- OZ Arts Nashville

Saturday, September 10, 2016 from 11AM to 4PM (Doors open at 11AM)

Welcome to our third annual Family Day at OZ! Whether you favor painting mini-canvases, designing & pressing your own buttons or learning paper marbling, this festival allows families to create together and play together both indoors and outdoors at OZ. Dozens of local artists and community organizations will have activity stations set up enabling kids to tap into their imagination and spark creativity while having fun with friends and family.

This year, renowned latin-fusion group Ozomatli takes the stage. The GRAMMY & LATIN GRAMMY award-winning, Los Angeles-based band is known for its street-party consciousness and show-stopping live performances, playing an array of genres from Latin and Hip-hop to Garage Rock. Their 2012 album Ozomatli presents Ozokidz features special family-friendly music geared towards performing for children and adults alike. Ozomatli has also been involved in composing, scoring and contributing music to Happy Feet 2 and Elmo’s Musical Monsterpiece for Warner Brothers Interactive.

Opening for Ozomatli is an entirely unique banjo-guzheng duo, Abigail Washburn and Wu Fei. They will sing and perform their original compositions inspired by the commingling of Appalachian and Chinese folk songs as well as improvised pieces and traditional tunes. Bring the family and enjoy a full day of activities – kids 12 and under get in for free and adult tickets are just $25.

“On this debut album for families, the legendary L.A.- based musical landmark band pulls out all the stops. Featuring effortless bilingualism (yes, your kids will learn some Spanish) and the band’s usual eclectic mix of genres, this album typifies multicultural America at its finest. Better yet, “Exercise” will fool your kids into dancing (you can’t help moving to that beat!), while “Germs” certainly made me want to wash my hands. Mostly, though, the album is the best kind of party.”

-Time Out Chicago

Schedule

11:00 AM, Doors Open

11:30 AM, Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville – Tai Chi Demo with Live Music

12:00 PM, Playing by Air: Group Demo

12:00 PM, Abigail Washburn & Wu Fei: Instrument Workshop

12:20 PM, Playing by Air: Showcase

1:00 PM, Abigail Washburn & Wu Fei

1:15 PM, OZOMATLI

3:00 PM, Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville – Tai Chi Demo with Live Music

3:30 PM, Playing by Air: Group Demo

3:50 PM, Playing by Air: Showcase

4:00 PM, Activity Stations Close;
Family Day 2016 Concludes – see you next year!

*Dozens of art making activities & games available from 11am -4pm*

Local Artists

Nashville Origami Club – Paper Folding for Everyone!

Hankabee Button Company – Make-Your-Own-Button Station

Plaza Arts – Painting Mini Canvases

Turnip Green Creative Reuse – Wearable Reuse Art! Scrappy Tutus

Prado Art Studio – Alebrije Sculptures

Kidsville – Game Spinner Collage

Emily Holt – Worry Dolls

Louisa Glenn – Family Day Community Mural

Abigail Washburn & Wu Fei – Instrument Workshop

Playing by Air – Juggling Make & Take, Demo, Showcase

Southern Girls Rock Band YEAH! – Instrument Lab

Mina’s Art, Dreams on Water – Traditional Turkish Paper Marbling

New Hat Projects – Family Day Handkerchiefs

Megan Little – Zines

Emily Sue Laird – 3D Printing for Beginners

Chinese Arts Alliance – Tai Chi Demo & Live Music

Ozomatli

OZOMATLI CREDITS:

2013 Band of the Year – Exceptional Ability Awards
2007 GRAMMY NOMINEE – Best Engineered Album, Don’t Mess With
the Dragon
2005 LATIN GRAMMY WINNER – Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album,
Street Signs
2005 LATIN GRAMMY NOMINEE -Best Engineered Album, Street Signs
2005 GRAMMY WINNER – Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album, Street Signs
2005 BILLBOARD LATIN AWARD WINNER – Latin Rock/Alternative Album of the Year, Street Signs
18 Awards/Honors
51 Television Song Credits
32 LIVE Television Appearances
33 Film Soundtrack Credits
53 Corporate/Private Events
8 Orchestra Collaborations

ABOUT OZOMATLI

Place in the Sun

PLACE IN THE SUN, the eighth album by multigenre, multicultural Grammy winning band Ozomatli, takes the band’s streetparty consciousness to new heights of eclecticism. Produced by the band and longtime friend, world renowned engineer Robert Carranza and featuring collaborations with the legendary Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart and Xandy Barry of WAX LTD, PLACE IN THE SUN is just the latest proof of the band’s relentless vitality. Shifting gears from electrocumbia to garage rock, hiphop, and Pérez Prado mambo, Ozomatli infuses a DJ party mix with dynamic live band chops and attitude.

Bursting onto the L.A. stage with their first eponymously titled album in June 1998, Ozomatli capitalized on being the talk of the live music scene, particularly their showstopping gigs at venues such as Dragonfly, Opium Den and The Viper Room. By 1999, they were touring with Carlos Santana and soon won the Grammy for “Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album” for 2001’s EMBRACE THE CHAOS. They repeated history in 2004 by winning again in the same category for their album STREET SIGNS, which also picked up the Latin Grammy for “Mejor Album de Musica Alternativa” in 2005. Ozomatli also recently became the first band to be asked to speak at the TED Conference, sharing their ideas about music and identities in the global age. In the band’s nearly twenty years together, they have toured internationally, collaborated with the Boston and New York Pops orchestras, and served as Cultural Ambassadors for the U.S. State Department.

OZOKIDZ

In addition to politics and social issues, Ozomatli emphasizes the importance of family and children. The band has strived to make music to be shared through the generations and have even recorded music specifically targeted towards children and families. Their 2012 release, Ozomatli Presents OzoKidz, features all original children’s music that captures the innovation and liveliness that Ozo fans have become accustomed to, while educating children on the values of nature and knowledge. The band continues to perform the album at special OzoKidz concerts, where parents and children alike dance and play along on OzoKidz kazoos.

ABIGAIL WASHBURN & WU FEI

Abigail Washburn is a Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter and clawhammer banjo player based in Nashville, TN, whose music often meshes traditional Appalachian and Chinese folk tunes. Abigail’s musical projects range from her string band, Uncle Earl, to her bilingual releases Song of the Traveling Daughter (2005) & City of Refuge (2011), to the mind-bending “chamber roots” sound of the Sparrow Quartet (featuring Béla Fleck, Casey Driessen and Ben Sollee), to Afterquake, her fundraiser CD for Sichuan earthquake victims. Her most recent record with her husband, Béla Fleck, won a 2016 Grammy for Best Folk Album. Washburn is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has regularly toured in China, including a month long tour of China’s Silk Road supported by grants from the US Embassy, Beijing. Abigail is a TED Fellow and gave a talk at the 2012 TED Convention in Long Beach titled “Building US-China Relations…by Banjo”. In March of 2013, she was commissioned by New York Voices and the NY Public Theater to write and debut a theatrical work titled, Post-American Girl, which draws from her 17-year relationship with China and addresses themes of expanding identity, cultural relativism, pilgrimage, and the universal appeal of music.

Wu Fei, a native of Beijing and a current Nashville resident, is a master of the guzheng, the 21-string Chinese zither. She plays beautifully in the instrument’s vernacular–a musical language which is at least 2,000 years old–and in a contemporary idiosyncratic, experimental dialect nurtured by years spent at Mills College and immersed in the New York Downtown improvisation scene which revolved around venues like The Stone, where Fei has frequently performed and curated. Fei composes for choir, string quartet, chamber ensemble, Balinese gamelan, and orchestra; her commissions range from a composition for Percussions Claviers de Lyon that premiered in the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing to live performances in Paris and Tokyo for luxury brand Hermès. In addition to her own original compositions, Fei has collaborated with many artists of different disciplines and genres ranging from Washburn to avant garde composer John Zorn, Fred Frith, Carla Kilhstedt, Billy Cardine, and Jeff Coffin, to name a few.