OZ ARTS NASHVILLE ANNOUNCES
2017-18 SEASON OF PERFORMANCES
Pioneering Contemporary Arts Center Builds Upon Remarkable Success with Robust Fifth Season
Programming Highlights Include:
- 2017 Family Day with “art-in-sports” interactive installations by Brandon Donahue and a pop-up skate park and a BMX stunt show (August 19, 2017)
- Seattle-Based dance and visual design team zoe | juniper’s Clear & Sweet, which immerses audiences in the unique a capella music of Sacred Harp singing—and surrounds the dance it inspired (September 14 & 15, 2017)
- En Garde Arts’ Wilderness, a multimedia documentary theater piece about families struggling to survive the pressures and complexities of adolescents coming of age in 21st-century America (October 20 & 21, 2017)
- The Joke Is Mightier than the Sword, an evening with Bassem Youssef, the “Jon Stewart of the Arab World” (November 18, 2017)
- A special concert by world-renowned singer Renée Fleming, inaugurating OZ Arts’ “Chairman’s Choice” series (December 1, 2017)
- SEA (Singular Extreme Actions), a death-defying spectacle choreographed by Elizabeth Streb, performed by her company STREB Extreme Action (January 27 & 28, 2018)
- Robin Frohardt’s acclaimed Bunraku-Style puppetry production The Pigeoning, about a New York City office worker plagued by pigeons (February 15-17, 2018)
- Satellite, in which audience members—equipped with turntables, effects boxes and color-coded vinyl records—perform with renowned DJ and music producer Kid Koala in an “Ambient Vinyl Orchestra” (Dates TBA)
(Nashville, Tenn., May 11, 2017) — OZ Arts Nashville, the city’s pioneering contemporary arts center, is pleased to announce its 2017-18 season. Artistic Director Lauren Snelling has programmed a fifth season of works that are by turns viscerally beautiful, death-defying, innovative and topical.
The season begins July 20, 2017, with the first theatre production to grace the TNT (Thursday Night Things) local spotlight series. Simon Stephens’ moving monologue Sea Wall, directed by Jaclynn Jutting and performed by Nat McIntyre will emerge from within an installation of photographs by Tina Gionis in OZ Arts’ Grand Salon.
Kicking off the Mainstage program on August 19, 2017, is the latest edition of OZ Arts’ annual Family Day, an indoor-outdoor extravaganza for young people and families. This year’s event, focused on sports and art, gives visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in thematic art-making activities as well as interactive installations by Brandon Donahue, including a volleyball court with unique design and a basketball court with handpainted backboards. A dozen of Donahue’s wildly creative art works made from scavenged sports equipment and found artifacts will also be installed on OZ Arts’ gallery walls. in OZ Arts’ front parking lot, audiences can take in stunts by skate boarders and BMX riders on a park of ramps assembled for the occasion.
Even in a city teeming with music, OZ Arts boasts several singular music—or music-influenced—programs this season. The legendary American soprano Renée Fleming comes to the venue for a special concert on December 1, 2017, inaugurating the Chairman’s Choice performance selection by Board Chairman Cano Ozgener. Seattle’s award-winning company zoe | juniper, led by choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey, presents Clear & Sweet (September 14 & 15), a multi-disciplinary piece inspired by the Sacred Harp choral music tradition originating in the American South and staged in the round with singers interspersed in the audience. Montreal-based scratch DJ, music producer and graphic novelist Kid Koala, who performed two shows of his Nufonia Must Fall at OZ Arts in 2016, returns with Satellite (April, 2018), in which he enlists the audience to join the performance by providing them with a turntable, an effects box and a crate of records.
En Garde Arts’ profoundly moving documentary theater production Wilderness comes to OZ Arts for two performances on October 20 & 21. In Wilderness, six adolescents stand at the brink of emotional chaos, lost in social stigma, insecurity, aggression and anger; their parents risk losing their children forever. Inspired by firsthand interviews and field research conducted by En Garde Arts’ Executive Producer Anne Hamburger and co-writer, director Seth Bockley, these families’ stories elucidate issues of mental health, addiction, gender and sexual identity and the extraordinary challenge of coming of age in 21st Century America. Another program that illuminates the world we currently inhabit, Bassem Youssef shares his experience as the “Jon Stewart of the Arab World” and his thoughts on the political climate that led to the Arab Spring and its parallels to the current state of American politics in The Joke Is Mightier Than the Sword (November 18, 2017).
Iconic artist Elizabeth Streb brings her company STREB Extreme Action to OZ Arts to perform SEA (Singular Extreme Actions), on January 27 & 28, 2018. The work showcases Streb’s physics-redefining “PopAction” choreography combining dance, athletics, boxing, rodeo, circus and stunt work into feats of pure daring and strict precision. Robin Frohardt’s inventive theater work The Pigeoning employs Bunraku-style puppetry, original music and lo-fi special effects to tell the story of a New York City office worker in the 1980s who is convinced pigeons are plotting against him.
TNT, OZ Arts’ local spotlight series, also features Love Song to the Sun, from electric six-string violin composer-performer Tracy Silverman, with Blair School of Music (October 5, 2017); Michael Gordon’s Rushes, performed by Rushes Ensemble, and Timber, performed by Mantra Percussion (March 22); and a Musicircus curated by Nashville’s Colleen Phelps (May 17, 2018).
Season Subscriptions will be $289 for season 5 which is a 20% savings and will be on sale May 14, 2017 through July 19, 2017. Tickets for all events can be purchased online throughout the year at www.ozartsnashville.org. OZ Arts is located at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle in Nashville, Tenn.
OZ ARTS NASHVILLE’S 2017-18 SEASON
THEATER
Sea Wall
Written by Simon Stephens
Directed by Jaclynn Jutting
Performed by Nat McIntyre
July 20, 2017
7pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Part of OZ Arts Nashville’s TNT Local Spotlight Series
For the first theater production within its TNT local spotlight series, OZ Arts presents a new production of Simon Stephens’ acclaimed monologue Sea Wall, directed by Belmont University professor Jaclynn Jutting. Jutting curates the evening’s presentations and “sets the stage” with an installation of photography by Tina Gionis.
In Sea Wall, things for Alex (Nat McIntyre), the play’s protagonist, are good. He loves his wife, his daughter, his city, his job (as a photographer). But sometimes the force of life can crash against you. Sometimes everything you thought you could always depend on can be taken away. Sea Wall is an unforgettable story about family, fear and the things that can’t be undone.
The Irish Times has described Sea Wall as “perfectly-formed” and “masterfully wrought.” The Independent (UK) has called it “devastating.”
Jaclynn Jutting is an Assistant Professor for the Department of Theatre & Dance and head of Belmont’s B.F.A. Directing program. She is a professional stage director and the former Associate Artistic Director of Vitalist Theatre, with whom she directed numerous productions, including Brecht’s MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN (as Associate Director), which won an After Dark Award for Best Direction. Select credits include THE AMISH PROJECT (Actors Bridge Ensemble & Belmont University), the Jeff-nominated THE SEAGULL (Eclectic Theatre), ANIMALS OUT OF PAPER (Steppenwolf Garage) and LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING (Redtwist). Jutting currently lives in Nashville and directs in both Nashville and Chicago.
Nat McIntyre’s Nashville credits include acting in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Nashville Shakespeare Festival); Othello (The Nashville Shakespeare Festival); As You LIke It (The Nashville Shakespeare Festival); Frost/Nixon (Studio Tenn); The Diary of Anne Frank & Becky Shaw (Actor’s Bridge); and directing End Days (FDR). His Broadway credits include War Horse (Lincoln Center). He has also appeared in numerous TV shows and films.
Tina Gionis is a conceptual portrait photographer currently based in Nashville, TN. A selection of her works from two series, entitled A Frame of Reference and Legacy, will be projected onto oversized photo frames installed within OZ Arts’ Grand Salon.
KIDS AND FAMILY
Family Day at OZ
Brandon Donahue
August 19, 2017
11am – 3pm
BMX & skate shows at 12:30 & 2pm (25 minutes each)
Family Day is OZ Arts’ annual festival of indoor and outdoor arts activities for young people and families, designed to spark creativity, activity and interaction. Dispersed among the grounds of OZ Arts, a dozen local artists and community organizations set up activity stations enabling kids to tap into their imaginations while having fun with friends and family members.
This year’s Family Day at OZ focuses on the theme of sports and art, featuring sports-themed art-making stations and performance presentations by creative athletes. Visual artist Brandon Donahue will create multiple interactive art installations, including an outdoor volleyball court and an indoor basketball court. OZ Arts will also display a selection of Donahue’s work on the warehouse venue’s gallery walls, including pieces made from using scavenged sports equipment and found urban artifacts that otherwise would have been thrown away.
Moving the Family Day mainstage outdoors this year, OZ Arts transforms its front parking lot into a park with BMX and skateboard ramps for two stunt performances.
INTERDISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE
Clear & Sweet
zoe | juniper
September 14 & 15, 2017
8pm (65 minutes, no intermission)
Post-show Q&A on September 14, 2017
Clear & Sweet is a multi-disciplinary performance incorporating dance and live vocals. Based on an inquiry into the raw and uniquely American tradition of Sacred Harp singing, a rousing tradition of sacred choral music originating in the American South, the piece is performed in the round with singers integrated into the audience, creating an immersive visual and sonic experience. Scofield’s angular, intense choreography and Shuey’s cutting-edge visual design embody a search for redemption, shifting points of perspective for the audience. Clear & Sweet highlights the strength that can be found in community and the redemption that can be achieved through physical exertion.
2015 Guggenheim Fellow and 2013 Stranger Genius Award-winner zoe | juniper is a Seattle-based dance and visual arts team The Boston Globe describes as a “crazy dream you just can’t shake.” Co-founded by choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey, the company creates stunning dance, video installations and photography works.
Their collaboration began in 2004 with I am nothing without you, for On the Boards’ NW New Works Festival in Seattle, eventually leading to the formation of their company in 2006. That same year, zoe | juniper and composer/musician Morgan Henderson co-created the Secret of Gold Festival, an annual multi-disciplinary arts festival in Arlington, Washington, now known as Smoke Farm Lo-Fi Arts Festival.
Clear and Sweet was commissioned through the National Performance Network’s Creation Fund with lead funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, MAP Fund, 4Culture and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Clear and Sweet was created in part during the Tisch Dance Summer Residency Program at New York University and in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, On the Boards, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and The Bellagio Center through the Rockefeller Foundation. Clear and Sweet had its world premiere at Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans in September 2016.
MUSIC
Love Song to the Sun
Tracy Silverman and Robin Fountain with Blair School of Music
October 5, 2017
7pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Part of OZ Arts Nashville’s TNT Local Spotlight Series
Redefining the role of the violin in contemporary music, Nashville-based composer-musician Tracy Silverman has contributed significantly to the development and repertoire for the electric six-string violin and what he calls “21st century violin playing.” He composed and performs Love Song to the Sun, a new, evening-length, multimedia performance for solo six-string electric violin and electronics, with constructed media design, alongside 75 undergraduate musicians from Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music. The performance utilizes interactive projections to tell a dramatic story of survival and triumph. It is a fusion of audio and visual technologies containing symphonic breadth and cinematic dimension, where the performer himself morphs into the abstract. In a departure from traditional concert surrounds, Tracy Silverman and the Blair School of Music orchestra, led by Robin Fountain, reimagine the 21st century classical concert for both performers and audience inside OZ Arts’ non-traditional warehouse space.
BBC Radio calls Silverman “the greatest living exponent of the electric violin,” and The Chicago Tribune praises his “blazing virtuosity,” adding, “You’ll be astonished that anyone can play the violin like that.”
“String playing must reflect our popular musical culture or risk becoming old-fashioned and irrelevant,” says Silverman. The foremost concert electric violinist, and the subject of new electric violin concertos commissioned specifically for him by John Adams, Terry Riley, Nico Muhly, Kenji Bunch and Daniel Bernard Roumain, Silverman was formerly first violinist with the groundbreaking Turtle Island String Quartet. He also tours internationally as a soloist with orchestras including the LA Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Montreal Symphony and the Adelaide Festival Orchestra, and under the baton of esteemed conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marin Alsop, Neeme Jarvi, Giancarlo Guerrero and Leon Botstein, among many others, with his solo performances and as a collaborator with other artists and ensembles. Recent highlights include performances of Silverman’s 2nd electric violin concerto and a return to Carnegie Hall to premier Nico Muhly’s Seeing Is Believing with the American Symphony Orchestra as well as the publication of his instructional method, Strum Bowing. A long-standing advocate for music education, Silverman is an in-demand clinician and on faculty at Belmont University in Nashville.
Love Song to the Sun is co-commissioned by Anchorage Symphony, Vanderbilt University Orchestra, and the Rogue Valley Symphony.
THEATER
Wilderness
En Garde Arts
Written by Anne Hamburger and Seth Bockley
Directed by Seth Bockley
October 20 & 21, 2017
8pm
(no intermission)
Post-show Q&A on October 20 & 21
Performances suitable for ages 14 and up
Wilderness is a pulsating new multimedia documentary theatre piece that speaks to our collective search for connection and hope, as families survive the extraordinary pressures and complexities that accompany coming of age in 21st Century America. It is anchored by six real families’ stories that explore issues of mental health and addiction as well as gender and sexual identity.
In Wilderness, adolescents stand at the brink of emotional chaos, lost in social stigma, insecurity, aggression and anger. Parents risk losing their children forever. Thoughts race. Emotions fire. Isolation intensifies. One question emerges: How do we persevere when we feel most alone in the world?
Wilderness takes us to the high desert of southern Utah where peers unearth the courage to change. Video and projection design combines sweeping video landscapes with documentary footage of parents as the show veers from familiar domestic confines to the harshness of the world outdoors. An evocative folk rock score by Kyle Henderson and his band, Desert Noises, Kyle Miller with his band, Towr’s, and Gregory Alan Isakov accompanies a visceral and emotionally charged movement by Devon de Mayo and Patrick McCollum.
Critics have hailed Wilderness both for its artistic merit and for illuminating the struggle of teenagers growing up in the 21st Century. In a Critic’s Pick review for The New York Times, Charles Isherwood called the show “terrific and moving,” and wrote, “The production’s emotional fluency is bell-clear, as is its honesty about the complex and sometimes mysterious roots of the characters’ problems.” “The young actors,” Isherwood added, “are all superb.” Reviewing for The Village Voice, Miriam Felton-Dansky called Wilderness “a compassionate glimpse at the outer edge of teenage angst,” and said that, in the show, “a smart ensemble of young actors turns the real-life stories from Hamburger’s research into an endearing constellation of high school kids in distress.”
En Garde Arts produces bold, unconventional and innovative multimedia and interdisciplinary theatre that marries content with community and inspires dialogue and debate about the salient issues of our time. Founded by Anne Hamburger in 1985, the not-for-profit is recognized for putting site-specific theater on the map in New York City. Most recent credits include developing and producing the critically acclaimed BASETRACK Live, a theatrical experience that illuminates the long-term impact of war on veterans and their families. BASETRACK Live premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 2014 and was recognized by The New York Times as one of the top ten theatrical experiences of the year.
OZ Arts will partner with Oasis Center Nashville for community engagement activities and outreach around this production.
LECTURE
The Joke Is Mightier Than the Sword
Bassem Youssef
November 18, 2017
8pm
Dubbed the Jon Stewart of the Arab World, Bassem Youssef was the creator and host of the wildly popular TV show “Al-Bernameg,” the first political satire show in the Middle East and, with 30 million viewers every week, the most watched program in the region from 2011 through 2014.
Throughout its three seasons “Al-Bernameg” remained controversial for its hilarious and bold criticism of the ruling powers. Accused of being “anti-Islam” and insulting the president of Egypt, Youssef was arrested and interrogated before being released on bail. During its final season, the show achieved unprecedented ratings before Youssef announced its termination due to overwhelming political pressures on the show and the airing channel.
In The Joke Is Mightier than the Sword, Youssef shares his personal story and his thoughts on the political climate that led to the Arab Spring, its parallels to the current state of American politics and how propaganda lays the foundation for dictatorial regimes.
In 2013, TIME Magazine named Youssef of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. He has also appeared on Foreign Policy’s list of “100 Leading Global Thinkers.” He was also received the International Press Freedom Award in 2013 from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Youssef’s current projects are a documentary film entitled Tickling Giants, which follows Youssef and the team of “AlBernameg” as they endure physical threats, protests and legal action—all because of jokes. His books include The Democracy Handbook and Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring.
MUSIC
Renée Fleming
December 1, 2017
8pm
One of the most beloved and celebrated American singers of our time, soprano Renée Fleming captivates audiences with her sumptuous voice, consummate artistry and compelling stage presence. For the inaugural Chairman’s Choice event at OZ Arts—a performance selected by Board Chairman Cano Ozgener—Fleming will perform an evening-length concert featuring French and Italian classics as well as some American contemporary works.
At a White House ceremony in 2013, President Obama awarded Fleming the National Medal of Arts, America’s highest honor for an individual artist. Known as “the people’s diva” and winner of the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo, she continues to grace the world’s greatest opera stages and concert halls, now extending her reach to include other musical forms and media. Fleming has explored a number of new-music projects not normally associated with an opera diva, namely a jazz recording with Fred Hersch and Bill Frisell released in 2005 and her recent album, Distant Light featuring modern works by Swedish maestro Anders Hillborg and Iceland’s Björk. In recent years, Fleming has hosted a wide variety of television and radio broadcasts, including the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD” series for movie theaters and television, and “Live from Lincoln Center” on PBS. She brought her voice to a vast new audience in 2014, as the first classical artist to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.
DANCE
SEA (Singular Extreme Actions)
STREB
January 27, 2018, 3pm & 8pm
A Post-Show Q&A Will Follow Each Performance
January 28, 2018, 2pm
90 minutes including one 15-minute intermission
Elizabeth Streb’s SEA is a thrilling and death-defying work in which daredevil performers interact with mechanics and hardware specifically created for the show. In this edge-of-your-seat, adrenalinized spectacle, the real-life action heroes of Streb’s company STREB Extreme Action redefine physics with unique “PopAction” choreography that intertwines dance, athletics, boxing, rodeo, circus and stunt work. The result is pure daring combined with the strictest precision. The SEA experience includes a soundtrack created by STREB’s resident DJ and emcee, Zaire Baptista.
STREB Extreme Action combines virtuosity and technical skill with openhearted popular appeal. Founded in New York City more than 30 years ago by MacArthur “Genius” Grant-winner Elizabeth Streb, the company has traveled, artistically as well as geographically, from the soaring heights of experimental dance to the cutting-edge of popular entertainment. In 2012, STREB was invited to participate in a festival as part of the London Olympics, performing unique events incorporating major London landmarks, all culminating with a high-flying performance on The London Eye.
Describing STREB’s work, The New York Times has said, “Danger and beauty hang in the air.” The Boston Globe has written that Streb is “an alchemist, concocting a potent brew of dance, gymnastics and physics that transforms these elements into an exhilarating evening of movement.” The New Yorker states plainly, “Streb’s dances don’t tell stories; they aren’t made to be beautiful or to illustrate an emotion, an event, or a conceit. They mean what they appear to mean, and they aren’t set to music.” And in Streb’s own words, there is one, simple goal “live or die, it’s time to fly.”
THEATER
The Pigeoning
Robin Frohardt
February 15 at 10am; February 16 at 10am and 7pm; and February 17 at 7pm
60 minutes, no intermission
Post-show Q&A after the February 16 evening performance
Appropriate for ages 8+
Hailed by The New York Times as “a tender, fantastical symphony of the imagination,” Robin Frohardt’s The Pigeoning is a Bunraku-style puppetry theater production performed by five puppeteers with an original score.
In The Pigeoning, Frank is an office worker living in New York in the early 1980s who is obsessed with cleanliness and order. Plagued by pigeons in the park, Frank starts to believe they are plotting against him. A darkly comedic yet heartfelt adventure, The Pigeoning spins articulate puppetry, live music, video and lo-fi special effects into an epic tale about obsessive compulsion and the illusion of safety and control in the context of the end of the world.
Of The Pigeoning, Helen Shaw wrote in Time Out NY, “Frohardt and company have been finessing their piece for years, and the result is something extraordinarily integrated, burnished to a high gloss.”
Awarded the 2014 Arlyn Award for “Outstanding Design in Puppet Theatre” and supported by the Henson Foundation, The Pigeoning premiered in October 2013 at as part of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s “Festival of Firsts.” It was developed in the Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse and at the Dream Music Puppetry program at HERE in New York City, where it was presented for extended runs twice. The Pigeoning has been presented by the Detroit Institute for the Arts, College of St Benedict/St John’s University and Lafayette College, among other venues. It has been translated into Arabic, German, Greek and Turkish, and it was recently featured in Germany’s Puppet Star TV competition where it took second prize.
A Creative Capital Award recipient known for her rich aesthetic and highly detailed constructions, Robin Frohardt is an award-winning artist, puppet designer and director living in Brooklyn, New York. Frohardt has a knack for taking a simple premise to an elaborate realization. Her rich imagination, unique sense of humor and stunning technical craft come together to create work that defies the conventions of traditional storytelling. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and the first artist-in-residence at Olson Kundig, a renowned design and architecture firm in Seattle.
MUSIC
Michael Gordon’s Rushes, Performed by Rushes Ensemble, and Timber, Performed by Mantra Percussion
March 22, 2018
7pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Part of OZ Arts Nashville’s TNT Local Spotlight Series
This concert curated by Nashville-based musician Maya Stone pairs Rushes and Timber, two works by Michael Gordon, composer and co-founder of the iconic Bang on a Can collective. Rushes features one of the most unorthodox groups imaginable, Rushes Ensemble, which consists of seven bassoons (and of which Stone is a member). Timber includes six simantra (simple two-by-four slabs of wood, amplified and yielding trance-like sonic textures), performed by Mantra Percussion.
Both works expand the boundaries of a single instrument’s repertoire into unknown (and at times, otherworldly) places. Rushes takes the listener on a meditative journey through rich, undulating harmonies produced by the velvety sound of the seven bassoons. The composition brings out tonal and timbral aspects of the instrument that are meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer. Timber brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level. Gordon shapes the music in both polyrhythmic and dynamic waves of textures; often each players’ hands are in separate rhythmic “worlds,” each traversing a different dynamic contour, from loud to soft to loud. With closed eyes, either work could be mistaken for an electronic sound score.
Presented at both ends of the rectangular, open warehouse space at OZ Arts, audiences will be invited to walk around during the performance, sit or lie down in the areas between the musicians.
MUSIC
Satellite
Kid Koala
Dates TBA
OZ Arts welcomes back world-renowned scratch DJ, music producer and graphic novelist Kid Koala with his newest, interactive work, Satellite. In Satellite, the follow-up to the his Nufonia Must Fall Live—presented by OZ Arts in 2016—the audience is seated, four per table, and equipped with a turntable, an effects box and a small crate of color-coded vinyl records. Through subtle colored lighting changes in the room, the audience is cued to play along, becoming an “ambient vinyl orchestra” accompanying Kid Koala, melding their individual strains into a fluid body of sound. Together, these harmonized turntables create a unique, uplifting and dynamic evening of light and music.
Satellite completes a trilogy of popular Kid Koala “quiet time” events that originated at Toronto’s Luminato Festival, beginning with 2013’s Space Cadet Headphone Concert and continuing with 2014’s widely acclaimed Nufonia Must Fall Live.
Kid Koala has released four solo albums on Ninja Tune, including, most recently, 12 Bit Blues. He has also released two graphic novels, Nufonia Must Fall and Space Cadet, and has also been involved in collaborations such as Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, and The Slew. Kid Koala has toured with the likes of Radiohead, the Beastie Boys, Arcade Fire, Money Mark, A Tribe Called Quest, Mike Patton, DJ Shadow and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has contributed to scores for the films Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Looper and The Great Gatsby. He has composed music for The National Film Board of Canada, the Cartoon Network, Sesame Street, and Adult Swim, and has also been commissioned to create music for runway shows for Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten.
Kid Koala’s unforgettable live shows range from silly touring turntable carnivals like Short Attention Span Theater (featuring turntable bingo) and Vinyl Vaudeville (including puppets and dancers) to quiet-time events like Music to Draw to and his Space Cadet Headphone Experience. He lives in Montreal with his wife and two daughters.
MUSIC
Musicircus
Curated by Colleen Phelps
May 17, 2018
10am – 9pm
Part of OZ Arts Nashville’s TNT Local Spotlight Series
Inspired by John Cage’s anarchic concerts of the 1960’s, a “Music Circus” is defined as a series of simultaneous performances, spanning a variety of styles, by both soloists and ensembles. It is a community event with no score and no rules, bar a set of loose guidelines that include: the event should be fun, there should be food and drink, and it should include the greatest possible variety of participants. In celebration of the diversity of artistic endeavors thriving in Nashville, the campus of OZ Arts, both indoors and outdoors, will team with artists presenting works.
“Art instead of being an object made by one person is a process set in motion by a group of people. Art’s socialized. It isn’t someone saying something, but people doing things, giving everyone (including those involved) the opportunity to have experiences they would not otherwise have had.”—John Cage
Colleen Phelps, a faculty member at Lipscomb University and Nashville State Community College, is a founding member of the experimental music ensemble Sound Riot and is Co-Artistic Director of the Wood/Silk Project, a collaboration of Chinese and American musicians.
About OZ Arts Nashville
Since opening in 2014, OZ Arts Nashville, a 501(c)(3) contemporary arts center, has changed the cultural landscape of the city. Housed in the former C.A.O. cigar warehouse owned by Nashville’s Ozgener family, OZ Arts brings world-class performances and art installations to the city, and gives ambitious local artists opportunities to work on a grand scale. The flexible 10,000 square-foot, column-free venue, nestled amidst five acres of artfully landscaped grounds, is continually reconfigured to serve artists’ imaginations, and to challenge and inspire a diverse range of curious audiences.
OZ Arts, under the artistic leadership of Lauren Snelling, has presented luminaries such as Philip Glass and Tim Fain, Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, Kyle Abraham and Abraham.In.Motion, Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, the Trisha Brown Company, Laurie Anderson and SITI Company/Bang On a Can All-Stars. OZ Arts has shown admirable leadership, particularly for an institution in its infancy, with new commissions (New Dialect), co-commissions (ETHEL’s Documerica, Phantom Limb Company’s Memory Rings, Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music), and artist residencies (Phantom Limb Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Mike Daisey). OZ Arts also serves as a catalyst for local creativity through its TNT (Thursday Night Things) program, which fosters collaborations among Tennessee-based artists from varying creative disciplines, producing quarterly presentations within the annual artistic season; and its newest series The Artists’ Lounge, which gives artists opportunities to develop work before a live audience, including fellow artists, in the venue’s intimate lounge space. OZ Arts has fostered community partnerships with colleague arts organizations for presentations with TedX Nashville, Zeitgeist Gallery/ New Dialect (Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Planes), The Belcourt Theater (2016 Academy Award-nominated film screenings), Nashville Repertory Theater (REPaloud with Rebecca Gilman & Christopher Durang), Nashville Fashion Week (Nashville Designer Showcase), Parnassus Books/ Humanities TN (Patti Smith) and Nashville International Women’s Day.
OZ Arts regularly engages the community for participation with visiting artists and artworks – either directly, through school visits, workshops, master classes, school performances and/or curated programs led by local teaching artists. In addition, OZ Arts founded a program called OZ School Days, a daylong, multi-arts program presented in partnership with Centennial Performing Arts Studios that aims to engage students aged 5 – 15yrs old on days when Metro Nashville Public Schools are out of session (ex: Columbus Day, Presidents Day).
For more information, please visit http://www.ozartsnashville.org/.
Media Contact
Amy Atkinson at Amy Atkinson Communications, 615.305.8118 or amy@amyacommunications.com.