Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > June
June 2009
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
Recent arts coverage:
‘The Lining of Forgetting’ at the Austin Museum of Art | Austin Chamber Music Festival reviews and updates |Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Alert
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
Recent arts coverage:
The (new) art of drawing: Today’s artists re-consider the art of making their mark’ | Austin Chamber Music Festival lights up the summer |Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Alert
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
Recent arts coverage:
The (new) art of drawing: Today’s artists re-consider the art of making their mark’ | Austin Critics’ Table Awards 2008-2009 | Tina Marsh, 1954-2009, Austin jazz innovator |Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Alert
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.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
Weekend Arts Pix
THURSDAY
Fellini’s ‘8 1/2.’
Austin Museum of Art teams with the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to present Fellini’s dizzyingly brilliant dreamlike film in the amphitheater of the museum’s original Driscoll Villa on the shore of Lake Austin. A ticket includes a glass of Italian wine and a sampler plate of Italian appetizers. Bring a blanket to sit on. 8 p.m. Laguna Gloria, 3809 W. 35th St. $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers. www.amoa.org.
THURSDAY-SUNDAY
‘Big Range Dance Festival.’
Modern dance, indie style, continues. Tonight and Friday, it’s the ‘Composer Challenge’ at 8 p.m. with each choreographer given the same music to create to. Then at 9:30 it’s improvisation time, with dances made up on the spot. The ‘Choregrapher Showcase’ runs 8 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday with some of Austin’s best indie dancemakers showing their new work. Austin Ventures Studio Theater, 501 W. Third St. $12, $6 children/senior. www.bigrangedance.org.
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
‘Good Things.’
Renaissance Austin Theatre present the American premiere of Scottish playwright Liz Lochead’s romantic comedy about a do-good Oxfam volunteer who finds her orderly life turned around by a series of chance occurrences. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through June 27. Vortex Theater, 2307 Manor Road. $10-$30. 478-5282. www.vortexrep.org.
SATURDAY
‘Celebration of the Patron Saint of San Miguel Tzinacapan, Puebla.’
Austin photographer Jesse Herrera will speak on his travels to Puebla, Mexico, over a period of eight years as he documented the village of San Miguel Tzinacapan and its celebration of its patron saint. 2 p.m. Saturday. Mexic-Arte Museum, 419 Congress Ave. Free. 480-9373. www.mexic-artemuseum.org
‘Soul to Sole.’
Austin’s Tapestry Dance Company once again hosts its annual tap dance festival that gathers major international for a show-stopping performance. Among the tap legends performing are Arthur Duncan, whose 50-year career includes sharing the stage with the likes of Red Skelton, Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Hines, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. Also on the bill is Dianne Walker dubbed the ‘Ella Fitzgerald of Tap Dance.’ 8 p.m. June 13. Rollins Studio Theatre, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $35. www.tapestry.org.
SUNDAY AND TUESDAY
‘June’s Bustin’ Out.’
Wild Basin Winds plays a program of 20th-century and contemporary chamber music by Lygeti, Adolphe, Basler and D’Rivera. 3 p.m. Sunday. Hope Presbyterian Church, 11512 Olson Drive; 7:30 p.m. Grace United Methodist Church, 205 E. Monroe St. $10-$20. www.wildbasinwinds.com.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
A/TRC offers ‘A Gathering of Interdisciplinary Artists’
The African-American Technical Resource Center, a project of Pro Arts Austin, is hosting the ‘Artist Convocation: A Gathering of Interdisciplinary. Artists Sharing Resources/Building Community’ June 12-14.
The ‘Artist Convocation’ is an opportunity for Austin-based artists of all experience levels to come together to build community as they develop professionally through a series of workshops, panels, art making and networking sessions. The workshops are centered around specific disciplines and are facilitated by Austin-based artists such as director Stephen Gerard, performer Sharon Bridgforth and technical expert Charles Medearis.
Registration is $12. See www.a-trc.org for more information.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
City offers free professional development workshops to the creative sector
Calling all nonprofit arts and culture organizations, and for-profit creative businesses, arts enthusiasts and individual artists and creative professionals.
The city of Austin’s Cultural Arts Division is once again hosting a series of FREE workshops to all members of the creative sector to help elevate professionals skills such as board development, public relations and fundraising while also learning important information on intellectual property, volunteer management, grant writing and public art.
The workshops are organized under three tracks: Nonprofit, Business Skills and Public Art.
This year’s workshop topics were determined by surveying past participants
and the creative community, and called forth by the CreateAustin initiative.
WHO: The City of Austin’s Cultural Arts Division
WHAT: Take it to the Next Level: Workshops for Creatives to Elevate Professional Skills
WHEN: June through September
WHERE: Austin City Hall, Austin Community College, artist studios, others TBD
COST: Free
REGISTER: www.cityofaustin.org/nextlevel or 512/974.7875
NONPROFIT TRACK
Bring it on “Board”- The Perfect Board of Directors
June 15
Exploring and defining some of the most important dynamics of a
nonprofit organization: the role, responsibilities and expectations
of, and between, the Board of Directors, Officers, volunteers, the
Executive Director, and Staff. Addressing different kinds of boards;
developing key organizational structure (applicable state/federal
laws, by-laws), policies and legal duties; responsibilities and
expectations of Board members; what it takes to achieve an effective,
high performing Board.
Fundraising Fundamentals Beginner to Advanced
June 29: Part 1
June 30: Part 2
Giving participants a new way to look at fundraising, new tools, and a
more strategic approach. Plus, a development plan that breaks down
each revenue area and creates goals, objectives, activities and
deliverables for the coming year giving organizations a necessary road
map for organizing their resources to greatest revenue gain.
Successful Grants Write Now
July 8: Part 1
July 29: Part 2
A two-part intensive workshop covering all the basics needed for
identifying potential funders, preparing a compelling grant proposal,
developing project budgets and much more.
Volunteer Management: Your Stepladder to Success
August 13
How to plan and maintain a flourishing and effective volunteer
program. How to find the “right” volunteers for your needs, keep them
engaged and move them to higher levels of support for your
organization.
BUSINESS SKILLS TRACK
Can You Hear Me Now? A Public Relations Strategy
July 16
Provide participants an understanding of how to create and implement a
comprehensive public relations campaign, addressing such key topics
as: How to build a PR plan; creating a communications platform;
identifying relevant and appropriate media and how to communicate with
them; social media / social networking; and return on investment
(ROI).
Intellectual Property: for Creative Organizations and Individuals
Aug. 5
Introducing participants to intellectual property and intellectual
property rights, which regard creations of the mind, both artistic and
commercial. This workshop will focus on the most common types of
intellectual property, namely, copyrights, trademarks, and, to a
lesser degree, patents. Specific topics to be covered include rights
related to musical, visual, theatrical, and literary works, publicity
and likeness rights, and trademark rights related to creative
organizations, groups, and individuals.
PUBLIC ART TRACK
Public Art Crawl - Inside Artists’ Studios
July 25
Visit the studios and working spaces of public artists for a first
hand look into the making of public art. Workshop participants will be
shuttled to a series of locations to meet with artists working at
various stages of the public art process. From design phase to
finishing touches on a completed piece, artists will reveal the
challenges and benefits of translating artistic concepts into artwork
for public spaces.
Discovery and Dialogue in Public Art: A Full-Day Symposium
Sept. 12
Plan to join the City of Austin’s Art in Public Places Program for a
one-day exploration of topics and tips related to public art in Austin
and around the country. The full day symposium will provide one-hour
interactive panels and workshops on topics such as how to create
successful proposals, community critique in public art, materials and
sustainability, art advocacy, and local involvement in programs and
possibilities.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Blanton launches film series
Sweet — a great way to beat the heat this summer. Head for a film series in the cool in the Blanton’s new auditorium that feature stadium seating,
The Blanton Museum of Art is teaming up with the Austin Film Festival for the ‘New Directions Film Series.’ The series features five emerging independent filmmakers, highlighting diverse perspectives and destinations around the globe. Stories range from the drama of American youth, to the struggles of art making in North Korea, to the vivacious growth of the Nigerian film industry, and more.
All films will be screened at the Blanton’s new auditorium on select Thursdays and Sundays through July 19.
Cost: $3 for AFF members, Blanton members, UT faculty and students; $5 for general public.
www.blantonmuseum.org
Gretchen (2006) 98 min.
Dir. Steve Collins, U.S.
7 p.m. June 18 and 3 p.m. June 21
Gretchen has bigger problems than abysmal fashion sense: She’s 17, painfully awkward and stuck in the most unforgiving place on earth - high school. When her obsession with school bad boy Ricky gets out of hand, her mother sends her to an emotional treatment center to recover. She has to travel elsewhere, however, to truly begin to understand why she fixates on the wrong kind of guy. Starring Courtney Davis as the perpetually uncomfortable Gretchen, Steve Collins’ first feature is a humorously deadpan yet poignant reminder of how the smallest moments can lead to extreme adolescent drama.
Silent Light (2007) 135 min.
Dir. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico
3 p.m. June 28
Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico, ‘Silent Light’ quickly establishes the importance of nature in setting the rhythms and routines of the religious, rural lives at the film’s center. Its lauded opening shot chronicles a starry sky slowly giving way to breaking dawn as the cacophonous chatter of crickets chanting, dogs barking, and roosters crowing fills the soundtrack. From here on, birdsong is nearly constant, and images of land and sky frequently hold the camera’s attention for extended durations.
But amidst this pastoral setting, a disturbance is apparent from the outset. A cut from the heavenly curtain-raiser takes us into the home of Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) and Esther (Miriam Toews), where a circulating camera catches static portraits around the kitchen table and introduces us to the couple and their numerous children, the silence broken only by the unnerving tick-tock of a clock until an “Amen” frees the family to eat breakfast. In the somewhat stilted manner between husband and wife, not simply the result of the director’s characteristic use of nonprofessional actors, festering emotions are legible.
The Juche Idea (2008) 62 min.
Dir. Jim Finn, U.S.
3 p.m. July 12
Roughly translated, Juche, the official North Korean religion and political ideology, means self-reliance. But the official text on the state-sponsored philosophy, written by Kim Jong-il, leaves final authority over interpretation of Juche to the Dear Leader, himself. ‘The Juche Idea’ tells the story of a South Korean video artist (Kim Jong-il loves movies!) who takes a residency in North Korea. She becomes inspired by the Juche concept of revolutionary art, and intent to further adapt the ideology to modern cinematic practices. The film is partly told through some of the projects she makes while at the residency-The Small Little Teeth of America: The Tiny Dentures of Imperialism; Flesh Ring in the Sea of Blood; and The Winter of Abundance: Our Hope is the Juche State. As in his earlier films ‘Interkosmos’ (Opening Night, 2006) and ‘La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzal’o (NYUFF 2007), Finn’s signature tone is in full effect. ‘The Juche Idea’ is a deadpan yet poetic look at the relation of image to idea, and an investigation into the role of propaganda and politics in the creation of art.
Shotgun Stories (2007) 92 min.
Dir. Jeff Nichols, U.S.
7 p.m. July 16
‘Shotgun Stories’ tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father, a man that never bothered to give his children proper names. He left the three brothers, Son, Boy and Kid, when they were young. Their last impressions were of a violent drunk who never hesitated to put his own needs ahead of his family. The brothers were left to be raised by their mother, a hateful woman, who to this day blames her children for the life she’s been left with and the man she could not keep.
Their father, having left the memory of his children as completely as he left their home, managed to move on and put his life back together. He sobered up, became a devout Christian, married a wonderful woman, and fathered four new sons. All of who received proper names. His life became a model that most would aspire to, a man successful in business, community and family. His only true failing being the sons he turned his back on. At the beginning of the film, we find Son, Boy and Kid as grown men. The three brothers’ lives progress and their futures play out, but their past inevitably comes to claim them. Following a dispute at their father’s funeral, a feud begins to simmer between these sons and the new young men their father has raised. It is an anger that has always rested uncomfortably in the background of their lives. However now, it is a thing that will rise up to overtake them all. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.
Welcome to Nollywood (2008) 80 min.
Dir. Jamie Meltzer, U.S.
3 p.m., July 19,
Nigeria’s Nollywood is now the world’s third largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood. Peace Mission is a guided tour from one of the industry’s major players: producer, filmmaker and founder of the African Movie Academy Awards, Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima. Fitting interviews in between conference calls, parties, and meetings, we get to know something about this thriving and surprising industry through the eyes of a woman determined to see the development of her continent through film.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: ‘KIller Joe’
Posters for Capital T Theatre’s production of “Killer Joe” at Hyde Park Theatre bill the play as a “very dark comedy.” In this case, there is truth in marketing. The company, led by director Mark Pickell, never shies from any of playwright Tracy Letts’s deeply unsettling writing. Nuanced, convincing performances from the cast and clear directing choices don’t allow the play’s comedy to overwhelm the gravity of its violence.
“Killer Joe” is a trailer park family drama, focused on the Smith family. The set, a trailer co-designed by Pickell and Tommy Grubbs, captures the family in detail: broken and lacking any order. Every time the family’s likeable, but inept father Ansel (Joe Reynolds) sits on the couch, he pulls dirty kitchen utensils from the cushions. When sassy, trampy stepmother Sharla (Katie DeBuys) serves dinner, the woven paper plate holders barely make it to the table in one piece. Pieces fall as Sharla walks.
The love between older brother Chris (Joey Hood) and mentally disabled Dottie (Melissa Recalde) seems the family’s only hope. Recalde aptly creates and manipulates Dottie’s robotic shell to reveal her as the family’s wise woman. The Smiths quickly entangle themselves in a web of bad choices. They hire contract murderer “Killer Joe” (Kenneth Wayne Bradley) and then put him on “retainer,” not with money, but with Dottie’s sexual companionship. It’s difficult to tell more of the plot without revealing the play’s secrets, but as Chris puts it late in the play “arrangements just kind of broke funny.”
The most uncomfortable of these broken arrangements is Joe’s relationship to the play’s women. He begins his romance with Dottie, coaxing her into sex by sending her back to memories of being a twelve-year old. Where softly disturbing silences characterize Joe elsewhere, with Sharla his sexual abuse is explosive and degrading.
Reynolds and DeBuys have the most opportunity to contrast the play’s violence against its comedy. Ansel’s inability to do anything right is reiterated with humor and detail. My favorite: As he exits with several beers in hand, we hear him drop several and curse offstage. DeBuys manages to convey subtext through only screams in the play’s most violent scenes, shifting from horror and fear to self-absorption.
‘Killer Joe’ continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through June 27. Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St. $15-$25. www.capitalt.org.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
Austin Museum of Art makes cuts to budget, staff
Responding to an across-the-board dip in private and corporate donations, the Austin Museum of Art has made another round of cuts to its operating budget and staff.
Dana Friis-Hansen, the museum’s executive director, said the institution’s budget has been reduced from $3.6 million to $3.45 million, and five full-time positions have been eliminated, leaving 25 employees. Senior staff have also taken a 10 percent salary cut, and all staff will take one-week furloughs.
In January, the museum made a 10 percent cut to budget and staff. “As an organization, we just have to respond to current economic circumstances,” Friis-Hansen said. However he added that there were to be no dramatic restrictions to the museum’s programming.
Museum hours will remain the same but instead of hosting two simultaneous traveling exhibits at its downtown Congress Avenue location, Friis-Hansen said the museum will bring in one traveling exhibit at a time, initiate a new exhibit series that will feature Austin artists and add another series of exhibits that will draw from the museum’s permanent collection and private Austin collections. Friis-Hansen said the museum is also looking to broaden its programming at its historic Laguna Gloria site in West Austin, where exhibits are staged in the 1916 Driscoll Villa and sculpture fills 12-acres of grounds on the shores of Lake Austin.
“We’re trying to do more with less,” Friis-Hansen. “Our donors are giving; it’s just that many of them are only able to give less than they have in previous years.”
People may have cut back on their charitable donations, but they haven’t stopped visiting the museum. Friis-Hansen said that attendance has stayed steady with an annual average of about 75,000 visitors to the museum.
Other arts groups have experienced some cutbacks in recent months, though not as drastic as the museum’s. In February, Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare laid off one senior staff person. At Austin Lyric Opera, senior staff salaries were cut by five percent. “It’s the smaller donations that have been much more sensitive to this economy,” said Kevin Patterson, general director of Austin Lyric Opera. Patterson said his organization was on target to meet its annual budget of $5 million.
Overall, Austin’s arts groups are faring better than many around the country. In March, the the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles — long-recognized as the world’s richest museum — announced that it was cutting its operating budget by 25 percent and slashed its staff by almost 14 percent after its endowment fell to $4.5 billion, down from $6 billion. In Florida, the 51-year-old Orlando Opera ceased operations in April, the sixth professional company in the country to go under or declare bankruptcy in recent months.
Closer to home, at the Dallas Museum of Art, attendance at the blockbuster traveling exhibit “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.” which ran from November to May, drew 600,000 visitors, far less than the 1 million the museum had initially projected.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
Joey Seiler: ‘Goodbye and thanks, Austin’
(Joey Seiler, longtime American-Statesman freelance theater critic leaves town this week and sends an adis to the arts community.)
I’m leaving this Friday to travel around the country for a few months. In the fall I’ll be heading to law school in New York, one of the cultural capitals of the world. I’m really going to miss Austin.
My earliest memory of any sort of art is falling asleep on the Zilker Hillside during the 1988 Summer Musical production of “Camelot.” I was five and my parents had carted me through the park in a red wagon filled with blankets and pillows — it wasn’t a critical judgment.
Far from it: I still remember Lancelot’s joust as was filled with real fighting knights in real shining armor on real thundering horses. If I think hard enough, it shifts to a few guys in pasteboard helmets riding horses made of sticks and cloth. But, then again, I always preferred the bittersweet ending of “Man of La Mancha” to outright cynicism of “Don Quixote.” And since I don’t know (for certain) which memory is more accurate, I’d rather stick with the giants instead of the windmills and remember the onstage magic.
That line of thinking cemented during my two summers at UT’s Shakespeare at Winedale. I was never a great actor, but I loved every minute of it. I got to be a part of the Roman Empire’s birth on a stage in a country barn and a rude mechanical in the woods of Texas. I owe a huge debt for personal, creative and intellectual growth to Dr. James Loehlin. The least I can do to make it up is encourage you all to make the drive to Round Top this summer if you haven’t taken the chance.
For the same reasons, I have an even larger debt to Austin theatre. In the almost four years I’ve been lucky enough to write for the Statesman, I’ve had some of the best experiences of my life. We don’t have the budgets or audiences of New York, but we do have, I think, a real sense of the pure joy and beauty and tragedy and wonder that can walk across a stage.
And that’s Austin for me: passionate people doing amazing things. Even at its most staid, theatre in Austin takes the best part of community productions (excitedly celebrating art) and combines it with real drive to succeed and, often, innovate. I didn’t always like the product, but I’ve been thrilled to be a part, in any small way, of the process. Whether back on the Hillside, in a warehouse in East Austin, a school’s student stage, or in one of our flagship theatres, it’s been my pleasure and outstandingly good fortune to sit quietly in dark rooms and take in Austin.
So thanks to the Statesman for the opportunity. Thanks, specifically, to Michael Barnes for answering an unsolicited email sent when I graduated from UT suggesting, “Hey, you should give me a job.” Thanks to Sharon Chapman and Jeanne Claire van Ryzin for all their help and advice since then. Thanks to anyone who read anything I wrote; I hope it drove you to see at least a few shows. And most of all, thanks to everyone—actors, directors, writers, crew, producers, etc.—who let me sit in the back of your houses and scribble away at notes for the last four years.
Thanks to all for letting me be a part of Austin theatre.
Image: Joey Seiler on the set of ‘Plaid Tidings’ at Zach Scott in December 2007, one of four holiday shows he saw, and reviewed, in one weekend. Photo by Tessa Moll.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Recent arts coverage:
Austin Critics’ Table Awards 2008-2009 | Robert Dale Anderson, 1949-2009 | ‘Practice, Practice, Practice’ at Lora Reynolds Gallery | Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Alert
Memorial set for Robert Dale Anderson
Friends of Robert Dale Anderson, the Austin artist and UT teacher who passed away unexpectedly Sunday, have organized a memorial event for Thursday evening at indie gallery Okay Mountain.
6 p.m. Thursday
Okay Mountain, 312 E Cesar Chavez St. Suite B
Organized by artist Jill Pangallo and Dan Sutherland, the event will include an exhibition of Anderson’s works. Anyone who has works of Anderson’s that are framed and ready for hanging please contact Sutherland at scumpuppy@mail.utexas.edu. Sutherland is compiling stories and sentiments about Anderson, so send those along as well.
Pangallo has generously offered to put together digital images on a CD to project during the evening. Please send images of Anderson and his antics to jillpangallo@gmail.com.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Weekend Arts Pix
THURSDAY
‘Drawn (Not Quartered).’
Who says fine art drawing is passé? It’s not. Six Central Texas artists present six engaging and very different approaches to drawing. From the raw, energetic works of Glenn Downing to Katie Maratta’s one-inch tall landscapes of the Texas horizon to Jared Theis’ delicate ink vellum images, drawing is alive and not just well, but hot. Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. today. Regular gallery hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Exhibit continues through July 18. D. Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St. Free. www.dbermangallery.com.
‘Word.’
Former Drums & Tuba drummer (and former Austinite) Tony Nozero returns to the Continental Club — but with his paintings at the club’s upstairs gallery, not his drum kit on the stage. Since putting his drumming to the side in the last few years, Nozero, who now lives in New Orleans, has created vibrant, expressive paintings Opening reception: 6 to 9 p.m. today. Continental Club Gallery, 1313-A S. Congress Ave. 512-441-2444.
SATURDAY
‘Lizzy Wetzel: The Medicine Show.’
Where’s the line between this world and the next? Artist Lizzy Wetzel explores the idea by creating a multi-sensory, interactive installation that transforms the Women & Their Work gallery into two dream-like realms. Visitors pass from a desertlike landscape filled with the ambient sound of drumming and into a black-lit chamber where masked attendants perform a mystically charged ritual. Opening reception: 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday. Regular gallery hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Exhibit continues through July 16. Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St. Free. www.womenandtheirwork.org.
Anton Nel: Dvorák’s Piano Music.
It’s always a special event when pianist Anton Nel plays a recital. As part of the Georgetown Arts Festival, Nel will play Dvorak’s Suite in A Major, Humoresque in G-flat Major, 12 Silhouettes and 8 Slavonic Dances. 8 p.m. Saturday. Alma Thomas Theatre, Southwestern University. 1001 E. University Ave. $20. www.gtownfestival.org.
Image: Jared Theis. ‘Sheet Music Drawing 15, 2008.’ Courtesy D. Berman Gallery
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Conspirare executive director steps down
Erich Vollmer, executive director of Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare, has announced that he will step down from his position effective June 30. Vollmer said he plans to retire to Santa Fe, NM, where he lived and worked prior to taking the Conspirare position in March 2007.
From Conspirare’s press release:
Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson said of Vollmer, “Erich came to the position of Executive Director with vast experience and many gifts as an arts administrator. He has worked tirelessly and passionately in support of Conspirare’s mission. His contributions to the organization and engagement with the Austin arts community have been significant. His knowledge of and love for choral music have been a special aspect of our partnership during his time here. I deeply appreciate all that he has done for Conspirare.”
Board Chair Fran Collmann added, “Erich’s extensive experience in managing non-profits helped Conspirare navigate our organization’s significant growth over the past two years during these very challenging times. On behalf of the Board of Directors, we thank Erich for his dedication and leadership and wish him the very best.”
The Conspirare Board of Directors has appointed Melissa J. Eddy, currently Conspirare’s Development Manager, as Interim Managing Director effective July 1. Eddy is the immediate past Executive Director of the Classical Music Consortium of Austin and has over sixteen years of experience as an Austin-area arts administrator. The board will undertake a search for Vollmer’s permanent successor.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Austin Critics’ Table Award Winners 2008-2009
The 14th annual Austin Critics’ Table Awards for 2008-2009 were presented tonight at the Cap City Comedy.
ART
Museum Exhibition
‘Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York’ Blanton Museum of Art, curator Linda Henderson
Solo Gallery Exhibition
‘Lee Baxter Davis,’ Texas Biennial 2009
Group Gallery Exhibition
‘Photography in the Abstract,’ Lora Reynolds Gallery, curator Maureen Mahony
Independent or Public Project
‘12:19 Library,’ Ron Berry, Phil Soltanoff, Scott Wilcox; Fusebox Festival
Work of Art
‘‘Let Me Entertain You,’ Jill Pangallo, Texas Biennial 2009
Artist
Sterling Allen
Touring Show, Art
‘Birth of the Cool,’ Blanton Museum of Art
New Kid on the Block Award
Co-Lab: A New Media Project Space
MUSIC
Symphonic Performance
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, UT Symphony Orchestra with UT Chamber Singers, Concert Chorale, Men’s Chorus, Women’s Chorus, and Choral Arts Society
Welcher: Symphony No. 5, Austin Symphony Orchestra
Chamber Performance
‘GHP 10,’ Golden Hornet Project with Tosca String Quartet
Choral Concert
Verdi: Messa da Requiem, Conspirare Symphonic Choir, Texas State University Choirs, Victoria Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra
Opera
‘Dialogues of the Carmelites,’ Austin Lyric Opera
Singer
Elizabeth Petillot, Viola by Choice
Emily Pulley, ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ (Austin Lyric Opera)
Original Composition/Score
‘Between Steel and Stardust (Songs of Texas Women),’ Graham Reynolds and Carrie Fountain
‘Symphony No. 5,’ Dan Welcher
Body of Work Award
Viola by Choice
Instrumentalist
Anton Nel, Anton Nel in Recital
Michelle Schumann, Gershwin: ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (Austin Chamber Music Center)
Touring Classical
Onix Ensemble, UT Performing Arts Center
Old Wine in New Wineskins (or Margarita Glass) Award
Lyova Rosanoff, Steve Saugey, and Shaun Wainwright-Branigan for their Austincentric libretto to ‘The Bat’
THEATER
Production, Drama
‘Cyrano de Bergerac,’ Mary Moody Northen Theatre
Production, Comedy
‘Age of Arousal,’ Austin Playhouse
Production, Musical
‘The Last Five Years,’ Penfold Theatre Company/Austin Playhouse
Direction
Michelle Polgar, ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’
Dustin Wills, ‘Ophelia’
Acting in a Leading Role
Annika Johansson, ‘The Last Five Years’
David Long, ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’
Tom Truss, ‘The Idiot’
Jennifer Underwood, ‘The Casket of Passing Fancy’ / ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane’
Acting in a Supporting Role
Verity Branco, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ / ‘An Ideal Husband’
Shavanna Calder, ‘Caroline, or Change’
Jenny Gravenstein, ‘Age of Arousal’
Marc Pouhe, ‘The Three Sisters’ / ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’/ ‘The Grapes of Wrath’
Ensemble Performance
‘The Red Balloon,’ Tongue and Groove Theatre
David Mark Cohen New Play Award
‘Dug Up’, Cyndi Williams
John Bustin Award for Conspicuous Versatility
Michael McKelvey
Music Direction
Jeff Hellmer, ‘Queenie Pie’
Movement
Jennifer Sherburn/David Yeakle, ‘The Red Balloon’
Touring Show, Theatre
Elaine Strich at Liberty, Austin Cabaret Theatre
‘Spectacular,’ Forced Entertainment, Fusebox Festival
None of the Above
‘The Casket of Passing Fancy,’ Rubber Repertory
W.H. “Deacon” Crain Award for Outstanding Student Work
Mark Scheibmeir, UT Department of Theatre & Dance
DESIGN
Scenic Design
Kevin Beltz, ‘Still Life With Iris’
Costume Design
Michaele Hite, ‘Queenie Pie’
Ariana Schwartz, ‘Still Life With Iris’
Lighting Design
Lih-Hwa Yu, ‘The Shape of White’
Sound Design
Buzz Moran, ‘Hamilton Township’
Video Design
Duncan Alexander, ‘The Color of Dissonance’
DANCE
Dance Concert
‘Skate! A Night at the Rink,’ Forklift Danceworks
Short Work
‘Crandall Canyon Mine,’ Sharon Marroquin, Big Range Austin Dance Festival
Choreographer
Sharon Marroquin, ‘Garden’ / ‘Crandall Canyon Mine’ / ‘Desprendimiento’
Dancer
Paul Michael Bloodgood, ‘Episodes’/ ‘Hamlet’ (Ballet Austin)
Ashley Lynn, ‘Episodes’ / ‘Hamlet’ / ‘Left Unsaid’ (Ballet Austin)
Touring Show, Dance
‘Grub,’ Teeth, Fusebox Festival
“A Gore-us Line” Award
Henri Mazza and the Alamo Drafthouse, Shawn Sides and the Rude Mechanicals, Indiana Adams and Flash Mob Austin, for Thrill the World Austin
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Recent arts coverage:
Conspirare plans to rock our souls with program of spirituals and gospel songs | Recent arts reviews | ‘Practice, Practice, Practice’ at Lora Reynolds Gallery | Follow @artsinaustin on Twitter
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Alert
Robert Dale Anderson 1949-2009
Robert Dale Anderson, artist and art lecturer at the University of Texas, died unexpectedly at his home Sunday afternoon, a spokeswoman with UT’s College of Fine Arts confirmed today.
Anderson was 60 years old. No cause of death was given, though natural causes were suspected, the spokesperson said.
Anderson’s intricate, detailed graphic drawings combined a kind of obsessive articulation and composition but had a wholly original sense of fantastical subject matter. Biomorphic forms inhabited complex tableaux that seemed both utterly classical and also distinctly futuristic.
“Everything that Bob did he did at an intense level,” said Ken Hale, artist and senior associate dean of UT’s College of Fine Arts. “He taught with intensity, he played with intensity and he collected friends with great enthusiasm. Added to these characteristics were four plus decades of intense studio practice. Bob was an artist who created images of great intensity. Even in a small 8” X 10” pencil drawing there is a universe of information.”
In a recent artist statement, Anderson wrote: “What is realized through silent contemplation is content that polite society does its best to hide - decay, disease, death, dementia, and chaos: the dark side. Siding within the traditions of the erotic, carnivalesque, fantastic, surrealistic, and psychedelic we find malignant growth and movement, a rotting world turned upside down in disorder, twisted grotesque bodies, beautiful monsters and decaying ruins.”
Anderson was represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas and D. Berman Gallery in Austin. His work is in countless private collections as well as in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Ransom Center and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Born in Glendale California in 1949, Anderson received his M.F.A. and B.F.A. at California State University at Long Beach. He moved to Austin in 1988 when he joined the faculty the University of Texas.
Anderson is survived by a sister, Thalia Larson, of California, and his companion, Peggy Linehan, of Austin.
“Bob was a natural networker,” said Hale. “His friends are located from coast to coast and beyond. He reached out constantly to give information to his friends and to stay connected. Bob was a supporter of his colleagues and a mentor to his students. He attended every opening he could. If there was one thing you could count on, it was that you could not count on what Bob was going to say or do.”
Memorial services are pending.
‘After Party,’ graphite on paper, 2004.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment
Revlew: ‘Faster Than the Speed of Light’
“Faster Than the Speed of Light” is billed as new sci-fi, multi-media musical about robots, love, and chaos. It comes off more as a live-action music video for a Bowie/”Blade Runner” concept album love child. It’s catchy, but nonsensical, and fun and occasionally emotional, but with the ephemera of pop.
Brilliant scientist Atom attempts to create the perfect life for himself in the form of robotic domestic bliss. What comes out are two sides of himself, Chaos and Serena. Both want him, for ominous or romantic reasons, and he must choose.
At least, that’s my reconstructed gist of the story. More like an opera than a traditional musical, “Faster” eschews dialogue for music. Unlike an opera, there aren’t notes providing back story and the songs favor capturing the sense of a moment over its plot points. It’s all exciting energy and little clear exposition.
That said, the music, created by producers and lead actors Stanley Roy and Jeremy Roye, is almost enough to push the play forward. Combined with a sci-fi shabby set design and costume aesthetic ripped from a dystopian American Apparel shoot, the music sets a tone that can range from the uncanny to the sentimental. Drawing from a palette rich enough to include stripped down drum, bass and vocal arrangements or piled on with electropop, cello, bassoon, and ukulele, the accompanying album might be a necessary purchase just to satisfy the inevitable earworm.
Ultimately it’s not quite enough to make the experience of the production itself last. The second half, which centers more on Serena’s lost love than the frenetic, mindless followers of Chaos, gets an emotional hook through the presence of a lovelorn and talented Kathleen Fletcher. But by that time it’s hard stay involved with the world of Atom, played by a sometimes off-pitch Roye, and Chaos, played by a permanently leering Roy. Throughout, though, the play is buoyed by Clock. Mute, sentimental, and comic, Clock is assistant to Atom and the latest in a line of Andrew Varenhorst’s standout (and varied) side roles in rock musicals.
A lot of the right elements are in place for “Faster.” It just doesn’t gel well into a final product. The story could be interesting, but the broad strokes push it towards inaccessibility and ridiculousness. The songs could punctuate climactic moments, but they stand alone. And there are hooks to show, but they’re in the music, not on the stage.
(“Faster Than the Speed of Light” continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. through June 13 at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. $12. 474-7886, fasterthanthespeedoflight.org.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: ‘If There Is A Heaven’
Toni Bravo and Diana Huckaby the creators of “If there is a Heaven …, Though shalt not pollute!” chose well when they picked the Umlauf Sculpture Garden for their performance last weekend. The garden’s mix of art and nature invites dance. Swirling pathways and small and large artworks create a kinetic overlay of lines and shapes.
While the garden offered a lovely performance site, the work lacked thematic linkages, even though it circled back several times to environmental themes. In individual moments, the political message was clear: honor the earth. But how the dances—twelve in all, most choreographed by Bravo—added up to homage to the Earth was unclear.
The audience walked through the garden led a large coffin hoisted high by four men, a clanging cowbell, and somber drums. The pieces had a variety of tones. Some were comedic: “The Jesters” had a vaudevillian acrobatic flair all the way down to the dancers’ striped socks, and “The Explorers” had a jungle theme, complete with stuffed monkeys hanging from the trees. (Why add a silly prop to an already lush landscape?)
Some of the more successful individual works were more somber. “Mother Earth’s Angel,” danced by Chika Aluka, drew strength from its central sculpture, a huge, single bird’s wing. In the first half of “The Warriors,” choreographed by Anu Naimpally, dancer Annelize Machado demonstrated how bodies and sculpture make beautiful shapes, not just by hitting positions, but by sending energy out along extended lines.
But moments of depth never became more than moments. And important social messages never became more than didacticism.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
