Patrick Reagan Ngo passed away on Friday, April 7, 2023 at the age of 37. Beloved son of Grace and Romeo Ngo, loving brother of Kathryn, Angelo and Therese, dear brother-in-law of Matthew and Ronald, and cherished uncle of Kerrigan and Emmett. Mass of Christian Burial offered at St. Adalbert’s Church on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 10 AM. Private Interment followed under the direction of Papavero Funeral Home, 72-27 Grand Avenue Maspeth NY 11378.
Vito Taranto passed away on Friday, April 14, 2023 at the age of 94. Beloved husband of the late Enza Taranto, loving father of Fina Salvo and Franca Saitta, father-in-law of Giuseppe, cherished grandfather of Maria Rosaria (Alessandro) Vicari, Antonino Salvo and Maria Concetta Saitta, great-grandfather of Alessio and Alena, dear brother of Jack Taranto, Rise DiStefano, Lena Lavignani, and the late Joe Taranto and Jerry Taranto, and also survived by many loving nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. In Lieu of Flowers, memorial donations may be made directly to the family. Funeral Services held at Papavero Funeral Home on Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 10 AM. Entombment followed at St. John Cemetery Christ the Redeemer Mausoleum, Middle Village, NY under the direction of Papavero Funeral Home, 72-27 Grand Avenue, Maspeth NY 11378.
Anthony J. Tamulinas passed away on Friday, April 14, 2023 at the age of 80. Beloved husband of the late Roseanne Tamulinas, loving father of TJ (Tara) Tamulinas and Lisa (Robert) McManus, cherished grandfather of Amanda, Tyler, Dillon and Justin, and dear brother of Joanne Rosman. Private Cremation held on Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at Fresh Pond Crematory, Middle Village, NY under the direction of Papavero Funeral Home, 72-27 Grand Avenue, Maspeth NY 11378.
On Monday April 3, the New York City Council released a response to the Mayor’s preliminary budget which called on the Mayor to reinstall cuts to essential city programs proposed in his preliminary budget– like libraries, education and affordable housing.
Budgets are a tie between moral documents stating what is a city’s priority and what is possible, but a budget that doesn’t invest in New Yorkers – including critical services such as libraries and education – should be a non-starter.
The council identified at least $2.7 billion in funds that could be used this year for which they want to spend $1.3 billion to reverse budget cuts and use the remaining $1.4 billion to put into reserves.
Members of the council rightfully caught flack last year for green-lighting the Mayor’s budget which cut education spending and it seems they have learned their lessons, by coming out with an alternative framework that centers crucial investments rather than austerity.
The city is in dire need. We have casscading crises — from the affordability crisis, the housing crisis, the migrant crisis —
The city is in dire need. We have cascading crises – from the affordability crisis, the housing crisis and the migrant crisis – but slashing the budget to take away basic services is a move that will only weaken the city further and increase misery and hardship on working class families across the city.
By Stephanie Meditz
news@queensledger.com
Ridgewood-based performing arts ensemble Gamelan Dharma Swara will present traditional music and dance from the Indonesian island of Bali to ring in the spring season with a bang.
On April 15 at 7 p.m, they will perform traditional Balinese gamelan music and dance in their “Springtime Super Nova” at Ridgewood Presbyterian Church’s Stone Circle Theatre.
Balinese gamelan is a type of music characterized by quick tempo shifts and melodic sounds produced by percussion instruments.
“They call this traditional ensemble Balinese gong kebyar,” president Victoria Lo Mellin said. “Kebyar is a term that means kind of like a flowering, a blossoming or an explosion.”
Gamelan famously uses metallophones, or bronze-keyed, intricately carved instruments, as well as several drums, gongs and sulings, or bamboo flutes.
“One of the things that gives gamelan that intrinsic sound is the fact that all of the instruments are tuned in pairs, and they’re tuned slightly apart from each other so it creates this wavelike sound in the air, which is a symbol of the spirits inhabiting the instruments,” she said.
The group will perform three full ensemble works — two dances and one instrumental piece.
One of the dances will depict the fierceness of a warrior, and the other is about ideal qualities in a king.
“What I really love about our presentation is that our dancers are female, and it’s kind of subverting this idea of gender identity and really putting this new feminine strength behind those gendered dances,” Lo Mellin said.
The dancers’ colorful costumes and makeup take between four and five hours to put on.
“An audience can expect to see what that dynamic, classic sense of what Balinese gamelan would mean for any person who were to come across it for the first time, even in Bali, those traditional dances that really give Balinese gamelan its characteristic sound, characteristic visual,” she said.
Founded in 1989, Gamelan Dharma Swara is a community-based ensemble, meaning that it consists of members who may not have played instruments or visited Bali previously.
Gamelan music has a very dynamic sound, and is played mostly with percussion instruments.
Photo via dharmaswara.org.
The group meets once a week to learn and eventually perform Balinese arts for the community.
Some members have over thirty years’ experience performing with the group, and others have only joined within the last six months.
Mellin has performed gamelan for over fifteen years, and she has been Gamelan Dharma Swara’s president for seven years.
She got her start in Gamelan Galak Tika, a group based in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I had found gamelan as just a part of my individual study and loved sitting in on rehearsals so much that I wanted Lo Mto learn what it was all about,” she said.
She played the bamboo flute for many years, but she has since picked up several instruments.
Lo Mellin now plays the ugal for Gamelan Dharma Swara, a metallophone that essentially leads the ensemble.
The group performed for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the New York Philharmonic’s Nightcap series on March 18.
In 2010, they were the first Western group to be invited to the Bali Arts Festival as part of their gong kebyar competition.
Gamelan Dharma Swara is currently in residence at Ridgewood Presbyterian Church, and they have been based in Ridgewood since September.
“I think one of the biggest things for this ensemble and one of my goals for this particular performance is to really start integrating the ensemble into the local arts ecology,” she said. “As a resident in Ridgewood myself, it’s the first time in my life where I’m really in touch with small business owners. I run into people every single day where I know the people’s first name. I really wanted to feel as though the community ensemble had that same feel, could really integrate itself into the community. Because I think it’s important the community understands what we’re trying to bring to their neighborhood as well.”
Gamelan is integral to daily life in Bali, and she hopes to break down artistic barriers in the Ridgewood community as well.
To accomplish this, Gamelan Dharma Swara offers two interactive public workshops per year in which the ensemble explains the way the music is structured.
By the end of each workshop, the group can play a few short pieces that demonstrate some key tenets of gamelan music.
“I think gamelan is such an interesting conduit for community members to find their own artistry…it’s really important for people to feel like, as a community member, they have that kind of potential, that they have a wellspring of creativity,” Lo Mellin said. “We’re offering an alternative culture to find that latent talent. I think everybody has a part that they can bring to the table, and they can challenge themselves to be a performer, and within a very very short period of time.”
The next workshop will take place on April 30 at Ridgewood Presbyterian Church.
The performance will consist of two sets, the first of which will feature Concetta Abbate’s ensemble.
Abbate’s contemporary classical music has a lyrical, narrative quality, which will contrast gamelan’s explosive, dynamic style.
“Through gamelan, you meet a lot of interesting people, and gamelan sort of has been an important part of my communal and social network. I met Concetta through somebody who used to perform in the gamelan,” Lo Mellin said. “The fact that we’re able to bring so many local creative cohorts…into one singular place, I think it’s going to be really exciting.”
Tickets for Gamelan Dharma Swara’s Springtime Super Nova are available for $25 at https://bandsintown.com/e/104251052 or for $30 at the door.
“Gamelan is an important interwoven experience in the daily culture of somebody who is Balinese. Gamelan is really integrated into the daily life, and I want the community to feel as though gamelan has a place in that community.”
By Adam Manno
news@queensledger.com
At the end of a long table, past the Coke carafes and sweetener packets, Arnie Layton sits with his hands clasped in front of him.
The retired IT worker isn’t new to the Psychic Night Dinners at Connolly’s Corner, a red-upholstered-booth eatery in Maspeth. But on Thursday night, he was on a mission.
“Pretty much, I wanna know when my psychic abilities will totally come out,” he said. The monthly outing is just about the only place he feels comfortable exploring his budding talent. “You talk to the average person about some of this stuff, being empathic, they think you’re crazy,” he said.
Arnie Layton, a retired IT worker at Thursday’s Event.
Few people at Connolly’s that Thursday, save for maybe the regulars at the bar, would agree.
“It was absolutely phenomenal,” Mary Ann Gasparro said of her 15-minute turn at the psychic’s booth. “I had an absolutely dead-on accurate reading tonight.”
She’s skeptical about any claims of supernatural abilities. But if Thursday’s reading was any indication, she’s turning into a true believer. Her friends, sat around her and rapt by the re-telling of her reading, already are.
“I grew up in a very abusive childhood. And tonight the psychic was saying, ‘I don’t understand why there’s apologies all around. There’s a male figure, has your father passed?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She goes, ‘He wants to apologize to you for the way he treated you in this life.’ No one says that! They all say, ‘Your father’s very proud of you, your fathers love you,’” Gasparro said.
Like Layton and Gasparro, many of the night’s guests are regulars at the event, which is run by ESPconnection. For $85 a person (not including tax or tip), diners are guaranteed a three-course meal, non-alcoholic beverages, and a private, one-on-one session with one of the five psychics on deck that night.
Re Jean, the group’s founder, spent the night walking between a side room—where the psychics sit at booths with their tarot cards strewn about—and the private hall behind the main dining area, where the guests sit at tables covered in white tablecloths, anxiously waiting their turn or dishing about their sessions.
Most are looking to hear from someone who’s passed on, Jean said, or if they’re younger, they’re curious about their love lives, careers, families and health. “I think it kind of covers all the big questions,” she added. “The readers try to focus on the big questions.”
And what makes a good reader? For this particular affair, speed.
“These are very short readings. It’s like 12 to 15 minutes, so if you can read quickly and accurately,” she said. “Some readers, they need 45 minutes to cover all they wanna get to. People that do well at events like this are people that can get a good chunk of—I don’t wanna say material—a good chunk of what’s going on with them in a short period of time.”
Jean is a former music teacher and occasional composer whose songs have appeared in shows like Law & Order, Will & Grace, and ER under her real name, Rae Jean Ferreri. These days, she’s busier handling her growing stable of psychics. Asked about the gentleman in the other room wondering when his own powers will blossom, she said, “We get a lot of people that are also very intuitive themselves. We get a lot of psychologists and therapists, we get doctors, you name it. They wanna know! They believe in it!”
Dolores Bedigian passed away on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at the age of 90. Beloved wife of the late Joseph Bedigian, loving mother of Joseph Bedigian, Robert J. Bedigian and the late Carl J. Bedigian, dear sister of the late Louise Duane, and cherished aunt of Mary Ann Renkas, Lynn Duane and David Duane. Mass of Christian Burial offered at St. Cecilia’s Church on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 10 AM. Interment followed at The Green-wood Cemetery, Brooklyn NY under the direction of Papavero Funeral Home, 72-27 Grand Avenue, Maspeth NY 11378.
Isolina Urgo passed away on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at the age of 91. Beloved wife of the late Charles W. Urgo, loving mother of Mary Ann Maiello & the late Joseph, and Donna Marie Assadourian, cherished grandmother of Melissa and Joseph, and also survived by many loving nieces, nephews and friends. Mass of Christian Burial offered at St. Mary’s Church on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 10 AM. Interment followed at Long Island National Cemetery, Farmingdale, NY under the direction of Papavero Funeral Home, 72-27 Grand Avenue, Maspeth NY 11378.
Virginia Vocaturo passed away on Friday, March 31, 2023 at the age of 80. Beloved wife of Anthony F. Vocaturo, loving mother of Anthony and Donna Vocaturo, cherished grandmother of Nicole, Jennifer, Anthony, Robby and Andrew, and great-grandmother of Chase. Mass of Christian Burial offered at St. Margaret’s Church on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 10:45 AM. Private Cremation followed at Fresh Pond Crematory, Middle Village, NY under the direction of Papavero Funeral Home, 72-27 Grand Avenue, Maspeth NY 11378.
