Recent arts coverage:
‘The Music Man’ marches into Zilker Park | ‘The Lining of Forgetting’ at the Austin Museum of Art | Austin Chamber Music Festival reviews and updates |Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things
Channeling ‘Henry V’
For almost two decades actor and Austin Chronicle arts editor Robert Faire has wanted to take Shakespeare’s history play about England’s most storied warrior king and re-imagine it as a one-man play.
Now, Faires’ dream — or is it an obsession? — has come true. Following Shakespeare’s instructions that the audience just imagine the courts, Faires takes the audience from Henry’s throne across the English Channel into the French court, through a fearful war and into one of the most charming courtship scenes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre.
Faires will perform ‘Henry V’ at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, and 5 p.m. Sundays through July 25 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $15. www.rudemechs.com.
And there’s a special July 4th performance at 5 p.m. with sparklers and champagne
Q: Of all the Bard’s plays, why choose Henry V?
Robert Faires: Ever since I saw Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V when I was in college, I’ve been drawn to the play. Part of it is just the character of Henry, who’s like the Errol Flynn of Shakespearean kings — dashing, heroic, good with a sword, gets the girl in the end. Who wouldn’t have fun playing that guy?
But mostly, I just love that the play is so unabashedly theatrical. Right from the get-go, you have the Chorus telling the audience that there’s no way this huge story can be presented the way it really happened, but you know what, these actors are going to do it anyway, and the audience will just have to use its imagination to bring it to life. And he keeps coming back with that message again and again, setting the scene with these beautifully descriptive speeches that are my favorite parts of the play.
And Henry himself, I discovered, is very much an actor. He puts on a number of different roles in the course of the play, pretending to be something that he isn’t to get what he wants. And seeing that made me think about how we all do that. I know Henry V is typically seen as a play about war, and you certainly can’t get away from the war in it, but it also feels very much to me like a play about how we play different parts in life and what it takes to find our authentic self.
Q: How did you distill the story (stories) down for one actor? What kind of creative choices did you make?
Faires: The more I studied the individual scenes, the more I saw them in two voices, usually Henry’s and that of some person or group he was facing off against: the bishop of Canterbury, a French ambassador, the three lords who betray him, his soldiers, the princess of France. So I pared lines and scenes that would help highlight the essence of those conflicts and how they affected Henry. Unfortunately, that meant ditching almost all the low comic characters and most of the French scenes, and with them went a lot of the play’s scope. But what you get in return, I feel, is a heightened intimacy, particularly with Henry, which seems fitting for a version of his story that’s just one actor and the audience.
Q: Why use Shakespeare’s instructions for the audience to use their imagination to conjure the scenes?
Faires: Well, it’s a great way to short-circuit criticism about a lame set and costumes, for one thing. But the real reason I love it is the way it throws an arm around the audience’s shoulder, pulls them in close, and whispers, “You’re in this, too. You’re making it happen.” It’s wonderfully conspiratorial. So if audience members are at all engaged with the show, it raises the stakes for them and makes the experience very personal. I’m very much relying on the audience to be my collaborators here, to be the English lords and soldiers that Henry speaks to, to fill out the French court. This Henry V is a one-man show only in the sense that my name is the only one on the poster. But the truth is, I’ll be sharing the stage with every person who comes to see it.
Photo courtesy Red Then Productions.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Theatre
A ‘Project Runway’ for visual artists? Bravo TV is now casting
It was just a matter of time.
Building on the success of ‘Project Runway,’ ‘Top Chef’ and other creative competion reality shows, Bravo TV has announced the creation of a yet-to-be-titled show (right now, it’s listed on the Bravo site at Untitled Art Project which could actually work as real title) that will pit contemporary artists against each other is some kind of undefined competition.
Casting begins soon in four cities across the country. See the casting notice.
The new series is being produced by Magical Elves (producers of ‘Project Runway’ and ‘Top Chef’) and Sarah Jessica Parker and her production company, Pretty Matches.
Wonder who will be plucked to handle the Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum roles?
The Bravo project isn’t technically the first reality competition series for contemporary artists. Art dealer and impressairo Jeffrey Deitch launched ‘Artstar’ in 2006 that followed eight artists who were selected for a group exhibit at Deitsch’s New York gallery and documented their work readying for the show. The series was screened at a few museums, but never broadcast on a television network.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Celebrating pride with chamber music
Inclusive, accessible, celebratory — and FREE — a new addition to the line-up of the Austin Chamber Music Festival offers a fresh and much-needed way of considering classical music.
Thursday night it’s ‘Pride Concert: Celebrating Music by Gay and Lesbian Composers.’
Organized by Austin composer Russell Reed and pianist Jim James, the free concert features the work of gay and lesbian composers. ‘I think it is important for people to know about gay artists, both living and dead, who have helped to shape our artistic and cultural heritage,’ says Reed. ‘I wanted to do this for my community because I am constantly dismayed about how little gay people know about their own history.’
On the program are works by well-known composers such as Aaron Copland (Duo for Flute and Piano), Benjamin Britten (Lachrymae), John Cage (‘In a Landscape’) and Reynaldo Hahn (Sonata for Violin and Piano). And representing today’s new music by living composers is Reed’s own ‘Princess Songs,’ William Lackey’s ‘Twisted Tension’ and Pauline Oliveros’ ‘To Valerie Solaneas and Marilyn Monroe.’
Reed, by the way, was most recently nominated for Best Original Composition from the Austin Critics Table for ‘Light the Lovely Candles,’ a song cycle he wrote for soprano Elizabeth Petillot and violist Aurelien Petillot.
Aurelien Petillot is one of the musicians on the roster for Thursday’s concert. Also performing is Kim Pollini, soprano; Joseph Smith, violin; Seeth Shivaswamy, flute and Adam Bedell, percussion. Both Reed and James will play piano.
‘Pride Concert: Celebrating Music by Gay and Lesbian Composers’
7:30 p.m July 2
St. James Episcopal Church, 1941 Webberville Road
www.austinchambermusic.org
Photo: Russell Reed
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Weekend Arts Pix
Just because it’s 4th of July weekend doesn’t mean you don’t have arts pix to pick from.
THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY
‘Henry V.’
Shakespeare’s history play about England’s most storied warrior king is reconceived as a one-man play by actor and Austin Chronicle arts editor Robert Faires. Following Shakespeare’s instructions that the audience just imagine the courts, Faires takes the audience from Henry’s throne across the English Channel into the French court, through a fearful war and into one of the most charming courtship scenes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays through July 25. Special Fourth of July performance at 5 p.m. with champagne and sparklers. Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $15. www.rudemechs.com.
FRIDAY AND SUNDAY
Austin Chamber Music Festival.
On Friday night take in Jupiter String Quartet with Austin pianist Michelle Schumann, as they play Haydn, Shostakovich and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E Flat. On Sunday afternoon, it’s the famed Mendelssohn Piano Trio celebrating its namesake’s 200th birthday with the composer’s Piano Trio in D Minor and Piano Trio in C Minor. 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Bates Recital Hall, UT School of Music, 2350 Robert Dedman Drive. $25. www.austinchambermusic.org.
SATURDAY
‘1812 Overture.’ The Invincible Czars —
Austin’s most inventive interpreters of Russian classical music — bring their latest to the city: Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’ in a charging guitar-centered arrangement. The Czars also will play John Philip Sousa’s ‘Noble of the Mystic Shrine.’ Rebecca Havemeyer and Little Stolen Moments are the opening acts. And attendees are encouraged to bicycle to the event and decorate their bikes. Austin’s Yellow Bike Project will release a fleet of their famous yellow bikes for the public to use to ride to the evening’s fireworks on Auditorium Shores. 1 p.m. Saturday. Wooldridge Square Park, 900 Guadalupe St, Free. www.invincibleczars.com.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: Chamber Music Fest, Weekend One
Cool.
It’s how the Austin Chamber Music Festival unfolded its first weekend with a trio of eclectic concerts: Modern classical guitar, a string quartet’s Grammy Award-winning riff on jazz great John Coltrane and the indie stylings of the genre-busting Tin Hat Trio.
Friday, the Brasil Guitar Duo — a concert co-sponsored by the Austin Classical Guitar Society — made an impressive, virtuosic program seem effortless in front of a full house at Northwest Hills United Methodist Church. With extraordinary technique rising young international starts Joao Luiz and Douglas Lora moved fluently from Bach (with Luiz’s arrangements) to Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s to Lora’s own sparkling compositions. Drama came with Gismonti’s “Don Quixote,” an alluring rich composition from the contemporary Brazilian composer.
Saturday night at UT’s Bates Recital Hall, the festival shifted mood. The Turtle Island String Quartet won a Grammy for their CD “A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane.” And no wonder. The quartet’s inspired interpretations of a wide range of jazz repertoire - Coltrane, yes, but also Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke — proved the foursome has not only the courage but the soul and the chops to channel the jazz legacy with freshness and authenticity. No schmaltzy pops stylings here — these are jazz musicians. And the improvisational finesse of David Balakrishnan, Mark Summer, Mads Tolling and Jeremy Kittel percolated with complexity and originality.
Sunday night, the Chamber Music Festival boldly went to a venue no chamber music group has been before — the Continental Club. About 200 people filled the storied South Congress Avenue rock club to hear Tin Hat Trio, the San Francisco-based group that blends blues, jazz, tango, classical and little cabaret into its own blend. Theirs is the kind of genre-defying music that signals the direction younger musicians are taking chamber music - blending it seamlessly with other genres and busting out of the formal concert hall. Tin Hat Trio made a bold but much welcome (and needed) choice for inclusion on a chamber music festival program.
You have to wonder when the last time people were handed a program when they walked into the Continental Club. And when was the last time the Austin Chamber Music Center music crowd ordered drinks during a concert? Both were refreshing sights.
However blame it on the current wilting heat wave or perhaps some awkward technical sound problems, but Tin Hat Trio didn’t quite deliver much energy Sunday. Ethereal to point of being atmospheric, they skittered around the music more than they seemed to arrive with it. The unusual combination of colors from the combo guitar, a soulful violin and an assortment of clarinets intrigued, but felt more like a tease than a show.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 11. See www.austinchambermusic.org for more information.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Missed ‘Considering the Creative Ecology?’ It’s now online
Did you miss Andrew Taylor’s thoughtful public talk last week? Well, you can tune in online.
The arts management scholar and consultant was in town last week courtesy of Austin Circle of Theaters for two days of talks with the members of theater community producing new works. The talks are a preliminary step towards a planning grant potentially funded by the Mellon Foundation for a long-term new works theater development.
Taylor’s talk at the Carver Museum was courtesy Create Austin, the cultural arts plan initiated by the city’s Cultural Arts Division/Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office.
One of Taylor most trenchant observations about Austin? That we get bogged down in analyzing process and policy and politics. A little ‘just do it’ could go along way in jump-starting the arts in Austin and taking it to the next level.
Taylor has posted slides and audio from his public presentation — Click here for “Considering the Creative Ecology.”
He also answered some questions for us which you can read here and here.
And don’t forget Taylor’s insightful blog, the Artful Manager.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
UT Butler School of Music hires violinist Anne Akiko Meyers
Another major score for the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music. This fall internationally renowned violinist Anne Akiko Meyers will join the school’s faculty, university officials announced today.
Meyers has earned world-wide recognition as asoloist, chamber musician and recording artist. She’s soloed with orchestras such as the Boston Symphony, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, l’Orchestre de Paris, New York Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
‘I am thrilled at the opportunity to work with the incredibly talented faculty and build on the inspiration the Butlers have afforded the University of Texas at Austin,’ said the 39-year-old Meyers. ‘I believe the students and quality of music making will be the talk of the world! I look forward to passing on the traditions that I learned from my mentors and incredible teachers throughout my life.’
And in a great piece of news for the future of Austin’s percolating new music scene, Meyers is an avid champion of contemporary music. She has premiered pieces by, among other noted composers, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Olivier Messiaen, Arvo Part, Manuel Maria Ponce and Ezequiel Vinao.
Meyers most recent recording — ‘Smile’ (Koch International) — features a boundaring-busting program that includes Schubert’s Fantasie, Op. 159, Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel, the U.S. premiere of the Messiaen’e Fantasie and tango great Piazzolla’s Introduction et Angel and Milonga en Re “Tango.” Also on the CD are a pair of ethereal arrangements of traditional Japanese folk songs, Kojo no Tsuki (Moonlight Over the Ruined Castle) and Haru no Umi (Sea in Spring). And to finish off its eclectic and forward-thinking offering, the CD also has a very intimate renditions of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ as well as Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Smile.’ Sweet.
Meyers played the program in recital in Austin this April at UT.
Here’s Myers with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestr playing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, Leonard Slatkin conducting:
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
ACMC Fest: Week One’s stunning line-up
The heat wave may be burning down on us and the economy is still fizzling, but this year’s Austin Chamber Music Festival is bringing us some inspiring talent, and free concerts to boot.
Here’s the first week of the three-week festival offerings:
FREE CONCERT: Mendelssohn Piano Trio
12 noon, Thursday
Central Presbyterian Church, 200 E. Eighth St. Program: Three Nocturnes by Ernest Bloch and Brahm’s Piano Trio in B Major.
Brasil Guitar Duo
7:30 p.m. Friday
Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Dr.
Young and blazingly talented, the Brasil Guitar Duo make their mark with a seamless blend of traditional and Brazilian works. On the program is music by Bach, Rameau, Piazzolla, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and others. Check out the Brasil Guitar Duo’s YouTube page.
Turtle Island String Quartet
7:30 p.m. Saturday
Bates Recital Hall, University of Texas Butler School of Music, 2350 Robert Dedman Drive.
The boundary-breaking quartet present their much-heralded interpretation of the music by the 20th-century jazz master that re-frames the improvising riffs of Coltrane’s saxophone for a sometimes-improvising string quartet. Also on the jazz-centered program — the first half of which will be announced from the stage — is Stanley Clarke’s ‘For John.’
Tin Hat
7:30 p.m. Sunday
Continental Club, 1315 S. Congress Ave.
This San Francisco-based ensemble uses accordion, guitar, violin, clarinet and other instruments in a singular blend of tango, blues, Eastern European folk music, cabaret songs and avant-garde classical. And where better to listen to that at one of Austin’s iconic live music clubs? (Yes, the club’s bar will be open.)
All concerts are $25. See www.austinchambermusic.org for more information.
See previous coverage and reviews of the festival here.
Image: Brasil Guitar Duo.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Weekend Arts Pix
FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY
‘Department of Angels.’ Heaven is a bureaucracy, so being an angel means punching a time clock and working in a cloud cubicle — unless you resort to slapstick antics to break up the routine. Ben Schave and Caitlin Reilly, husband-and-wife neo-vaudeville clowns, bring their critically acclaimed family-friendly show back to Austin after its national tour. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. $8-$12. www.schaveandreilly.com.
‘Black Snow.’
Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov (‘The Master and Margarita’) wrote the novel ‘Black Snow’ in the 1930s as a savage satire of the post-revolutionary, propaganda-fueled Russian art scene. The ever enterprising Tutto Theatre Company offers an updated production of Bulgakov’s story for the stage. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, through July 12. $15, www.TuttoTheatre.org,
Improv marathon and fundraiser.
The Hideout Theater at 617 Congress Ave. will be celebrating the weekend with a 40-hour improv theater and comedy marathon. The event, which marks the signing of a new lease and new owners, starts at 5 p.m. Friday and continues Saturday and Sunday. The weekend jam will be held in one-hour blocks, each for $5. Marathon players include Andy Crouch, Caitlin Sweet, Curtis Luciani, Jeremy Lamb, Kaci Beeler, Kareem Badr, Matt Pollock and Troy Miller. Guest troupes will include Improv for Evil, Snackers, ColdTowne and McNichol and May. Details on the shows at www.hideouttheatre.com.
SATURDAY
‘Cruz Ortiz: Ice Cold’ and ‘I Am Not So Different.’
Opening: 8 to 10 p.m. Saturday
Live performance by Cruz Ortiz 8:15 p.m. Spaztek Stuka Krash: Spaztek has been traveling for 8 earth days-all of his navigation instruments are not working-his rickety Stuka Spaceship has just crested over the Olympus Mons mountain range-everything is going wrong-the radio might be his only hope.
Exhibit continues 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays, through Aug. 5. Art Palace, 2109 E. Cesar Chavez St. Free. 496-0687, www.artpalacegallery.com
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Andrew Taylor: ‘Austin’s Cultural Ecosystem,’ Part 2
Author, lecturer and researcher on a broad range of arts management issues, Andrew Taylor specializes in business model development for cultural initiatives and the impact of communications technology on the arts.
Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration, Taylor is in Austin this week to offer a public talk Wednesday night and to consult on the CreateAustin plan,
Read the first part of this Q-and-A here.
Andrew Taylor: ‘Austin’s Cultural Ecosystem’
6:30 p.m. June 24
Carver Museum & Cultural Center, 1165 Angelina St.
Q: You’ve had some time to dig into the CreateAustin plan. What’s especially thoughtful or forward thinking about this plan?
Taylor: I was impressed with the depth and breadth of the plan, and the many links, examples, connections, and specific steps included. Like many such plans, it’s a large document that works to distill years of conversation into a single narrative. So, I imagine it’s still being digested and considered, and many may be intimidated by the number of recommendations, partners, and initiatives it suggests. But that volume offers so many options and opportunities. I’ll be eager to hear which recommendations have traction, and which partners are embracing the opportunities the plan presents.
Q: You’re in Austin to discuss the creation of a cultural alliance, the first recommendation of the CreateAustin plan. What are the benefits to such an alliance?
Taylor: Actually, the plan calls for a ‘creative alliance,’ suggesting something more broad than arts and culture, but certainly with culture playing an essential role. Part of the reason I was invited to listen and to share, I think, was because of my particular interest in ecological perspectives on creative and expressive endeavor. And, admittedly, the Create Austin plan is intentionally vague on what form such an alliance should take. Alliances can be many things — from formal organizations and umbrella institutions to more distributed cooperatives to highly informal clusters of groups and individuals. Each has benefits, each has challenges. But given Austin’s rich history in so many forms of expression, there seems a unique and powerful opportunity to think like a community, and act in ways that benefit the whole as well as the parts.
Q: Cultural plans come and go, and sometimes never get implanted. We’re in tough economic times. Is a the formation of a creative alliance do-able?
Taylor: My experience with communities all over the country over the past year has suggested that tough economic times are the BEST time to connect, to share, to rethink old divisions between organizations and creative disciplines. Resources are shrinking, old models are becoming less effective, less sustainable, and less resilient. These days, for many, the ONLY way to sustain and advance a creative vision is through shared services, collaborative endeavors, and new alliances. It’s a difficult time, to be sure. But the challenges are forcing new thinking. If there’s a bright side to these dark times in the economy, that’s it. Something new and innovative will rise from the struggle.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
NEA report: Arts audiences in decline?
A report recently released by the National Endowment for the Arts has found that adult attendance at arts events declined in 2008 for virtually all for arts disciplines.
The report, ‘Arts Participation 2008: Highlights from a National Survey,’ reveals findings from a survey that asked U.S. adults 18 and older about their patterns of arts participation over a 12-month period ending May 2008.
The news isn’t great but we don’t have it all yet, so it’s hard to make conclusion about the findings. This fall, the NEA will release a full summary and detailed report of the survey findings, including regional data on arts participation.
But in the meantime, here’s a few important findings:
- Attendance at the traditionally most popular types of arts events — such as art museums and craft/visual arts festivals — saw notable declines. The U.S. rate of attendance for art museums fell from a high of 26 percent in 1992-2002 to 23 percent in 2008, comparable to the 1982 level.
- Audiences for classical music declined at 29 percent rate since 1982, with the steepest drop occurring from 2002-2008. Audiences for opera dropped 30 percent for the same period.
- From 2002 to 2008, 45-54-year-olds — historically a demographic that’s always made up a significant share of arts audiences — showed the steepest decline in attendance for arts events. For example, for ballet, that audience dropped 37 percent; for classical music, 33 percent.
Download the 16-page summary report here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: Blue Lapis Light’s ‘Impermanence’
Dancers repelling off tall downtown buildings, bursting through showers of creatively manipulated light. Or dancers floating on zip lines far overhead the Austin streetscape.
The site-specific aerial dances created by Austin choreographer Sally Jacques have always traded on spectacle — chiefly the spectacular marvel of performers doing dramatic stunts which are then framed with a lot of visual and aural artifice — even if those spectacles haven’t always charted deep artistic trajectories.
But unfortunately, in ‘Impermanence,’ Jacques latest work and the third created for the J. J. Jake Pickle Federal Building in downtown Austin, the spectacle never quite makes an appearance.
Having dancers harnessed to repelling gear or maneuvering on suspended aerial silks ultimately leads to a self-limiting movement vocabulary. After all, there’s only so many things a body can do when it’s tied up or wrapped up. And if those handful of moves or poses — striking an arabesque of sorts after pushing back from a building, a slow fluttering of arms, or twisting and hanging from an aeriel slik — are just strung together tentatively or repeated repetitively, there’s little dramatic build-up and certainly no sense of an artistic journey.
That’s certainly the case with ‘Impermance.’ The limited moves churned in repetition with no trajectory established and little sense of transition. The dark, modernist building — usually a palette that lighting designer Jason Amato leverages to great effect — seemed to swallow up, not show off the dancers. And the episodes of movement seemed little connected to each other.
In the end, the formula Jacques’s relied before — the spectacle of dramatic movement and stunning lighting — just didn’t return this summer to the Pickle Federal Building.
‘Impermanence’ continues at 9:15 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. www.bluelapislight.org.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment
Review: ‘Tango on the Terrace’
Tango set a sophisticated tone for Austin Chamber Music Center’s kick-off concert Friday night for its annual summer festival.
Beautifully played by a five-piece ensemble led by ACMC artistic director Michelle Schumann and featuring Grammy-winning bandoneonist Raul Jaurena, the virtuoustic hour-long program of Astor Piazzolla’s urbane and expressive nuevo tango exemplified the smart, forward-thinking turn this chamber festival has taken since Schumann took the helm.
Regarded as one of the world’s most prominent bandoneonists — and a musician who can claim a direct link to Piazzolla before the great composer’s death in 1992 — Jaurena’s masterful playing exemplified tango’s schizophrenic tones and moods. Nervous and edgy, lusty and full-bodied, mournful and nostalgic — Jaurena wrested it out of an instrument that has one the most compellingly unique voices.
Schumann and the ensemble — Korine Fujiwara on violin, Russ Scanlon on electric guitar and Chris Maresh on bass — made spotless work of Piazzolla’s charging rhythms, twisting harmonies and jumpy use of counterpoint. In tango, every instrument can be used as percussion, with string players not just using pizzacato plucking, but making the distinctive ‘chicharra’ sound produced from scraping the strings. Those are tricky techniques that can sound inauthentic in some hands, but both Fujiwara and Maresh pulled it off with aplomb.
Jaurena and the ensemble poured a breathtaking level of energy and passion into the seamless program and that energy flowed off the stage. The audience — a packed house in the intimate auditorium of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — began the rousing cheers about half-way into the concert that were soon joined by ovations.
Nothing like starting a sizzling three-week line-up of concerts with a sizzle.
The Austin Chamber Music Festival continues through July 11. See www.austinchambermusic.org for information.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment
Andrew Taylor: ‘Austin’s Cultural Ecosystem,’ Part 1
Andrew Taylor is the director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration, an MBA degree program and research center in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. An author, lecturer and researcher on a broad range of arts management issues, Taylor specializes in business model development for cultural initiatives and the impact of communications technology on the arts.
Taylor is also an intrepid blogger having kept ‘The Artful Manager’ blog on artsjournal.com since 2003 (i.e., blogging’s earliest days).
As part of CreateAustin and Austin Creative Alliance initiatives, Taylor will be in Austin next week. He will meet with various sectors of Austin’s creative community to discuss the interconnections of commercial, nonprofit, community, and informal creative enterprise in Austin. Then, he’ll his findings in a public presentation on Wednesday, June 24.
Andrew Taylor: ‘Austin’s Cultural Ecosystem’
6:30 p.m. June 24
Carver Museum & Cultural Center, 1165 Angelina St.
Q: In this economy, why is it important that arts groups think like businesses?
Andrew Taylor: In this economy, I think it’s essential for ANY enterprise to rethink what they do, and how they do it. For arts groups, it’s not so much thinking like a business, but realizing that they ARE businesses, regardless of how they think. They aggregate people, resources like money and buildings, to advance a purpose. That’s a business. On the other side of the question, for-profit businesses also need to rethink how they work, often finding more ‘artful’ approaches to their markets, their management, and the means by which they work. And finally, any organization — for-profit, nonprofit, public, informal — needs to rethink its place in a world increasingly driven by digital communications. Users are generating their own content, services, products, and conversation. That completely changes the game for most industries, including arts and culture.
Q: What are some of the obstacles the keep arts groups from thinking or acting like businesses?
Taylor: The myths and methods of the nonprofit, professional arts organization were extraordinarily effective over the past three decades, as new money and new markets provided opportunities to form arts organizations and grow them over time. Many of the inputs and environmental factors that formed those organizations have plateaued or reversed directions. It’s difficult for any industry to change in response to external changes — we’ve seen that in banking, investment, automobiles, telecommunications, and elsewhere. The challenge of the nonprofit arts organization is that it’s form makes it particularly resistant to innovative change.
Q: An Urban Institute study found Austin to rank #2 in the nation in terms of arts offerings, but ranked #51 when it comes to philanthropic giving. We don’t have large foundations here nor major corporate headquarters nor the ‘old money’ demographic. Austin arts groups raise money through lots and lots of small to medium donations. Can a city’s philanthropic culture ever change?
Taylor: I’d suggest that there’s no ideal model for community support of arts and culture, and the most productive conversation explores the systems already at work in a community, rather than longing for a different system. Sure, many other cities have a more established and pervasive emphasis on individual philanthropy for arts and culture. There’s every reason to believe there are positive ways to grow that tendency in Austin.
But I’m guessing there are also qualities to Austin’s arts, culture, and entertainment ecology that would be the envy of other communities (in fact, I know that’s the case). Before my public presentation, I’ll be meeting with many groups in arts, theater, entertainment, public policy, and business. I’m hoping to weave in much of those conversations into my public session. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to learn and share!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Weekend Arts Pix
THURSDAY
‘Frida Kahlo: Her Art and Life.’
Hayden Herrera wrote the book on Frida Kahlo. Literally. Herrera’s 1984 critical biography kicked off a wave of Kahlo-mania and became the foundation for the Hollywood biopic starring Salma Hayek. Now, Herrera comes to discuss Kahlo’s art and life with a focus on her childhood, the accident that turned her to painting, her tumultuous marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera, Rivera’s influence and other sources of inspiration for Kahlo’s art. Herrera’s lecture will also be Web-cast live at www.hrc.utexas.edu. 7 p.m. today, Ransom Center, 21st and Guadalupe streets. Free.
‘KDH Dance Company: Celebrating 10 Years.’
Athleticism, expression, wit and charm have characterized the modern dance presented by Austin choreographer Kathy Dunn Hamrick and her company. In celebration of the organization’s 10th anniversary, the company resurrects its greatest hits and offers some new work as well. 8 p.m. today-Saturday AustinVentures Studio Theater, 501 W. Third St. $12-$15. www.kdhdance.com.
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
Returning to the pair of downtown buildings that have served as her dancescape before, aerial choreographer Sally Jacques creates another new dance that uses the 150-foot J.J. Pickle Federal Building and its shorter neighbor as a stage. Jacques’ aerial spectacles feature dancers and rappellers in a Cirque du Soleil-like, visually intense event. 9:15 p.m. Fridays-Sundays, through June 28. J.J. Pickle Federal Building, 300 E. Eighth St. $20 ($15 students and seniors). www.bluelapislight.org.
SATURDAY
‘New American Talent: The Twenty-Fourth Exhibition.’
Hamza Walker — curator and director of education at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society — is the curator of this year’s ‘New American Talent.’ Walker chose the work of 26 artists from the United States including 12 Texans, eight of whom live in Austin. Walker will talk about what he chose and why. 3 p.m. Saturday. Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave. Free. www.arthousetexas.org.
SUNDAY
The Blanton Museum of Art breaks ground again with an exhibit of Latin American art, this time the first U.S. exhibit of Francisco Matto, a pioneering artist who led the rise of modernism in Latin America. Five decades of Matto’s vibrant, abstract paintings show how the artist drew from pre-Columbian art and mixed it with mid-century abstraction. The exhibit runs through Sept. 27. 1 to 5 p.m. Blanton Museum of Art, $4-$7. www.blantonmuseum.org.
Francisco Matto ‘Composition on Black Background,’ 1958
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Symphony ED joins in on the concert
Galen Wixon — who came on board in Marchc as executive director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra — is picking up his cello and joining the ASO Woodwind Ensemble Sundya in a free performance of Dvorak’s Woodwind Serenade. The piece is scored for cello, double bass and woodwinds and will be played as part of the orchestra’s free Hartman Foundation Concerts in the Park which run every Sunday through Aug. 23.
7:30 p.m. Sunday
Long Center City Terrace Lawn, 701 W. Riverside Dr.
www.austinsymphony.org
Wixson has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cello performance from Wichita State University in addition a master’s in arts management from the Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Public Policy.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Talking ‘Texas Treasures’
Culled from the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Austin Museum of Art and UT’s Ransom Center, ‘Texas Treasures’ assembles masterworks of early Texas art that have been rarely are seen by the public.
Organized by the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art ‘Texas Treaures’ reveals the breadth of Texas art from the origins of classical portraiture and impressionist landscape painting in the 19th-century to the American Scene painting of the Depression era to the many interpretations of modernism at the mid-twentieth century.
Thursday join Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Blanton Museum’s curator of american and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs, for her take on ‘Texas Treasures.’
7 p.m. Thursday
Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum
605 Robert E. Lee Road
Free
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Visual arts
Review: ‘Big Range Dance Festival’
The Big Range Festival ended its two-week Austin stint with a grab bag of modern dance. Saturday’s program at Ballet Austin’s Austin Ventures studio was uneven. Big Range mixes local dance pieces with groups from other cities.
One of the more exciting offerings on Saturday’s program came from Brooklyn. “Supplant,” choreographed by Jamal Jackson, blended West African and modern dance in a collage of fury and fire. Dancers Tiffani Harris, Meredith Moore, Asha Rhodes and Jackson brought intensity and speed to their performances. When they all fell to the floor with a resounding echo at work’s end the audience let out a collective breath and immediately applauded.
The program’s other out-of-town group, Dallas-based Muscle Memory Dance Theatre, had a similar drive to their dancing, although choreographer Lesley Snelson-Figueroa’s creation had a relatively simplistic structure to it. Two groups of women faced off, using portable green picket fences as movable dividing lines. The movement of the fences got rather clunky and repetitive, but the dancing held the piece together well.
Simple choices worked well elsewhere. Local choreographer Sharon Marroquin danced with ease and grace in a parable-esque story of a fisherman who loves to fish, and then learns from his fish.
Festival producer Ellen Bartel’s Spank Dance continued in the quirky vein Bartel seems to be making her signature. With video by Eliot Haynes and a punk-lite score by Adam Sultan, five dancers cavorted about wearing then discarding baroque wigs and skirts. While the tone of the piece felt defiant and suggested a possible political critique, the various elements never quite added up . The program also included Cheryl Chaddick’s earnest “The Watchful Sleeping Heart” and “Cycle I,” an excerpt from Andrea Ariel’s ongoing Gyre project, which premieres its next installment in August.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s ‘Iolanthe’
“All hail the influential fairy” might be the best line of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of “Iolanthe,” which opened Friday at Travis High School’s Performing Arts Center.
The members of the society, led by stage director and choreographer Ralph MacPhail, Jr., and music director and conductor Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, dedicate themselves with gusto and humor to one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s less often produced operettas. “Iolanthe” chronicles the follies that ensue when the English lady Phyllis (Meredith Ruduski) falls in love with Strephon (Derek Smootz) a shepherd, who, unbeknownst to Phyllis, is half fairy, half man.
The story, like many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, relies on a several twisting plot lines, most of which reveal the group of all female fairies and the all male peers (members of the upper-class British House of Lords) to be equally befuddled beings. I won’t give away “Iolanthe’s” moment of resolution, but the stage picture it creates makes sitting through the almost three-hour production worthwhile.
Gilbert and Sullivan lovers usually cite “Iolanthe” as some of Sullivan’s best music. Several performers brought lovely voices to the Gilbert’s speedy lyrics, which have to be sung almost too fast for projected subtitles to keep pace. As the intensely rigid Private Willis Russell Gregory nearly steals the show. Queen of the fairies Lisa Alexander, Earl of Mountararat David Fontenont, and Lord Chancellor Arthur DiBianca were among the show’s standout voices. Fontenont and DiBianca, with Andrew Fleming as Earl Tolloller had one of the better-staged and funniest scenes, trotting and skipping to the song “If You Go In.” The production continues through June 21.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
‘Iolanthe’ continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. For more information www.gilbertsullivan.org.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: ‘Big Range Dance Festival’
Big Range Austin is a dance festival, but Thursday’s two Big Range performances at Austin Ventures Studio were as much about music as they were dance.
The first program “Composer Challenge” paired musicians and choreographers with mixed results. Of the six pieces, only Jayne King’s “Threshold” and Ben Schave and Caitlin Reilly’s “Tickets, Please!” thoughtfully engaged with their musical accompaniment. The evening’s second program, a combination of improvised music and dance, was inventive and playful.
Part of the problem with “Composer Challenge” might have been its premise. Two composers, Austin Schell and Laura Phelan, each created a piece. Each work was assigned to three different choreographers, who then made three separate pieces. For the audience, this meant sitting through the same musical composition three times within an hour, a tedious task.
Also, neither musical work had a great deal of dynamic shifts. Since most of the choreographers chose to make dance that corresponded to the music, rather than challenging the music’s tempo or tone, dance and music grew monotonous together. King made the fullest embrace of the music, using the repetition in Schell’s “3 Stages of Oblivion” to make a dance about the utility—even pleasure—of repetitive tasks. A large video, projected for the entire piece, focused closely on a slowly rocking wooden chair. First, King sat in a similar chair, also rocking, and then she lay on her back and circled her legs as if bicycling. Then she stood, gripped a bike tire and started to spin, letting the wheel’s weight and inertia pull her round and round, recalling the hours of fun such mundane tasks provided during childhood summers.
Performing as klutzy clowns, Schave and Reilly treated Phelan’s “Swings and Arrows” as background music. Not really a deep choice, but a functional one. Other pieces on the program included works by Rhianon Renae Kjar, Ashley Parker Overton with assistance from her dancers, Deidre Russell Robinson and Shawn Nasralla.
Musician Adam Sultan opened the second show by quickly setting a playful tone. Improvisation performances often offer a chance to watch the subtleties that emerge as dancers and musicians play—play with how weight settles into their bodies, how an instrument sounds when touched in a bizarre way, or what sound happens when a person throws herself into an object. Even when I don’t know what’s going on, I know I’m being asked to open my mind to experience a room and a group of people.
The thirty-minute jam of six dancers and two musicians, Sultan and Thomas van der Brook, felt hypnotic and comedic by turns. In a late solo, Chell Garcia Trias’s joints seemed to melt as she moved. Mari Akita had a quirky sensibility that also separated her from the group. Several performers used improv to point to theatrical conventions often left unmarked. Sultan ran into the audience, producing rhythmic squeaks as he jumped on the theatre’s stairs. As two dancers crawled to the side of the stage, they called to someone in the wings, “Yoo hoo!” The improvisation felt full of clever joy.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
The Big Range Dance Festival continues through Sunday. See www.bigrangeaustin.org.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: ‘Love, Janis’
Janis Joplin’s colored sunglasses and uncombed hair are icons of 1960s rock. “Love, Janis,” playing at Zach Scott through July 12, relies heavily on audience’s familiarity with Joplin, but the musical also avoids the trap of superficiality icons offer. The musical does not tell the story of Joplin’s life as a tragedy. “Love, Janis” celebrates Joplin’s voice and performance style: big, wild, and oh, so pleasurable.
“Love, Janis” follows the now familiar formula of jukebox musicals: well-known popular songs interspersed with short scenes stringing together a sparse storyline. Randal Myler created the musical from the book of the same name by Joplin’s younger sister Laura. The book and musical draw exclusively from Joplin’s letters written to her family in Port Arthur, Texas, and press interviews. These materials merge into a musical for two versions of Janis, one who sings and speaks (Mary Bridget Davies) and one who delivers much of the letters turned monologues (Sydney Andrews).
In Wednesday’s performance, much credit for the musical’s depth goes to Davies, who seemed a bit too Texas cheerleader to channel Joplin in early scenes, but then her voice took over. Davies has a sensually gravelly voice in early numbers and elsewhere perfectly mimics Joplin’s sultry mumble in opening song lyrics. Davies also manages to create a full character transformation for Joplin through subtle vocal shifts over the course of the two-hour show. Early on, she is a howler, but by the end her singing has turned to a lullaby, comforting the sadness and anger lurking within the drug-addled Joplin.
Andrews, too, finds nuance in Joplin by these closing moments, having traveled from enthusiastic teen to unsatisfied, lonely star. Davies alternates in the role of singing Janis with Andra Mitrovich, who I saw a week earlier in a show that ended early due to technical problems. Creating Joplin, Mitrovich makes a woman who’s plenty beatnik, but has a stronger Texas outsider quality to her.
For fans of Joplin’s music, “Love, Janis” provides layers of context, particularly around Joplin’s debt to black female performers. Hearing Joplin talk about her love of Bessie Smith brings out “Down on Me’s” blues. Later, after Joplin calls Aretha Franklin the best voice of 1968, I heard “Me and Bobby McGee” anew, recognizing the R&B vocals in Kris Kristofferson’s country melodies.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
“Love, Janis” continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through July 12 at Zach Theatre. $20-$52. www.zachtheatre.org.
Photo by Kirk R. Tuck.
Latest comments
I would have to agree with Jeanne Claire van Ryzin’s review for the most part. I was at the performance on 6/28. While I appreciated the strength and talent of the dancers, and enjoyed the first 15 minutes, I found the rest of the performance to
... read the full comment by Daisy | Comment on Review: Blue Lapis Light's 'Impermanence' Read Review: Blue Lapis Light's 'Impermanence'
I wholeheartedly agree with Sally. The partner work was especially impressive and heightened the sense of how very skilled and focused the dancers must be to have not merely pulled off the moves in tandem, but also not been harmed - all the while projecting
... read the full comment by from the audience | Comment on Review: Blue Lapis Light's 'Impermanence' Read Review: Blue Lapis Light's 'Impermanence'
See more recent comments