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Former teahouse in a park next to the Afghan Exhibition of Economic and Social Achievements in the Shah Shahid district of Kabul. Balloons were illegal under the Taliban, but now balloon-sellers are common on the streets of Kabul providing cheap treats for children.
Just for the record:
I've been using the phrase "I've got you pixelled in" instead of "I've got you pencilled in" for over a year now when I confirm that I've put something on my calendar. Feel free to use it yourself, but when everyone starts using the phrase, when it becomes part of our digital-age idiom, just know that I wrote the phrase.
The trailer for a production of Edward Albee's "The Goat," project by a Miami University student as part of his Masters in Directing degree. I'll be going to the Saturday night show in room 100 of the Art Building.
Kick off your summer right with Know Theatre of Cincinnati and the fourth annual Cincinnati Fringe Festival (May 30 to June 9, 2007). Following the success of last year’s programming, Know Theatre of Cincinnati officially merged with Cincinnati Experimental Arts, the prior producing organization of the Cincinnati Fringe. This season’s merger with Know Theatre promises a kick-ass Kickoff Party and even more late night entertainment in Know Theatre’s new cabaret space, The Underground Lounge, at 1120 Jackson Street.
Friday, May 18, 2007 - Know Theatre of Cincinnati’s Underground Lounge, 1120 Jackson Street.
Know Theatre of Cincinnati premiered its capacity as a full-service bar with their “007” New Year’s Eve party and will continue to spice up Cincinnati’s night life with the official 2007 Cincinnati Fringe Festival Kickoff. With lots of room to mix, mingle, and dance; Know Theatre will be thumpin’ with live local music and stimulating your brain with sneak peeks of upcoming Cincinnati Fringe Festival.
Alone Together
Ted Brengle
“A love story, shattered.”
From: Oxford, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
36 minutes
Comedy, drama
Alone Together follows the course of a relationship between two people, from friends to lovers to strangers. After a fashion. Love is a delicate equation, after all. A balance of conflicting forces: passion, trust, and the loss of control both of them necessitate. If that balance ever breaks down, it can seem like the world itself shatters. And the fiery pieces that rain down in the wake can come to rest next to each other oddly; arrayed in new patterns that are sometimes illuminating, sometimes joyous, sometimes painful, and sometimes inescapable. Sitting in the ruins, those who are left behind can huddle near the fading warmth of these embers. Alone at last. Alone together.
Amid the Noise
So Percussion
“Subtly dynamic street scenes set to breathtaking soundscapes.”
From: Kyoto, Japan
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
52 minutes
Family Friendly, Inter-disciplinary, musical
Amid the Noise amplifies the everyday with subtly dynamic street scenes of Kyoto, Osaka, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Bali set to breathtaking soundscapes and quietly surging beats. The 12 short films are a bi-product of the collaboration between filmmaker Jenise Treuting, composer Jason Treuting and producer Lawson White on the documentary ‘Invitation and Ultimatums.’ The Brooklyn-based quartet So Percussion recently released ‘Amid the Noise’ as their 3rd album on Cantaloupe Music. ‘(Amid the Noise) creates a unique experience...a comparison of the dichotomy of the films natural and mechanical world and the natural percussion and mechanical programming of the music.’ - Wes Barker ‘Rich and Engrossing’ - Time Out NY ‘These short films serve as an effective visual metaphor for each of the albums tracks, as what might initially appear to be an inert or vacant frame can be seen, upon closer examination, to be teeming with continuous quiet activity.’ - Pitchfork Media
Ancestral Voices
MN2 Productions
“An interdisciplinary work that explores a story of two sisters.”
From: Cleveland, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Inter-disciplinary
Ancestral Voices is an original dance-theatre piece which explores the story of two sisters: one destroyed by fate and the other one thriving with her good fortune. Fate has set for them two disparate paths and though they were inseparable as children, their destinies as adult women have dissolved that once tender union. Elements of Ukrainian life rituals (baptisms, weddings and funerals) as well as folk music and folk lore regarding the changing seasons (spring songs, summer fire festival songs, winter songs) are integrated into the work. The story draws its text from Ukrainian folk songs and the poetry of Oleksander Oles, Lesia Ukrainka, Taras Shevchenko and Mykhailo Drai-Khmara and is presented through a fusion of modern dance, puppetry, folk music and theatre. Choreography by Natalie M. Kapeluck and Mark Tomasic. Written and directed by Nadia Tarnawsky.
Art of Longing
Ovation Theatre Company
“Ordinary people set out to uncover the extraordinary.”
From: Covington, KY
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
55 minutes
Comedy, drama, inter-disciplinary
Ordinary people set out on individual quests to discover "the extraordinary" in life. Through their encounters they uncover sometimes troubling truths about themselves and their fellow travelers. Ultimately, their search leads them to a crisis they can only resolve by relying on each other, and to a surprising vision of hope in an unsettled world. The Art of Longing is the original creation of an ensemble of actors blending movement, theatre and spoken word. Ovation Theatre Company is proud to present this journey of extraordinary discovery.
Caberlesque!
BSide Productions
“Blending the best of European Cabaret with American Burlesque, Caberlesque! is a cheeky, sassy, sexy romp!”
From: St. Regina, SK, Canada
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
80 minutes
GLBT, women’s issues, comedy, inter-disciplinary, musical
Join Ms. Sugarpuss and friends as they take you on a sexy journey through the romance of Berlin 1933, with the music of Kurt Weill and Irving Berlin, the brash raunch of Amsterdam 1967, with the music of Jacques Brel and Henry Mancini and into the smoky burlesque houses of contemporary NYC - where anything goes!
Calculus: The Musical!
Matheatre
“A comic ‘review’ of the concepts and history of calculus.”
From: Austin, TX
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
50 minutes
Family friendly, comedy, musical, educational
Calculus: The Musical! is a comic ‘review’ of the concepts and history of calculus. With musical parodies that span genres from light opera to hip-hop, Matheatre puts the ‘edge’ back in ‘education!’
Casualties
Sally Domet
“Young woman seeking self-identity encounters others who are ‘Casualties’ of life.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
90 minutes
Drama
Casualties traces a young woman’s odyssey in her quest for self-identity. The play begins in the downtown tenements where Angie grew up, then leads from the fifties to the sixties, at which point she hooks up with draft-dodger Bruce, and then with Bruce’s buddy Rick, who is just fresh from Vietnam. Rick is haunted by images of war and attempts to escape by burying himself in drugs and booze. Angie battles a different enemy: ghosts and images from her past. These include her abusive stepfather Mac, her Grandma, and an aged woman called Old Mary who is known to be psychic. Other pivotal characters include a Cherokee woman named Wilma who guards a secret, and Angie’s eccentric uncle Stanley who is a misfit in society. The play revolves around issues of survival of the human spirit in the face of the killings, sexual abuse, post-war trauma, and feelings of isolation.
Christmas in Bakersfield
Traveling Kurkendaal Productions
“This is ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ meets Brokeback Mountain.’”
From: Los Angeles, CA
Third-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
GLBT, minority issues, comedy, solo
Les finally meets Mike the man of his dreams. But when Mike takes Les home for the Christmas Holidays he forgets to tell his Republican, Caucasian, Conservative parents one very important detail, that Les is African American. OOPS!
Contains Adult Themes
Against Type Players
“Two performance pieces that explore humanity’s relationship to the mind.”
From: Maineville, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
90 minutes
Solo, drama, inter-disciplinary, shadow theatre/movement-based
Contains Adult Themes, two one-person performance pieces from writer/performer Kristin Larsen and Against Type Players, provides unique perspective on humanity Ts relationship with the mind and how it affects interpersonal contact. In The Rest is Up to You, a young girl named Inne loses her imaginary childhood friend as she falls under the seductive spell of Maroon, a controlling ventriloquist dummy. My Dresser Drawer reveals the artist Cid and her encounters with Verbal, a dream figure who may hold the key to ending Cid Ts struggle with self-mutilation. Both pieces employ found props, movement and shadow manipulation to embody the human impulse and resistance to change.
Exhale Dance Tribe Project
Exhale Dance Tribe
“A Hypnotic Human Experience.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
Third-time Cincinnati Fringer
50 minutes
Family friendly, GLBT, minority issues, women’s issues, dance
Exhale Dance Tribe, founded by Andrew Hubbard and Missy Lay Zimmer in 2000, is a company of any given number of dance artists. Exhale celebrates the full range of modern and rhythm-based dance and features diverse and versatile performers. Exhale is a company that is constantly daring to explore and expand notions of individuality and nonconformity. Based in Cincinnati's vibrant arts community, the dance tribe has appeared as part of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival 2004 - 06, Choreographers Without Companies, Dance Cincinnati '06 , Exhale’s annual ‘Evening at the Aronoff’ (jarson kaplan theater), performances with Know Theatre of Cincinnati and New Stage Collective, as well as New York premieres : 'under construction' and 'plutonian ode' in association with Planet Dance and Zodiac Dance.
Extreme Puppet Theatre
Soque du Soleil Productions
“Puppets gone wild - real puppets, uncensored, and out of control.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Comedy, puppetry
Extreme Puppet Theatre by Soque du Soleil Productions is an adult variety show which exposes for the first time the sordid history, the hand-to-mouth lifestyle, and bizarre sexual practices of today's puppet population. See puppets as you've never seen them before! Watch puppets on the fringe of becoming unraveled as they search for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything puppet. Using different forms of puppetry, including shadow puppets, hand puppets, marionettes, sock puppets, and postmodern puppets, Extreme Puppet Theatre is an adult show that is filled with humor, insight, and random acts of puppet debauchery. Its Monty Python meets the Muppets on crack. Keep the children at home for this one.
girlfight
Performance Gallery
“Accidental conflict. Mythical battle. Unintended consequences.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
Fourth-time Cincinnati Fringer
45 minutes
Comedy, drama, inter-disciplinary
Two women -Different perceptions -Conflict. The outcomes are endless. This provocative new ensemble-created performance piece explores conflict through physical theatre, sound and character. Both violent and funny, personal and epic, 'girlfight' challenges the way we view the world. You'll gasp, you'll laugh, and you’ll recognize yourself. P.S. 'girlfight' is a 'challenge play' with LePetomane Theatre. See their piece and have fun looking for the mutually incorporated words/themes and props.
Glenn’s Letters
Xavier University
A documentary performance regarding the death penalty, based on letters by students and inmates on Ohio’s Death Row.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
A documentary performance on the death penalty, based on actual letters written by Xavier University students and inmates on Ohio’s Death Row. We will dramatize the interactions between the students and inmates with footage of inmates in an “inside/outside” synergy that brings attention to a consistent life ethic and allows the audience to put a human face to real life inmates on Ohio’s death row today.
How To Fake Clinical Depression
Daydream Productions
“Starving artist fakes clinical depression to buy bass of dreams.”
From: Sherman Oaks, CA
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Comedy, solo
For the last three years, major pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have been recruiting research subjects off of Craigslist Los Angeles to test new anti-depressants by offering them money in exchange for taking their drugs. See how a starved actor/bassist twisted the study to his own diabolical needs, and got waaaay more than he bargained for.
I Do… I Think
Derby City Productions
“Happy ever after...If she can survive the wedding first!”
From: New York, NY
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Women’s issues, comedy, solo
Is life truly about the destination or the journey? Is a wedding about the party or the marriage? Would being a runaway bride really be all that bad? These are some of the questions New York actress (and Midwest bride) Amanda C. Thompson explores in her hilarious take on the ‘blissful day’ in her one-woman show I Do...I Think. And once you survive the wedding, then what? The first year of marriage isn’t quite the honeymoon when clashing traditions and overbearing mother in laws are thrown into the mix. Come laugh, and cry, as she recounts the most stressful day (and year) of her life!
Input
MegLouise Dance
“Choose your own adventure - a moving experience.”
From: Cleveland, OH
Second-time Cincinnati Fringer
40 minutes
Family friendly, women’s issues, comedy, solo, inter-disciplinary, improvisation, dance
Let us move you. Take 50 strangers, 8 dancers, 3 questions and one stage. Input your perspective and leave the rest to us. Its a dance performance of collective design and every show is different.
iLove
The Satori Group/New Stage Collective
“A sensual montage of love and being in America today.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
Second-time Cincinnati Fringer
80 minutes
GLBT, women’s issues, comedy, drama, dance, performance art
iLove is an ensemble theater piece inspired by Charles Mee's Fetes de la Nuit. It's a collection of both borrowed and created images, vignettes, and scenes that speak of love, philosophy and revolution. Fetes de la Nuit is a play set to the back drop of the worker revolution in France in May of 1968, and deals with issues surrounding a cultural revolution. It is about relationships affected by the need for change, or striving for change. It points to the truths in our society, and recalls a time when revolution was more readily embraced. Our goal is to illuminate the atmosphere of pre-revolution in America today just as Mee underscored the themes of love, philosophy and revolution with the atmosphere of May 1968. Using contemporary sources ranging from the spoken word poetry of Saul Williams to the films of Richard Linklater and Jean Luc Godard, Alone, Together is an un-original, original work.
I Take It Back
Odds & Ends Productions
“How much does one vote really count?”
From: Pittsburgh, PA
Second-time Cincinnati Fringer
45 minutes
Comedy, solo, drama
I Take It Back is a political coming-of-age story that follows an Ohio woman’s quest to take back her vote cast for George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential election. Using a mix of multimedia elements, a simple set and the intimate theatrical form of solo-performance this piece sets out to uncover the importance of personal truth in the political voice of each voter. A visit from God and a conversation with her surprisingly conservative vagina force the play’s heroine into action that sends her on a comical journey to revoke her misguided vote. WARNING: This play is based on real events. So you will be stuck in a room with a rehabilitated former Bush supporter. Please refrain from throwing eggs.
The Kid in the Dark
Mark Halpin, Richard Hess, Andrew Smithson
“A song cycle dealing with love, loss, fear, and hope.”
From: Coldspring, KY
Fourth-time Cincinnati Fringer
50 minutes
GLBT, musical
The Kid in the Dark is an original one-act song cycle dealing with love, loss, fear, and hope. Five CCM students perform original songs by Mark Halpin and Andrew Smithson, under the direction of Richard Hess.
Le Petomane Project
Le Petomane Theatre Ensemble
“True-life memoirs, forgotten telephone book lore, intra-ensemble personal attacks, and the lost tale of a mysterious and powerful being of pure electricity.”
From: Louisville, KY
Second-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Comedy, musical
This project may or may not include: true-life memoirs, forgotten telephone book lore, intra-ensemble personal attacks, and the lost tale of a mysterious and powerful being of pure electricity known in its former corporeal state of Benjamin Franklin.
Mad
Ink Tank
“One family’s courageous attempt to understand their schizophrenic son.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
Third-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Drama
A true story, Mad explores one family’s courageous attempt to understand their schizophrenic son as they fight to keep their family together in the face of chaos. Faced with sudden illness, the Dalton’s struggle to find answers and solutions for their son, as each are forced to confront their own inner demons. Mad illustrates the daily struggles involved with coping with Schizophrenia and the courageous stories of love, sacrifice and heartbreak that accompany caring for someone with a mental illness. Written by Jennifer Dalton, Mad is a personal account of her family’s experience with Schizophrenia. Dalton intertwines her own experiences with those of her family to tell the story of a man and a family paralyzed by illness.
Monkey’s Paw
The Snacktues
“It’s either a hallucination or a new take on a very old ghost story.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
55 minutes
Comedy, drama
Monkey’s Paw is a one hour play about the fear of fatherhood. It is fairly grim, funny and probably not for everyone. It uses the monkey’s paw fable as an allegory and counterpoint. It’s either a hallucination or a new take on a very old ghost story.
Noble Parasites
Maple Leaf Theatre Productions
“A very funny post-apocalyptic tragedy about a society living underground.”
From: Yellow Springs, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Comedy, drama
In an underground civilization that rejects life on the earth’s surface, a young woman finds a forbidden, secret-filled book. A very funny post-apocalyptic tragedy. “Sharply written always involving” – Now Magazine (also named Outstanding Script & Outstanding Production). “Alarming and entertaining” – Eye Weekly. “Shot through with trademark martini-dry humour deliciously written sci-fi” – Toronto Star
On Edge
Stephen Hunter
“A thrilling tale of betrayal, love, and sacrifice.”
From: Cleveland, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Comedy, drama
Two brothers bonded by a piece of jewelry and a secret, find the true meaning of brotherly love. One a star baseball player and the other a street purse salesman, they are two worlds apart, but secrets are revealed and they find out that they truly aren’t that many leagues away from being the same man.
Think Fast Go Slow
Todd Juengling
“Jazz guitar meets Simon: Pure electro-acoustic love.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
45 minutes
Family friendly, solo
In Think Fast Go Slow, guitarist and composer Todd Juengling creates electro-acoustic magic with his guitars, four Simons (an electronic memory game with flashing lights and sounds, for ages 7 to adult), phrase recorder, and various tools, toys and percussion. He combines solo guitar performance with 20th century electronic music, minimalism, jazz, and visual elements into a unique and coherent whole. Sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, humorous yet completely serious, a bit atmospheric but always in the groove.
True + False
Big Picture Group
“Half true, half false. Can you tell the difference?”
From: Oxford, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
90 minutes
Comedy, drama, inter-disciplinary, multimedia
Do you believe what you read in the papers? What politicians promise? What your lover tells you? What you tell yourself? In a series of personal monologues, half true and half false, True + False explores the blurry boundary between fact and fiction. Set in a multimedia junkyard of discarded televisions and hidden cameras, of live and pre-recorded images, the performance tests the audience’s ability to believe their eyes or trust their judgment.
Tommy Nugent’s The Show
Tommy Nugent
“One man, one act, one bullet.”
From: Dearborn Heights, MI
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
60 minutes
Comedy, solo, drama
Without the strength to start over yet again, Pentecostal preacher turned professional gambler, turned law school drop out, turned street magician, turned failed motivational speaker Tommy Nugent (of 2002’s hit Tommy Nugent’s Burning Man) takes a (final) page from hero Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo book of life and stages one last solo play - a play with more laughs than you’d expect and more truth than you may realize. Guaranteed to be the best show featuring animal traps, straitjacket escapes and Russian roulette you’ll see all week!
The War On Weather
Theatrezine
“There’ll never be a rainy day in America again, thanks to The War On Weather.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
50 minutes
Minority issues, women’s issues, comedy
America is in a protracted battle against foreign weather systems. Through policy and technology everyone in the U.S. is enjoying blue skies at a delightful 75 degrees, 365 days a year. In the War On Weather young men and women risk their lives to guarantee that U.S. citizens can live in a country where the skies are not cloudy all day. Weather manipulation was first used during the Vietnam War to prolong the monsoon season and block supply routes. Now meteorologic weapon strategies are being developed to ensure national security. This play uses actual U.S. military documents on weather control technology as a factual basis for the story. In these times of terror, where fear of all things foreign is fueling war… so keep your eyes on the sky, this may be satire but it isn’t sci-fi.
Wet Dream
Jammingtalent Productions
“Wet Dream....we hope you come.”
From: Cincinnati, OH
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
40 minutes
GLBT, minority issues, women’s issues, comedy, solo, drama, musical, dance, performance art
Wet Dream is a multi-media production that allows us to experience an erotic, fantasy-like performance. Veronica enters her bed room after a night of hard partying. She dresses for bed as she sings her blues away. She soon passes out, and begins to dream a sequence of intense fantasy- using aerial dance, live vocals, performance art and video. This is definitely a high- fashion product ... we hope you come.
Woof! The Road Show
Ragged Blade Productions
“A two-man musical about dogs, pancakes, sex, and theater.”
From: St. Louis, MO
First-time Cincinnati Fringer
70 minutes
GLBT, comedy, musical
Don’t you just hate it when you’re trying to make out and there’s a dog panting at your feet? Woof! Adam and Jon are touring a show. A gay romance, come to think, that Adam wrote without realizing he’d have to deal with an acting partner who keeps trying to make it happen in real life. If that’s not bad enough... a group of frustrated writers (and even the Wednesday Mah Jongg club (keep work shopping the play and our actors never know what’s in the script from one show to the next. Can they ever transfer the onstage love to back stage... even if there’s a clause in the contract that forbids it? An unusual play with dry humor, a bit of a vaudeville style, some makin’ out, and some great songs.
Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC) presents the regional premiere of Michael Hollinger’s Opus March 14 through April 1. In Opus, violinist-turned-playwright Hollinger (who received his Bachelor of Music in viola performance from Oberlin Conservatory and a Master of Arts in theatre from Villanova University) examines the chemistry between four very distinct personalities, who must, in the pursuit of artistic excellence, synthesize with one another to create one seamless sound.
Drew Fracher will direct. Artistic sponsor: The Dr. Stanley and Mickey Kaplan Foundation.Individual tickets are $32 for adults, $29 for students and seniors, and $16 for children ages 12 and under. Special “Rush” tickets are also available for $15, fifteen minutes prior to curtain (subject to availability). Call the ETC box office, 1127 Vine Street, at (513) 421-3555 or purchase tickets online at www.cincyetc.com. Audio enhancement, wheelchair accessible seating, and large print programs are available with advance notice by calling the ETC box office at (513) 421-3555.
A World Premiere from one of the leading lights of Broadway…
The great love story from one of the leading lights of all time…
A fascinating look at life and death from a skeptic and a believer…
The drama of a family striving to move forward from tragedy…
And a return of rollicking Christmas mayhem…
All are coming to downtown Dayton’s Loft Theatre during the 2007-2008 season, with the superb professional quality for which The Human Race Theatre Company is noted.
The five plays of The Loft Series will be:
SNAPSHOTS
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
Book by David Stern
September 20 – October 7, 2007 SERIES 1&2
The Human Race and Victoria Theatre Association are proud to be among three theatres presenting the world premiere of this new work by famed composer Stephen Schwartz. New tunes by Schwartz, old tunes by Schwartz (composer of Children of Eden, Godspell, and Wicked) and even old tunes with new lyrics trace a couple’s 30-year relationship after the wife, about to leave her husband, finds a collection of old Snapshots in the attic. The bittersweet musical follows them as the photos lead them to rediscover themselves and each other.
THE SUNSET LIMITED
By Cormac McCarthy
October 25 – November 11, 2007 SERIES 2
When a professor throws himself in front of a train, an ex-con pulls him out of harm’s way and takes him home to talk. The skeptical professor and his faith-driven rescuer then debate truth, fiction, and belief, seeking an answer to the age-old question, “Is life worth living?” The characters have strongly diverse opinions, but all is not black and white in this work by an author famed for his novels of the southwest. The Chicago Tribune calls The Sunset Limited “brilliantly articulated.”
A TUNA CHRISTMAS
By Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard
December 6 – December 23, 2007 SERIES 1
Leave your brain at home and roll with the holiday fun in the third smallest town in Texas, where the best lawn display contest is down and dirty, and a mysterious phantom may strike at any time. Two actors play 22 characters, setting off 222 chortles, guffaws, and knee-slappers, and some of the world’s strangest Christmas trees have cameo roles as themselves, in a comedy so down-home even the New York Times called it “a hoot.”
ROMEO AND JULIET
By William Shakespeare
January 31 – February 17, 2008 SERIES 2
Wherefore art we bringing Romeo and Juliet to The Loft? Because it’s one of the greatest love stories ever told, that’s wherefore - Montagues, Capulets, street fights, balcony scenes, teenagers in love, the most tragic ending, the most beautiful language. What light from yonder window breaks? It is the love of the ages shining from The Loft. Director Brian Crowe – who brought us the stunning Tempest – will bring his touch to this classic.
RABBIT HOLE
By David Lindsay-Abaire
March 13 – March 30, 2008 SERIES 1
David Lindsay-Abaire, previously known for his deft comic touch, shows a deep understanding of the process of rising above grief, in this stirring drama of a family coping with the accidental death of a four-year-old boy. The New York Times acclaimed the script’s ability to find hope in the lowest moments in life for its “meticulously mapped empathy.” The New York production reaped five 2006 Tony nominations.
Season tickets are now available by calling Ticket Center Stage at (937) 228-3630 or (888) 228-3630 or by visiting www.ticketcenterstage.com. Subscription prices run from $72 to $90 for either series, $120 to $150 for both.
Individual show tickets will go on sale over the summer. Single ticket prices range from $28 to $34, with discounts for Seniors, Children & Students.
Go! FEATURE
The Acting Company breathes life into a classic novel by giving it a contemporary appeal.
“This is the first American production of this adaptation,” said Hannah Cabell, who plays the title character in
The Acting Company’s touring production of “Jane Eyre,” the classic Charlotte Bronte novel. “She really captured the spirit of the novel, which is hard to do when turning a 600-page book into a two and a half hour play.”
It’s also quite the tour de force for Cabell as the play follows Jane from ages 10 through 19.
“So it’s up to me to figure out how a person like that matures based on what she goes through,” she said.
Because the novel is so huge, the action on stage moves quickly. There are 23 scenes in the first act alone.
“So instead of making these changes gradually, I had to throw myself into it to make sure the audience feels that she is really going through these things.
“Many people see her as a very angst-ridden character, very frustrated, but I see her as a very strong person, but someone who loses courage and makes a few wrong decisions.”
Cabell also takes issue with the categorization of the novel as a bit of “chick lit.”
“I disagree with that very heartily,” she said. “I see it as a story about a human being. Certainly, it’s an early feminist work, but that shouldn’t keep men from being sucked up in the story and being moved by it.”
Cabell said this production is also greatly enhanced by the presence of an on-stage cellist whose music underscores the dialogue and facilitates changes.
“It really helps to move things along and link together all of the scenes,” she said.
how to go
WHAT: The Acting Company presents “Jane Eyre,” adapted by Polly Teale from the novel by Charlotte Bronte.
WHERE: Jarson-Kaplan Theatre, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday.
COST: $28.
MORE INFO:(513) 621-2787; cincinnatiarts.org.
llustration by Scott McKowen.
A trip to Ghana, West Africa, got Tracy Featherstone to thinking about how tenuous domestic situations can be.
At the time, the Miami University instructor was looking to buy her first home.
While her home-buying experience meant meetings with realtors and mortgage agents, she saw people in Africa going through quite a different set of rituals and processes.
“They would walk around the beach gathering palm fronds,” she said. “The incongruities of doing the same thing in different places at the same time really struck me, and as I thought more about it, the thing that most stuck with me is that our existence is really as ephemeral as the next, but we talk ourselves into thinking that these things are permanent and safe.”
Those contrasting images of domesticity — the African frond home and the custom-built American McMansion — started becoming metaphors for relationships: “The domestication of me,” she said.
Expressing this through her art entailed the construction of “child-like fort environments” for her Weston Gallery exhibition "Please Tie Me Down."
“Childhood fort building exemplifies the need to devise a safe personal space while emphasizing the awkward and inadequate nature of the structure created,” she wrote in her statement. “Standard Western construction elements such as two-by-fours and plywood mingle with less stable elements such as collage and papier-mâché. Industrial materials are reformed to reference their natural states. The unstable relationship between man and man or man and his natural environment is displayed through awkward acts of balance and aggressive intersections throughout the sculptures.”
In “Fall Out,” for instance, living room furniture undergoes transformations to underscore and emphasize their inherent instability.
“Love relationships are a temporary thing,” she said. “Things can go awry.”
“Fall Out” and some of the other installations use a television set as part of the imagery, a comment on the effect that instrument has had on our lives.
“I think television is primarily responsible for breaking down relationships in our society,” she said.
Featherstone received a bachelor of fine arts from the college of DAAP at the University of Cincinnati in 1997 and a master of fine arts from the University of Arizona in 2002. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions presented at Hiestand Gallery at Miami University and other galleries around the country. In 2006, she received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Creativity Award.
Featherstone lives and maintains a studio in Hamilton.
how to go
WHO: “Please Tie Me Down,” installation by Tracy Featherstone.
WHERE: Weston Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut Ave., Cincinnati.
WHEN: Through March 17.
COST: Donation.
Photo: "Escape Route"
Go! REVIEW
Although it’s set in the 1950s in Apartheid-era South Africa, “Master Harold and the Boys” still resonates.
This coming-of-age story concerns a young white South African boy/man and his relationship with two black men who work in his mother’s tea shop.
While Hallie, as the older of the two men refer to him, struggles with homework and the pending return home of his abusive, alcoholic father, Willie (Landon E. Horton) and Sam (Reginald Willis)are concerned with the ballroom dancing championship a mere two weeks away.
When he was a child, Harold (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music student Kyle Nunn) had a close relationship with the men, especially Willie, who would make kites for him. But as he grows and matures, becoming increasingly cynical of the world, his relationship with the men change. Harold now finds himself in a position of superiority, and willing to gloat a little about it.
Indeed, this rainy day in which the events of the play transpire may be the last day that Sam calls him “Hallie.”
“Master Harold” is now the appellation.
Underscoring their relationship is the tense racial relationships of the day. It’s interesting to note that Willie and Sam are concerned about competing in an event brought to their homeland by the white English and Dutch settlers, forsaking their own tribal heritage. Harold, however, has no interest whatever in the event until he realizes that he could write about their dreams as “an annual event of cultural significance” for a term paper assignment.
When Harold asks what happens when they bump into each other on the dance floor, Willie describes “a world without collisions,” in which the couples strive for perfection, trying to fit into a world where cultures are colliding from the outset.
“Master Harold and the Boys” is a telling of another sort of cultural collision. All three actors bring a smooth energy and style to the production. While their accents aren’t exactly dead-on some of the time, they are sufficient to lend time and place to the show.
The Harriet Tubman Auditorium at the Underground Railroad Freedom Center wasn’t built for theater, but New Edgecliff has done a credible job of making the conversion and compensating for the shortcomings of the space.
how to go
WHO: New Edgecliff Theatre presents “Master Harold and the Boys” by Athol Fugard.
WHERE: The National Underground Freedom Center’s Harriet Tubman Theater, 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati.
WHEN: through March 4.
COST: $18 adult; $14 senior/students.
MORE INFO: 888-588-0137; newedgecliff.com.
What goes around keeps going around.
Back in a previous life, John Starling was a bluegrass musician. Then he was a doctor. Now he’s a musician again.
In the 1970s, Starling was a founding member of the Seldom Scene, an influential bluegrass band that helped launch the career of Ricky Skaggs and included among its collaborators Emmylou Harris.
In 1977, Starling left the band to pursue his medical career as a head and neck surgeon — or as his musician friend liked to tease him, an “ear, nose and wallet man.”
“All this time, I was practicing medicine and did very little playing or road work,” he said, “but I would fill in from time to time when I could.”
But when he announced his retirement from medicine two years ago, music quickly rushed in to fill the void.
He re-connected with former Seldom Sceners Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray to form Carolina Star.
The debut set from that band, “Slidin’ Home,” just released this week, also includes a contribution by old friend Harris on “In My Hour of Darkness,” a song that he thought was written by the legendary Gram Parsons.
“Emmylou and I went to New England seven or eight years ago to do a college benefit,” he said. “The dean of that college had been Gram Parson’s dorm counselor when Gram went to Harvard.”
It was a song about losing good friends, and Starling had just lost one, so at the request of the dean, he and Emmylou worked up the Parson’s tune.
“When I decided to work it up again for the record, I called Emmylou and found out that she had a co-writing credit on that song,” Starling said. “She said she only contributed a couple of phrases or something, but it’s turned out to be one of my favorite tunes on the album.”
Starling said that playing music is like riding a bicycle, that it didn’t take long for him to get his chops back.
“You never really retire from music, I guess,” he said. “But when you retire from medicine, you really retire. I’ve only been gone for less than two years, and it’s already moved right past me.”
how to go
WHO: John Starling and Carolina Star.
WHERE: Parrish Auditorium, Miami University Hamilton Campus.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.
COST: $20 adults; $18 seniors; $12 students and children.
MORE INFO: (513) 529-3200; tickets.muohio.edu.
The Greatest Show on Earth reaches out to a new generation with a significant re-invention of the traditional circus.
“It’s been over 50 years since we’ve made changes this big,” said Mike Steward, general manager of the 136th edition. “We’re basically trying to reach out to 20- and 30-year-olds with children.”
The biggest change is the elimination of the three-ring format.
“You can focus your attention on the acts more,” Stuart said. “People don’t have to decide what to look at.”
The addition of a 24-foot television monitor also makes an appeal to the next generation of circus-goers.
“You don’t have to watch the screen, but it allows people to see stuff they might not see otherwise,” said boss clown Scott O’Donnell. “It brings a different element to the show.”
That “television appeal” goes one step further with the addition of a hostess, an “American Idol” runner-up Jennifer Fuentes.
“I’m the singer and the storyteller,” Fuentes said. “They call me 'the songstress extraordinaire.’”
Fuentes has five songs to sing in the show, including the traditional “Star Spangled Banner” opening.
“I pick a family out of the audience and try to interest them in different things they can become in the 'circus of dreams.’”
The father gets the chance to become the Ringmaster, the mother joins the trapeze artists and the children get to try out different things.
Some of the specialty acts for this edition include:
• The Kassaev Cossacks, which includes former members of the Russian cavalry. The new ringless format allows their horses to gallop at full speed.
• Madame Shamsheeva, a former member of the Moscow State Circus, who travels with 13 dogs, 14 cats and over 50 birds.
• Familia Torres, seven motorcycle-riding brothers who ride full speed in the traditional “Globe of Death.”
• The Clown Alley presents a NASCAR parody called “SMASHCAR,” featuring the world’s worst pit crew.
“The clowns are more involved in the show more than ever,” O’Donnell said. “The addition of a story line really allows them to branch out.”
how to go
WHO: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus presents “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
WHERE: U.S. Bank Arena, Cincinnati.
WHEN: Feb. 28-March 4.
COST: $15-$85.
MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.ticketmaster.com.
Fans of Nickel Creek may shed a few tears over the band’s imminent demise, but take heart in knowing that good things may rise from its ashes.
Even though there are still contractual obligations taking the band through the end of the year, mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile has already started on the next project.
When all is said and done, the band will be known as The Tension’s Mountain Boys, which will focus on combining chamber music and bluegrass, but first, it’s members are getting back to the bluegrass roots by performing as How to Grow a Band.
“We are gradually phasing out our other projects so this will be the main thing that all of us do,” Thile said. “But How to Grow a band is a finite endeavor.”
His relationship with Sara and Sean Watkins, the brother/sister team that is the rest of Nickel Creek remains “as good as it can be,” Thile said.
“There was no event that broke the band up,” he said. “It’s just that being in one band for 17 years is a long time, especially when you started at 8. It’s just time to move on and do something else.”
Something else began with fiddler Gabe Witchler, whom he met when he was 7 years old.
“We grew up playing together and always talked about doing something together, but didn’t know what it should be,” he said. “Then a couple of years ago, we were both suffering from broken hearts so we went out to dinner together and drank a bunch of wine and started talking.
“If I’m going to do something different, it’s going to be real different,” he said. “We’re moving away from pop music and toward acoustic music and the forms that are embodied in classical music.”
Following in the footsteps of bluegrass/classical fusion pioneers Mark O’Connnor and Edgar Meyer, The Tensions Mountain Boys will focus on “closing a divide that need not exist,” Thile said.
“There really isn’t that much space between sight reading and improvising,” he said. “We’re very oriented in our goal to push beyond that.”
The Tensions Mountain Boys will perform the world premiere of “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” a coming-of-age tale in four movements fusing elements of folk/pop songs and large-scale classical works, March 17 at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Listening to Black Diamond Heavies’ debut, “Every Damn Time” sounds like one of those bad nights at one of 
those hole-in-the wall dives with a sound man who’s worked at about a thousand too many punk rock shows and keeps turning the sound up until the speakers rattle like a blow-out on your front tire going 80 down I-75 until your ear lobes fold themselves over on their own to muffle the feedback but you can still feel the bass drum thumping against your chest until it alters your heart beat and you either run from the bar with your ears bleeding — or you dance.
“Yeah, that’s about what we were going for,” said frontman John Wesley Myers. “It was very loud in there. Van (Campbell, the drummer) was in one room and I was in the other, so a lot of what you hear is us hollering at each other because we couldn’t see.”
The son of a Southern Baptist preacher, Myers learned to play piano at his daddy’s Texas church until he, like the stereotypical PK, began to sow wild oats as a teenager and started pounding the keyboards to the wicked punk rock’n’roll instead. A natural progression, he said.
Then NPR changed his life.
A program on Howlin’ Wolf got him listening to the blues and he decided to see what would happen if one mixed equal parts Stooges and Muddy Waters.
When he first pulled together Black Diamond Heavies to try out that recipe, it was a four-piece ensemble based in Chattanooga. Attrition and a move to Nashville, not necessarily in that order, found the Heavies boiled down to a two-piece, keyboards and drums, but with all the shouting, distortion and feedback of an entire nation of punk.
“The biggest difference is that with only two players, the drums really become a lead instrument,” Myers said. “The music is more wide-open and it makes touring a whole lot easier.”
It’s probably not giving much away to remind you that just about every character in “Hamlet” dies by the final curtain.
The Know Theatre Company takes a different track by killing off everyone before the play even begins, which this production does with the prince’s famous final words, “The rest is silence,” spoken by Christopher Guthrie.
“It starts the moment before he dies and his entire life flashes before his eyes,” Guthrie said. “It could play in a loop if you would let it. It could go on forever.”
And in an odd way, it does. As one of the Bard’s most-quoted and frequently-produced plays, there’s probably at least one “Hamlet” going on somewhere in the world at any given moment. But this adaptation by the Know’s artistic director Jason Bruffy promises a multi-media re-invention.
The text is the same, maybe mashed up a little bit, but this “Hamlet” takes place in “an entirely different world” from a conventional production, Guthrie said: “Ours is a much more nebulous place. You don’t just move from room to room in the palace for everything, you see it through Hamlet’s eyes” using 10 on-stage monitors “to delineate between the things going on in Hamlet’s head and what is actually happening.”
Although this is the Know’s first production of anything by Shakespeare, Guthrie is an old hand in classic theater, having moved to Cincinnati in 2001 to join the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival (now Company). He also played Rosencrantz in that company’s paired productions of “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in 2004, earning a CEA nomination for the latter.
The Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival has been around (with other names) since 1993. In that time, it’s nearly exhausted the canon of William Shakespeare.
One of the last hold-outs is the current production, “The Winter’s Tale,” a play rarely produced anywhere.
This says a lot about the script, one of what the scholars call Shakespeare’s “problem plays.”
Indeed, the play is probably best known for one of Shakespeare’s most famous stage directions: “Exit, pursued by a bear” (to the company’s credit, the bear was one of the highlights of the show).
That’s not to discredit the rest of the cast, however. Nick Rose gave King Leontes a fair shot, although there’s not much in the script to explain exactly why he was so consumed with jealously that he would throw his wife (Corinne Mohlenhoff) in prison and send an assassin out to kill his best friend (Matt Johnson), the King of Bohemia, who apparently went to the same king school.
That, along with an abandoned baby, make up for a fairly dark and tragic first act, but one of the problems of “The Winter’s Tale” is the sudden shift in tone to a romantic comedy in Act Two.
The company doesn’t try to mask the 180 turn at intermission, but let the play be as it is. Shakespeare’s romantic comedies often utilize bizarre plot points like mistaken identies and the use of unlikely disguises. Here, the abandoned baby is now a blossoming shepherdess and engaged to the Prince of Bohemia, one of Shakespeare’s most incredible coincidences. Giles Davies keeps the entertainment value high, however, as the con man and cut-purse Autolycus, a part that really deserves a better play.
Though flawed from the outset, “The Winter’s Tale” still has historical significance, if only because of its author’s reputation on far more important works, and in the hands of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company it is more than a relic, but a piece of living theater.
There are a couple of missed opportunities in Carson Kreitzer’s “1:23,” now making its world premiere at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.
First, the play runs 75 minutes. It should have been 83 minutes, not only making the running time the same as the title, but it would have given the playwright another eight minutes to explicate exactly what she wants to convey in this mashing of two true stories, one legend and a handful of fictional subplots.
As it stands, “1:23” refers to the time cited on the interview tapes from the confession of Andrea Yates, the Houston woman who drowned her five children in 2001. The other true story is that of Susan Smith, who in 1994 let her Mazda roll into a lake with her two children inside, later making national headlines by pleading to the African-American hijacker who stole her car and children to return them.
(Although it’s not mentioned in the play, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity while Smith was convicted and now serves a life sentence.)
Intermingled with these stories is the legend of La Malinche, the mistress of 16th century explorer Hernan Cortes who drown the children she bore him, the world’s first Mestizos, rather than allow them to go to Spain with their father.
Eva Kaminsky plays Andrea as she gives testimony to the police video camera, taken from her actual statements, interjecting (fictionally, I presume) bible verses numbered 1:23 that may or may not have anything to do with her story or the others. The delivery is dry as dust, as appropriate, but fails to dig beyond the facts of the case and delve into the psychology behind it. Likewise, Deborah Knox’s Susan tells her story to a different detective (frequent Playhouse actor Robert Elliott), but also fails to provide much in the way of enlightenment or understanding.
Is that enlightenment to be provided, then, by the legend of La Malinche? Certainly it is the most interesting and colorfully-told of the stories, using projected drawings in crayon and colored pencil to liven up the concrete and plain-walled, police-station set.
Indeed, the production is slick and evocative, but in the end, doesn’t help scratch below the surface and remains a rather distant telling of the tales.
The second missed opportunity, perhaps, is the appearance of the Carjacker, the young black man who would’ve stolen Susan Smith’s car if a young black man had indeed stolen Susan Smith’s car. The Carjacker, appearing in the manner and function of a Greek chorus, could have been more than a projection of the fear Smith used to manipulate the public and the media for nine days. He could also have been effective spokesman for the darkness that drove these two women to the most horrible crimes imaginable, the murder of one’s own children.
"George M" opens March 16 at the Loveland Stage Company, 111 S. 2nd St. Loveland, Ohio
Show Dates: 8 p.m. March 16, 17, 22-24, 29-32; 3 p.m. March 18, 25, and April 1.
Tickets are $14 adults, $10 for seniors (60 and over) and students (18 and under).
See lovelandstagecompany.org for more information.
The Drama Workshop presents the British farce “Communicating Doors” by Alan Ayckbourn at the Westwood Town Hall, Feb. 16, 17, 22, 23, 24 at 8 p.m. and a matinee performance on Sunday, Feb. 18 at 3 p.m.
Ticket prices are $14 for preferred center seats and $12 for open side seats. Group rates are available. Please call our ticket line at (513)598-8303 or order your tickets online at thedramaworkshop.org.
Director talk-back after the Sunday February 18 performance.
“Communicating Doors” tells the sordid tale of Reece Wells, an aging business man, who has secrets to tell. Secrets that he tries to keep from his slimy business partner, Julian Goodman. Secrets which he confesses to a scantily-clad hired woman, Poopay. Secrets about his two wives, Jessica and Ruella. Secrets that embroils all three women in a convoluted race for their lives, race to loo and race for better clothing or at least, some clothing. The fun never ends in this British farce by the genius of Alan Ayckbourn. This clever and engaging piece unfolds with suspense, surprises and hilarity.The Department of Theatre & Dance at Northern Kentucky University announces the selection of three World Premiere plays which will be produced during its 13th Biennial Year End Series (Y.E.S.) Festival of New Plays. This year’s festival productions will be presented in repertory from April 12-22, with specific performances including talkback discussions with the playwrights, directors and special guests. Highlights of this year’s festival include the selection of a work written by NKU senior Brad Cupples, and the directorial debut of Broadway veteran and faculty member Teresa De Zarn.
The Chester County Automaton(s) by Brad Cupples will open the festival on Thursday, April 12 at 8:00pm in the NKU Corbett Theatre. When the members of the First Uniform Church of Perpetual Joy and Humility learn that the local scientist, Dr. Metternich, is in the process of creating an Automaton, a mechanical man, they believe the Apocalypse is at hand and will do anything to exorcise this demon from their midst. This fast-paced comedy examines the battle between science and the religious right through the eyes of a town full of people who choose emotion over reason.
Cupples, a senior who will graduate in May with a B.F.A. in playwriting, submitted the play under a pseudonym to the festival contest. It is the first time in the history of the Y.E.S. Festival that the work of an NKU student has been chosen for production, and Brad says he is “honored and excited to have his world premiere and first major production at the school he has called home for the past five years.” Originally from Jackson, Tennessee, Brad staged his first play (Adolf’s Follies, a rollicking fun musical set in Nazi Germany) at the age of 17 at the local high school theatre. He has developed a reputation for works of political and social satire. While at NKU, he has had various student productions of his work mounted, including Funny Sunny Beach Blanket Luau Extravaganza and a one man show titled All the Hot Chicks are in Hell. He has also performed in The Bald Soprano, The Crucible and The Importance of Being Earnest. The Chester County Automaton(s) will be directed by faculty member Mary Jo Beresford.
The Aaronsville Woman by Stephen Spotswood will make its debut on Friday, April 13 at 8:00pm in the NKU Stauss Theatre. When the skeletal remains of a woman believed to be thousands of years old are discovered in the small town of Aaronsville, Pennsylvania, renowned forensic anthropologist Eve Beecher is called back to the hometown she left over 20 years ago to verify the find. Although she tries to keep the trip strictly professional, a visit from her childhood friend and first love, Samantha, forces Eve to confront the painful past that caused her to leave Aaronsville. When the bones of the “Aaronsville Woman” are stolen, Eve must solve two mysteries: what has happened to the bones, and why did Sam betray her so many years ago?
Spotswood is a journalist and playwright living and working in the Washington, D.C. area. He is currently pursuing his M.F.A. in playwriting at The Catholic University of America (CUA). His previously performed works include Give Unto Caesar, winner of the CUA Religious One-Acts Festival, 3 a.m., Fire Burn and Cauldron, Teaching Silence and Says Eugenia, for which he was commissioned as co-author by The Cardboard Box Collaborative theatre company in Philadelphia. His play The Aaronsville Woman was read at The Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival in September and workshopped at the Region II Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in January. The premiere production of The Aaronsville Woman will also be the directing debut for faculty member Teresa De Zarn.
In the Wake of King Death by Chuck Spoler will premiere on Saturday, April 14 at 8:00pm in the NKU Corbett Theatre. In 1348, the Black Death wiped out thousands in Europe, including Princess Joan of England, daughter of King Edward III, who was on her way to be married to Prince Pedro of Spain. The alliance, which would have made Edward the most powerful man in the world, was prevented when Joan’s entire retinue was consumed by the Plague… but what would have happened if the princess had lived? In the play, Joan survives her journey to Spain, and we see what turns history may have taken as she encounters Pedro, his servant Gracias, an itinerant monk called Thimblerig, the beautiful prophet Oracle, and King Death himself in a story of confused identities and imminent Armageddon.
Spoler wrote his first play, Blood Memory, in 1999. When it won the Arts and Letters Prize in Drama, as judged by John Guare, Chuck was hooked. His work has also won the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, The Pennsylvania Playwright Right to Performance Award (twice), The Promising Playwright Award and The National One-Act Playwriting Competition, as well as a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Mr. Spoler’s plays have been produced in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio and Off-Off Broadway. Along the way, he has also taught playwriting at Goucher College in Baltimore, and conducted Hepatitis-C and HIV research while running a support group at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He lives on a goat and alpaca farm in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania with his wife and muse, Linda Apuzzo, an HIV researcher and fiber artist, and his daughter Shannon is a sophomore at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Mr. Spoler is a member of the Dramatists Guild. In the Wake of King Death will be directed by faculty member Brian Robertson.
The performance schedule for the three plays in the 2007 Y.E.S. Festival of New Plays is as follows:
The Chester County Automaton(s) April 12, 16, 19 and 21* at 8pm; April 14 at 1pm*
The Aaronsville Woman April 13, 17, 19 and 20* at 8pm; April 14, 15* and 21 at 4pm; April 22 at 1pm
In the Wake of King Death April 14, 15*, 18 and 20 at 8pm; April 21* at 1pm
*indicates performance with talkback to follow
Reservations may be made by contacting the NKU Fine Arts Box Office by phone at 859-572-5464. Tickets are $10 for adults, $9 for NKU faculty and staff, $8 for senior citizens 60 or older and $6 for students. All seating is general admission; space is limited, so advance reservations are recommended.
After Ashley, directed by Jason Bruffy, is a blisteringly funny and deeply moving story about a teenage boy navigating the media circus surrounding his mother’s tragic death. Know Theatre of Cincinnati concludes its 2006-07 Season “Entertainment Outside the Box” with Gina Gionfriddo’s critically acclaimed satire After Ashley in place of the originally slated Vatican Falls. Know Theatre is proud to present the Regional Premiere of After Ashley from April 19 – May 12 at Know Theatre, 1120 Jackson Street. Tickets are available through 513.621.ARTS (2787) or online at knowtheatre.com.
After Ashley was originally produced by Actor’s Theatre of Louisville at the 2004 Humana Festival of New Plays where it was widely received by critics and audience members. Shortly following its tremendous success at the Humana Festival, After Ashley made its regional debut at the Off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre in New York City featuring renowned actors Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down) and Anna Paquin (The Piano and X-Men).
It’s long been said that the blues -- in all its forms -- is one of the most potent means to transform pain into beauty. Lucinda Williams has known that since she began devouring music as a youngster growing up in Louisiana, and she’s been finding new ways to perform that alchemical reaction ever since.
Download samples at Lost Highway Records.com.
It’s long been said that the blues -- in all its forms -- is one of the most potent means to transform pain into beauty. Lucinda Williams has known that since she began devouring music as a youngster growing up in Louisiana, and she’s been finding new ways to perform that alchemical reaction ever since.
Download samples at Lost Highway Records.com.
With West, a disc that may well be Williams’ most personal work to date, the singer-songwriter channels both her emotion and restive creative energy into a startling set of songs that touch on both darkness and redemption. At turns strikingly spare and compellingly muscular, the album’s 13 cuts attest to her willingness to stretch as a musician -- and to put herself on the line as a chronicler of life.
“The songs deal with a chapter in my life and they definitely tell a story,” says Williams. “It’s probably been the most prolific time in my life as a writer. I’d been through so many changes -- my mother’s death and a very tumultuous relationship that ended badly-- so obviously there’s a lot of pain and struggling, but it ends with a look towards the future.”
There’s no disputing the sense of struggle that imbues songs like “Fancy Funeral” -- a ballad with a gentle lilt that can’t mask the disillusionment of a narrator trying to make a case for the meaninglessness of such an affair. Nor can one miss the ache in “Mama You Sweet,” a raw-but-right rumination on what remains after the loss of a loved one.
On the other hand, West is rife with songs that serve to enliven and affirm, albeit in decidedly non-Hallmark fashion. The fiery “Come On” -- a kiss-off tune in the mode of Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” -- uses a stinging guitar hook to grab the listener by the lapels, all the better for Williams to deliver a knockout blow with a flurry of acerbic, double-entendre lyrics. There’s a similarly edgy vibe at play in “Wrap My Head Around That,” which stalks stealthily for nine minutes of hypnotic rhythm -- goosed along by Bill Frisell’s serpentine guitar -- that matches Williams’ sharp wordplay at every turn.
The envelope-pushing sonics on those songs can be attributed to Williams’ recent listening patterns -- an eclectic list that includes Thievery Corporation and M.I.A in addition to The Black Keys and White Stripes -- as well as the collaborative relationship she developed with the album’s co-producer, Hal Willner.
“Hal certainly had a major impact on the outcome of the sound,” says Williams. “He had a lot of ideas and he brought in certain players -- Jenny Scheinman on violin, who did all the string arrangements and brought in a couple of other guys -- and introduced a little sampling. I wasn’t totally familiar with Hal’s work, but I listened to Marianne Faithfull’s Strange Weather and that made me think it would probably work. That album is so derived from folk and blues roots, yet it has this very mature womanly quality to it. My goal was to make a mature yet hip album.”
Lucinda Williams has been bringing those elements together since the onset of her career, which was launched back in the early ‘80s with a pair of acclaimed albums for Smithsonian/Folkways. She honed the spartan approach established on those discs on a self-titled 1988 collection that brought her to wider attention -- with listeners as well as with fellow performers like Mary Chapin Carpenter, who had a hit (and helped Lucinda win a Grammy) with the disc’s “Passionate Kisses.”
Having decided that she’d been doing “the singer-songwriter thing by default,” Williams took off in something of a new direction during the ‘90s, issuing the slow-burning Sweet Old World -- a disc that, as much as any release, helped place the Americana movement at the forefront of listeners’ minds -- and cementing her own spot in the cultural lexicon with 1998’s rough-hewn masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
That disc earned Williams a Grammy as a performer, and -- true to form -- inspired her to shift gears again for Essence (2001), a sensual, burnished offering that prompted Time magazine to dub her “America’s Best Songwriter,” a title she upheld righteously two years later in 2003 with World Without Tears.
In recent times, Williams has broadened her palette even further through frequent collaborations with kindred spirits -- acts as varied as The North Mississippi All-Stars and Flogging Molly -- who share her uncommon sense of non-revivalist traditionalism. That combination of rootsiness and restlessness runs through West like a raging rapid, cutting out craggy soundscapes that beckon listeners inexorably -- as on “Unsuffer Me,” perhaps the album’s most overtly bluesy offering.
“That’s very much in the tradition of the blues -- like one of those old Robert Johnson songs that deals with demons and trying to get free from them,” says Williams. “There are only so many subjects you can write about. Every song and every poem is about one of them -- love, sex, death, loss, redemption."
“That’s a song of redemption -- a spiritual song, to whoever your God is, whatever power it is that can come in and release your burden. In terms of searching, that’s something that’s ongoing in my life. I don’t know that I’ll ever achieve that spiritual/mental freedom as long as I am walking around on this troubled, disturbed chaotic planet that we all live on.”
That quest is at the center of each of West’s songs -- and Williams’ unflagging ability to embark upon it openheartedly from so many directions lends an unambiguously timeless feel to the disc, a sense that it can be appreciated in a bucolic meadow, a darkened room or a raucous roadhouse.
“I get tired of people looking at my songs and feeling that they’re all sad and dark,” she says. “There’s more to them than that. Some people might read Flannery O’Connor and see that as simply dark, and it is dark and disturbing, but there’s a philosophical aspect, even a comical aspect to it as well. I think that’s all there on this album -- it’s a full circle, like I’ve come through a metamorphosis.”
The haunting quality of Martha Scanlan's voice, unique perspective and poetic imagery of her songs helped to gain national acclaim for the innovative old-time string band, Reeltime Travelers. In their six years of touring they played some of America's most prestigious venues and festivals from the Grand Old Opry to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
After catching the attention of Grammy-winning producers T-Bone Burnett and Bob Neuwirth the group recorded a cut for the soundtrack to Cold Mountain and were featured on the Great High Mountain Tour along with Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley, and other artists from the “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” and “Cold Mountain” soundtracks.
Martha's songwriting first gained national attention in 2003 at the prestigious Merlefest Chris Austin Songwriting Contest where a panel of judges including Gillian Welch and Jim Lauderdale awarded her first and second place in the bluegrass and country music categories for "Little Bird of Heaven" and "Hallelujah".
The immersion into traditional American music and its expression in an ever-changing cultural landscape seems to be reflected in the songs she writes and the music she plays. Martha's first solo project is produced by and features Dirk Powell along with Levon Helm, Amy Helm and Glenn Patscha from the band Ollabelle. The album is due out in early 2007. When not on the road she divides her time between the mountains of East Tennessee and those of Western Montana.
A sold-out crowd waits in semi-darkness. Outside, a van pulls up and five beautiful rag-tag misfits carrying all manner of instruments saunter through the back door. They head unapologetically, past the frantic promoter, and onto the stage.
Po'Girl starts the show. In typical Po'Girl fashion. On time…and at the last minute.
“I’ve got this lingering feeling/It’s like I’ve slipped between the fingers of the century/I know you know what I mean,” sings the 25-year-old singer/songwriter on the song “Of A Friday Night” – a storm cloud of a piano ballad. Anaïs’ “lingering feeling” of being in the right place at the wrong time could also be interpreted as the plight of modern-day artists, who are up against an American Idolized industry that’s all about judging a book by its cover.
With The Brightness, Mitchell gives us a glimpse into the raw talent and infectious energy of today’s underground folkies, not to mention a handful of the places she’s been. Over the course of 11 songs, listeners are transported to Bethlehem and the Virginia countryside; they bathe in New Mexico moonlight and hear the world whizzing by from the inside of a hobo’s train car. But for all of its worldliness, this is a lovingly homemade album. During the recording process, Anaïs lived above the studio, which was built into an old Vermont gristmill. She could wake up, shake the sleep out of her eyes and record tracks in her pajamas.
Recorded with producer and long-time collaborator Michael Chorney and a handful of Vermont-based artists, The Brightness is anchored by sparse, unpretentious arrangements, whether it’s the charming backwoods banjo of “Shenandoah,” Chorney’s warm lap-steel playing, or Mitchell’s acoustic guitar work, which is almost harp-like in its soft, economical beauty. On the rare occasions when the production gets richer, it’s instantly memorable – especially the wave of vocal harmony that washes over the chorus of “Your Fonder Heart.”
Given the absence of production tricks and the near-lack of percussion – drummer Chuck Terranova appears on a mere two tracks – Anaïs’ lyrics give The Brightness its major source of light. Instead of a musician, she credits “The Alexandria Quartet,” a series of four novels by British author Lawrence Durrell, as the main influence behind the record. This is songwriting with a stress on the latter half of the word, where the hooks are in the syllables as much as they’re in the melodies.
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Mitchell spins stories about forgotten old poets, jilted lovers and the three wise men, making each one a distinct chapter of one cohesive work. Her lyrics tackle the personal and political with equal aplomb, often blurring the lines between the two. In fact, thin lines are a recurring theme in her music, whether it’s between friends and lovers, religion and violence, or prosperity and pain. On The Brightness, Anaïs Mitchell is going somewhere, and you’re invited to come along. Chances are it’s a trip you won’t soon forget.
The Sunset Players Inc. are pleased to announce their winter production, "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" a musical woven around the well loved cartoon characters of Charles M Schulz. The book music and lyrics are by Clark Gesner
The play is produced and directed by Don Frimming and features the talents of Wayne Kirsch as Charlie Brown, Helen Ann Betz as Lucy, Sarah Baumann as Patty, Gerald Yearout as Schroeder, Rob Bucher as Linus and Richard Fricke as Snoopy..
The action represents the events of an ordinary day in the life of Charlie Brown> of course fans of the cartoon strip know that there is no such thing as an "ordinary" day for Charlie Brown. This play opened in New York in March of 1967and played for 1597 performances.
Show dates are February 16, 17, 23 and 24, and March 2 and 3. All performances are at 8 p.m. in the Arts building of the Dunham Recreation Center 1945 Dunham Way (off Guerley Rd) in Price Hill. Ticket prices are $10 or $9 for seniors, students, or groups. For information or reservations call 588-4988 All Sunset players performances are presented with the cooperation of the Cincinnati Recreation Commission.
For further information on this announcement or the Sunset Players Inc. please contact Dave Myers at 451 2519 or email myersdam@fuse.net
Falcon Theatre is proud to announce its latest production: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and Christopher Sergel.
All performances are at the newly renovated Monmouth Theatre at 636 Monmouth Street, Newport, Kentucky. Performance dates are February 23, 24 and March 2, 3, 9, 10 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students and seniors.
For ticket information and reservations:513-479-6783
www.falcontheater.net
Footlighter’s Inc Presents "The Foreigner" by Larry Shue, Feb. 15-March 4 at The Footlighters’ Stained Glass Theater, located at 8th & York Streets in Newport, Ky.
Thursday through Saturday performances begin at 8 p.m.; Sunday performances are 2 p.m. matinees. All tickets are $17. Group rates available for 10 or more.
For information and/or to purchase tickets, please call 513-474-8711 or buy online at www.footlighters. org. Visa and Mastercard are accepted.
"The Goat (or, Who Is Sylvia)" is being produced and directed by Luis Fernando Midence, a second year graduate student in the Department of Theatre at Miami University as part of his graduate thesis project in directing.
The story revolves around a man who falls in love with a goat named Sylvia, and the consequences that this new love affair has on his family and friendships.
The Tony Award winning play will be performed at Miami University in Oxford on the following dates:
Admission is free, but there is limited seating. The play contains adult themes, not appropriate for younger viewers.
For more information please visit the website or email Luis at midenclf@muohio.edu.
“We’re very serious about being ridiculous,” said Mark Stewart, part of the trio known as Polygraph Lounge.
“In the spirit of Spike Jones, who took the common musical currency of the day and re-wrote it with crazy hi-jinx, we do American pop songs and the great classic tunes in a way that combines music and mirth,” Stewart said. “If it’s fun for us, we find it fun for others.”
Polygraph Lounge, which also includes Rob Schwimmer and Melissa Fathman, began at a bar in New York City’s Lower East Side, where Schwimmer and Stewart first met because of their love for a particular Belgian ale on tap there.
“The bartender introduced us and we immediately took a shine to each other,” he said.
Both professional musicians, they coincidentally both had tunes on a compilation CD and were asked by the organizers to do something for the opening party.
“We’d been making each other laugh for months, so we worked up a 20-minute set,” he said. “We kept working on it and it became a side project for us, but at a certain point we decided to get more serious about it, find an agent and all that.”
Both Stewart and Schwimmer are members of Paul Simon’s band, and a bit of their Polygraph madness can be seen in the DVD version of Simon and Garfunkel’s recent “Concert in Central Park” when they get to cut loose at the end of “Feelin’ Groovy.”
The current repertoire includes a version of “The Nutcracker” that “asks you to re-think what the whole dance is about,” and features a vocal feat by Fathman that “always leaves folks mouths hanging wide open.”
Another favorite number is re-telling the story of “Moby Dick” with a medley of recognizable pop songs.
“It will also be ‘Nose Flute Night,’” Stewart said. “Everyone in attendance gets a nose flute free of charge, included in the price of your ticket, and the audience will become a nose flute choir.
“It is at once beautiful and hysterical,” Stewart said.
how to go
WHO: Polygraph Lounge.
WHERE: Hall Auditorium, Miami University, Oxford.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday.
COST: $14 adults, $13 senior citizens, $7 students and youth.
MORE INFO: (513) 529-3200; tickets.muohio.edu.
A version of this story originallly appeared in the Go! entertainment section of the JournalNews.
A comedy of manners meets outlandish farce in Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever,” opening next week in a Mason Community Players production.
Four members of the Bliss family — Judith, a retired stage actress; David, a self-absorbed novelist and their two children — each invite a guest to their country home for the weekend, unbeknownst to each other, said director Amy Hamilton.
“The Bliss family is eccentric and rude and the events of the weekend throw their guests into a tailspin,” she said.
The guests — a proper diplomat, a shy flapper, an athletic boxer, and a fashionable sophisticate — are repeatedly thrown into melodramatic scenes wherein their hosts profess emotions and react to situations that do not really exist.
“The play is based on a weekend Coward spent with the family of Laurette Taylor’s home back in the 1920s,” Hamilton said. “The family was very theatrical and would launch into a scene from one of her melodramas in the middle of dinner.”
The Mason cast includes Adrianne Underhill as Judith and Phil Catlin as David. Their children are played by Jenn Hillman and Scott Wiederkehr.
The cast also includes Ann Barfels as Clara, Dana Morgan as Myra Arundel, Gregg Robertson as Richard Greatham, Amelia Uecker as Jackie Coryton and Chris Weidner as Sandy Tyrell.
“It’s a very family-friendly show about a family,” Hamilton said.
In conjunction with the Aug. 16 performance, there will be an optional high tea beginning at 6 p.m. Tickets for the high tea and show are $25.
how to go
WHAT: “Hay Fever.”
WHERE: Mason Middle School Auditorium, 770 S. Mason-Montgomery Road, Mason.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Feb. 15-17; 2 p.m. Feb. 18.
COST: $12 adults; $10 seniors/students.
MORE INFO: (513) 398-7804; www.masonplayers.org.
A version of this story originally ran in the Go! section of the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.
Parody is hard, especially when the parody is of every Broadway musical ever written.
“Urinetown: The Musical,” opening next week at Northern Kentucky University, is one such parody.
The play takes plays in the unspecified future, when water is so scarce that the people need to pay to use the toilet.
“A young hero comes along and feels that people should be able to 'pee for free,’ as he says,” said director Ken Jones, “so he starts a revolution.”
The politically incorrect tale of public rebellion brings silliness to a new level while poking fun at theatrical conventions and characters from shows like “West Side Story,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Les Miserables” and “Guys and Dolls.”
Because it encompasses so much territory, it’s not only a treat for the audiences, but a learning experience for Jones’ student cast.
“The comedy is solid from beginning to end,” he said, “so students learn a lot about timing.
“Because it makes fun of musicals, it has every kind of dance in it, and when the soprano hits a high note, it’s extra high. And when the peasant people burst into dance, it’s right out of '42nd Street.’
“As deceptive as it seems, you really need great singers, great comedians and great dancers.
“It’s hard in a good way.”
And in spite of the theme, it’s still a musical suitable for families, Jones said.
“The strongest language in it is the word 'pee,’” he said.
how to go
WHAT: “Urinetown: The Musical.”
WHERE: Corbett Theatre, Northern Kentucky University, Highland
Heights, Ky.
WHEN: Feb. 15-25.
COST: $10 adults, $9 for NKU faculty/staff, $8 senior citizens, $6 students.
MORE INFO: (859) 572-5464; boxoffice@nku.edu.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Go! section of the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.
It’s autumn on the stage at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati.
Brian c. Mehring’s evocative set design for “Fiction” depicts autumn leaves falling from the rafters, landing in a neat circle appointed with cafe chairs, sofas and other suggestive pieces to serve as the key settings in the lives of Michael and Linda Waterman (Dennis Parlato and Amy Warner). In the center of the circle is a simple desk-and-chairs set-up that serves mostly as a cabin at the Drake Writer’s Retreat, where the Watermans, in their own turn, wrote their debut novels.
In Linda’s case, it was “At the Cape,” the story of her trip to South Africa in her youth, during which time she dated a black musician and was raped by a pair of white thugs, who were blamed for their crime.
Her novel was a great hit, but her following novels failed to gain the critical or commercial acclaim, so many years later, she still teaches “At the Cape” in her creative writing classes.
Michael, on the other hand, has enjoyed a lucrative career as a “hack,” his word, writing what amounts to be advance novelizations of his movies.
When Linda is diagnosed with a rare kind of brain tumor that leaves her only three weeks to live, she asks her husband to read her diaries when she is gone. In exchange, she wants to read his diaries before she goes.
He reluctantly agrees, but tears out a single page from the steamer trunk of volumes before leaving her to it. But while expecting to delve into the deepest parts of his mind, heart and soul, Linda only encounters a recurring narrative of deception, his on-going affair with Abby Drake, the coordinator of the Drake Writer’s Retreat, played by Shannon Rae Lutz.
The interplay between Parlato and Warner is a beautiful thing to behold. Both are gifted actors and at the top of their game in “Fiction” as they wander through the deceptions and red herrings of the story. Lutz is less effective as Abby. She is supposed to be a muse for Michael, but we can’t quite grasp why that may be. She is rude, selfish and not even made all that attractive physically, so we are never quite convinced that Michael would pursue her and take her around the world with him, even if only in his imagination.
Steven Dietz’ script is carefully crafted to reveal many layers of “Fiction” as the Watermans re-invent themselves for their craft and for their own amusement.
A version of this review originally appeared in the Go! entertainment section of the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.
I am very distressed by this. Blondie is the hottest daily cartoon character working. I'd even do her over Miss Buxley. I'm just very upset at these clowns that gave her such a poor impression with their stereotypical shenanigans. Show her some love...
April 5-8 at the Poison Room in Cincinnati.
Go to the next page or to my Chicks With Guitars main page to see who's been booked so far... Complete schedule to come....
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 8 Inch Betsy Chicago, IL Pop, Rock What if punk was pretty, but not emo? In June of 2004, three girls got together to turn their shy awkwardness into a fierce, mighty, rock-your-pants-off mania. The result was 8 Inch Betsy. |  10 Sugar Charlie Wichita, KS Rock, Punk Imagine the hottest girl in school. Now imagine the hottest girl in school kicking your ass. That my friend is 10 Sugar Charlie. |
 Backseat Virtue Cincinnnati, OH Rock, Pop Backseat Virtue takes the best parts of Pop, Guitar Rock and Punk, and leaves the rest by the wayside. Aggressive music melds successfully with memorable hooks and a performance that brings it all together. |  Carmen Townsend & the Shakey Deals Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada Rock, Singer/Songwriter Compared to Jeff Buckley, Bjork and Led Zeppelin, Cape Breton's guitar wielding phoenix Carmen Townsend and her band “ The Shakey Deals” will Rock your world. "ECMA 2006: highlights from the party of the year: any show by Carmen Townsend..." The Guardian,Charlottetown,Todd MacLean |
 Casey Desmond Boston, MA Singer/Songwriter, Rock Casey Desmond is a singer/ songwriter/ multi-instrumentalist whose material is a blend of powerful pop/rock/folk melodies, soaring harmonies, provoking lyrics, soulful pianos & deep rocking guitars. |  Cookie Cutter Girl Ipswich, MA Pop, Rock Cookie Cutter Girl packs GIRL POWER POP MUSIC on 500+ TV & RADIO STATIONS! This POP SUPERHERO is freeing women from the mold which holds them captive: "Power Puff Girls meets KISS at CBGBs!" 1 of the TOP 10 EPKS on SONICBIDS in 05+06, CCG endorses MINARIK GUTIARS, SAM ASH MUSIC & NACA COLLEGES. |
 Crankbox Cincinnati, OH Rock Crankbox is a coed rock band from Cincinnati, Ohio, dedicated to live performance and seemingly disinterested in publicity, record deals, or "making it." What else would you expect from a group that takes naked promo shots or slips profanity into an otherwise perfect radio tune simply to avoid mainstream acceptance? |  Crooked Rook Cincinnati, OH Rock The perfect combination of the past and present! Crooked Rook's music is a powerful blend of their many influences, coming together to form a sound both new and familiar! The stage show's packed with energy & emotion that reaches out and draws the audience in to make them a part of the experience! **This is a hi res photo to be used for press and media purposes.** |
 Dead Language New York City, NY Alternative, Rock "Ultimately a mix of urban hipness and emotional delivery, Dead Language offer a sound and a feel that hits the listener in the gut." ~NYRock.com |  Deadly Seven Cincinnati, OH Rock, Goth Deadly Seven is the next generation in the electro-rock movement--Layering textured synth programming and heavy guitar rhythms over tight drum loops and aggressive yet haunting vocals. |
 Dirty Lenin |  FLUTTR EFFECT Boston, MA Rock, Avant-Garde D I S C L A I M E R : Fluttr Effect's music is equal parts dense and sparse, exciting, sophisticated, dynamic, and not intended for those with severe dizziness, a history of mental illness, a closed mind, or heart problems! |
 Freyja Los Angeles, CA/London, England Alternative, Rock If you like Tori Amos, Evanescence, PJ Harvey, Shannon Wright, Dido, or Aimee Mann, you'll love Freyja! ("fray-uh") Piano-based rock mixed with sultry vocals and haunting violin gives the music a uniquely classical feel. |  Holly Spears Cincinnati, OH Pop, Rock Introspective and poetic lyrics intertwined with simply unique melodies are how Holly Spears strips her soul bare and shares her life experiences with audiences accompanied by her best friend, her guitar. Holly is nothing if not a 'Girl On A Mission' |
 Hungry Lucy |  Jami Ross Cleveland, OH Rock, Pop Jami Ross delivers her powerful vocals with passion . Her debut album "Figure Me Out" and latest single "Situation" are a modern rock sound with a lot of attitude. Jami is fearless and fun on stage and always leaves her fans wanting more! |
 The Jellyhearts Cincinnati, OH Alternative, Punk we're a couple whiskey-drunk, roadtrippers who stomp out the lowdown dirty punked out blues like dudes. our songs are real-life stories of happiness and hopelessness, all delivered to you by a wanky-ass guitarist, reba, and her bambam metronome, lorn. |  Jen Porter & the Most Fabulous Band Chicago, IL Rock, Adult Contemporary Jen Porter delivers original piano & acoustic guitar-driven rock with powerhouse vocals. Critics say her voice is “soulfully raucous”, she “has a true Janis Joplin feel” and “has the pop sensibilities of Vanessa Carlton, but she's all grown up and without a doubt an artist to keep your eye on.” |
 |  Karma Ft. Lauderdale, FL Pop, Acoustic KARMA is a four-piece, indie pop rock force to be reckoned with. Equipped with addictive songs - KARMA are captivating and powerful. They are relentless in their mission to collide and captivate the hearts and minds of every fortunate soul who encounters them. |
 Katie Trotta Indianapolis, IN Pop, Singer/Songwriter "Trotta is more than just another girl with a piano." Jacob Lee of Indie-Music.com |  kelp Cincinnati, OH Rock, Pop a playful romp through tangled debris... power-pop quintet from the green midwest, kelp takes it's mission of 'providing crunchy goodness to the masses' quite seriously. quirky nuggets of sound that stick to your cerebellum, the band's trademark vibe continues to convert. |
 The Locals Smart, High Energy indie rock. Power 3 piece with power-house female lead vocals. |  LOURDS New York City, NY Rock, Alternative As quoted in Billboard, "[LOURDS] is poised to break into the big time." With a diehard national following, LOURDS is well-known for hook-laden songs, the electric violin wailing like a guitar, gritty female vocals, and their explosive stage show. |
 Magpie Columbus, OH Rock, Alternative Dark, Pop-Rock...The perfect mixture of muscle and sensitivity. |  Manifest Frequency Atlanta, GA Rock, Electronic/Dance/DJ Dr. Dawn, Southern Voice's 2005 Reader's Choice Award Recipient of "Atlanta's Best Female Musician", experiments with going solo & using alternate line-ups in 2006 as she searches for the perfect Frequency. Her debut CD is gaining national attention with a release date of Spring 2007 |
 MercuroChrome Cincinnati, OH Alternative, Rock This eclectic group of musicians pulls from three generations, varied life experiences and a deep and true fascination of all things musical. |  Mieka Pauley Cambridge, MA Rock, Acoustic Billboard says she's a young McLachlan. The Boston Globe thinks she's more Aretha. But anyone who's seen her agrees Mieka Pauley is a name you need to remember and a voice you won't forget. |
 Motorpsychos Pittsburgh, PA Metal, Punk Check out the new video for "PRIMER" on our website. Let us know what you think. Winners of the "Best Rock Band in Pittsburgh" title, 2005 Hard Rock, K-Rock Winter Rock Challenge, 2005 ZIPPO HOT TOUR finalist for Pittsburgh & Winners of the 2004 Rolling Rock Hard & Heavy Rock Challenge |  The Orphans Brooklyn, NY Alternative, Rock In an age of cookie-cutter bands and sound-alike vocalists, The Orphans stand out with songs of sass, style and soul. It's time to adopt these Orphans. |
 OttO Vector Detroit, MI Pop, Rock Video games, cartoons & pop music of the 1980's inspire the highly-animated musical stylings of OttO Vector. With a focus on heavy beats & catchy melodies, OttO Vector represents a uniquely balanced musical synthesis of organic & electronic, modern technology & funky retro-pop. |  The Outside New York City, NY Alternative, Rock Sounding like Yeah Yeah Yeahs on steroids, The Outside's barrage of melodic musings and off-kilter rhythms and timings intrigues and excites. [2006 Review] **THIS IS A HI RES PIC TO BE USED FOR PRESS AND MEDIA PURPOSES** |
 Pandora Crete, IL Rock, Alternative THINK... Tool, System of a Down, and Evanescence. Although our music is considered Alternative or Progressive Rock, the Indie crowd loves us! It is a great sense of accomplishment when you are accepted by more than one genre in the music industry! |  The Passive Aggressives San Francisco, CA Alternative, Funk Sultry. Spicy. Dynamic. This group brings a unique flavor to the hard-rock experience without conforming to any single genre -- the band produces sound excellence with mood bending vocals, thumping bass lines, spicy guitars, and manic percussion. |
 Pike Cincinnati, OH Rock, Alternative "...raw, upbeat AltPop... consistently dynamic and radiant, harnessing Punk riffs and varying song structures. Jarvis has a powerful, New Wave sneer..." -- Ezra Waller, Cincinnati, CityBeat. |  Rebecca Hart New York City, NY Singer/Songwriter, Rock "A chick singer-songwriter with a rocker's soul who has something to say and knows how to get her point across. " - Midwest Record Recap. "The love child of Suzanne Vega and Steely Dan". - michael popke, sea of tranquility |
 Rebecca Jed Nashville, TN Americana, Country Traditional Country meets Eclectic Arkansas Bluegrass to form Female Misfit Americana Sound. Kitty Wells meets Lucinda Williams meets Loretta Lynn. |  Red Dahlia Athens, OH Rock Anger, lust, hatred, jealously, greed, envy... We play out the worst in human emotions. We just wrap it up in a nice little box with sultry vocals. |
 Ruby Rendrag New Orleans, LA Rock, Pop Check your CD collection. If you're like most people you've got everything from Led Zeppelin to Johnny Cash. Ruby Rendrag writes her own truth so expect anything. |  Star Cherry Seven Cincinnati, OH Pop, Acoustic Star Cherry Seven is a blend of lyrical songwriting, captivating music and precise harmonies. It's also largely an excuse for two friends to spend time together doing something they love. |
 Subliminal Cincinnati, OH Alternative, Rock Subliminal Music is a power trio that strives to sound like a four-piece band. Strong lead vocals and innovative guitar meld well with powerful and noticeable lead bass lines. Complex and diverse drums hold it all together. Subliminal Music is alternative rock with a growing progressive edge. |  Sunspot Madison, WI Rock, Alternative Arena Rock for Geeks. Green Day meets Husker Du with Van Halen on guitar. |
 Tangerine Pittsburgh, PA Rock, Pop “Blending lush dream pop (The Church) with sensitive balladry (Paul Westerberg), the Pittsburgh foursome triumph... creating addictive, moody landscapes underneath singer Tony Matz's gravely, emotive vocals. ” - Pork Tartare. |  Tildebang Columbus, OH Rock, Alternative TildeBang brings balls wrapped in a deceptive package! The energetic, frenetic April can hardly be contained as she prowls the stage. 4 talented musicians- delivering memorable tunes- this performance will be etched in your memory. |
 The Trojan Rabbit Cincinnati, OH Alternative, Rock Seasoned pros making a run for the big time... All original material written by the band itself, with heavier alternative rock tunes to sultry lounge lizard jams. The powerful female lead vocalist, Blank, is the cornerstone of this eclectic group. |  Twisted Wood Cincinnati, OH Acoustic, Rock Twisted Wood is a local original acoustic/progressive rock band. The combination of instruments creates a unique sound that is hard to cast into any particular genre, however they’ve played many venues. Energetic playing and thought provoking lyrics forms the music that is Twisted Wood. |
 Vanity Theft Middletown, OH Rock, Alternative Vanity Theft produces a fun indie/alternative rock sound with a unique blend of riveting guitar riffs, catchy drum beats, and explosive keys and effects. They use two female lead vocalists to give an intense, inspiring rock sound and an ear-pleasing melody simultaenously. |  The Walker Project Cincinnati, OH Pop, Acoustic The Walker Project is the soul-child of brother and sister duo, Carole and Chris Walker. It is acoustic guitar soul, fueled with thick bass lines, and topped with poetic lyrics and pure vocal power. |
 Whiskey Boots Kansas City, MO Rock, Alternative Whiskey Boots is a "bare-knuckled classic-rock/blues duo" comprised of two women with strong voices, mixing hard-hitting drums with aggressive guitar riffs, banking on rhythm and emotion, weaving tales of love gone terribly wrong. Oh, what loud goodness! |  The Whitney Barricklow Band Cincinnati, OH Pop, Singer/Songwriter "Sharp lyrics, fantastic melodies, abundant charm and one of the biggest, best voices that you'll hear almost anywhere." - Cincinnati's CityBeat |
 Wicked Liz & the Bellyswirls Davenport, IA Rock, Pop Modern Americana, fronted by Wicked Liz.....one of the midwests' best front persons. Just released their 3rd CD "Hulathong" and their first live DVD, "Live at Circa '21" | |
Wright State University Theatre is proud to present The Threepenny Opera on the Festival Playhouse stage February 15-25, 2007. This production marks the first time WSU Theatre will present this greatly influential and acclaimed musical.
Performances are February 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25 at 8:00 PM, February 18, 24, 25 at 3:00 PM, and Wednesday, February 21 at 7:00 PM. Tickets are $19 for adults and $17 students and seniors.
For tickets and theatre information call the Box Office at (937) 775-2500.
Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, which premiered in 1928 in Berlin, is an adaptation of John Gay’s 1728 The Beggar’s Opera and has greatly influenced modern musical theatre. Set in the seedy underworld of 19th-century London just before the coronation of Queen Victoria, The Threepenny Opera is a biting satire of the post-war society, wrapped up in Weill’s jazzy score and the tale of Mack the Knife, a debonair crime lord on the verge of turning his illegal empire into a legitimate business. Macheath’s ragtag band of felons, thieves and ladyloves prove to be untrustworthy as they all try to stay on top.
The score for The Threepenny Opera, in the original electrifying translation by Marc Blitzstein, includes some of the most memorable melodies in 20th musical theatre, including Mack the Knife and The Barbara Song, which will be presented by a cast of 20 accompanied by a band under the direction of WSU Theatre’s new Musical Director, Rick Church.
To fully realize the music of Kurt Weill’s astonishing score, WSU Theatre was given a major grant from the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. Weill’s music has been called “one of the century’s most powerful creations,” by award-winning composer Virgil Thompson, and Bob Dylan wrote that “I was aroused straight away by the raw intensity of the songs.”
As part of the celebration of the Weill score for The Threepenny Opera, there will be a free Symposium on the Legacy of Kurt Weill following the matinee performance on Sunday, February 18 at 5:30-6:30 PM in the Recital hall (directly across the lobby from the Festival Theatre where The Threepenny Opera will be performed) featuring Neil Gittleman, Maestro of the Dayton Philharmonic, Dr. Hank Dahlman, Dr. James Tipps, Dr. David Booth, and Dr. Kim Warrick of the WSU Department of Music, hosted by Dr. W. Stuart McDowell.
This production features the talents of senior musical theatre majors Ashley Hannon (Macheath), Shavey Brown (Mr. Peachum), Julie Langan (Mrs. Peachum), Desi Shurelds (Polly Peachum) and Sarah Weinhardt (Jenny). The Threepenny Opera is directed by W. Stuart McDowell (Cabaret, As You Like It, South Pacific). This production marks the first time McDowell will direct a Brecht play at WSU Theatre. His professional credits include directing the New York premiere of Brecht’s The Life of Edward II, produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the American premiere of Brecht’s Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer. McDowell studied at Brecht’s theatre, the Berliner Ensemble, under a Fulbright Fellowship and has interviewed numerous of Brecht’s leading actors and colleagues.
Choreography for The Threepenny Opera is by WSU Theatre alumna Dionysia Williams, who played the lead in last year’s Annie Get Your Gun. The Threepenny Opera’s set is designed by Don David (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Ragtime, Cabaret), with costumes Lisa Loen (Annie Get Your Gun), lighting by JT Mauric (The Story, Blithe Spirit), properties by John Larvarnway, and sound by Matt Rosenfeld (Grease, Annie Get Your Gun).
The Covedale Center for the Performing Arts, located at 4990 Glenway Avenue in Western Hills will present a new musical review, Route 66 February 15, 2007 – March 4, 2007.
Route 66 begins in Chicago and travels along the famed ‘Main Street of America’ to the coast of California.
Four service station attendants burst into “The Texaco Star Theme”. The station bells ring, and it’s time to head out onto the open road. You’ll hear tunes such as “On The Road Again”, “King Of The Road”, “Let’s Go For A Ride”; “Bring My Cadillac Back”; “Hot Rod Queen”; “Every Woman I Know”, and many more including a wonderful new rendition of “Route 66”.
Cast Includes: Chris Wyllie, Jerry Wiesenhahn, Matt Dentino and Joe Stollenwerk.
Tickets: $21.00 for Adults, $19.00 for Seniors and Students. Tickets may be purchased on line at www.cincinnatilandmarkproductions.com or by calling the box office at 513 241 6550.
The word 'artist' these days is used to refer to pretty much any musician, but few songwriters or performers approach their musical life with the degree of intense concern as does Jesse Sykes. Although originally a visual artist, Sykes sings that "only music sets my soul free." She's always, however, brought a deep visual sense to her textually (and texturally) rich songwriting.
Her new album was produced, recorded and mixed by Tucker Martine (Decemberists, The Long Winters) and Martin Feveyear (Mark Lanegan, Kings of Leon), with additional recording and production by Randall Dunn (Kinski, SunnO)))). Like, love, lust & the open halls of the soul is a musically deep piece of work, addressing themes of love, illusion, forgiveness, and the universality of the human experience. Her band, The Sweet Hereafter (along with guest appearances from Scandinavian cult songwriter Nicolai Dunger, jazz keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, and avant garde violinist/composer Eyvind Kang), explore new sounds with a confident ease. Open halls' guitar solos and driving rhythms could easily be lost gems cut by Crazy Horse between takes with Neil, yet the record retains the atmospheric beauty of much of Sykes' earlier work as well.
The band's musical growth has been mirrored by the evolution and maturation of Sykes' distinctive singing voice, which time has saturated with a weathered wisdom that connects to something beyond the singer and the song. And the visual aesthetic of Sykes' songwriting has never been more evocative. Listen closely to her stark descriptions of isolation, sometimes-swaggering toughness, fragile human emotion, and the possibilities of love, and you'll hear something that perfectly, tenderly, and surprisingly captures the feel of the 21st century so far — it's the sound of vulnerability, and the sound of the best and most relevant piece of art Jesse Sykes has ever made.
OFFICIAL BIO Samples on Rickie's MySpace page
THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD, the new album by Rickie Lee Jones and her first for New West Records, is a beauty--soul-satisfying and sonically unique. RICKIE LEE sounds completely tapped in, alive and vital, heading down some mighty interesting roads and discovering new magical essences. Lots of creative sparks here--plenty of them. She sounds like she's going through a transformation throughout the album in a way that's reminiscent of Van Morrison's performances on his classic album Astral Weeks. There’s Rickie’s spellbinding performance on the eight-plus free-flowing minutes of “I Was There,” and so many other highlights here, including “Where I Like It Best,” “Gethsemane,” “Falling Up,” “Circle In The Sand,” “7th Day” and “Elvis Cadillac” and especially “Nobody Knows My Name.”
NOTES ON ALBUM ART: The album cover was designed by Lee Cantelon in the winter of 2006, using a self-portrait collage that was created by Rickie Lee Jones. Rickie created her collage from the photograph of a very old Mexican religious painting that she purchased years ago. Details, such as the dove image, were added by Lee Cantelon from photographs he took of graffiti in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem in 2006.
"I wanted the album cover to have the feel of a battered sacred book, street art mixed with icons and and east-meets-west," Lee Cantelon says of his design. Cantelon has designed five previous albums for Rickie, including "Naked Songs," "Ghostyhead," Live from Red Rocks," the award-winning (Best 100 Album Covers of All Time), "It's Like This," and "Duchess of Coolsville," anthology.
What will certainly be most striking to some fans about THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD is that it rocks harder than any album the two-time Grammy Award winner has ever recorded. “Nobody Knows My Name,” the striking opening track, might best be described as “minimalist pure pop punk rock,” and the evocative, riff-‘n’-hook-filled, stream-of-consciousness rant titled “Falling Up” follows in a similar decidedly art-rock manner. And yet, this music transcends all of its historical touchstones, taking the elements (“Wind, fire, water, laughter,” explains Ms. Jones) and creating something that sounds totally new--full of grace, soul and adventurous sonic textures. Rickie Lee's vocals soar throughout the album. What's ultimately just as fascinating as the remarkable music on the new album, however, is that all 13 songs are inspired by the real words and ideas of one Jesus Christ. But before anyone reading this poses the obvious question of, “What in the world does a title like 'Elvis Cadillac' have to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ?” perhaps a little history is in order.
Essentially what Rickie Lee Jones and her collaborators have done on THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD is to put Christ's words into a modern-day context, portraying those words in a way that anyone can understand. Hence, “Elvis Cadillac”--which not only talks about cruising around Heaven in the King's most famous vehicle, but also mentions the late, great Janis Joplin. After all, if anyone in recent history can be considered a secular Jesus, it would have to be Mr. Presley, arguably one of the “Christs” walking among us for that generation.
The recording began in a painter's loft on an abandoned industrial street in mid-L.A in the summer of '05. Lee Cantelon, who can best be described as a modern renaissance man, originally conceived the project as a lo-fi, low budget undertaking, a spoken word interpretation of “The Words,” his book of Christ's teachings. Cantelon had created beds of music with guitarist Peter Atanasoff (“The Velvet Underground was the name that seemed to come up most often,” recalls Rickie Lee), and Cantelon's initial plan was to recruit friends and associates--running the gamut from punk icon Mike Watt to a homeless man he encountered every day to Rickie Lee--to do the talking.
When Rickie Lee arrived to record her spoken work track, the project was to take an unexpected turn. Instead of reciting the text, she improvised a stunning 'sermon' that was to change the undertaking in a wonderful and personal direction. “Nobody Knows My Name” set the pace for what was to become THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD--and it appears on the record exactly as it was delivered that day. And the fact that she had not even heard “Nobody Knows My Name” when she began to sing was no less remarkable. She found a niche by improvising off the texts to tunes she had—and had not—heard, and the resulting songs are truly inspired.
When circumstances put the recording on hold for half a year, the project seemed in danger of being abandoned. Ms. Jones hired producer Rob Schnapf (Elliot Smith, The Vines, Beck) to put the project back on track. Rob took Rickie Lee and her crew to Hollywood’s legendary Sunset Sound. Peter and Lee kept the 'sermon' focused by using the same musicians throughout the recording. The new sessions would also find Rickie Lee now contributing musical ideas as well as lyrical ones, including such latter tracks as “7th Day,” “Tried To Be A Man,” “I Was There,” and “Elvis Cadillac.” One evening, Rob brought in Joey Waronker (son of Lenny, co producer of Rickie’s first two records) to play on a number of these new songs. Rickie began to play bass and guitar, and again, the project began to change. Within six weeks the 'words' project was completed, and the THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BLVD was born. Besides the aforementioned songs, the album includes “It Hurts,” “Where I Like It Best,“ “Donkey Ride,” “Road To Emmaus,” “Lamp Of The Body” and “Circle In the Sand” (originally written for the recent indie film Friends With Money).
“If you just have faith and try to believe and don't control it, it will unfold and reveal itself to you,” says Rickie Lee. “In life, that's true--but it's especially true in art. If you don't try to control it, you'll find that you've delivered something way beyond what you could've mapped out.” She elaborates: “I love what I was able to do with it, putting myself in the skin of Christ and all the characters walking with him on the sand--in my mind, that's what I was doing. It's still hard for me, two thousand years later, to come to that stuff and those ideas and read them. But what you get out of it is how little there actually is--there were very few words. And that Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher you can go to for wisdom. And it seems that the real story of Jesus is lived over and over again in each generation but no one ever recognizes the Christ that walks among us.”
“It would be great if you could dip your hands into any spiritual path and find what's actually there,” she notes. “People today can't even hear the name Jesus without tensing up because they don't want to be associated with the TV evangelists and that lot. I just wanted to level the playing field a bit.”
“You start to realize there are maps inside of you that lead you to all sorts of insights you cannot possibly retrieve in the normal hours of the day,” says Rickie Lee. “Music is a true, living connection to the spirit, and it’s a higher work we do, whether it’s blues or jazz or punk or opera. Working with this text, improvising, and using this raw, tough sound was all new to me, so, in so many ways, I am new…new stars…new sun.” THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD does sound like the beginning of an auspicious career in music, never mind the artist creating it has been making music for 27 years.
OFFICIAL BIOPatty Griffin's new album Children Running Through (ATO) continues the remarkable creative evolution that's quietly established Griffin as a vital and singular musical force. It also belies her persistent sensitive-singer-songwriter image - a limiting perception that fails to fully convey the emotional depth and breadth of her songwriting or the emotive power of her fluid, soulful singing. Indeed, the new disc's 12 Griffin originals maintain a timelessly truthful resonance that echoes a variety of styles, most notably the classic R&B and gospel music that have long been a source of inspiration for the artist.
On Children Running Through, Griffin's seamless songcraft is supported by spare, spacious arrangements and production by Griffin along with Mike McCarthy (Spoon) that emphasize her effortlessly eloquent lyrics, her subtly indelible melodies and her sublimely expressive voice, while making judicious use of such sonic frills as horns and strings. The artful instrumental settings are perfectly suited to the soul glory of "Heavenly Day," the wistful melancholy of "You'll Remember," the haunting intimacy of "Railroad Wings," the vivid storytelling of "Trapeze," the rocking "No Bad News," the steely determination of "I Don't Ever Give Up" and the healing gospel of "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)."
"I just wanted to write from the heart and let it be," Griffin says of the project. "Some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard is when you catch somebody singing to themselves. I wanted to make music that had that feeling."
That sort of heartfelt forthrightness has won Griffin a fiercely loyal fan base that's continued to expand, even as she's retreated from the cookie-cutter machinery of the mainstream music industry. Among her higher-profile admirers are the Dixie Chicks, who recorded much-loved versions of the Griffin compositions "Top of the World," "Truth No. 2" and "Let Him Fly"; Emmylou Harris, a longtime supporter who's covered several Griffin songs, and who lends her iconic harmony vocals to the Children Running Through number "Trapeze"; and Solomon Burke, who covers "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" on his latest record.
The Maine native first became aware of music's capacity to communicate while growing up as the youngest of seven siblings, listening to her mother sing hymns, country songs and made-up ditties. She began singing during childhood, and wrote poems and songs as a teenager, but was too shy to make much of an effort to perform in public. After a stint living in Florida, she moved to the Boston area, where she waited tables and worked as a telephone switchboard operator at Harvard University. It wasn't until her guitar teacher coaxed her into joining him on stage in a tiny Cambridge club that Griffin mustered up the courage to begin performing her songs in public.
On the strength of a set of unadorned acoustic demo recordings, Griffin won a recording deal with A&M Records. When an attempt at cutting more elaborate studio versions of the same material proved unsatisfactory, the label agreed to release the artist's stripped-down original demos instead. The result was her 1996 debut release Living with Ghosts, which won widespread critical acclaim and won Griffin the beginnings of a passionate and devoted fan following. The following year, Griffin defied expectations by taking a radically different approach on her noisy sophomore effort, Flaming Red.
After an album she recorded in 2000 went unreleased due to corporate shuffles, Griffin found a more hospitable home when fan Dave Matthews signed her to his new, artist-friendly ATO Records. The change in labels coincided with Griffin's determination to scale her music back down to its essence, a direction that was reflected on 2002's sparse, mostly acoustic 1000 Kisses, which earned a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. It was followed in 2003 by the live CD/DVD set A Kiss In Time.
2004's Impossible Dream was Griffin's most ambitious and accomplished effort yet, encompassing a broad range of musical influences while boasting some of her most ambitious, emotionally complex songwriting to date. It also netted a second Grammy nomination for Griffin.
As her own releases have continued to win consistent critical attention and a steadily expanding audience, Griffin has simultaneously become a popular source of material for other artists. In addition to the ones mentioned above, Griffin's songwriting has been embraced by a diverse assortment of performers, including Martina McBride, Bette Midler, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Reba McEntire and Maura O'Connell, all of whom have recorded her songs. Also inspired by her work, filmmaker Cameron Crowe personally selected her to appear in his 2005 feature film "Elizabethtown."
In addition to raising her public profile, having her songs covered by other artists has allowed Griffin the luxury of making music on her own terms, and her iconoclastic approach is reflected throughout Children Running Through.
"I invested a lot more time in this than anything I've ever done," she says of the new album. "After Impossible Dream, I had used up all the songs I'd been carrying around for years, so it was a challenge to find out if I had anything left in me. It took some time, but it was a positive thing to be tested that way."
While her new songs maintain the levels of clarity and insight that Griffin's fans have come to expect, the new album's organic, deeply felt performances embody an openhearted sense of directness and simplicity. "The aim," Griffin states, "was to strip everything down and just give it a few brushstrokes here and there, to come up with something that's quiet but powerful. I wanted to be a little less wordy, but I also wanted to make a record where I didn't hold back and let myself sing as loud as I wanted to.
"A great part of getting older," she adds, "is not caring so much what other people think. I feel like I'm allowed to be goofy or whatever, and I'm allowed not to worry about whether something is cool enough or smart enough. That's pretty liberating."
Children Running Through, was recorded in the artist's adopted hometown of Austin, Texas, in a makeshift studio set up in a rented house across the street from her home. In addition to Griffin on vocals and guitar, the sessions featured a sterling assortment of Austin, Nashville and New York players, including longtime Griffin collaborator Doug Lancio on guitar, legendary Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan, and a nine-person string section conducted and arranged by multi-instrumentalist John Mark Painter.
"This record was tough, but it was really rewarding," Griffin reports. "I was more relaxed than I've ever been making a record, and I had a lot of confidence in the material. But there was also a lot of tension, and there were definitely moments where we didn't think we were gonna get it together. But we did.
"One of the most important things to me is avoiding cynicism, and that's what this record represents to me," she concludes. "For me, the best songs and the best ideas have always emerged from just thinking, 'Well, what do I feel like singing right now?' That's always a good, honest place to start from. For me, this whole record is a little like that."
The Sinclair Community College Theatre and Dance department will present Triumph of Love by Pierre Marivaux, February 16-24.
PRESS RELEASE
New Stage Collective, Cincinnati’s award-winning company dedicated to provocative and passionate professional summer theatre, is proud to announce their brand-new permanent home in the heart of the Main St. Entertainment District in Over the Rhine, and their season line-up that for the first time spans the entire year.
After the unprecedented scope and success of New Stage Collective’s (NSC) Summer 2006 Season, Producing
Artistic Director Alan Patrick Kenny, winner of the 2006 Rising Star Cincinnati Acclaim Award for his body of
work at NSC, is proud to announce that the theatre company behind such sell-out hits as The Full Monty, The
Book of Liz, and All We Can Handle at the Fringe Festival is growing exponentially once again, now reborn as a year-round theatre company.
In the past four years since NSC’s inception, the company has rented various traditional and non-traditional
theatre spaces to house its diverse lineup of productions, both in downtown Cincinnati and the surrounding
areas. “In the process of identifying a permanent home for NSC, it was extremely important to us to renew our commitment to bringing provocative and passionate theatre to the downtown area, and I am proud to say that our new home puts us right in the middle of one of Cincinnati’s most important and developing
neighborhoods,” says Kenny.
NSC is taking up residence in a second-floor club space (formerly operating as Jekyll & Hyde’s Billiard Club)
in the heart of the Main St. Entertainment District, located at 1140 Main St. (at the corner of Main and 12th).
“We are transforming the former club space at 1140 Main into a truly unique non-traditional performance
space,” says Kenny.
"I'm absolutely thrilled," says Over-the-Rhine Chamber president Brian Tiffany. "This is going to help change
the face of Main Street.
"These (bar) spaces have been vacant, it's clear what worked in the late '80s and '90s doesn't work anymore. I've been telling people it's a good thing to start from a clean slate and New Stage is one of the first marks on the slate. This is going to stimulate a lot of activity. It's awesome."
To open their new home on Main St., NSC is proud to announce a challenging lineup of incredibly provocative
theatre. “For our first year-long season in our new home, we have chosen to focus on a group of pieces that our artists are extremely passionate about: six plays and musicals that are written by, about, or inspired by the most innovative and infamous theatre artists and works of our time,” says Kenny.
From a Tony Award-winning play from one of our greatest living dramatists about an unthinkable topic and its
impact on a family, to a pulsating new musical about the artist who exploded from the graffiti movement in the New York subways in the turbulent 1980’s to become the Andy Warhol of his generation, plus a musical by one of the most innovative musical theatre composers of our generation that is based on one of the most infamous and frankly sexual plays ever written, and a play that fuses Eastern and Western ideas and theatrical traditions by using Bunraku puppets and all-American characters to tell a powerful and universal tale of family tension at the holidays, NSC is filling its new home on Main St. in 2007 with theatre that defines provocative.
The line-up for New Stage Collective’s 2007 season includes:
Songs from an Unmade Bed
a theatrical song cycle
Lyrics by Mark Campbell, Music by 18 composers
in co-production with Know Theatre of Cincinnati
February 4-14, 2007 at the Underground @ Know Theatre
NSC collaborates with Know Theatre to present the regional premiere of a
genre-defying evening of theatre that is part one-man play and part chamber
music concert but all about the pajamas. Songs from an Unmade Bed features
NSC Producing Artistic Director Alan Patrick Kenny at the piano and singing
18 songs exploring the ruminations of a gay man living in New York City,
looking for lust, love, and loneliness and rarely finding the right one at the
right time. Supported by 2 musicians and songs composed by 18 of the
hottest and influential composers from the worlds of Broadway, alternative
rock, modern art song, cabaret, folk, and more, Songs from an Unmade Bed is a unique theatrical event that hits
just in time for Valentine’s Day.
"Comical and moving...An amusing and entirely unsentimental tableau of single life in the city...Campbell’s lyrics
are witty, imaginative and at times seemingly very personal."
-Associated Press
“The show’s resulting texture is unique and irresistible, and never fails to delight or surprise as each new
composition is revealed in the course of this tightly packed, 60-minute musical stream of consciousness...Songs
from an Unmade Bed is a dream of a show you won’t want to wake from.
-Talkin’ Broadway
THE GOAT or Who is Sylvia?
(Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy)
by Edward Albee
April 19-May 12, 2007
To officially open NSC’s new home on Main St., NSC is honored to
present the regional premiere of one of the most controversial and
acclaimed plays of the new millennium, the modern masterwork of
legendary playwright Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
Three Tall Women, A Delicate Balance) and the 2002 Tony Award-
winning Best Play, THE GOAT or Who is Sylvia? This bold drama concerns a seemingly perfect, happy and
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wealthy family that is shattered by the news that the husband, a staggeringly successful architect, has fallen in
love with a goat. Directed by NSC Producing Artistic Director Alan Patrick Kenny, THE GOAT’s themes of
hidden desire, obsessive love, and repressed sexuality are challengingly dealt with in a major work that
confronts the limits of our own tolerance in a way that is outrageously funny yet profoundly unsettling.
"THE GOAT is about a profoundly unsettling subject, which for the record is not bestiality but the irrational,
confounding, and convention-thwarting nature of love. Powerful [and] extraordinary...Mr. Albee still asks questions
that no other major American dramatist dares to ask.”
-The New York Times
"...as challenging—and...as outrageously funny—as theater gets."
-The New York Post
Alone, Together: A Party of the Night
an original work created by The Satori Group
inspired by Fetes de la Nuit by Charles L. Mee
May 30-June 10, 2007 at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival
Following the success of 2006’s All We Can Handle, NSC is proud to
return to the Cincinnati Fringe Festival with an original work inspired by
a theatre work by revolutionary playwright Charles L. Mee (Big Love,
bobrauschenbergamerica, Playwright-in-Residence at Anne Bogart’s
SITI Company). Through his “(Re)Making Project,” all of Mee’s play
texts are available on his website with an invitation to other artists to use
them as a resource for the creation of new theatrical works. During the NSC Summer 2006 Season, a group of
NSC artists formed The Satori Group, responded to Mee’s call and have compiled and created an original work
as the American response to Fetes de la Nuit, using contemporary sources ranging from the spoken word poetry
of Saul Williams to the films of Richard Linklater and Jean Luc Godard. An 18-year-old escort, Beatrice,
rekindles love in a burnt-out philosophy teacher. A Republican, Paul, climbing the rungs of the executive ladder
falls in love with a young male student. These relationships are affected by the need for change. This play deals
with the issues surrounding a cultural revolution in 1960’s Paris and the America of today. Through music,
beautiful language, and dance these characters explore the highs and lows of the atmosphere of revolution.
Joining the Satori Group to perform in the ensemble of this production is award-winning actor and local favorite
Nick Rose.
Radiant Baby
a musical installation inspired by the life and art of Keith
Haring
Book by Stuart Ross, Music by Debra Barsha,
Lyrics by Ira Gasman, Stuart Ross, and Debra Barsha
June 21-July 14, 2007
NSC is thrilled to present the regional premiere and third U.S.
production of the innovative new musical Radiant Baby. Utilizing
an explosive combination of rock, punk and pop music, Radiant
Baby tells the story of 1980’s pop artist Keith Haring and his
symbol-inspired graffiti line art created in the New York subways which catapulted him to international
superstardom, before tragically dying of AIDS at age 31. Haring, a rare artist who achieved widespread public
accolades but only minimal appreciation from the art world during his lifetime, used his art-accessible-to-all
approach to encapsulate the turbulent generation living in the 80’s and celebrate the vitality of their human
spirit. Originally developed and directed by distinguished theatre director, writer, and producer George C.
Wolfe, Radiant Baby received its World Premiere staging at New York’s Public Theatre, and was further
developed in a later production at New York University. NSC is proud to present this fascinating and energetic
musical’s first ever regional production, directed by NSC Producing Artistic Director Alan Patrick Kenny.
"... a must-see show...one of the most perfect examples on display in New York of what the physical shape of a
musical today is, and where it's going tomorrow... one of the most exciting musicals New York has seen in years "
-Talkin’ Broadway
Hello Again
a musical
Words and Music by Michael John LaChiusa
Suggested by the play La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler
August 2-25, 2007
During the hot nights of August, NSC brings fiery passion to
the stage with Michael John LaChiusa’s adult musical fantasy
Hello Again. Inspired by the infamous 1900’s German play La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler, Hello Again is
comprised of ten nameless characters searching for one perfect lover in a cycle of encounters that span the
decades. Written by one of the most innovative musical theatre writers of our generation, Michael John
LaChiusa (See What I Wanna See, The Wild Party), Hello Again features a tantalizingly eclectic score, widely
regarded as his best and most accessible work. NSC’s production features direction by NSC veteran and
Acclaim Award winner Andrew Lazarow (All We Can Handle, A Number, multimedia design for Sunday in the
Park with George) and musical direction by Alan Patrick Kenny, fresh from musical directing another complex
LaChiusa score, See What I Wanna See, at the Know Theatre last fall.
"Mr. LaChiusa’s smart, beguilingly world-weary work was the best original musical of the season..."
-The New York Times
"LaChiusa is an artist with a puckish, damn-the-torpedoes imagination...his deliriously eclectic score is like tuning
into a radio station with a serious President Clinton complex: It wants to please as many listeners as possible...Hello
Again scores."
-New York Newsday
The Long Christmas Ride Home
a puppet play with actors
by Paula Vogel
October 11-November 10, 2007
NSC closes the 2007 season with the regional premiere of a
masterpiece from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel
(The Baltimore Waltz, How I Learned to Drive), the
transcendently magical play The Long Christmas Ride Home. Mixing live actors with Bunraku puppets and
oriental music with Thornton Wilder’s minimalist style of Americana-for-grownups, Vogel creates a tale of
classic holiday tensions, including parental infidelity, grandparental homophobia, a road trip with three siblings
crammed in one back seat, and (both then and now) all the wrong presents. NSC is proud to welcome back
CEA Hall of Fame member Michael Burnham (A Number), who directs this breathtaking, other-worldly family
drama.
NSC 2007 Combined Auditions
NSC will be holding combined open auditions for all 2007 Season productions February 18-21 at the new home
at 1140 Main St. Auditions will be held by individual appointment Sunday, February 18 and Monday, February
19, with callbacks sessions held for each production on February 20 and 21. If unavailable, alternate audition
appointment times and video auditions are also available. To schedule an audition appointment, visit
newstagecollective.com or call 513.826.2060. To work on an NSC production in another capacity, email
productionopportunities@newstagecollective.com.
Buy a NSC FLEX-PASS subscription!
NSC offers a subscription program that puts you in control! A NSC FlexPass gives you three tickets for the
price of four, which can be used for any of the NSC main season productions (The Goat, Radiant Baby, Hello
Again and The Long Christmas Ride Home). With the opportunity to use on any or all shows, the ability to split
your FlexPass with a friend, and flexible scheduling, the NSC FlexPass is the best way to guarantee your seat at
innovative theatre in Cincinnati! To get your FlexPass, go to newstagecollective.com today!
Single ticket sales for NSC’s main season productions will begin later this spring. Single ticket prices for all
2007 NSC productions are $20 General, $12 Student with valid ID. For more information on the 2007 Season,
check out newstagecollective.com and sign up for the NSC email list.
Volunteer at NSC!
NSC needs your help to make their new home at 1140 Main St. ready for its upcoming season. Volunteers of
any availability and skill level are welcome – from simple household cleaning to painting and building, we have
a job for you! NSC is also seeking donations of cleaning equipment and tools, which are tax-deductible. For
more information, email volunteer@newstagecollective.com or call 513.826.2060.
NEW STAGE COLLECTIVE is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, whose goal is to facilitate the development
of the pre-professional artist while bringing to the region exceptional performances of meaningful and rarely
performed works. NSC debuted in June 2003, and productions have included Kooky Tunes*, All We Can
Handle*, A Number*, The Full Monty, The Book of Liz*, Kimberly Akimbo*, Sunday in the Park with George*,
Side Show*, Merrily We Roll Along, The Last Five Years*, Fully Committed, The Shape of Things, the New
Directors Workshop Series* and A Cabaret: An Evening of Musical Theatre (* indicates regional premiere).
NEW STAGE COLLECTIVE is a member of the League of Cincinnati Theatres, and is a Performance Affiliate
of the Contemporary Arts Center.
The Clermont Inn Players are proud to announce the opening of February's shows "Blind Date" by Horton Foote and "A Marriage Proposal" by Anton Chekhov, directed by Karen Vanover. Performances dates are February 9, 10; 16, 17; and 23, 24, 2007.
Come and enjoy fun theatre and a lovely meal at The Clermont Inn, 180 E. Main St., Batavia, OH. Dinner and shows are $25 per person and for reservations, which are requested, please call 513/732-2174. House opens at 7pm and the shows start at 7:30
The Victoria Theatre will become the home of a colorful dream in an enchanted forest when Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy draws Dayton audiences into a trance of the imagination as part of Victoria Theatre Association’s Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series, February 20 – March 4.
Grace Ann Schwab was a gentle soul who “gave much although she had little.”
While she enjoyed some measure of success for her art work in the 1960s, she was not a self-promoter and mostly worked for the pleasure of working.
A native of Pittsburgh, Penn., Schwab died last fall in a Fairfield Township nursing home, leaving behind a legacy of more than 600 paintings that have become a treasure and a labor of love for local art dealer Sherry Armstead of Art On Symmes.
“They’re just so alive, the more you look at them, the more captivating they become,” Armstead said. “Sometimes, I’m real sad to see them sell.”
Armstead’s association with Schwab began in 2002, when Helen York, Schwab’s sister, came to her gallery looking for help. Schwab’s health had deteriorated to the point that she couldn’t continue to take care of herself, York said.
“I’m the only sibling and there were just a few cousins left in Pennsylvania,” she said. “We were the youngest in a really old family, so it was necessary for her to move in with us.”
But even in her poor health and suffering form some form of dementia, Schwab wouldn’t be separated from her collection of paintings, which she had kept in the attic of her Pittsburgh home. So York’s husband, Jimmy, made a return trip to gather them and bring them to their Fairfield Township home. Y
ork said that until then and since their childhood, she had only seen her sister for brief visits every few years.
“She went to college in California and I went to college in Tulsa, then got married and moved to Ohio,” York said. “She graduated from San Jose State, then went to Italy.”
Schwab was also an accomplished classical guitarist and while in Italy studied with the great Andres Segovia.
After returning to the United States, she settled for a while in Washington, D.C., and then Annapolis, Md., where she studied art with Donald Coale.
During the 1960s her paintings commanded prices from $300 to $1,000, Armstead said, judging from the price tags that were on some of them. Schwab returned to Pittsburgh in the mid ‘70s. She stopped painting around that time, perhaps around 1973.
“Grace was a very gentle person and didn’t promote her own work,” her sister said. “She had some people in Washington who did that for her for a while.
“She always felt she did art work for her own sake, for her own experience. Many of them she never signed. She was not a person who had conventional designs on life. She lived hand-to-mouth, teaching painting and guitar. She was a draftsperson for an architectural firm for a while, but her life was her involvement with her work and her love of her guitar. She was soft-spoken and kind and generous.
“She gave much even though she had very little.”
With 600 paintings in her garage, York didn’t know what to do with them.
“I liked her paintings, but I’m not a connoisseur. I found it interesting, but I didn’t know what to do with them, so I looked around to find someone to assist me.”
Armstead said that normally, when someone comes into her gallery with a story like that, she treats it with suspicion, but something piqued her attention.
“My intuition led me to that garage,” she said. Although the paintings were not in good condition, Armstead saw the genius that went into them. She bought 20 of them on the spot.
“I took them home, and the more I looked at them, the more I loved them,” she said. “So I went back and offered a price for them all and a five-year royalty on each one I sold.”
Before she took possession, she had Schwab sign those that weren’t. It then took Armstead about eight months, she said, to restore and catalog the collection. She frames them as she sells them. So far, she has sold about 60 of the 600.
“Buyers from as far away as California and Tennessee have stopped in my shop and bought her paintings,” she said. “There’s a local couple who have become avid collectors and have bought about six or eight of them.
“Some of them have dates and we guess the time frame on the rest of them. They’re painted on tissue paper and grocery sacks. Some of them have paintings on two sides, so I have them framed so that you can turn them over. Several of them have poems on the back and I’m not ready to cover them up.
“I can see the different periods in her life. Sometimes she was dark and sometimes she was cheerful. She developed a phobia to birds and sometimes they show up in unusual places.”
She also apparently developed a phobia for the chemicals in the paints, and that is likely the reason she quite painting, Armstead said.
After 15 months in her sister's home, Schwab's condition deteriorated to the point that she had to be put in a nursing home.
“I just couldn’t cope anymore with her dementia,” York said. “We did all right, but it became difficult and her illness just robbed her of everything.”
But her work lives on, and a selection of her work will be part of an exhibition at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts beginning Thursday with an opening reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The exhibition will continue through March 23.
how to go
WHAT: “Grace Ann Schwab: Paintings.”
WHERE: Fitton Center for Creative Arts, 101 S. Monument Ave., Hamilton.
WHEN: Opening reception 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8. Exhibition continues through March 23.
COST: No charge.
MORE INFO: (513) 863-8873; www.fittoncenter.org.
A version of this story originally appeared in the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.
What a world!!
A bizarre little vaudeville act, vintage 1939, with introduction by Red Skelton.
MORE GO!
Before he was a rock’n’roll star and one of the founding members of the ground-breaking folk/rock band The Byrds, Roger McGuinn was folk singer Jim McGuinn.
Although he has kept his rock star name, he has never given up his passion for folk music.
When he was a high school student in his native Chicago, McGuinn had a teacher who knew Bob Gibson, one of the leaders of the folk revival of the 1960s.
“So one day he came in to school with his five-string banjo and played a set for us,” McGuinn said in a phone interview from his Florida home. “I was into Gene Vincent and the rockabilly scene. This was before the Kingston Trio became popular. I had heard of the Weavers but I didn’t associate them with folk music because I thought they were just pop.”
He was enchanted by Gibson’s fingerpicking style and his way of tying stories into the songs.
“I asked my teacher about it and she sent me over to the Old Town School (of folk music, where Gibson taught) and I went there and started studying folk music, began playing the banjo and the 12-string guitar,” he said.
It was the 12-string with its distinctive tone that drove many of the Byrd’s later hits, but it was already a staple for folk musicians at the time.
“Bob Gibson played one,” McGuinn said. “Pete Seeger and Leadbelly both played 12-strings. It had a fuller sound and was better as a solo instrument.”
By the time he got out of high school, Jim McGuinn was already well-known as a folk prodigy around Chicago, then went on the road as an accompanist, first with the Limelighters, then as the fourth member of the Chad Mitchell Trio before joining Bobby Darin’s band.
At Darin’s urging, McGuinn moved to New York City and went to work as a songwriter in the famous Tin Pan Alley Brill Building. He also started performing as a regular in the emerging Greenwhich Village folk scene, where he became acquainted with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the others.
But another emergence would prove just as important to McGuinn’s career: The Mersey Beat.
“I heard the Beatles and started messing round with putting folk songs to the Beatles beat,” he said. “I heard folk music changes in the Beatles music. They were using a lot of passing chords that weren’t common in rock’n’roll and made their music a lot more interesting than three chords.
“So I started experimenting with this in the village. It didn’t go over very well because the folk musicians there were purists. And one day the club owner put up a sign that said ‘Beatle Impersonator’ to bring in the tourists and that was when I decided to go to L.A.”
In Los Angeles, he found an audience at the Troubador and one night after opening for Hoyt Axton that he met the first of the future Byrds.
“Gene Clark liked what I was doing” by mixing rock and folk music, McGuinn said. “He had just left the New Christy Minstrels and was looking for something to do. But it was a hard sell for a lot of the folk musicians. ‘That’s bubblegum,’ they’d say. We called them the ‘folk nazis’.”
Clark and McGuinn started writing songs together. One day, a guy that McGuinn hung around with sometimes back when he was in the limelighters started singing with them, adding a high harmony part that McGuinn really liked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be in a band with David Crosby, but Crosby knew a guy named Jim Dickson that had a recording studio they could use for free after hours, so a trio was suddenly born and Dickson became its manager.
They first called themselves the Jet Set, then signed with Elektra records as the Beefeaters. The first single, “Please Let Me Love You,” flopped. Dickson suggesting they form a full band. A mandolin player named Chris Hillman auditioned to play bass. Crosby and McGuinn were hanging out in front of the Troubador one day when they saw a guy on the street one day who looked like one of the Rolling Stones, so they signed him up to play drums. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know how to play; Michael Clarke literally got in on his looks.
At Thanksgiving dinner in 1964, they batted around a new name. Their host suggested “The Birds” since it was kind of like “The Beatles,” but bird was British slang for “girl,” so McGuinn suggested spelling it with a Y.
While looking for material to record that winter, Dickson played them a tape of a song Bob Dylan was working on.
“Dylan was recording the song for an album but Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was singing out of tune on it so they weren’t going to use it,” McGuinn said. “So we got a copy of it and decided to do it for our first single.”
Dylan’s version was also in a folky 2/2 time, so they ramped it up to 4/4 and played it with electric instruments — before Bob Dylan had turned electric himself — and cut it down to one verse and two choruses to make it more radio-friendly. Because the other members of the band were still novices on their instruments, only McGuinn played on that record with an electric 12-string.
“Dylan came to the studio when we were recording it, though, and gave it his seal of approval,” McGuinn said. “We had recorded some of his other songs and played him a tape of ‘All I Really Want to Do’ and he said, ‘What is that song?’ He didn’t even recognize it. He said, ‘You can dance to it.’ He appreciated what we were doing to his songs.”
That summer, “Mr. Tambourine Man” climbed to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts and they Byrds were officially rock stars.
In the next two years, they scored hits with “All I Really Want to Do,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Eight Miles High,” “So You Want To Be a Rock’N’Roll Star,” “Mr. Spaceman” and another Dylan tune, “My Back Pages.”
Jim McGuinn became Roger McGuinn in 1967 because a guru in Indonesia said that a new name would “vibrate better with the universe.”
The guru sent Jim the letter “R” and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter.
Because he was into gadgets and science fiction, McGuinn sent back names like “Rocket” and “Ramjet.” He included the name Roger only because they use it for radio messages to indicate “OKAY.”
Roger was the only “real” name in the bunch and the guru picked it. Jim only changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger but used Roger as a stage name.
He didn’t notice any changes in the vibrations of the universe and wanted to change his name back, but decided it would have been too confusing.
“A study of the ‘60s would help you to understand all this,” he said.
The Byrds eventually fell apart. Clark had to leave because he was afraid of flying.
“You can’t be a Byrd, Gene, if you can’t fly,” Roger told him.
Crosby left from dissatisfaction with the musicianship of McGuinn, Hillman and Clarke. Tired of his carping, McGuinn and Hillman confronted him at the Monterey Pop Festival and offered him a cash settlement to leave.
Other players came and went, most famously Gram Parsons, widely considered to be the founder of the “alt-country” sound, and when a 1973 reunion with Crosby and Hillman flopped, McGuinn retired “The Byrds” name and set out as a solo artist.
In recent years, McGuinn has returned to his love of folk music.
In 1995 he began uploading folk song recordings and music charts to his website, rogermcguinn.com, and last year released 100 of those recordings in “The Folk Den Project,” a four-CD set of his favorites.
While that is a consuming passion, McGuinn said his live shows are more of “a history of rock’n’roll,” including Byrds tunes and stuff from his solo career.
“I usually do some of the folk den stuff, but not a lot,” he said. “Most people find that too boring.”
But preserving the folk music heritage, he said, is as important as restoring an old building.
“One of the reasons I started the Folk Den was to preserve some of these songs that may have gone away,” he said. “They’re beautiful and if they would be lost it would be a shame.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo not only sparked a world music revival when it appeared on Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album in 1986, but helped bring an end to the centuries-old practices of Apartheid in their native South Africa.
By that time, however, the band had been performing for more than 20 years. Inspired by the traditional music known as isicathamiya, a rhythmic a capella style born in the mines of South Africa, Joseph Shabalala put his first group together in 1960, but had difficulty explaining to people the kind of sound he wanted to create.
“In 1964, he had a dream about how to put the music and voices together,” said his cousin and band spokesman Albert Mazibuko, “but the singers still failed to learn all the techniques he wanted. They said it was too much. Most of the traditional songs only had a few words that were repeated over and over, but Joseph wanted to tell stories.
“So he came to us (his brothers and cousins) and said ‘Let’s re-form this group.’ ”
Part of the isicathamiya tradition was the fierce, but social, competitions that took place. The music was born in the mines where workers were taken by rail to work far away from their homes and their families.
On Saturday night, they would sing late into Sunday morning, calling themselves “Cothoza Mfana,” or “tip toe guys,” referring to the dance steps choreographed so as to not disturb the camp security guards. When miners returned to the homelands, the tradition returned with them.
The harmonies were very challenging, but the group got amazing reactions.
“People who heard us thought that we were very old but we were really very young,” Mazibuko said. “They said we didn’t sound like people and wondered if we were even human.”
Shabalala’s group won every competition they entered and were eventually banned from competition, although regularly invited to perform. They took the name Ladysmith Black Mambazo: “Ladysmith” is the hometown of the Shabalala family; “Black” references the black oxen, considered to be the strongest on the farm; “Mambazo” is the Zulu word for “ax,” symbolic of the group’s ability to “chop down” the competition.
So they were already well-known in South Africa and on tour when they received a call from Paul Simon’s record company saying that Simon wanted to meet with them.
“We had heard ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ and we were very surprised that he would call us because our music was so different,” Mazibuko said. “Gospel would have made more sense.”
Cultural differences afflicted the first recording session.
“There were so many people trying to tell us what to do, it was very difficult and confusing,” Mazibuko said. “We finally called it a day and we went back to the hotel with a tape of Paul Simon playing the piano with the song we were to do.
“We went back to the hotel and prayed, then we practiced until we had to go back to the studio at 10 a.m. We said, ‘We’ve got something we want you to hear.’ ”
The result was “Homeless,” one of the songs that appeared on “Graceland” and it set the tone for the rest of the sessions.
Simon later produced Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s American debut album, “Shaka Zulu,” which won the 1987 Grammy Award for best folk recording.
The latest album, “The Long Walk to Freedom,” celebrates the band’s history by re-recording many of their most important songs, including tracks from “Graceland,” with a new slate of special guests such as Taj Mahal, Natalie Merchant, Sarah McLaughlin, Zap Mama and Emmylou Harris.
