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THE ARTS PAPER – ARTICLES
Touch sensitive
For Greg Garvey, viewers’ interaction completes
works
Hank Hoffman
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Greg Garvey's work was featured
in Status Update, an exhibition presented by
the Arts Council that explored emerging social networking
technologies. Photo by Judy Sirota Rosenthal. |
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Wander into the Louvre and you know: Don’t touch the
Mona Lisa. But that’s ancient history. Artist
Greg Garvey is working in the here and now of bits, bytes,
RAM, ROM, and pixels. A professor of interactive digital design
at Quinnipiac University, Garvey specializes in what he calls
“interactive art.” His multimedia work invites
the viewer – in fact, requires the viewer – to
touch, to engage with technology in order to tease out the
full meaning, or meanings, of a piece. His commitment to interactivity
is “based on the foundation that we’re conscious
living beings that engage in the world.”
“It is important in each age that one uses the means
and technologies that are part of that age,” Garvey
tells me in an interview at his Hamden home. Not that he lacks
respect for artists who work in the “ahistorical mode.”
Garvey himself was trained in painting and drawing at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. On his first trip to Europe,
in the pre-ATM era, he had to fall back on those skills when
his money ran out, drawing portraits of tourists at the Place
du Tertre in Paris. Still, he believes “there is an
obligation for artists to push things and experiment.”
“Today the borders of what we describe as art and non-art
are so elusive,” Garvey notes, a development he attributes
in part to the Dadaists’ rejection of traditional media
and art practices in the early 20th century. “The artist
can choose, and actually has an overwhelming burden in how
you can choose to work.”
Garvey made his choice while working on his MFA in Madison.
Originally accepted into the graduate program for painting
and drawing, he steered his studies in a multimedia direction.
When he tried to get credit in his graduate program for a
Fortran programming course he took, Garvey says, “One
of my faculty advisers said, ‘I don’t see that
computers have anything to do with art.’” Garvey
saw otherwise. Upon completion of his MFA he decamped to the
Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
“When you got to MIT, you were just expected to know
how to program,” recalls Garvey. “It was a very
exciting place to be because it was where you were with other
like-minded people who saw and believed in the potential of
technology to offer a broader palette of artistic possibility.”
It was at MIT that Garvey created Labyrinthos, his
first interactive work that explicitly incorporated computer
technology as a control mechanism. When visitors passed through
a door of the labyrinth, it would lock behind them. Visitors,
Garvey tells me, “would have to constantly move forward.”
The work, according to Garvey, plumbed binary notions of rationality
versus irrationality, the Apollonian versus the Dionysian.
“In some ways, you look at this and it’s very
rational. It’s at MIT, you know it’s a computer-controlled
labyrinth, everything is built of rectangles,” explains
Garvey. “But it defies rationality because ultimately
whichever door is locked is random. The only rational thing
you know is that the door immediately behind you is always
going to lock once you pass through it.” (There were,
helpfully, “panic buttons” that would unlock all
the doors if any visitor experienced a claustrophobic freakout.)
Garvey’s works wed high concepts with aesthetics. His
ideas, he says, come from his traditional training “but
at the same time through my interests in science, technology,
and psychology.” His work is part of an “international
style” that sees many engineers drawn into art-making.
Multimedia work draws on a multiplicity of skill sets.
“One of the challenges I find is that there is not enough
time in the day to do all these things — electrical
engineering and programming, or shooting video or hand drawing,”
says Garvey. “Part of the response to this is that we
see the rise of more and more collectives, groups working
together to create complex projects.”
Although deeply cerebral, his multimedia installations are
also capable of striking emotional chords. His Requiem
for a school left behind, a site-specific installation
created for City-Wide Open Studios at the old Hamden Middle
School in 2006, was set up in the band room. Using abandoned
school computers – loaded with compact discs of student
performed music and a slide show of digital images Garvey
shot of the school and its grounds – Requiem
evoked nostalgia, loss, and also a measure of anger over the
fact that the school was built on land contaminated by hazardous
waste.
Fear and anxiety were the resonant emotions sparked by his
CWOS installation the following year. Identity Swipe,
SUBMIT used four iMacs to play on the dread of identity
theft and virtual surveillance. Labeled with the declarations
“Trust Me,” “Go Ahead,” and the provocative
“Make My Day,” the computers invited viewers to
enter personal information — including Social Security
number, credit card number, bank account PIN — in the
data fields. At the bottom of the form was a button rife with
double meaning: “Submit.” (A disclaimer on each
form noted the information would not be stored; Garvey told
me the “submit” button actually cleared the information.)
“I like the piece because in a way it’s a one-liner
but it’s much more than that. It allows me to explore
issues,” Garvey told me at the time. “You can
imagine how banal it would be if I made a painting with a
screen like this. It shows the limitations of traditional
media. There are ideas, even emotions, that can’t be
captured by other media. There are emerging dimensions of
our human experience that require new ways to comment and
subvert.”
Garvey says he is “putting on multiple aesthetic hats
in each work.” As an example, his interactive work Touching
the Sacred and the Profane triptych encloses LCD video
screens within touch sensitive metal frames decorated with
Hindu iconography. On one hand, the work showcases the frames,
evincing Garvey’s reverence for the traditional physicality
of the material. By touching the frames, however, the viewer
causes the video imagery to jump between appropriated cable
broadcasts of Hindu religious programming and flashy Bollywood
music videos. This is the “mashup” aesthetic,
a form of montage. Mashups, Garvey says, “are an aesthetic
made possible by digital technology” because they can
be accomplished “in a fluent and very dynamic way.”
As with the word “submit” in the 2007 CWOS installation,
the notion of “touch” carries here a double meaning.
The religious notion of the “laying on of hands”
competes with that of “profane” carnal physical
contact, illustrated by the dancing ecstasies of the Bollywood
videos. And both modes of touch are subject to the interaction
of the viewer.
“It’s a cliché or truism to say that artwork
is completed by the viewer. But here you actually have to
be engaged in a very active way. Otherwise, you miss the work,”
Garvey says. “Part of the dynamic of interaction is
ceding to the viewer participation in creating the work. Only
when the viewer interacts does the work become manifest in
its possibilities.”
‘Music is something people do’
Lucile Bruce
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Rachael Jungkeit leads a Rhythmic
Movement class for children ages 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years
old at Neighborhood Music School. Photo by Harold Shapiro. |
One rainy night in July, I drove to my dad’s house
in Middletown to learn about my early childhood music education.
From the kitchen where we sat I could see the door to his
large studio, with the grand piano and piles and piles of
music. I asked him what music I heard during my first five
years of life, 1966-1971.
Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor. Chopin’s
Piano Sonata no. 3 in B minor. Works by Boulez, Chabrier,
Fauré, Haydn, Webern, and others. Songs of the Sacred
Harp tradition. At my maternal grandparents’ cabin on
the Elk River, my dad recalled, “They had lots of sheet
music. We’d gather around the piano and sing –
‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ ‘I’m
Forever Blowing Bubbles,’ many popular songs like that.”
At home, my dad – composer/performer Neely Bruce –
didn’t “perform” classical piano works;
he practiced them on the old upright piano in our living room,
the only instrument my parents could afford. Listening to
him practice, I heard short phrases played, repeated, changed,
replayed. The right hand, the left hand, two hands together.
When he composed, I heard him puzzle through notes and chords
at the piano. He went slowly. He wrote things down. It was
my first exposure to the artistic process.
Over the last 15 years or so, public interest in early childhood
music education has exploded, spurred in part by new research
showing that music is good for the developing brains of children.
I have my own children now, and most parents I know are at
least vaguely aware that music helps make children “smart.”
This popularizing of scientific theory can be traced to the
1993 study that coined the term “the Mozart effect.”
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine concluded
that listening to Mozart increased spatial reasoning in adults.
Other scientists have theorized that good music increases
“neural plasticity” in the brain – a kind
of structural flexibility believed to facilitate learning.
More recently, exposure to music has been linked to increased
mathematical ability; improvements in memory; enhanced verbal
ability; and an increase in overall cognitive functioning.
But when my two young children spontaneously break into song,
dance around the backyard, and bang on pots and pans, my first
thought isn’t their neural plasticity. Of course, positive
brain development is one great reason to expose children to
music at an early age. But the research, as fascinating as
it is, doesn’t capture the essence of what music is
or why it’s good for children.
There are three major methods of music education, each developed
by an individual musician in the 20th century: Kodály,
Orff, and Suzuki. Today, early childhood music education programs
continue to draw on these three great traditions, often explicitly,
sometimes in hybrid forms.
The work of John Feierabend, Professor of Music and Director
of the Music Education Division at The Hartt School, University
of Hartford, is rooted in the Kodály method, developed
by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály.
“Kodály believed that the voice is the most personal,
accessible instrument,” Feierabend explained. “A
lot of parents don’t know how to sing songs to their
children. My goal is to teach songs to parents, so they can
sing to the children.”
Kodály felt that folk songs from one’s own culture
are the best songs to sing to young children. As they grow,
children take their knowledge of folk songs and use it to
develop classical music abilities. For older children, Feierabend
explores classical music and movement in a program –
available in two DVDs – that he developed with former
Martha Graham Company dancer Peggy Lyman. But for the little
ones, he says, singing folk songs is the best.
“I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” “This
Land is Your Land,” “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother
Me” – these are some American folk classics that
I know by heart. I sing them easily. Kodály, I suspect,
would say there’s a reason I know these songs. They
are simple, elemental, and passed down through generations.
“I think it’s great that there’s a burgeoning
market in children’s music,” reflected my dad.
“But that kind of music doesn’t necessarily have
a life after you grow up. Other music you can return to throughout
your life, and find new meaning in it.”
The Kodály method de-emphasizes built instruments.
The Orff-Schulwerk method is different. In the 1920s and ’30s,
German composer Carl Orff designed a system of percussion
instruments for children including xylophones, metallophones,
and glockenspiels. Orff-Schulwerk (which roughly translates
to “Orff for Schooling”) incorporates singing,
movement, chanting, storytelling, rhyme, and keeping the beat
in a process that gradually moves children into ensemble music-making.
Since 1978, Margaret O’Hara-Best has been teaching preschool
and elementary-age children in the New Haven Public Schools
using the Orff-Schulwerk method. The Orff instruments, she
said, are completely accessible to people who have never been
exposed to music before. To play them, children use gross
motor, rather than fine motor, skills, ensuring a high degree
of comfort and success.
In her classes, preschoolers have limited access to the Orff
instruments. They use them to play “Stop and Go,”
with O’Hara-Best serving as conductor, and they improvise
within certain tonal scales. As they grow older, the instruments
enable them to make musical sound together.
“A big part of the Orff philosophy is that instruments
used to teach children should sound good. And they do,”
said O’Hara-Best. “They’re beautiful.”
“Music is an art,” my dad reminded me. Children
respond to music that is beautiful, expressive, and emotionally
rich. For me, this is a key to understanding early childhood
music education. As Feierabend put it, “We want children
to be beatful, tuneful, and artful. It isn’t enough
to give children skills. We want them to feel something. We
want them to express something.”
Aesthetic values were important to Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, founder
of the Suzuki method. Suzuki observed how easily children
learn their “mother tongue” (their first spoken
language) and believed that every child could learn music
just as easily. He recognized that even babies in utero appreciate
music.
“He recommended that pregnant mothers choose one piece
of baroque or classical music, five minutes in length, and
listen to the same piece every day,” explained Dawn
Rockwell, director of the early childhood music program at
the Bethwood Suzuki Music School in Woodbridge. “The
baby will recognize the music immediately after birth, and
mother and baby will have this wonderful shared experience
of music.”
The Suzuki method is famous for its approach to instrumental
lessons for young children, sometimes as early as ages 3 or
4. Suzuki placed great emphasis on listening. Before young
children learn to read music, they learn to hear music through
a process Rockwell describes as “listening and translating.”
The Suzuki early childhood method of pre-instrumental group
classes was developed by Dorothy Jones. This method incorporates
Suzuki’s core principals of listening, parental involvement,
and exposing young children to classical music.
Is there anything young children shouldn’t listen to?
Absolutely. According to John Feierabend, very young children
respond best to the unaccompanied voice.
“Research has shown that as you add layers of accompaniment
to a song, babies and young children lose their ability to
hear the melody,” he told me. “When a child hears
heavily accompanied music, they ignore it. They can’t
take it in. This kind of music actually desensitizes young
children to music.”
Feierabend described a 1997 study by a high school student
who exposed mice to different kinds of music, then recorded
their progress navigating a maze. Mice listening to no music
reduced their maze time by 5 minutes; mice listening to Mozart
reduced their maze time by 81⁄2 minutes; and mice listening
to acid rock added 20 minutes to their maze time. Incredibly,
these mice actually ate each other.
“They did the study twice and got the exact same results
both times,” laughed Feierabend. “I guess children
shouldn’t listen to acid rock.”
For parents seeking to enroll their children in early childhood
music classes, Neighborhood Music School (NMS), located in
downtown New Haven with satellite programs in Guilford and
Madison, offers a range of opportunities, reflecting the school’s
understanding that every child is unique and learns differently.
Beyond being a great place to expose young children to music,
NMS fulfills an important civic function: it’s a community
resource for people of all ages, a center for the learning
and sharing of all forms of music and dance.
“We have a philosophy that creating a rich and stimulating
atmosphere is critical for human development,” said
Larry Zukof, director of NMS. “The more stimulating,
the better. We know that children need human contact, song,
vocalization, movement, and a variety of materials that they
can manipulate. We also know that putting young children into
lessons – more structured learning – too early
can impede their musical development.”
At NMS, early childhood music classes combine music and movement
and expose children to a variety of musical forms. Pam Welch,
director of the school’s early childhood music program,
and many of the early childhood educators at NMS have trained
with Feierabend and draw on his Kodály-based approach.
They also incorporate classical repertoire. Some NMS early
childhood faculty members are Orff-Schulwerk educators. This
fall, the school has added two Orff-Schulwerk classes for
children in grades 1-2, further increasing the diversity of
its program. NMS also offers early childhood Suzuki classes
through the Teddy Bear Rhythms program in Guilford (older
children may continue with Suzuki lessons at the New Haven
site).
For children ages 6 months to 4 years, NMS’s core early
childhood classes, “Making Music,” offer an integrated
approach that keeps kids playing, singing, listening, and
moving. For children ages 3 and 4, the program branches in
two directions: “1-2-3 Sing With Me,” a more singing-based
class, and “Rhythmic Movement,” which is more
dance-oriented.
For a different approach, Liz McNicholl, director of Musical
Folk, teaches Music Together classes at two locations in New
Haven and will soon be expanding to Branford. Music Together,
a play-based program, offers fun, interactive musical learning
for young children using songs, rhythm instruments, and recorded
music. Songs are arranged or composed to appeal to children.
They demonstrate particular musical principals and build on
one another. Some of the music is traditional folk; many songs
are composed by Music Together founder Ken Guilmartin.
Like Music Together, Kindermusik, another early childhood
program, operates as a for-profit business. Music by the Sea
offers Kindermusik classes in Branford, North Madison, Guilford,
and Old Saybrook. Music Together works with a mixed group,
ages 6 months to five years. NMS, Kindermusik, and Suzuki
classes group children within more limited age ranges.
While classes offer valuable learning opportunities for parents
and children, they are expensive. It costs several hundred
dollars to provide continuous early childhood music classes
for one child for one year. For many families, especially
those with more than one child, the cost may be prohibitive.
But singing at home is free. I have an anthology of folk songs,
and I search the Internet for new song ideas and lyrics I’ve
forgotten. The public library has resources too. Neighborhood
Music School offers scholarships in early childhood classes.
And McNicholl periodically offers free Music Together classes
at the New Haven and North Haven public libraries. For parents
so inclined, religious communities such as churches and synagogues
have always played an important role in music education by
exposing children to live music. As they grow older, many
children in the Greater New Haven region are fortunate to
work with wonderful music educators like O’Hara-Best
and others, both in public and private schools.
Music educators agree: live music is best. As my dad put it,
music doesn’t come from a box.
“You saw from a very early age that music is something
people do,” he said. “Today many people basically
think that music is recorded. In the music stores of my childhood,
there was only one small section of recorded music. The rest
of it was sheet music, instruments, music stands – things
for making music.”
When people make music together, they embody community in
its best, most joyful sense. I see it in my own children and
have experienced it in my life. Most children won’t
become professional musicians. And that’s fine.
“Teaching music is not my main purpose,” Suzuki
said. “I want to make good citizens. If children hear
fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it,
they develop sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. They
get a beautiful heart.”
It was late. My dad yawned. He’d gotten up at 4am that
day (to practice the piano of course). I had 35 miles to drive
and a busy day of work and children ahead of me. I thanked
my dad. For the dinner. For the conversation. For the love
of music he instilled in me from the beginning.
What's on?
David A. Brensilver
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Sam Waterston will star in the world
premiere of Athol Fugard’s Have You Seen Us?
at Long Wharf Theatre. Photo courtesy of Long Wharf
Theatre. |
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With summer behind us, it’s time to look ahead to a
performing arts season that promises a wealth of dance, music,
and theater programs, more, certainly, than can be discussed
in these pages. What follows is a mere sampling of what area
audiences can look forward to experiencing in the coming weeks
and months.
The Shubert Theater, which, on December 11, will celebrate
the 95th anniversary of its opening night, has booked a Broadway
series that includes family favorites Annie, The
Wedding Singer and Disney’s Beauty and the
Beast, in addition to Avenue Q, which the theater’s
executive director, John Fisher, believes will be embraced
by Yale University students, and The 39 Steps, a
comedic nod to Alfred Hitchcock that kicks off a national
tour in New Haven.
Modern dance aficionados should mark their calendars for performances
at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts. As it
celebrates the 10th anniversary of its Breaking Ground dance
series, the Center welcomes the Stephen Petronio Dance Company,
which Director Pamela Tatge calls “one of America’s
most important” touring companies. As it celebrates
its own 25th anniversary the company will perform Petronio’s
I Drink the Air Before Me, which explores the power
of extreme weather conditions and features music by American
composer Nico Muhly and the participation of the Middletown
High School Chamber Choir.
Tatge said part of her mission in programming the series “has
been to reveal artists that are perhaps under-recognized.”
One of those is the Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson &
Company, an ensemble of dancer-vocalists that comes to Connecticut
for the first time to perform Thorson’s Heaven,
an evening-length work that Tatge says looks at how different
religions approach the nature of ecstasy. It’s a work
Tatge says will be “provocative in terms of the kind
of dialogue we hope it will foster.”
Also coming to Wesleyan this season is the Reggie Wilson/Fist
& Heel Performance Group, whose The Good Dance –
dakar/brooklyn, a work by the Brooklyn-based Wilson and
Dakar-based choreographer Andréya Ouamba, investigates
the cultures that exist around the Congo and Mississippi rivers.
The Good Dance – dakar-brooklyn received preview
performances at this summer’s International Festival
of Arts & Ideas, and will be premiered at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music before arriving at Wesleyan.
Dance audiences should also be aware of what’s going
on this season at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts
at Fairfield University. In addition to performances by Pilobolus,
which Director of Programming Deborah Sommers calls “the
darling of Connecticut,” the Quick Center welcomes Ronald
K. Brown/Evidence, A Dance Company for a performance of the
New York-based choreographer’s Two-Year Old Gentlemen,
as well as the Ballet Folklórico de México,
founded by the late Amalia Hernández, and the Moscow
Festival Ballet, which will stage the classic Coppélia.
Rounding out the Quick Center’s dance programming is
the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in a performance of legendary choreographer
Twyla Tharp’s Sue’s Leg.
For music aficionados, there’s no shortage of impressive
artists passing through New Haven. The John Lyman Center for
the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University
will present Dutch saxophone megastar Candy Dulfer, who, in
addition to a successful solo career, has worked with such
musical legends as Prince and Maceo Parker. Also coming to
the Lyman Center are the Philadelphia-based band Pieces of
a Dream with singer Phil Perry and the ever-popular Spyro
Gyra with guest vocalist Jane Monheit.
New Haven’s premiere jazz venue, Firehouse 12, continues
to showcase extraordinary musicians. The venue’s Fall
Jazz Series kicks off this month with Brandon Ross & Blazing
Beauty and continues with the Matt Wilson Quartet, led by
its drummer-namesake. The series also brings to town a trio
led by alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa that includes
bassist Mark Dresser and drummer and New Haven native Gerry
Hemingway, both of whom have worked extensively with celebrated
saxophonist and Wesleyan professor Anthony Braxton. Also coming
to Firehouse 12 is the Taylor Eigsti Trio, led by the composer-pianist,
and the Mary Halvorson Quintet. Halvorson’s 2008 album
Dragon’s Head, which was recorded for Firehouse
12 Records, has done “exceptionally well,” says
Firehouse 12 owner Nick Lloyd. Bringing the season –
which, at press time, was still being booked – to a
close is a trio led by cellist Daniel Levin, former music
director at New Haven’s Amistad Academy. Lloyd describes
Levin’s music as “high-energy stuff” that
is, “in its way, very accessible.”
The so-called “classical music” calendar (this
writer feels obligated to point out that not all chamber,
choral, and orchestral music was composed during the classical
period) is rich in compelling programs. The New Haven Symphony
Orchestra, in addition to welcoming composers-in-residence
Augusta Read Thomas and Jin Hi Kim, will present, over the
course of its season, the complete Beethoven symphonies, a
symphonic cycle Music Director William Boughton calls “the
musician’s Everest.” The orchestra’s season,
aptly billed as “Beethoven and Beyond,” will showcase
the composer’s nine symphonies, as well as works by
Brahms, Mozart, Schoenberg, Shubert, Walton, Webern, Thomas,
and Kim. Soloists performing with Boughton and the orchestra
this season include violinist Kurt Nikkanen, cellist Mihai
Marica, pianist Irena Koblar, and violinist Ani Kavafian.
The New Haven Chorale, which was founded in the fall of 1950
and thus is entering its 60th season, will present “Ode
to Music,” a Baroque concert that showcases Handel’s
oratorio Alexander’s Feast; “Unforgettable
Voices: American Masters of Choral Music and Song,”
a program of works by American composers including Barber,
Bernstein, and Copland, and arrangements of songs by Bob Dylan,
Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger, and others; and
“Cante de su Corazón,” a presentation of
Spanish-language music with the Alturas Duo.
The Yale School of Music performance calendar features, among
other programs, a “Benny Goodman Centenary Celebration”
and performances by the Tokyo String Quartet, the Imani Winds
with the Jasper String Quartet (an ensemble-in-residence at
the school), the Orion Quartet with pianist Peter Serkin,
and the East Coast premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
and Yale faculty member Aaron Jay Kernis’ Symphony No.
3, Symphony of Meditations.
The Yale Institute of Sacred Music welcomes visiting professor
Masaaki Suzuki, an organist and conductor whom the Institute’s
director, Martin Jean, describes as one of the world’s
“prominent Bach performers.” This season, Suzuki
will conduct the Yale Schola Cantorum (with the Yale Collegium
Players) in an all Bach program and a concert of selections
from Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale,
and will also perform an organ recital. Simon Carrington,
who founded the Schola Cantorum in 2003 and retired at the
end of last season, will return to Yale to lead the ensemble
and organ soloist Thomas Murray in a program of works by Bennett,
Gibbons, and Taverner. The Institute’s season will also
include recitals by soprano Dame Emma Kirby and Emily Saliers
of the Indigo Girls, who will appear with her father, musician
and theologian Don Saliers, as well as an art exhibition,
Breaking the Veils: Women Artists from the Islamic World,
presented by Yale’s Council on Middle East Studies with
support from the Institute and the Divinity School.
Mark Bailey, who studied at the Institute, has planned a compelling
concert season for the New Haven Oratorio Choir and Orchestra,
of which he’s the music director. As Mendelssohn’s
200th birthday is celebrated worldwide, Bailey’s period-instrument
and vocal ensemble will offer its own take on the occasion
with “Mendelssohn’s Muse,” a program of
works by composers whose work influenced Mendelssohn, as well
as Mendelssohn’s cantata, Jesu, meine freude,
a nod to Bach’s work of the same name, which the Choir
and Orchestra performed last season. Bailey’s ensemble
will also put on a Baroque Music Gala that will culminate
in a performance of Handel’s coronation anthem Zadok
the Priest and a Russian Baroque choral program in which
Bailey, a Russian Baroque music scholar, will introduce audiences
to music set to sacred text from the Russian Orthodox Church.
Area theatergoers need no introduction to the caliber of work
presented each season by the Long Wharf Theatre and Yale Repertory
Theatre. The former continues its relationship with South
African playwright Athol Fugard, whose Coming Home
received its world premiere at Long Wharf Theatre last season.
This season, Long Wharf Theatre will present the world premiere
of Fugard’s Have You Seen Us? The play will
be directed by Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Gordon
Edelstein and will star Sam Waterston, whom Edelstein says
is “truly one of our great stage actors.”
Edelstein will also direct his adaptation of Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House, a production, Edelstein says,
that will look unlike any other adaptations audiences have
seen. Long Wharf Theatre will stage Nilaja Sun’s No
Child …, the world premiere of Darci Picoult’s
Lil’s 90th, a piece Edelstein describes as
a “very funny and moving play,” and the A.R. Gurney
comedy Sylvia, which will be directed by the theater’s
Associate Artistic Director Eric Ting, whose stage adaptation
(with Craig Siebels) of Hemingway’s classic novella
The Old Man and the Sea received its world premiere
at Long Wharf Theatre last season. Long Wharf Theatre will
kick off its season with a production of The Fantasticks
that, in Edelstein’s words, will “look and
seem utterly different than how anyone’s seen the show”
staged before.
The Yale Repertory Theatre will present the musical Pop,
a world premiere production by Maggie-Kate Coleman (book and
lyrics) and Anna K. Jacobs (music) inspired by the shooting
of Andy Warhol. The Yale Rep’s season will include a
new production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder directed
by Evan Yionoulis, whom Artistic Director James Bundy says
is known for a “strong combination of heart and intelligence
and theatricality,” and a new play by Danai Gurira,
Eclipsed, based on interviews the playwright conducted
with women in Liberia. The Rep will also stage Carlo Goldoni’s
The Servant of Two Masters and the world premiere
of Rinne Groff’s Compulsion, a work inspired
by the life of Meyer Levin that Bundy says “has a lot
of imaginative breadth to it,” as well as French playwright
Bernard-Marie Koltès’s Battle of Black and
Dogs directed by Robert Woodruff, who, last season, directed
the Rep’s production of Dostoevsky’s Notes
from Underground.
Theatergoers should also keep an eye what the New Haven Theater
Company is up to this season. In December, the company will
stage Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel’s
A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration,
which was produced last year at Long Wharf Theatre. T. Paul
Lowry, New Haven Theater Company’s creative director
and producer, promises a “new, fresh approach”
to Vogel’s piece with a cast of “dozens and dozens
of performers of all ages.” His aim, Lowry says, is
to make his company’s production a “big community
event.” The New Haven Theater Company will also produce
the winner of “Pick Our Play,” an online initiative
in which the audience submitted the names of 32 plays, some
classic, some new, and voted on which one the company would
produce. In October, the company will stage Soccer Moms
from Hell, a new play by Richard Cummings set in Fairfield
County.
Must-sees in the galleries
Don’t miss …
… Brooklyn-based artist William Lamson’s site-specific
public-art installation in The Lot (Chapel and Orange streets),
presented by Artspace (artspacenh.org). Lamson will install
oversized basketball hoops and backboards made from rebar,
rope, and wood onto The Lot’s 25-foot rigger poles creating
a miniature basketball court. A public opening and pick-up
basketball game will be held on Saturday, September 12, from
2-6pm. Basketballs will be available at Artspace (all types
of balls will be welcomed on the court). From November 10-December
19, Lamson’s work will be the focus of a solo exhibition
at Artspace …
… Dispersion, a City-Wide Open Studios (cwos.org)
Juried Exhibition curated by Dina Deitsch, assistant curator
of contemporary art at the DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts.
The exhibition, which opens September 17 at Artspace, features
the work of 26 artists. An opening reception is scheduled
for Friday, October 2, from 6-8pm. Index II, the
second of two unjuried exhibitions of work by registered City-Wide
Open Studios artists, is on display through August 29 …
… Cultural Passages: What’s Art Got to Do
with It? Kicking off with an Opening Day Celebration
at Creative Arts Workshop (creativeartsworkshop.org) on Sunday,
September 13, from 1-4pm, this exhibition features works in
a variety of media by 57 Connecticut artists whose cultural
experiences the exhibition aims to reveal …
… Mrs. Delany and Her Circle and Horace
Walpole’s Strawberry Hill at the Yale Center for
British Art (ycba.yale.edu). The 18th century artistic contributions
of Mary Delany, which, to some degree, have fallen through
the cracks of art history, are recovered and explored alongside
an exhibition of historical objects collected by Delany’s
contemporary, Horace Walpole, at his Strawberry Hill estate
…
… The Pull of Experiment: Postwar American Printmaking
and Continuous Present at the Yale University Art
Gallery (artgallery.yale.edu). A period of great experimentation
in printmaking is examined in an exhibit that represents a
bridge from surrealism and cubism to abstract expressionism
through the work of artists of the time who embraced printmaking
as a creative medium unto itself. And the aesthetically divergent
work of 11 contemporary artists working in a variety of media
challenges our experience of the present …
… Disease Detectives at the Yale Peabody Museum
of Natural History (Peabody.yale.edu) is an interactive exhibit
in which museum visitors enter the world of epidemiology,
investigating the origins, transmission, and prevention of
infectious diseases …
Change some of us can believe in
Gabriel Seidman
This past summer, as part of the International Festival of
Arts & Ideas, New Haven had the distinction of hosting
Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at the Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation. His short stay in the city consisted
of two main stops: the “Artists, Diplomats, and Other
Actors on the Global Stage” panel hosted at the Yale
Center for British Art and a dialoguing session coordinated
by The Arts Council of Greater New Haven for executive directors
of nonprofit arts organizations and arts funders. As the Yale
President’s Public Service Fellow at the Arts Council
this summer, I had the pleasure of sitting in on the latter,
feeling just a bit out of place, and observing.
The luncheon began with a brief but dynamic speech by Cameron
on the need to rethink the 501(c)3 model that has dominated
the nonprofit arts world for the past five decades or so.
In just half an hour, Cameron blew through philosophical musings
on human nature, a structured list of everything he believes
is wrong with nonprofit arts organizations, and the various
missions of the Doris Duke Foundation. Those in attendance
barely came up for air as they scrambled to write down everything
he had to say, and with good reason, since Cameron addressed
issues large and small with refreshing and novel clarity.
Still, after 30 minutes of listening to nearly flawless soapboxing
on the need for “short-term survival and long-term transformation,”
I came out of the meeting fixated on the only point with which
I disagreed. It can be summed up in Cameron’s own four-word
sentence: “Change always provokes anxiety.”
Now, I’m writing with the assumption that everyone reading
this can recall a significant shift in political power that
happened at the federal level this past winter. And anyone
with even the vaguest recollection of this transition will
remember that Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency
depended wholly on his promise to bring about “change.”
Change. That one word meant a lot to America back in November.
It meant a higher percentage of voter turnout than the country
had seen in 50 years. It meant younger, more racially diverse
groups caring about politics. And it meant a reversal in America’s
direction after eight years of cynical Bush-bashing. It certainly
did not evoke the kind of crippling fear or nail-biting worry
one might normally associate with anxiety. In fact, I’d
be willing to go out on a limb and say it did exactly the
opposite. On one hand, we could credit this apparent dichotomy
between the nation’s zeitgeist and Cameron’s opinion
to an oversight in his choice of words.
Perhaps Cameron actually meant to say “excitement”
or “restlessness,” rather than “anxiety.”
On the other hand, however, it is possible that he chose his
words correctly but failed to realize that his point only
applies to a subset of the population. And, based on something
else Cameron said, I am inclined to believe the latter.
Cameron cited an overwhelming discontentedness among young
people eager to enter the arts world. They complain of an
inability to influence and change older arts organizations,
many of which they are inheriting with broken or dated administrative
structures. They protest: “Unless we are given the same
authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as (members
of the previous generation) were given, we are not interested.”
Clearly, the next generation of arts leaders is not worrying
about change. They seem to be worrying about a lack thereof.
And, considering Cameron based his whole spiel on the idea
that we need to do away the current 501(c) 3 model, I find
it safe to say that we need a new generation of pioneers to
rethink the structure of our nonprofits. In today’s
economic climate, these organizations cannot survive without
such a transformation. Change is necessary, and it will most
certainly begin to provoke anxiety. But only in those individuals
who refuse to acknowledge that, without it, the noncommercial
arts world will cease to exist.
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