiative for Carbon Freedom in 2017, supporting cities in developing and implementing cutting edge climate action plans. She has performed and recorded internationally, most notably as co-founder of the modern chamber post-rock and Juno Award winning ensemble Esmerine, as a member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Set Fire To Flames, a member of Colin Stetson’s Sorrow ensemble, and her electro-acoustic songwriting project Saltland. In January 2020, Rebecca released her first album under her own name, Waxing Moon, with all proceeds going to 1000 cities.
Jesse Paris Smith
Jesse Paris Smith is a writer, musician, producer, and co-founder of Pathway to Paris. She has been performing, composing, and recording music since 2004. In 2014, she and cellist Rebecca Foon founded Pathway to Paris, a non-profit organization dedicated to turning the Paris Agreement into reality by offering tangible solutions for combating global climate change. In September 2019, along with Tenzin Choegyal and Laurie Anderson, Jesse released ‘Songs from the Bardo,’ an album inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which was nominated for the 2021 Grammy® Awards. She has been a certified Grief Support Coach since 2017. In February 2019, she released her first solo single entitled, ‘Legacies,’ with all proceeds going to Pathway to Paris. Jesse was born in Detroit, and resides in New York City.

Patrick Watson
Montreal singer-songwriter Patrick Watson brings soaring vocals and piano to the musical landscape of the evening. The acclaimed cult favorite emerged from the pandemic as a viral sensation after Tik Tok discovered his 2010 song “Je te Laisserai des Mots”.
More about Patrick Watson
Patrick Watson is a singer, pianist and composer. He invents uncanny musical landscapes, harmoniously mixing organic elements and electronic textures, cacophonic rock songs and pristine ballads, all held together by his omnipresent voice. The recipients of Canada’s Polaris Music Prize in 2007, in addition to JUNO and Polaris nominations, Watson and his band have toured on all continents, on occasion playing with full orchestras to bring the rich music to life. Raised and still living in Montreal, Watson has composed several scores for both film and television.

CAConrad
Acclaimed writer CAConrad, who has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975, will perform their spoken word piece Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return.
More about CAConrad
CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. They are the author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021), as well as 9 other books of poetry. They received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. Their play The Obituary Show was made into a film in 2022 by Augusto Cascales. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Visit them online at https://linktr.ee/CAConrad88

Devesh and Veena Chandra
Devesh Chandra and his mother Veena Chandra, an alumni of Basilica Hudson’s beloved 24-HOUR DRONE music festival, will perform Northern Indian Classical Music.
More about Devesh and Veena Chandra
Devesh Chandra has been learning the Tabla since the age of 3. He has learned Northern Indian Classical Music by accompanying his mother, Veena Chandra. Devesh, the youngest of six children, grew up immersed in Indian music. His first spoken words were the syllables of tabla -Dha Dha Tita. Immersed in music at a young age, Devesh is fortunate to have grownu p surrounded by iconic figures of Indian Music. Devesh accompanied his mother on her visits with the late Ustad Vilayat Khan. Ustad Vilayat Khan grew to be a grandfather to Devesh.

Rudy Shepherd
In the performance Healing Music for a Troubled World, artist Rudy Shepherd, as The Healer, interacts with multiple sculptures – Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers – to an improvised score played by an experimental music collective of synthesizers, bass clarinet, drums, cello, theremin and more. Shepherd’s performance signifies a spiritual healing, where destructive forces like racism, exclusion, and the trauma and the destruction of environmental collapse are transmuted through a cathartic collective experience.
More about Rudy Shepherd
Rudy Shepherd’s latest work explores the nature of evil through the mediums of painting and sculpture. This exploration involves investigations into the lives of criminals and victims of crime. He explores the complexity of these stories and the grey areas between innocence and guilt in a series of paintings and drawings of both the criminals and the victims, making no visual distinctions between the two. By presenting the people first and the stories second, a space is created for humanity to be re-instilled into the lives of people who have been reduced to mere headlines by the popular press. Going along with these portraits is a series of sculptures called the Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers. They are a group of sculptures meant to remove negative energy from people allowing them to respond to life with the more positive aspects of their personality. The series is, on the one hand, a response to living in New York City for the last twelve years and witnessing the madness that takes place in this American microcosm. At the same time, it is also an approach to political art that seeks to push the dialogue started in the late 80s/early 90s forward into 2015 by looking at the problems of society in a more comprehensive way and advancing practices culled from new-age mythology and ancient religions to heal our still divided and troubled country. (more here)
VISUAL ART

Jim Krewson
In the Basilica Gallery, visual artist Jim Krewson will present an exhibit of work titled “Dark Star Motherf****r”. This new series of paintings seeks to visit a psychedelic landscape completely oriented by the imagination. With the use of black light and fluorescent airbrush paint, Krewson invites the viewer to escape reality and hopes to help subvert the bland moralizing of much of contemporary art.
More about Jim Krewson
Jim Krewson has been using airbrush as his main instrument since the age of 14. He hails from Bucks County, PA and is an art school dropout. Currently living in Catskill, NY, he did a previous residency with Basilica Hudson in 2018. He has shown with Zack Feuer’s Retrospective Gallery, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Andrew Kreps among others.

TROUBLE
Trouble’s Vanitas is a series of site-specific pools of resin body parts fragments, the “weeds” that grow through them, and the insects they attract. Like all Vanitas, it is a meditation upon the fleeting nature of life. Trouble is excited to see Vanitas absorbed into Basilica’s grounds and incorporated into its many gatherings.
More about TROUBLE
TROUBLE is Sam Hillmer and Laura Paris. Trouble live and work in New York and have been active since 2006.
Sam Hillmer is a Brooklyn-based musician, artist, and curator. He is the founding member of the band Zs and one half of the art duo Trouble (with Laura Paris). He also makes music as Diamond Terrifier. Recent collaborations include work with David Salle, Tauba Auerbach, Dirty Projectors, Laurel Halo, Arto Lindsay, and Eartheater. Past projects include H0L0, Trans-Pecos, Wet Ink, and the SEM Ensemble, among others.
Laura Paris is a sculptor, projectionist, and installation artist. She has shown/performed at Pioneer Works, the Queens Museum, Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), The Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, White Chappell Gallery and the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, and Vacant Gallery in Tokyo Japan. Laura appears frequently with her partner and collaborator Sam Hillmer as projectionist for Diamond Terrifier and ZS. Laura is also active as an arts based community activist in Bushwick Brooklyn where she lives.

Sean Desiree (outdoor installation)
BEAM ENSEMBLE is a public art project by Sean Desiree that combines their understanding of timber frame construction and instrument making. The installation is an outdoor orchestra, creating a space intended for the public to establish a connection with the buried history of African American composers. The architecture of the piece resembles that of an orchestra with four distinct sections, each representing a different instrument originating from the African diaspora.

Alison McNulty (outdoor installation)
Alison McNulty’s Hudson Valley Ghost Column 8 is made of historic Hudson Valley-made bricks found on Basilica’s campus and unprocessed Cormo sheep wool. McNulty’s work questions systems of value creation and meaning-making in a contemporary world using salvaged materials and precarious forms.
About Pathway to Paris
Pathway to Paris brings together musicians, artists, activists, academics, mayors, and innovators to help raise consciousness surrounding the urgency of climate action and offers solutions to turning the Paris agreement into action. The organization was founded in 2014 by Jesse Paris Smith and Rebecca Foon, launched with an intimate evening of music and speakers immediately following the People’s Climate March in New York City. A series of concerts unfolded in North America and beyond over the ensuing years. The events were initially intended to build awareness to help establish a global climate agreement, leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference (Cop21) which took place in December 2015, and culminated with two major concerts in Paris, the first weekend of the conference. In November 2017, Pathway to Paris launched the 1000 Cities Initiative for Carbon Freedom in the lead-up to COP 23. The initiative invites all cities of the world to transition off of fossil fuels and move to 100% renewable energy in order to turn the Paris Agreement into reality.

