The New York Times’ Overlooked series was introduced on March 8, 2018 for International Women’s Day, when they published fifteen obituaries of “overlooked” women, and has since become a hugely successful bi-weekly feature in the paper.
As part Relevant Tones: Live, Access Contemporary Music has commissioned five composers to write musical portraits of the lives in the series, including surrealist painter and mystic Remedios Varo, singer-songwriter Judee Sill, journalist, teacher and political activist Jovita Idár, food inventor and war heroine Maria Orosa and the first African-American registered nurse in the United States, Mary Eliza Mahoney.
Each new string quartet was performed live by The Overlook, and host Seth Boustead talked with special guests Amy Padnani, creator of the Overlooked series, filmmaker Vanessa Gould and obituary writer Jacques Kelley in between each performance.
Live from Symphony Space in Manhattan.
MUSIC
I Laughed So Hard I Cried by Shanan Estreicher
La Esperanza de la Gente by Gilbert Galindo
The Best Things Come to Those Who Act by Lynn Bechtold
REPARE by Milica Paranosic
String Quartet No. 2 Mary Eliza Mahoney by Nailah Nombeko