PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts Project presents Arn Chorn-Pond on Friday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m., at Next Stage, 15 Kimball Hill, in a special appearance to benefit Next Stage as part of the Community Artists Performance Series.
Arn, a part-time Putney resident, will perform Cambodian songs and speak about his survival during the Khmer Rouge, and about his work in Cambodia to transform his war- and genocide-ravaged country through the arts. He sings popular ballads and also plays the Cambodian flute and the kim, an instrument similar to the hammer dulcimer.
He will be accompanied by Savang and Seyma, two colleagues from Phnom Penh, who will also perform with him at Lincoln Center on April 11, part of “Season of Cambodia,” the largest festival of Cambodian arts and culture in modern times (produced in a association with Putney resident John Burt).
This festival is a unique initiative of Cambodian Living Arts, which Arn founded in 1998 and which is playing a vital role in transforming Cambodia from a country known to the world for its tragic genocide to one known for the living arts.
Arn was featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary “The Flute Player” (2003). He is an internationally recognized human rights leader, speaker, and trainer.
A former director of youth programs for the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association in Lowell, Mass., Arn served as a special advisor on Cambodian affairs for Clear Path International in early 2001. Arn resides in Cambodia, where he continues to be chief advocate of Cambodian Living Arts supporting elder Cambodian musicians and artists to pass on their invaluable practices to the younger generation.