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Review: Ellen Fullman and the Long String Instrument
Venue and performer synched perfectly Sunday night when experimental composer and instrument creator Ellen Fullman brought her 100-foot Long String Instrument to the Seaholm Power Plant, a defunct 1930s power plant in downtown Austin.
Hosted by the New Music Co-op, Fullman installed her Long String Instrument in the Seaholm’s towering turbine hall — its cavernous corners, abandoned industrial fittings and dust-caked windows dramatically lit by lighting designer William Meadows.
Atmosphere is everything for Fullman, a self-taught musician who began her career as a sculptor (and who created the Long String Instrument when she lived in Austin from 1985 to 1997).
Yes, there’s the resonance from the enormous venue that accentuated the almost ethereal sound of Fullman’s instrument. But the visuals and the environmental - and the audience interaction with both — played an equally strong part in the 90-minute performance.
Coating her hands with rosin, the petite Fullman walks like a tight rope performer, one foot carefully in front of the other as she moves the length of her instrument, vibrating its long strings as she slowly moves.
And as if to acquaint the audience to exactly what she was doing, Fullman started with “Event Locations, No. 2” a solo piece she played with tiny surveillance cameras attached to each of her wrists. The detail of her hands on the strings projected in black-and-white on a wall several yards away.
The magnificient ‘Adaptations from Stratified Bands: Last Kind Word’ was a re-setting for of Fullman’s epic piece composed in 2002 for the Kronos Quatret. Fullman was joined by New Music Co-op members James Alexander (violin), Henna Chou (cello) and Travis Weller (violin) whose fixed string instruments provided a kind of tonal grounding against the ethereal bent pitches of the Long String Instrument. Fullman used as a starting point for the piece a haunting 1930s blues song which echoed throughout.
Weller and Nicke Hennies joined Fullman on the box bow — the boxes are handle-held rhythmic devices used to play Fullman’s string instrument more rhythmicall — for ‘Time Crossing.’ Developed as Fullman’s homage to the sound of the harmonica in folk music, the box bow created repeated rhythms that jigged along sounding also sometimes like an accordion or a pump organ or a harmonium or a couple of banjoes or even the vestiges of marching band heard from a distance.
Its simple harmonies — characterized by big wide open fourths and fifths — bore the unmistakable sounds of early American folk music, at once joyous and plaintive and nostalgic.
Though there were seats for the sold-out audience of 250 (the second of two shows last weekend), people were invited to move quietly around the vast turbine hall. And wander they did, some slipping off to far corners, others drawing closer to the musicians. One woman danced free form. A woman and her young daughter paraded the perimeter of the crowd for a while quietly swinging hands.
As shadows in the industrial setting grew deeper as the night outside darkened, the audience only seemed to grow more engaged. As the last sounds resonated resonated, people seemingly froze for a moment — venue, musicians and audience by then in perfect synch.
Photos by Dell Hollingsworth.
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ACP presents An Evening with David Alan Harvey
From the “Not SXSW” category of events this week comes the Austin Center for Photography’s Icons of Photography lecture series featuring David Alan Harvey.
Harvey bought a used Leica as kid and began photographing his family and neighborhood in Virginia. Now, he is a Magnum photographer who has spent his career training his lens on African American culture, the hip-hop scene in New York, Cuba and latino migration to the Americas.
Harvey will also be signing copies of his book ‘Living Proof,’ a photo essay examining DJ culture in the Bronx River Projects.
7 p.m. Wednesday
Blanton Museum Auditorium
Tix: $5 student/senior/military in advance or $10 at the door; $10 general admission in advance or $15 at the door.
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Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra, Douglas Harvey, cello
The shout of ‘bravo’ came a micro second after cellist Douglas Harvey let go of the last note of Strauss’ ‘Don Quixtoe’ at the Long Center Friday night.
Loud, clear, sincere — that ‘bravo’ packed a kind of spontaneous emotion rarely witnessed from an Austin Symphony Orchestra audience.
The kudos were deserved. Harvey, who is principal cellist for ASO, delivered an emotionally thoughtful, musically wise interpretation of Strauss’ vivid, spirited tone poem that tells the story of Cervantes’ picaresque novel through a series of lush yet highly caricaturesque variations.
Conductor Peter Bay kept the tempos moderate and sympathetic to Strauss very literal musical interpretation of Don Quixote’s imaginative adventures without letting the sometimes satirical piece from turning into caricature. The whimsy was just right; So was the pathos of Quixote’s misguided adventures.
Other orchestral soloists featured in the piece — concertmistress Jessica Mathaes and violaist Bruce Williams — deftly handling Strauss’ conversation-like musical dialogue.
Indeed, ASO is to be complimented for featuring soloist talent from its own ranks rather than hosting a guest soloist: It should happen more often.
Bay organized the evening’s program around works that celebrated literature and hence also presented Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. With pieces both so often excerpted and rehashed in popular culture, they could remain indistinct, or worse, exaggerated. But again, Bay kept things nicely measured and sharp, allowing for a full-bodied presentation of each lush, fantastical work to take shape. No cartooning here.
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It was more than a little auspicious Sunday afternoon at the Paramount Theatre that opera singer Barbara Smith Conrad was greeted with waves of applause and standing ovations during the premiere of “When I Rise,” the intelligent, poignant and ultimately liberating documentary by Austin filmmaker Mat Hames chronicling Conrad’s life.
After all, when Conrad was a gifted young music student at the University of Texas in 1957 — part of the first group of African Americans to be admitted as undergraduates to Texas’ flagship university - she wasn’t initially allowed into the Paramount to see a film that her drama professor sent the class to see.
Produced under the auspices of UT’s Briscoe Center for American History, “When I Rise” is ultimately about the extraordinary grace of an extraordinary woman.
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Review: Ballet Afrique
Ballet Afrique, Austin’s new African American dance company, weaves their vision of African American culture through ever facet of their work.
The result: their Friday show at Salvage Vanguard was a fascinating, intelligent blend of a variety of African American dance vocabularies—a dense collage of West African dance, jazz, modern and ballet. (And yes, every one of those traditions has roots in African American art. American ballet’s rhythmic complexity owes substantial debt to African American jazz.)
Led by founding executive director China Smith and artistic director Leah Smiley Tubbs, who choreographed all of Friday’s seven pieces, Ballet Afrique adds an exciting dimension to Austin’s dance community. It’s wrong that in 2010 it’s still rare to see an American contemporary dance company with multiple performers of color, but it’s great that Ballet Afrique’s six talented female dancers are stepping into the void.
Tubbs, who creates incredibly technically difficult work, has found dancers who meet her challenges head-on. Sade’ M. Jones spent most of the solo “Through the Silence” standing one leg. The precarious position eventually suggested a resolute desire to stand strong in the face of obstacles.
In “Nina Remixed,” the full company proved their versatility, moving across a choreographic palette that included the swinging, pulsing rhythms of arm-swinging West African movements; hip-grinding jazz isolations, and balletic pirouettes. Every step had a confident posture—an attitude that made it easy to overlook the occasional wobble.
The dancers’ self-possessed performance quality meant some moments offered a glimpse of emotional depth that will surely grow with the company. Adriana Ray’s acting made “At Play” an apt and hilarious depiction of the power struggles of childhood games. Daniele Martin’s intensity in the solo “Reset” made a relatively simple choreographic conceit, a fight to untangle the dancer’s bound arms, a statement on how persistence is central to self-empowerment. Tubbs’ solo in “Nina Remixed” saw the fantastically strong dancer use her physical agility to communicate a sense of internal turmoil.
Welcome to Austin dance Ballet Afrique. We need you.
The show continues tonight at 8 p.m. at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road. www.balletafrique.org
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And, the inflatable suit guy is off!
As scheduled, artist Jimmy Kuehnle arrived at Congress Ave. and Cesar Chavez St. and donned ‘You Wear What I Wear,’ his enormous inflatable suit. Then he set out on a downtown walk.
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This weekend: Some arts happenings vault their own publicness
Starting tomorrow, Austin will be thronged with crowds for two weeks thanks to the various iterations of the South by Southwest festivals of film, interactive and music.
So what better time than to schedule a big public art happening.
On Friday, San Antonio-based artist Jimmy Kuehnle will don one of his giant inflatable suits and hit the streets of downtown at noon to surprise pedestrians. Kuehnle says he didn’t plan his art stunt with SXSW in mind — it’s just a coincidence. Really? Not knowing that March madness in Austin means SXSW is a little like not knowing it gets stinking hot here in August. Read our Q-and-A with him. Kuehnle will start his trek at Cesar Chavez Street and Congress Avenue.
Then on Saturday, Stephen Dubov hopes to attract attention with 50 orange and white hard plastic traffic barriers for a temporary sculptural installation at an South Austin intersection
Dubov will pile the barriers in odd groups and extend them 100 feet or so along South Lamar Boulevard. A team of artists led by Dubov will install them from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Then, the public is invited to an opening from 6:30 to 9 p.m. And to keep the event on a neighborhood-friendly wavelength, attendees are invited to purchase refreshments from a convenience store next to the art site. www.artontheway.com
“I think this piece has a sweet, silly charm that will make people smile, the way Christo’s The Gates did,” Dubov said in press release.
‘The Gates’? Hmm. ‘The Gates’ was a profound public project on a massive scale. Will 50 traffic barriers really share that profundity?
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Arthouse scores the love with micro-giving campaign
Combining recession-era austerity and social media cleverness, Arthouse launched a micro-giving fundraising campaign that was promoted solely through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Throughout February, Arthouse used Twiiterverse and Facebookverse — and yes, conventional old email — to seek $5 donations from 2,000 people, or a total of $10,000 . Dubbed ‘I Heart Arthouse’ — ‘I <3 Arthouse’ in Twitter-ese — didn’t quite make its goal, but it did garner the downtown Austin visual arts center a lot of attention for its clever low-overhead approach to fundraising.
Arthouse director of development Jennifer Wijangco reports that the campaign netted a total of $3,560 from 279 donors representing 19 states. Gifts ranged from $5 to $100.
“We’re looking at conferences to present at about our ‘I <3 Arthouse ‘experience, since there seems to be a lot of demand for this idea,” says Wijangco.
See the campaign’s virtual donor wall at www.arthousetexas.org/valentine/donors.html.
Arthouse is currently in the midst of a major $6.6 million renovation to its downtown Austin home. More than $5 million has already been raised. Arthouse is set to re-open in late October.
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Review: Thang Dao’s ‘Quiet Imprint,’ Ballet Austin II
Love stories between a man and woman (often of royal parentage) enjoy narrative hegemony in ballet. But Ballet Austin and choreographer Thang Dao proved ballet can be (and should be) a tool for telling other stories, too.
Ballet Austin II, Ballet Austin’s apprentice company, premiered Dao’s “Quiet Imprint” this weekend at Ballet Austin’s AustinVentures Studio.
Dao paired contemporary ballet with the smoky, almost bluesy voice of Vietnamese singer Khanh Ly to tell Vietnamese Americans’ stories of growing up in Vietnam during waves of war and violence. The series of vignettes to ten songs, performed live by Ly, hinted at narrative, but more compellingly portrayed a emotional landscape of survival: fierce struggle in the face of sorrow.
Dao crafts an image of a community of undulating bodies of rocking and swaying dancers. A couple swims forward from the group, but just as quickly the group swells to swallow them. No man nor woman ever seems representative of a single character, but the dancers gain identities through relationships. In an early section, a series of women perhaps mourn a lost love. The pairs intertwine their bodies, but never seem to see each other, as though a memory, not an actual man lifts each woman.
In general, the piece’s partnered choreography is strong because Dao imagine partnering as much more than one man lifting one woman. Some of the most interesting partnering features two quartets. In each two men and a woman work together to lift the other man.
The slow rock of Ly’s singing shapes much of the piece’s movement, but one section — really, one movement — stands out as sharply defiant. The cast circles the stage, one at a time interrupting their running fist-pumping, foot-punching jumps.
So much in this ballet is sad, but the dancers seem to refuse to go down under the emotional weight. Similarly, Ballet Austin II’s young dancers face Dao’s choreographic challenges thoughtfully. The dancers explore what it means to give into gravity, often letting their legs lead as their torsos ripple slowly behind.
It’s exciting to see young dancers trying out new ways to move and, equally exciting that Ballet Austin, by commissioning now a fourth from Dao, has made a long-term commitment to an emerging voice.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Weekend Arts Pix
‘Over’
Austin-based artists Ilea Avalos, Andrea Bonin and Megan Kincheloe — all recent University of Texas grads — collaborate on a site-specific installation using handmade plaster bricks to create assemblages that represent both units of time and the building blocks of memory. Opening reception is 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday. Exhibit continues through March 27. Mass Gallery, 916 Springdale Road. Free. www.massgallery.org
‘Treading Where No One Hears The Echo of Her Foot Fall.’
Houston-based artist Kathryn Kelley up-cycles and reanimates objects of urban refuse into large, fleshy sculptures that often stand in the place of the self. The impressive scale of these pieces creates a theatrical position for viewers who are confronted with gregarious forms, or intimations of the shadowed self. Remnant inner tubes, doors, frames and windows morph and mingle in these ambitious works. Opening reception is 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday. Exhibit continues through April 15. Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St. Free. www.womenandtheirwork.org
Complete Brahms Violin Sonatas
What did Johannes Brahms do when he was on summer vacation in idyllic mountain settings? He wrote exquisite, intimate sonatas for piano and violin. Pianist Michelle Schumann and violinist Soovin Kim relay stories of Brahms’ creations and play them all: Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major, Sonata for Violin and Piano in D minor and Sonatensatz in C minor. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. First Unitarian Church, 4700 Grover Ave. $25 ($10 students). www.austinchambermusic.org
Duo Melis
Spanish guitarist Susana Prieto and Greek guitarist Alexis Muzurakis light fire to a wide repertory of classical guitar music from the baroque to modern tango of Astor Piazzolla. 8 p.m. Saturday. Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Drive. $25-$50. www.AustinClassicalGuitar.org
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Testsite launches ‘Just Because’ series, and more
The energetic, inventive indy micro-gallery testsite is gearing up for a new a exhibit series.
‘Just Because’ is a new series of solo shows slated for the gallery cum Central Austin residence.
Opening the series on Sunday is ‘Elizabeth Chiles: Book of Praise.” The reception is from 3 to 5 p.m. The exhibit continues through March 28.
‘Karl Marx says that the problem with beauty is that it doesn’t talk back; that is its strength in fact. Its silence reminds us about grace,’ says the Austin-based Chiles whose work is included in FotoFest 2010 and has been exhibited here at Okay Mountain.
Continuing the ‘Just Because’ series June 6 to 27 will be ‘Ben Ruggiero: After Icebergs With A Painter,’ featuring the new photographic work by the Texas State University art professor that riffs on the 19th-century Hudson River School group of painters.
Before the Ruggiero exhibit though, look to testsite for what promises to by a slyly smart project by Jay Sanders and the irrepressible Michael Smith. Opening in conjunction with the Fusebox Festival, Sanders and Smith will transform testsite into their version of fraternity.
We can wait for Sanders’ and Smith’s kegger.
Image: ‘Aboo,’ 2009 .Elizabeth Chiles. Courtesy the artist and testsite.
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A 100-foot-long string instrument to take up residency in Seaholm
The turbine hall of the historic Seaholm power plant will become the site for an utterly unconventional concert when Ellen Fullman, composer/performer and former Austinite, returns to town with her 100-foot-long string instrument.
When Fullman was here in Austin, 1985 to 1997, she rented a space in a former candy factory off Manor Road It was there that she developed her very unique instrument known as The Long String Instrument.
Fullman used amazing lengths of wire and custom-built wooden resonators to fashion her gigantic instrument. To play it, she developed a method of rosining her hands and walking the lengths of wire as she coaxed out otherworldly vibrations.
“My work resides between the fields of sound art and music,” she has said. “My interest is in composing music on multiple levels, constructing not only the fundamental harmonic content, but also creating a phantom composition by choreographing the performer’s movement through a multi-dimensional matrix of unfolding overtones.”
Fullman’s return visit — her first in 12 years — jibes with the SXSW premiere of Peter Esmonde’s documentary film about her music entitled “5 variations on a long string.”
The two performances at Seaholm are courtesy the non-profit group New Music Co-op.
8 p.m. March 13
8 p.m. March 14
Seaholm Power Plant, 214 West Ave.
Tickets: $12 students/advance and $15 at door
www.newmusiccoop.org
For the concerts Fullman will perform her compositions solo and in ensemble with NMC instrumentalists James Alexander (viola), Henna Chou (cello), Nick Hennies (percussion) and Travis Weller (violin).
Ellen Fullman performance at Berkeley Art Museum, Dec. 2009.
Photo by John Fago.
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Review: ‘Albert Herring,’ Butler Opera Center
Though it debuted in 1947, Benjamin Britten’s comic opera has only fairly recently gotten the love from the opera world with productions popping up on calendars more and more.
The University of Texas’ Butler Opera Center mounts a comely new production of its own which opened this past weekend.
Perhaps it’s Britten’s particularly cruel British comedic sensibility hits home with today’s audiences? Then again, perhaps it’s only now that Britten’s status as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century is now a given.
Like his more popular opera ‘Peter Grimes,’ Britten’s ‘Albert Herring’ centers on an outsider character misunderstood by uptight British society as represented by a small town riven with hypocrisy and intolerance.
Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant — but thoroughly British in Britten’s interpretation — ‘Albert Herring’ is vicious satire on societal propriety as portrayed in early 20th-century Britain that leaves no character unscathed.
When the autocratic Lady Billows (in this production played by soprano Emily Ward) finds no suitably chaste young woman to be crowned May Queen in the village’s annual celebration, she is convinced by the a council of villagers to elect the hapless grocer Albert Herring (tenor Brad Raymond). Albert is, after all, a simpering momma’s boy.
After being dressed in the clownish humiliating May King costume for the village festival, Albert benefits from a glass of surreptiously spiked lemonade which leads him on an all-night bender. After a night of reckless wanton behavior, Albert returns to the village defiant in his new-found embrace life’s more licentious behavior.
The notable highlight of UT’s production was the orchestra led by Jim Lowe, the Butler Opera Center’s new conductor. Lowe (whose resumes includes stints with Houston Grand Opera and conducting the recent Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of ‘Gypsy’ starring Patti LuPone) wrested considerable panache out of the 12-piece chamber orchesrta of student musician. And that’s not an easy feat given that Britten’s score is chock full of deft musical craftsmanship and witty, ironic references to both the whole operatic canon and popular British music. (Britten quotes everything form Gilbert and Sullivan operattas, Baroque operas and even the late Romanticism of Richard Strauss). Lowe’s musical direction is some of the best seen yet from the Bulter Opera Center.
Though the voices in Sunday night’s cast were generally good, (a few secondary roles are double cast), Marc Reynolds’s limp stage direction left some cast members and their characters adrift.
Those who rose above it — and whose voices also stood out — shone.
Raymond makes Albert his own dramatically and vocally, utterly convincing at first as the hapless nerd, a convincing buffoon as the May King and finally a rather sardonic convert to life’s pleasures — and musically strong and distinct throughout.
As Albert’s erstwhile buddy Sid, baritone James Van Rens (who recently had a small part in Austin Lyric Opera’s charming ‘The Star’) was the complete opera package: a performer with excellent comedic acting chops and a rich voice full of clarity and seasoned with superb articulation.
Ditto with baritone Brian Pettery, in a secondary role as the Vicar. Vocal clarity and theatrical aplomb made his character stand out in a cast filled with many secondary characters.
An awkward set by Anne McMeeking had a split staircase serving as the main scenic element but its institutional modernist style were out-of-place next to Michaele Hite’s luscious period costumes.
Though in places uneven, this production of ‘Albert Herring’ nevertheless gives notice that this bitterly funny Britten comedy is not to be ignored.
‘Albert Herring’ continues at 7:30 p.m. March 5 and March 7. McCullough Theatre, UT campus. $20 ($10 for students). www.music.utexas.edu.
Photo by Jon Smith.
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Review: New Music Co-op ‘Invisible Landscapes’
Silence permeated the new compositions played Saturday night by Austin’s New Music Co-op at Ceremony Hall, one of three different concerts — under the banner ‘Invisible Landscapes’ — the music collective presented which focused on the music of California-based composer Michael Pisaro in collaboration with percussionist Greg Stuart.
Warm water morphing into air was the primary image behind Pisaro’s ‘Ascending Series(7) (Evaporation),’ a 25-minute piece. A commission from the New Music Co-op, called for seven bowed instruments — in this case two violins, a viola, a bass and three percussionists who used bows on the rims of floor tom drums to create a soft, ethereal scraping sound. ‘Ascending’ started with a tone that formed something of backbone of the sound. Then, after slowly crescendoing, the tone seemed to evaporate, longer stretches of silence marrying the ever quieter moments of the almost white noise coming from the percussive bowing. Ambient noises from outside the auditorium made delightful guest appearances while ‘Ascending’ demanded careful, meditative listening.
New Music Co-op member Nick Hennies debuted his ‘Second Skin With Lungs’ which had five musicians at floor toms making a circle around the audience. Slowing using their hands to make circular motions across the drum skins, the musicians created a gentle wave of sound, sometime no more than a whisper.
Also getting a debut was Travis Weller’s ‘Toward and Away From the Point of Balance,’ a mesmerizing 10-minute piece for a string trio and The Owl, Weller’s inventive 16-string instrument that produces haunting sounds. Toward’ arched from silence to purpose and back to silence with moody slivers of harmony roughed up a bit with the string players injecting near-silent and other-worldly scraping sounds.
Sound may have been the product of Saturday’s concert, but, cleverly, silence emerged as the subtle star.
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Ballet Austin’s 2010-2011 season
Romanticism rules much of Ballet Austin’s 2010-2011 season.
Along with its usual holiday presentation of ‘The Nutcracker,’ the company will dance ‘La Sylphide,’ widely credited as the first romantic ballet and first staged by the Paris Opera ballet in 1832. The story of a young groom who leaves his bride in pursuit of a tempting, beautiful sylph runs, perhaps appropriately, Feb. 11-13, 2011, right up against Valentine’s Day.
Then on Mother’s Day weekend (May 6-8), the company presents the ballet version of Mozart’s romantic opera, ‘The Magic Flute.’
Ballet Austin opens its season Sept. 24-26 with re-mounts of two works by artistic director Stephen Mills, ‘Carmina Burana’ and ‘Kai.’
A as-yet-to-be-announced program for the Studio Theatre Project March 25-April 3 will play in Ballet Austin’s 270-seat Austin Ventures Studio Theater at the company’s downtown Austin headquarters.
The apprentice company, Ballet Austin II, will reprise Mills’s popular ballet for young audiences ‘Not Afraid of the Dark,’ Sept. 18-19 at the Paramount.
See www.balletaustin.org for more information.
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Big Medium art gallery/artist studios garage sale Saturday
The art group responsible for the East Austin Studio Tour, the Texas Biennial, and which operates an art gallery and 16 artist studios is having a collective rummage sale Saturday.
Up for sale are only-at-an-art studio finds such as artwork, art supplies and building materials are up for grabs along with the usual garage sale paraphernalia.
9: a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday
Big Medium Studios, 5305 Bolm Rd. #12
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‘Architecture at the Umlauf’ series 4.0
The fourth series of popular lectures by local designers and architects at the Umlauf Sclupture Garden & Museum kicks off its fourth season next week.
Appropriately, Robert Steinboomer of Steinboomer & Associates, who along Larry Speck, designed the Umlauf’s media/lecture room and chapel, known as the Roberta Crenshaw Building, starts the series March 4.
‘Front Porches to High Rises: Horned Lizards and Architecture’ is the title of Steinboomer’s talk.
The event starts at 7 p.m. Admission is $5.
See the Umlauf events calendar for the remainder of the ‘Architecture at the Umlauf’ roster of speakers.
Images of the Umlauf’s Crenshaw Building courtesy Steinboomer & Associates.
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This weekend, fresh music abounds
Live Music Capital of the World? We got your fresh music right here. This weekend offers several opportunities to catch fresh approaches to the classical canon and also new composed music.
Friday night conductor Kristjan JärvI and his Absolute Ensemble play ‘Absolute Bach Reinvented’ at Hogg Memorial Auditorium.
The program features a 16-piece ensemble playing pieces that riff on Bach’s Inventions by members of the band.
To Jarvi, Bach is like water. ‘Like water is essential for life on this planet, Bach is essential to musicians,’ the Estonian-born conductor says by phone last week from New York.
Jarvi’s boundary-shredding musical MO eschews dumb-downed crossover antics, the typical model used to popularize classical music. If anything, he wants to return classical music back to its origins when a score was considered a little less sacrosanct and musicians and conductors felt empowered to improvise.
Read our story here.
Also this weekend, Friday through Sunday, Austin’s irrepressible New Music Co-op presents ‘Invisible Landscapes’ three different programs featuring the music of guest composer Michael Pisaro and percussionist Greg Stuart.
Featured on Friday is Pisaro’s piece ‘A Wave and Waves’ for 100 percussion instruments, played by Stuart accompanied by an eight-channel surround sound system. Saturday’s show features two major commission pieces, ‘Red River 7’ by Radu Malfatti and Pisaro’s ‘Ascending Series (7) (evaporation).’ Sunday’s free concert features more by Pisaro as well as new works by Co-op composers Brent Fariss and William Bridges.
Shows are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Ceremony Hall, 4100 Red River St. $12-$15 (free on Sunday). www.newmusic.coop
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Chinati Foundation director announces retirement
Attention all fans of Marfa, Texas and its arts scene and Donald Judd africiandos: Marianne Stockebrand, founding director of the Chinati Foundation, has announced her plans to retire.
The Chinati Foundation is 340-acre 32-building former US Army Fort D.A. Russell. During his lifetime Judd transformed the site into a laboratory for his ideas about the permanent installation of contemporary. Now, the Chinati feautures monumental outdoor concrete works by Judd and 100 aluminum works by Judd housed in two converted artillery sheds. Former army barracks house one large-scale work in colored fluorescent light by Dan Flavin and a building in downtown Marfa display 23 sculptures by John Chamberlain. Other artists represented at the Chinati include Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; Ilya Kabakov, Carl Andre and John Wesley.
Stockebrand, who was Judd’s companion in the years before his death, was appointed by the artist in 1993 to be the director of the non-profit Chinati:
From the Chinati comes this statement:
The Board of Directors of The Chinati Foundation, in Marfa, Texas, has announced that its director, Dr. Marianne Stockebrand, has expressed her intention to retire as soon as a successor can be found. Stockebrand, who was appointed to the position in 1993 by the museum’s founder, the artist Donald Judd, and who has been responsible for its development since his death in the following year, plans to continue residing in Marfa and will assume the title of Director Emeritus. The search for a new director will begin immediately.
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Weekend Arts Pix
‘Ellington’s Sacred Concert’
Last year, it was beyond standing room only as crowds filled the aisles when Austin Chamber Music Center hooked up with Huston-Tillotson University choirs and other performers in a rousing performance of Duke Ellington’s ‘Sacred Concert.’ Now the choirs, jazz orchestra, soloists and accompanying tap dancers will reprise Ellington’s mighty oratorio, sprawling collections of songs and suites that blend gospel music with jazz, classical music, spirituals, blues and choral music. 3 p.m. Sunday. King Seabrook Chapel on the Huston-Tillotson campus at East Seventh and Chicon streets. Free. Seating is first-come, first-served. www.austinchambermusic.org
‘Albert Herring’
University of Texas’ Butler Opera Center presents Benjamin Britten’s comic chamber opera based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant. ‘Albert Herring’ tells the story of a small English village looking for nominations for its coveted annual title of Queen of the May. When villagers can find no young women pure enough to be worthy of the title, they select Albert Herring, a socially awkward wallflower. The production also marks the debut of James Lowe, the Butler Opera Center’s new conductor. This weekend’s performances will also be webcast live. 7:30 p.m. Friday and Sunday. McCullough Theatre, UT campus, $10-$20. www.music.utexas.edu
‘Smoking Lesson’
Award-winning director Marcus McQuirter presents Julia Jordan’s unnerving play about three 15-year-old girls who spend time underneath a bridge on the Mississippi River remembering their friend who mysteriously and violently died there seven years earlier. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through March 7. Rio Grande Campus Gallery Theater, 1212 Rio Grande St. $5-$10. 512-223-3240.
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Consider artists, architects at work on public projects
AIA Austin Emerging Professionals and Art Alliance Austin are co-sponsoring a casual exhibit and informal discussion on the convergence of art and architecture. It’s a prelude to the Austin Arts Week and Art City Austin events coming up in April.
The free event, ‘A Conversation About Art & Architecture’ is from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday. It’s open to the public. Members of Austin’s art and architecture communities are encouraged to attend.
The work of artists Bridget Quinn, Jared Theis, Joseph Philips and the Sodalitas collective is all up for discussion. The talk will be lead by Salvador Castillo.
It all goes down in an empty retail space near City Hall at 233 W. Second St.
The evening will also present the opportunity to stike up dieas for the international Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space — aka TOGS — Ideas Competition. The project, now in its third year, challenges designers to come up an radical new alternative to the typical art fair tent.
The ‘Fort,’ from ‘July Transplants’ project. Organized by Bridget Quinn. Photo by Stephanie Becker.
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My wife and I enjoyed the show very much. Very interesting.
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If only I could convince Steven Tomlinson to apply for this job …
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