On Sunday, October 1, 2023, Tomashi Jackson will undertake a lip-synced embodied performance of the 1978 Doobie Brothers album Minute By Minute in its 36-minute-and-16-second entirety as her alter-ego Tommy Tonight, under the direction of Alexander Gedeon. Tommy Tonight will perform at sunset, embodying and responding to sonic collages of sounds of the ten songs, with emphasis on the lead and backup vocals of Michael McDonald woven with clips of conversations between Jackson and her late mother, Aver Marie Burroughs, recorded in 2010 as part of Jackson’s graduate research on domestic labor among their family of origin in Texas and California. The piece includes the live, spoken testimonials by Southern California intensive care nurse Karly Kodzis chronicling her experience as a health care worker contending with the death of patients due to the ravages of COVID during the height of the pandemic. Tommy Tonight is a romantic male R&B singer styled after 1990s Black male love music groups and the icons of previous generations. Tonight emerged in the Summer of 2019 while Jackson was an artist participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Together with artists Ariel René Jackson, Nikita Gale, and Ashley Teamer, Jackson formed the boy band D’TALENTZ named after Octavia Butler’s text Parable of the Talents. Tonight has since appeared in Athens, Greece, Los Angeles, New York City, Cambridge, MA, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Great Sand Dunes of Southern Colorado. His lip-synced and embodied musical performances explore themes of love, liberation, and the complexities of living. Wearing a mask is encouraged, and please stay home if you're not feeling well. Please RSVP to rsvp@nightgallery.ca.