Join DJ Trent as he welcomes MALUCA and ARAABMUZIK to Solar 1 and the WFMU airwaves. Maluca – Bronx-born, Dominican-raised, now part of Diplo’s Mad Decent crew- is full of hyperfast rap-sing bounce. She’ll bring it with a dance crew in tow. Rhode Islander araabMUZIK – you’ve probably heard his work on the Dipset track “Salute” – is a prodigy on the MPC drum machine, banging out otherworldly beats you won’t believe are being performed live with just two hands. DJ Trent will also bring a stack of videos to screen live, honoring the women of hip-hop who have made the world a lot more interesting in recent decades. Join the fun live at [Solar 1 on the East River at 23rd Street – and enjoy really cheap, really good beer – or tune into live audio and video streams at WFMU.org and 91.1 / 90.1fm.

Trailer for A Road Not Taken

Join students from Unity College, Bill McKibben and 350.org as they ramp up their Put Solar On It campaign for world leaders to install solar panels on the roofs of their official residences on 10/10/10.  And since it’s always good to go looking for your heart’s desire in your own back yard, they’re taking one of the solar thermal panels that used to sit on the White House roof during the Carter and Reagan administrations (Reagan had the panels taken down in 1986) back to DC to ask President Obama to reinstall it as a symbol of his commitment to better renewable energy policy.

In addition to a visit from the panels, we’ll be screening the documentary about the panels A Road Not Taken when the sun goes down. Before that, we may have some speeches or we may not. There will be information on how you can become involved with 350.org and Put Solar On It. Hopefully the weather will be beautiful, so please come on over, bring a little picnic supper and stay for the movie (and some popcorn)!

You can RSVP to dina@solar1.org or via Facebook. And it’s FREE for people of all ages!

New York City Parks Department, Arc Finance and Solar One present:

When: Tuesday, September 7, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
Where: The Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, 64th Street and Fifth Avenue
Reception to follow.
R.S.V.P. required. Call 212.360.1324, or email rsvp@parks.nyc.gov

Access to energy for services such as lighting, cooking and communications is an essential precondition for eradicating poverty in the 21^st century. Yet today, 1.6 billion people currently have no access to electricity. Over 2.5 billion depend on traditional cooking fuel sources that exact to intolerably high costs for human health and the environment.

While scaled deployment of the energy infrastructure that is typical in the world’s advanced economies remains remote even in the long-term in many parts of the rural developing world, innovative technologies, companies and approaches to service are setting the stage for a new energy paradigm. In contrast to conventional aid-based models, such a paradigm is characterized by local enterprise and end user investment.

In this conversation, a distinguished panel of energy sector innovators will discuss their work and provide a firsthand account of today’s leading energy challenges and opportunities in the developing world.

Panel Participants:

Sarah Alexander, Innovations Manager, Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO)

Edwin Adkins, Research Coordinator, Millennium Village Project, Energy Program.

Jacob Winiecki, Co-Founder, Simpa Networks

Moderated by Christopher Neidl, Consultant, Arc Finance

On Saturday September 11, we’ll be kicking off the 2010 Solar-Powered Film Series as the NYC stop on Rooftop Films Gasland tour.

This will be a rare ticketed event, tickets are $10 and can be purchased on the Rooftop Films website. If there are still tickets available on the day of the event, they will be available to purchase at the door. Solar One will not be selling tickets, but we’ll try and update as we get closer to the date and let people know if/when the show sells out.

Doors open at 8:00pm
Live Music TBD at 8:30pm
Films begins at 9:00pm
Q&A/reception at 10:30pm

Tickets are $10, available HERE!

UPDATE: This performance will be postponed until Saturday August 28 from 3:00-4:30pm. We look forward to seeing you then!

Join the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association as they present the last concert of  this year’s Helen W. Collins Memorial Music Series: Legends of Jazz, featuring 99-year-old saxophonist Max Lucas* playing music from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Dancing is encouraged!

* Unfortunately, and unknown to us until yesterday, Max Lucas passed away May 15, 2010, and saxophonist Fred Staton will be appearing with Legends of Jazz. We apologize for this error!

Sun To Stars, our annual South Asian festival of food, music and dance, is turning 5, and we’d like you to come to the party!

The festival was inspired by the all-night concerts held along India’s Ganges River where not only are the talents of a wide variety of artists presented, but also a vibrant mix of families, children, couples, friends and random passersby as everyone settles in to relax and enjoy. The Solar One blacktop in front of the stage will be transformed with carpets and pillows into a South Asian seating area, with carpets and pillows for attendees to lounge on. Long Island City’s Five Star Banquet and Restaurant will be serving North Indian fare for $8 a plate; they’re known for their chicken makhani (butter chicken).

This year’s performers include:

A.R. Balaskandan │ Bill Buchen │ Narendra Budhakar │ Jay Gandhi │ Sonali Mishra │ Rohan Mishra │ Nitin Mitta │ Nemanja Rebic │ Indrajit Roy-Chowdhury and more!

Check the Sun To Stars page in the coming weeks to find out what’s new as the Festival approaches!

Join DJ Trent as he freaks out to his two favorite movies:

1) David Byrne’s TRUE STORIES, starring John Goodman and Byrne, with music by Talking Heads, exploring the changing world of central Texas in 1986
and
2) Daft Punk’s INTERSTELLA 5555: THE 5TORY OF THE 5ECRET 5TAR 5YSTEM, an insane anime adventure into the year 5555 set to Daft Punk’s “Discovery,” possibly the best album ever made.

Since both movies are set to music (but avoid the awful cliches associated with, you know, musicals) it will also be a dance party with $2 Brooklyn Beer all night long. If you can’t make it in person, join the fun from home with live audio/video broadcasts at 91.1fm and wfmu.org.

Come see Paul Sachs and his band at Solar One this Saturday for an evening of urban acoustic folk. You can learn more at his website, www.paulsachs.com, but here’s a little blurb from the site:

“Urban acoustic/folk songs in the tradition of Harry Chapin and Springsteen…  A native New Yorker, Sachs has played many clubs in the city and in coffeehouses in Upstate NY and Connecticut. His new CD, The Refuge, was released this summer and is now available for sale on CDbaby.com and iTunes.”

Presented as part of the Helen W. Collins Memorial Music Series.

Volunteer extraordinaire Tom Eccardt serves up handmade mulberry ice cream, made with mulberries grown in Stuy Cove Park, to an enthusiastic crowd at Family Day on June 26. All photos are by Solar One photo intern Maya Cramer.

Tomorrow we’ll be having our second annual creature-themed Family Day,  but in June we had a Family Day that revolved around pollinators and food. We learned about pollinating creatures like bees, moths, flies and butterflies, colored pictures of pollinators and made puppets out of them (this activity is always a hit, and is affectionately known as Bugs-On-A-Stick), sampled sprouts grown from native plants seeds, and best of all, made ice cream without an ice cream maker! Check out the pictures after the jump to find out how we did it! And also a big, heartfelt “Thank You” to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer for supporting Family Day!

Tom shows examples of pollinators to a rapt audience.

Preparing butterflies to become Bugs-On-A-Stick.

So how did we make the ice cream? The  basic idea came from the fabulous ReadyMade magazine; here’s the link to the original recipe. Instead of Lemongrass-Vanilla, we made 2 flavors using park-grown plants: mulberry and mountain mint chip. We used coffee cans to hold the ingredients, but we couldn’t find any 5-lb coffee cans for the ice, so we used clean plaster buckets instead:

Kicking the cream around under the FDR drive.

Everyone gets in on the action.

The wider top of the plaster bucket made it really easy to kick in a circle, from one person to another. Even in the 90-degree-plus weather that day, it only took about 30 minutes of kicking to form the ice cream. Because the plaster buckets were so big, we could put 2 coffee cans inside, and make our 2 flavors at once!

The results were absolutely delicious! There were many satisfied customers, and you can be sure this is a Family Day activity we’ll be repeating…

Our next Family Day is coming up THIS SATURDAY, August 7 from 10am-2pm, and we’ve got great news- we will be having a visit from some native creatures from the Art Farm at noon! Plus costume making (we’re prepping butterfly wings tomorrow), face painting, making creature puppets, painting- and enjoying what looks to be a beautiful Saturday at Solar One! Fun for kids of all ages!

RSVP to Dina@solar1.org or Daisy@solar1.org.

Mark your calendars for a free tour of the first home built to NYSERDA’s High Performance Residential Challenge guidelines!

On Tuesday, August 17th from 5-8pm stop by the new home at “The Views” located at 29 Haven Esplanade, Staten Island for a free tour.  Ely Reiss of Concord Home Builders, the builders of 29 Haven Esplanade, and Max Joel, the NYSERDA Energy $mart Communities Coordinator for Staten Island, will be on hand to answer questions about green building, energy efficiency, and incentives available from NYSERDA.

The home is 65% more efficient than NYC energy code and 50% more efficient than Energy Star. Plus, the home owner is expected to save $1,100 per year in energy costs!

For more information and photos, please visit http://claireproperties.com/

Refreshments will be provided

Jazzmobile is a 45-year-old NYC nonprofit dedicated to presenting, preserving, promoting and propagating jazz music as “America’s classical music”. Their programs include a summer festival, a jazz vocal competition and workshops, seminars and lectures to raise awareness of jazz as a unique American art form.

The Harlem Renaissance Orchestra’s mission is to revive the music of the Big Band Era and to preserve this music in its living form by giving recognition to the following great creators:  Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Pops Louie Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lucky Millinder, Earl Fatha Hines, Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton, and others. Our goal is to reestablish Harlem as the Big Band Mecca of the world.

The orchestra maintains a nucleus of ten veteran musicians. These musicians have engaged in performances around the world and acquired college degrees in Music Performance and in Education.  As a result, their contributions have provided a firm foundation over a span of twenty years.  Collectively and with conscious effort, we have been able to blend the talents of fine young musicians with more mature musicians, thus producing a sound that is enjoyed by music lovers of all ages.

Presented by the Stuyvesant Cove Park association as part of the Helen W. Collins Music Series.

Join us for the 6th Annual Solar-Powered Dance Series! 12 emerging choreographers will perform short works on our recycled eco-stage, with audio powered by the sun! Free and suitable for all ages, children are highly encouraged to attend.

Program B July 29-31 at 6pm, rain date August 1

Yesid Lopez
Joseph Celej
Mariana Valencia
Makiko Tamura
Daniela Hoff
Mana Kawamura

Photo of Makiko Tamura/small apple co. by Akimasa Mitsuishi

Join us for the 6th Annual Solar-Powered Dance Series! 12 emerging choreographers will perform short works on our recycled eco-stage, with audio powered by the sun! Free and suitable for all ages, children are highly encouraged to attend.

Program A July 22-24 at 6pm, rain date July 25

Meghan McCoy
Tzu Ying Lee
Tracie Stanfield
Mercedes Searer
Theodora Boguszewski
Mary Ann Wall

Photo of Tracie Stanfield/Synthesis Dance Project by Yi-Chun Wu

Civilian space exploration is still prohibitively expensive (for most of us), but intergalactic travel can be closely approximated by a simple journey to the East River on the evening of July 12th.

Join Solar One, Astralwerks Records, and WFMU’s DJ Trent for a 100% solar-powered evening of electronic music videos of every vintage, including the amazing new audiovisual experience by the Chemical Brothers, “Further.” Free Sixpoint Beer for everyone 21+ while supplies last. Solar One is located on 23rd Street @ the East River.

If you can’t make it in person, tune in to live audio and video streams at 91.1 in NYC, 90.1FM in the Catskills, and WFMU.org all over this planet. RAIN DATE: July 19th.

Now a Facebook event!

You can also check out an article in the NY Observer about Solar One, Solar 2 and the Platt sisters HERE. It’s official: Chris Collins is dapper!

It’s time once again to join our favorite local father-and-sons jazz act as the Rutkowski Trio return to Solar One for a triumphant 6th year playing outdoor classic jazz tunes by the likes of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon and many more illustrious jazz composers.

Performance will begin at 7pm, and the concert is free, open to the public and suitable for all ages.

Yet another event collaboration with our good friends at Rooftop Films, we’ll be screening the Sundance award-winning satirical drama Sweet Mud, a story about a young man and his mentally-troubled mother set on an Israeli kibbutz in 1974. While the kibbutz movement is often depicted in a sentimental, idealized way, this film has earned kudos for showing a different side. Co-presented with IFC and the Consulate General of Israel, this event celebrates the 100th anniversary of the kibbutz movement in Israel.

For more information and to RSVP, please visit http://www.rooftopfilms.com/2010/schedule/17-sweet-mud. Solar One will not be able to accept RSVPs for this event.

Sunday June 20, 2010 at 8pm at Solar One
8:30pm Live Music by Hank & Cupcakes
9:00pm Film begins
10:30pm Free drinks courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner

Where does our food come from? How do flowers turn into fruits? Which tiny creatures are responsible for the existence of some of our tastiest treats, like almonds, strawberries and oranges? In fact most nuts, fruits and vegetables require animal pollination, or they wouldn’t exist at all!

On Saturday June 26 from 10am-2pm, we’ll be exploring the pollinators in our environment: honeybees, bumble bees, moths and even flies. Come make handmade ice cream using fruits and plants that grow in Stuyvesant Cove Park, sprout a native plant salad to take home, make a watercolor painting or pollinator costume and learn all about the fascinating, tiny helpers that make our food taste so good!

In Stuyvesant Cove Park, 20th Street Entrance
20th Street & the East River
Map & Directions: http://solar1.org/about/map
RSVP to Daisy@Solar1.org