Event

Sonia Gomes, Ó Abre Alas (detail), 2025. Courtesy the artist, Mendes Wood DM, and Pace Gallery. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jacob Vitale courtesy of Storm King Art Center

Join us at Storm King for an unforgettable performance that animates Ó Abre Alas!, the groundbreaking first large-scale outdoor installation in the U.S. by celebrated Afro-Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes. 

Staged on Museum Hill amid Gomes’ sculptural installation—where threads of fabric, memory, and ancestry entwine—Breath of Lineage brings together visionary saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins with acclaimed writer and poet Mahogany L. Browne. 

In an electrifying call and response with the land and Gomes’ work, Wilkins and Browne will move the audience through sound, language, rhythm, and presence, summoning the spiritual frequencies embedded in her art. 

This is more than a performance—it’s a ceremonial offering, a living altar of sound and movement, a resonant celebration of Black imagination, resilience, and interconnected lineage unfurling under the open sky. 

Ó Abre Alas! is curated by Nora R. Lawrence, Executive Director of Storm King & Larry Ossei-Mensah, Guest Curator with curatorial assistance from Adela Goldsmith.  

Bios 

Mahogany  L.  Browne, a MacDowell Arts Advocacy Awardee, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, & UCross. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for a play by Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne’s poetry collection, Chrome Valley (highlighted in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times), is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner, and she is most excited to tour her newest YA Novel in Story A Bird in the Air . Mahogany L. Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College, and is the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center.

Alto saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins grew up in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. After he graduated high school, Wilkins moved to New York City in 2015 to attend The Juilliard School. In the city, he met trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire, who mentored Wilkins and helped him navigate the jazz scene. He also met a musician who would change his professional life, Jason Moran, the prominent pianist and composer who took the young saxophonist on tour. In what was one of Wilkins’ biggest gigs to date, he played alto in Moran’s “In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, 1959,” a series of live performances honoring the great legacy of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. Wilkins has since worked with a diverse range of artists including Solange Knowles, Gretchen Parlato, Wynton Marsalis, Gerald Clayton, Aaron Parks, and Joel Ross, making a striking appearance on the vibraphonist’s 2019 Blue Note debut KingMaker.

ACCESSIBILITY
Restrooms
The indoor restrooms on Museum Hill are equipped with somewhat accessible stalls. These stalls include grab bars but are too narrow to accommodate the full turning radius of most wheelchairs. ADA portable restroom stalls are located at the base of Museum Hill near the picnic pavilion.

Terrain and Getting Around
Museum Hill can be accessed via paved paths as well as the elevator near the South Fields. The performance will be on mostly level grass and will be a short distance from the paved pathway.

If you have questions or need other accommodations, please email info@stormkingartcenter.org.