Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things
Heather Woodbury’s ‘The Last Days of Desmond Nani Reese’
Obie Award-winning performer and recipient of the first-ever Spalding Gray Award, Los Angeles-based performer Heather Woodbury returns to Austin and the Vortex Theater to present the Texas premiere of her new solo show, “The Last Days of Desmond Nani Reese: A Stripper’s History of the World.”
Back in the 1990s, Woodbury gained audience praise in Austin when she presented her epic one-woman 100-character show “What Ever: An American Odyssey in 8 Acts. ”
“The Last Days” finds a feminist graduate student, Amber, in a futuristic dystopian Los Angeles busily researching a 10,000-page dissertation on “The History of the World, as Told by Loose Women.” The main source of this history? A legendary 108-year-old stripper named Desmond “Nani” Reese. From Reese’s mouth spin a century of tales about outlaw women.
Woodbury’s compelling performance style has been heralded by critics as “mesmerizing,” her gift being “her singularly flamboyant way of telling (a story).”
“The Last Days” plays 8 p.m. today through May 11 and 8 p.m. May 14-18. See the Vortex Web site for ticket information.
Heather Woodbury
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Austin Shakespeare names new managing director
Signaling its further organizational growth, Austin Shakespeare today announced that Alex Alford has been appointed as the first managing director in the company’s 23-year history.
Ann Ciccolella, Austin Shakespeare artistic director praised Alford’s experience as a long-time Austin arts administrator.
“Not only is Alex an extraordinarily talented arts administrator, he brings with him financial skills of the COO/CFO variety. His arrival is expected to take the organization from a place of reintroducing itself in the community to one of growth,” says Ciccolella. “He is a beloved insider in the Austin Arts scene. I know that Alex will now spread his wings by returning to his first love — the theater.”
Austin Shakespeare is currently presenting free performances “Much Ado About Nothing” in Zilker Park.
In 1994, Alford assumed the position of Director of Administration for Austin Lyric Opera, a position he held until 1999, when he became the Executive Assistant to the General Director. In 2004 he became Director of Board and Volunteers, serving as the primary liaison to the Board of Trustees and administrating volunteer and outreach programs, including: The Austin Lyric Opera Guild, Triangle on Stage (outreach program for Gay & Lesbian audiences) and La Noche de Opera (outreach program for Hispanic audiences).
A native of Liberty, Texas, Alford is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in History, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Alford has worked at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Research Center, Paramount Theatre for the Performing Arts, University of Texas Performing Arts Center and Zachary Scott Theatre Center. A dedicated Longhorn football fan, he has served on the board of directors for Austin Circle of Theaters as President and Rude Mechanicals, where he served as Treasurer.
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2007-08 Austin Critics’ Table Awards nominees
Ballet Austin’s “Cult of Color: Call to Color,” Austin Museum of Art’s triennial exhibit “New Art in Austin” and Zach Scott Theatre’s production of “Porgy and Bess” are just three of many events in the past year to be nominated for an award by the Austin Critics’ Table.
Other nominees announced today include composer Graham Reynolds, who was nominated for two original compositions, “Cult of Color: Call to Color” and “The Odyssey,” a choral work commissioned by the Austin Children’s Choir; dancers David Justin, Andee Scott and Laura Cannon; actors Marc PouhĂ©, Lee Eddy and Katherine Catmull; and visual artists Yoon Cho, Ali Fitzgerald and Jonathan Marshall. Costume designer Susan Branch, sound designer Buzz Moran and lighting designer Tony Tucci are also among this year’s nominees.
For a complete list of the Austin Critics’ Table 2007-2008 nominees, go to www.austin360.com/criticstable.
The informal group of arts critics from the American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle acknowledges achievement in the arts with its annual awards. Awards are given in various categories for theater, dance, visual art and classical music.
This year’s awards ceremony will be at 7 p.m. June 2 at the Cap City Comedy Club, 8120 Research Blvd. Admission is free, and no reservations are required.
(Pictured: Anthony Casati and Allyson Paino in Ballet Austin’s “Cult of Color: Call to Color.”)
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Austin Critics’ Table Awards nominations to be announced Thursday
Nominations for the 2007-2008 Austin Critics Table Awards will be announced here on Thursday.
Check back here to see who and what have been noted for the achievement in the arts over the past year.
The Austin Critics Table Awards will be presented Monday, June 2, at Capital City Comedy Club, 8120 Research Blvd. The informal ceremony starts at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Also honored at the ceremony will be this year’s inductees to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. The honorees are:
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, for arts patronage of the Austin Symphony Orchestra and in particular the Long Center for the Performing Arts, named in their honor after they donated $22 million to the recently completed $77 million center.
Architect Stan Haas of Nelsen Partners Architects, for his design of the Long Center.
Craig Hella Johnson, director and founder of the Grammy-nominated choral group, Conspirare
Tina Marsh, innovative jazz vocalist and founder of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra
Capital City Comedy Club owner Margie Coyle
Arts patron Don Howell
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Irresistible: Artist’s talk by Ali Fitzgerald
Austin artist Ali Fitzgerald has created in irresistible micro-opera with “Swan School: The Matriculation,” her current solo exhibit at Art Palace.
With an expressive line, Fitzgerald crafts a sprawling open-ended narrative from drawing-based sculptural elements. In “Swan School” Fitzgerald presents a dystopia where adolescent impulsive judgments rule and with that, a certain wanton violence. Yet the improbable ‘Through the Looking Glass’ architectural elements of Fitzgerald’s installation ring with an ornate girliness — a nightmare diorama decorated with swirly decadent details in white and gold. Somewhere in “Swan School” is the story of a little girl lost and left at a gothic boarding school. Everywhere in “Swan School” is Fitzgerald’s talent for constructing rich, operatic tableaux that — refreshingly in this age of self-consumed conceptual projects — spin fantasical fictions.
Fitzgerald will give a talk Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. Art Palace, 2109 E. Cesar Chavez St. Admission is free and Fitzgerald invites questions after her talk. The gallery opens at 7 p.m.
Don’t miss it.
You can catch a preview of the exhibit here
Photo by Carling Hale.
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Fusebox review: Scott Heron and Hijack
Scott Heron and dance duo Hijack have a paradoxical ability to seem both more and less than human. The New Orleans-based solo performer and Minneapolis-based dancers were a sensitive and hilarious inclusion in the Fusebox Festival, performing Saturday afternoon at Salvage Vanguard Theatre.
The concert began as Heron, wearing a dress, crooned “Desperado” while playing a synthesizer. Kristin Van Loon darted about the theater, occasionally stopping to stroke her blue vinyl belt. Heron eventually joined her, the two embarking on a chase circling around a small log. Finally they sit and pose, ready for either a family portrait or glamour shot.
Things only got funnier when Van Loon and the other half of Hijack, Arwen Wilder, scuttled onto stage wrapped in fleece blankets held up by a series of belts for “Guerrilla Gay Bar”. Van Loon and Wilder proceed through jerky isolations, moving like robots, except for soft, caressing hand gestures. The music skips through portions of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet,” sampling, according to program notes, “only the positive lyrics.”
Hijack and Heron come together for “Stacked Double Cow,” which has the most pedestrian feel of the collaboration’s repertory. As the group moves through lots of walking phrases and climbs all over each other, they seem the contemporary heir apparent to the Judson Theater movement, the 1970s dancers and choreographers who questioned what constitutes dance, including more movement from the sidewalk than the stage in work. Whatever Hijack and Heron might be classified as, their work is funny, compelling and queer. As I watch, I don’t care that I’m never quite sure what’s going on.
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Fusebox review: Field Guide: Dance in the US pt. 2
He sat there like a satyr in repose. One man, wearing only nude briefs and an incredibly lifelike deer head, sat in a rocking chair. The slow sway of the chair was only interrupted by an occasional hand reaching up to scratch the deer head’s neck.
Portland-based dance theater group Teeth, who closed Fusebox Festival’s “Field Guide: Dance in the US pt. 2” at Salvage Vanguard Theatre on Thursday with the piece “Rash,” is funny, and oh so strange.
In stark juxtaposition to the man/deer’s calm, Angelle Hebert seemed near the brink, as she used her fingers to pry open her mouth. Her screams and facial contortions, accompanied by an electronic smash-up of sounds, only ended when she placed her head on the man/deer’s lap. She found a humorous sort of peace there. Me too.
Other works on the program expanded the category of dance beyond the usual Austin fare. In “Falling Up,” Heather Maloney and John Beauregard questioned what constitutes limitation and possibility onstage. Beauregard, who uses a wheelchair, used a rope tied across the stage a foot above the ground to pull himself along on his back, while Maloney bent and twisted herself over the rope.
Sarah Gamblin and Jordan Fuchs’ duet “Not in But Here” had a rich, full quality, largely due to Gamblin’s ability to carve through air with every available inch of her body. Even her fingertips are part of the dance.
The program also included the comedic, pleasantly smooth Austin-based Elsewhere Dance Theatre in “Playing Nice.”
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Review: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
In “Much Ado About Nothing,” new management and new direction grace the old Zilker Park stage for Ann Ciccolella’s *first turn at *Austin Shakespeare nĂ©e Festival’s free summer performance. It’s a first step in the right direction, to be sure, but there are still plenty more to take.
Most important are pacing and attention to language. The first third of the play lags due to line problems, an unwillingness to trust in Shakespeare’s words and frequently lugubrious delivery. For example, the men’s deception of Benedick is one of Shakespeare’s finest comic moments. With built-in gags for four lovable characters, the Bard mines bit of comic gold and puts it in the hands of the actors. Unfortunately, it gets slowed down and tripped up for a fumble here.
The next scene, essentially the same joke for the play’s women, almost always suffers for its repetition. Here, though, it shines. Beth Burns is incredibly winning as the often under-served serving woman Ursula, warming up to the prank slowly and then exuding glee.
What follows — from a steady stream of smart, touching moments between Matt Radford as Benedick and Babs George as Beatrice to a Three Stooges police force led by improviser Les McGehee — goes a long way to make up for the unsteady introduction.
Here’s hoping the production’s transition is emblematic of Austin Shakespeare’s.
(“Much Ado About Nothing” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through May 25 and 2 p.m. on May 11 at Zilker Park’s Sheffield Hillside Theater. Free. www.AustinShakespeare.org.
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City announces new Long Center parking plan
Assistant City Manager Rudy Garza released a memo Friday detailing a new parking and traffic plan for the Long Center, Palmer Events Center and Auditorium Shores.
Memo on Long Center Parking Meeting (pdf)
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Update: Arts on Real loses lease
Arts on Real Theater has lost its lease on the East Austin property it has called home for the past five years.
The venue, at 2826 Real Street, is the permanent home of theater director Blake Yelavich’s Naughty Austin Productions, the primary presenter of shows at the theater.
Gary I. Currier, an attorney with Vack, Kiecke and Currier who is representing the property’s owner, LWR Family Partnership, LP, said Friday that the nonprofit theater organization’s lease was terminated effective May 1 and that his client has taken reposition of the property. Currier said he has been negotiating a renewal of the lease contingent on payment of back rent but that the theater had not made the payment by Thursday. Currier declined to disclose the amount of back rent the owner said was due.
Earlier this week, Yelavich and Arts on Real supporters had sent out a plea for money when a new lease was not offered on the former warehouse.
Catherine Tabor , an attorney with Tabor Law Firm, PC who said she was providing pro bono legal services to Arts on Real, said donors had pledged $15,000 by Wednesday in effort to secure a new lease. Tabor said she had “a small hope” that the property owner would still be open to negotiating new lease terms once the pledges had been collected.
Tabor said that Yelavich had added approximately $30,000 of improvements to the property over the five years he has occupied it.
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Austin Children’s Choir changes leadership
Austin Children’s Choir announced Thursday that Kathleen K. Turner, who has been the artistic director of the 150-voice choir since 2003, is moving on to other endeavors and is welcoming a new artistic director, Adam Roberts.
A press release from the organization reads:
Turner and the Austin Children’s Choir board of directors this week selected Roberts from a short list of over two dozen applications for the position. Roberts has served as the artistic director, musical director or choreographer for over 60 musicals. His accompanying and choreography credits include two European concert tours with the Sound of America Honor Chorus.
Says Turner, “My tenure as artistic director has been wonderful, exciting, invigorating, creative and life-changing. My calling as a professional musician has always been one to bring an organization in need to healthy standing. I made the decision to pass the torch as artistic director in January of this year. My decision was made in a positive place, knowing the Austin Children’s Choir has a future that is bright, stable and ready to move forward.”
Roberts holds a Master’s degree in Music and a College Teaching Certificate from Florida State University. He received undergraduate degrees from Youngstown and Kent State universities. A member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, the National Registry of Dance Educators and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, he received formal training in grant writing from the Grantsmanship Center of Los Angeles. Turner calls Roberts “a person of great integrity and spirit” who possesses what she believes are essential attributes to do the job well: “multifaceted musician, a person born to teach, and a person with an innate creative spirit.
Turner has led the Austin Children’s Choir to greater notoriety and connectedness in recent seasons with concerts such as Water Under Snow is Weary (part of the citywide Shostakovich 100 celebration); a collaboration with the George Washington Carver Museum, Austin History Center, and University of Texas Department of History titled “The Passage of the Underground Railroad,” and a critically acclaimed world premiere of “The Odyssey” from Graham Reynolds and librettist Beverly Bardsley (commissioned from board member Sara Jarvis Jones). She plans to explore other creative opportunities after this weekend’s concerts.
The announcement about Kathleen Turner’s resignation comes the day before the 2007-08 season finale performance by the Choir, “Around the World in 80 Days,” a collaboration with Grammy Award-winning children’s artists Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel to present an international musical excursion. The concert will be presented Saturday in Austin and Sunday in San Marcos, both with San Marcos-based Hill Country Youth Chorus.
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Update: Arts on Real offered new lease
Arts on Real has been offered a new lease for the property at 2826 Real St., the East Austin property it has called home for the past five years.
Cathy Tabor, attorney with Tabor Law Firm, who is providing pro bono legal services to the theater, said that she is “cautiously optimistic” that by the end of Wednesday the theater would be able to sign a 12-month lease on the former warehouse that Arts on Real founder Blake Yelavich converted into a theater.
Yesterday, the theater reported that its occupancy was threatened when the LWR Family Partnership, the owner of the property, said they would not offer the theater group a new lease. An attorney for LWR Partnership said in a statement Tuesday that a continuation of the lease was not offered because of arrears in rent payments.
Tabor said that she received a new one-year lease agreement this morning.
She said that $6,000 was needed by the theater by the end of the day to pay outstanding debt LWR Family Partnership says it is owed. She said that although an exact accounting of what LWR Family Partnership is owed has still not been provided, the theater was willing to make the additional $6,000 payment in order to secure a new lease. “Part of the confusion seems to be not fully understanding the (monthly payment) calculations and the fact that the property taxes and the insurance have fluctuated,” she said. The initial lease required the tenant to cover property taxes in addition to a monthly rent payment.
“We have donors that have come forward and are willing to keep the theater open,” said Tabor. “We just need to bring in those donor pledges.”
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Fusebox review: ‘Terrible Things’
Hundreds of marshmallows spread across a stage make compelling theater. Austin favorites director/performer Katie Pearl and playwright Lisa d’Amour bank on the beauty of marshmallows in the works-in-progress showing of “Terrible Things” Sunday at the Blue Theatre, which closed the first weekend of the Fusebox Festival. The marshmallows did their job: the piece has a kinesthetic, visual draw, even though it is obviously still under construction.
The play loosely follows Pearl’s life, tracking her childhood in Oklahoma, and then gesturing to her adult life as an artist. The show is a solo show and it is not a solo show. Seven women swirl around Pearl throughout the play, painting pictures with marshmallows and shadowing Pearl’s gestures. Their largely silent, slowly sculpted movements, choreographed by Minneapolis-based dancer Emily Johnson, expand Pearl’s presence.
The text, delivered by Pearl playing herself, is at its most poetic when stories are told absent context. After recollecting her parents enticing her 5-year-old self to sleep, Pearl curls up against the theater’s back wall, telling stories that seem to reference frustrating intimate relationships: wanting to tell someone she would move in with her and nursing someone in a hospital. These stories give a more natural sense of jumbled emotion and desire than Pearl’s more straightforward childhood anecdotes. As Pearl jokes throughout the show, “Terrible Things” teaches others how to feel like Katie Pearl for a half an hour. It’s funny that it’s easiest to empathize with Pearl in the moments where it is least clear why she feels the way she does.
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Arts on Real may lose East Austin home
Arts on Real Theatre may lose the lease on the East Austin property it has called home for the past five years.
The venue, at 2826 Real Street, is the permanent home of theater director Blake Yelavich’s Naughty Austin Productions, which is the primary presenter of shows at the theater.
In an e-mail sent to supporters April 23, Yelavich wrote that “we will be forced to close (our) doors by the end of May if we do not raise $7,500 by the end of April.”
A copy of the lease obtained by the American-Statesman shows that Yelavich was required to pay from $2,480 per month to $3,100 per month for the past 11 months in a graduated rent payment schedule over 60 months. The lease also required that Yelavich pay the taxes on the property.
A statement issued by Gary I. Currier, an attorney with Vack, Kiecke and Currier who is representing the property owner, LWR Family Partnership LP, said that the nonprofit theater organization “was in almost continuous default of the lease by failing to pay its rent on time, wrote several rent checks that were returned for lack of sufficient funds and still owes a considerable sum in back rent to the landlord.”
Currier did not respond to a request asking for the specific amount LWR Famly Partnership was owed by Yelavich.
“In all honesty there have been cash flow problems with the organization,” said Catherine Tabor on Tuesday, an attorney with Tabor Law Firm who said she was providing pro bono legal services to Arts on Real. “All we really want is May, to (have the time to) sort out the numbers and figure out what is owed and to negotiate the next year’s rent,” she said. Tabor said that documents she received Tuesday from Currier revealed that $15,000 was owed by Arts on Real. She said that almost $10,000 has been raised by the organization since last week. She added that Yelavich had added $30,000 of improvements to the property over the five years he has occupied it.
Multiple calls to Yelavich were not returned Tuesday.
Larry Rother, representative of the group that owns the property, referred all questions to lawyer Currier when reached for comment. In the statement from Currier, he said that LWR Family Partnership, “has decided not to extend the lease on the property leased to Arts on Real.”
This is a developing story and updates will be posted.
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Zach extends ‘Doubt, A Parable’ for an extra month
Due to the popularity of the show, Zach Theatre will extend “Doubt, A Parable” for an additional four weeks beyond its original end date of May 11. The production will continue through Sunday, June 8.
Show times are 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. ZACH Theatre’s Whisenhunt Stage, 1510 Toomey Road. See the Zach Web site for more information.
Directed by internationally renowned playwright Steven Dietz, John Patrick Shanley’s Tony Award-winning suspenseful, drama takes a look at the goings on of a Catholic school in Bronx in 1964 when a independently minded nun grows suspicious of a young priest who seems to take a special interest in a new student.
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Salvage Vanguard Theater announces new leadership
Salvage Vanguard Theater has appointed a new executive director and an interim artistic director to fill the shoes of company founder Jason Neulander, who announced his departure from the nonprofit group last fall.
Here’s the official news release from the theater:
Salvage Vanguard Theater, an Austin theater company founded in 1994, has selected two people to replace founder and Artistic Director Jason Neulander when he steps down on May 30.
Following a four-month national search, SVT has hired Brad Carlin as executive director of the fourteen-year-old company. Jenny Larson, currently SVT’s associate artistic director, will serve as interim artistic director.
“There is genuine excitement on the Board about our future with Brad and Jenny leading the organization,” says SVT board chair Reza Shirazi. “We’re evolving from a founder-driven company to a full-fledged Austin arts institution.”
When Neulander announced he was leaving last year, the company’s board determined that they would split his role into two positions. They quickly asked Larson to step in as interim artistic director based on her long association with the company as they began a national search for an executive director.
Shirazi led a succession committee through the four-month search. The committee received resumes from coast to coast. When the time came to select the new leadership, the committee’s vote was unanimous.
“Jenny and Brad have a natural chemistry,” continues Shirazi. “Both can focus on their specialties, and together they will find great ways for SVT to have impact on the artistic community in Austin.”
Before accepting the position with SVT, Brad Carlin was the associate managing director of SITI Company (an ensemble theater company led by Anne Bogart and based in New York City). Prior to his time with SITI, he worked with the managing director of City Theatre in Pittsburgh while earning his masters degree in arts management from Carnegie Mellon University. While in Pittsburgh, he led research projects on tax policies supporting the arts and arts education for American for the Arts. Carlin is also an alumnus of the prestigious Theatre Communications Group’s New Generations Mentorship Program.
Carlin’s roots in Austin run deep. He has a BA in acting from St. Edward’s University and has worked on stage and off with many local theater companies, including SVT, Hyde Park Theatre, the Rude Mechanicals, and Refraction Arts. His work was recognized with several ACoT B. Iden Payne Award nominations, Critics Table Award nominations, and a Deacon Crain Award.
“I feel like the challenges and experiences I have gained while away will be invaluable in charting a path for the next fourteen years of SVT,” says Carlin. “Salvage Vanguard Theater is a robust and vital company with a nationwide profile, and I am honored to be entrusted with continuing SVT’s transformation into an Austin institution.”
Jenny Larson has been active in Austin theater as an actor, director, and teacher for over ten years. Larson has a BA in theater from St. Edward’s University and has been involved with numerous local and touring theater productions. Larson’s first experience with SVT was as an audience member at SVT’s 2000 production of Terminal Hip. After seeing the show, she knew she had to work with the company.
“I have always had and continue to nurture my love for new works, edgy performance, and productions that defy tradition,” says Larson. “This company has always been a perfect fit for me.”
Larson started her professional relationship with SVT in 2001, first as a literary intern, then as an actor, literary manager, resident company member, director, and finally, associate artistic director. Larson has won numerous local theater awards and has already directed three SVT main-stage productions.
Larson’s enthusiasm about the future is palpable: “I am very excited and hopeful as I step into this next phase of not only my career, but of Salvage Vanguard Theater’s development. And I am thrilled to be working with Brad Carlin.”
Salvage Vanguard Theater’s next production is Hamilton Township by Jason Grote, directed by Jenny Larson. It opens May 30 and plays through the end of June at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road in Austin
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Interview with composer John Adams
American composer John Adams — winner of a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards and numerous other honors — is in Austin this week, appearing at the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music as a part of the school’s visiting composer series. During his stay, Adams will receive the $25,000 Eddie Medora King Award for Musical Composition, which is awarded every other year by the university to a composer for his or her body of work; and some of his best-known pieces will be performed in concerts by various UT ensembles Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
In a recent e-mail interview, Adams responded to some questions about his professional life and works:
Austin American-Statesman: Depending on when you start counting, you’ve been composing for about 50 years now. How do you think your music, or your view of your music, or your view of the public’s view of your music, has evolved over that time?
John Adams: Yikes! Much too broad a question. It would take a novel to answer this. I just finished a book of memoirs, called “Hallelujah Junction,” which answers this question, but it takes 320 pages.
A-AS: You frequently appear as a guest conductor. Although you will not be doing so during your Austin visit, how do you feel about conducting your own music? What kind of insights does it provide you as a composer? br>
Adams: I enjoy conducting, not only my own music but both the classics and the contemporary repertoire. I sometimes say it’s the yin to the yang of composing; it’s an extroverted activity that provides a good psychic balance to the very private world of creative work. It also reminds me of the need for practicality, especially in the creation of orchestral and operatic works, where rehearsal time is usually severely limited. When you look at a score by Mahler, for example, you can immediately tell that, despite the great originality and daring of the music, it’s the creation of a working musician who understood intimately the realities of large ensemble performance.
A-AS: Many classical music aficionados identify you as a “minimalist” composer, and in 2006 you curated the hugely popular “Minimalist Jukebox” for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. How does the term apply (or not apply) to your work?
Adams: I think that “minimalism” is a very useful term, especially in music. Using it quickly orientates us as to a particular style and musical procedure. On the other hand, I have never considered myself a “minimalist” composer. For me that would be too limiting a definition. I have absorbed the technique into my larger musical language. Certainly my music is pulse-driven, and some of my earlier works like “Shaker Loops,” “Nixon in China” and “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” share the feel and sound of minimalist pieces. But I think that minimalism in music was much like cubism in painting. It was a breakthrough in language and technique, in a sense a reduction of means to arrive at a new result. After its introduction it almost immediately required an integration into a more complex and varied system, or it would have grown stale.
Three nights of the music of John Adams
At 8 p.m. today, UT Symphony Orchestra will play ‘The Wound-Dresser,’ based on Civil War poems by Walt Whitman. At 8 p.m. Tuesday, UT’s New Music Ensemble plays ‘Christian Zeal and Activity,’ ‘Phrygian Gates’ and ‘Chamber Symphony.’ At 8 p.m. Wednesday, the Butler School’s Wind Ensemble joins forces with the Choral Arts Society, Concert Chorale, Women’s Chorus and Men’s Chorus for ‘Fanfare for Great Woods,’ ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine’ and ‘Grand Pianola Music.’ All concerts are in Bates Concert Hall, Music Building, Trinity Street and Robert Dedman Drive. $10-$17 ($5-$10 students). Tickets available at box office one hour before concert. All concerts will also be webcast live at www.music.utexas.edu. 471-5401.
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Fuse Box filling houses
Austin wants to get lit. Or so it would appear from the crowds turning out for Fuse Box 08, the 10-day contemporary performance arts festival that kicked off this weekend.
On Thursday, Graham Reynolds’ re-working of his Cult of Color: Call to Color score as a string quintet played to a standing-room only crowd at Arthouse. You can catch composer-pianist-drummer Reynolds again when he collaborates with jazz drummer Brannen Temple this Saturday, May 3, at 8 p.m. at the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre for what promises to be a super-charged concert of original new work and some improvisations. Tickets are $10.
Friday, there were nearly full theaters for London-based theater troupe Rotozaza’s beguiling show “Five in the Morning” at Salvage Vanguard Theater. Ditto with Neal Medlyn’s hysterical “Neal Medlyn’s Lionel Richie Opera”) at the Blue Theater.
A performance art jam at the Victory Grill organized by Austin Video Bee also brought in a standing-room-only crowd.
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Fuse Box review: ‘Neal Medlyn’s Lionel Richie Opera’
Go ahead. You know you want to. You want to lip-synch to and act out your favorite pop songs. You’ve thought of imaginary scenes that would go perfectly with those catchy hits that just stick in your head. You know — you just
Pop culture talks to Neal Medlyn. And the brilliant satirist that he is, the East Texas-born New York-based performer talks right back with some of the funniest, most inventive little shows on the alt performance landscape.
Shows like “Neal Medlyn’s Lionel Richie Opera” which he brought to the Blue Theater Friday night in one of two performances as part of Refraction Arts Fuse Box 08 Festival.
In an absurd premise, Medlyn took his abiding appreciation of Richie’s “Back to Front” greatest hits album and layered it with the plot of Richard Strauss’ opera “Arabella.” Well, that’s sort of what transpired in the hysterical 40 minutes or so that Medlyn was on stage.
With the frenzied intensity of an evangelist, Medlyn throws a weird array of props and himself through the first few rows of seats, acting out characters, donning tiaras and costume hats, flicking his wrists and his skinny-boy hips on perfect cue with Richie’s Top 40 ballads.
What made it all this transcend just simple camp, is that while Medlyn is dissecting and mocking our pop-culture worshipping zeitgeist, he’s also celebrating it. He catapults Richie saccharine pop songs so far out of their original context you think these songs — “All Night Long,” “Easy Like Sunday Morning,” “Say You, Say Me” — really are full of the melodramatic drama Medlyn injects.
For all the gut-busting laughter he provokes, Medlyn’s a serious performer. He slyly transforms what are impossibly fun and absurdist happenings into what you only later - after you’ve stopped laughing — realize are trenchant comments on contemporary culture.
But really it’s all amazingly ridiculous. Medlyn is amazingly ridiculous. But he’s also wonderfully smart.
Fuse Box continues through May 3. See the Refraction Arts Web site for show times and other information.
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Fuse Box: Double Fantasy/Double Reality Exhibition
Call it a creative melting pot — with a deadline.
As part of the Fuse Box 08 Festival, producers put out an open call to artists interested in collaborating with another artist working in a different medium. Playwright with installation artist, choreographer with video artist — that sort of thing. Artists from Mexico, France and across the U.S. responded, and five collaborative teams were formed.
Today through May 3, you can see these artists’ individual work on exhibit in “Double Reality” in the galleries of Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road. Then May 3, from 7 to 9 p.m., head to Big Medium Gallery, 50305 Bolm Road, for the “Double Fantasy” unveiling where you can see the fruits of the artistic collaborations.
Among those at work over the next week is Mexico City-based artist Armando Miguelez. He had show here at the now-closed Volitant Gallery last year. But for Fuse Box, Miguelez will be bringing part of utterly beguiling large-scale installation he exhibited this fall at Casino Metropolitano, an artist-run project space in Mexico City. “Eppur si muove” — Italian for “and yet it moves” — involved an arrangement of enormous constellationlike mobiles arranged throughout the old commercial building that houses Casino Metropolitano in Mexico City’s historic downtown. The motorized mobiles whirred quietly around in the intriguing old venue which is delightfully tucked away in Mexico City’s historic central district.
Miguelez’s Fuse Box collaboration with Austin-based dancer/actor Lauren Tietz is likely to produce intriguing results.
Armando Miguelez in his “Eppur si muove” installation in Casino Metropolitano in Mexico City.
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Austin Arts Hall of Fame inductees named
The Austin Critics’ Table has named seven individuals to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame.
Those celebrated for their long-time commitment to Austin’s arts community are long-time philanthropists Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, whose arts patronage of the Austin Symphony Orchestra and in particular the Long Center for the Performing Arts, named in their honor after they donated $22 million to the recently completed $77 million center.
Other inductees this year are architect Stan Haas of Nelsen Partners Architects, named for his design of the Long Center; Craig Hella Johnson, director and founder of the Grammy-nominated choral group, Conspirare and Tina Marsh, innovative jazz vocalist and founder of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra. Capital City Comedy Club owner Margie Coyle and arts patron Don Howell were also named to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame.
The Arts Hall of Fame awards will be presented June 2 at the annual Critics’ Table Awards ceremony. The free event is open to public and starts at 7 p.m. at Capital City Comedy Club.
The Austin Critics’ Table is an informal group of arts critics and writers from the Austin American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle who each year present awards for outstanding achievement in the arts.
Teresa Lozano Long and Joe R. Long at the opening gala of the Long Center.
Architect Stan Haas in front of the Long Center.
Craig Hell Johnson of Conspirare.
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Great choices this year—and can’t wait to see the various nominations for “Best of” etc. If you’ve never been to one of these events, they are…very Austin: irreverant, entertaining, unexpected… and a great tradition.
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Her blog is magnificent.
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