The Green Room: From on stage, back stage and the theater seats, the Performing Arts blog illuminates the intersecting worlds of dance, theater, and music.
This 360° panoramic was made by stitching together six wide-angle vertical images. They were made during the first song by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings during Rock the Garden 2010. You can also download the high-res quicktime movie.
This 360° panoramic was made by stitching together six wide-angle vertical images. They were made during the first song by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings during Rock the Garden 2010.
You can also download the high-res quicktime movie.
A friend recently shared this video medley with me: Juana Molina’s former comedy show, Juana y Sus Hermanas (!) The clips are funnier to me than, say, most SNL skits in recent memory, and I only speak un poco. Ms. Molina’s comic genius speaks a language of universal incoherence. Molina is better known in the U.S. for [...]
A friend recently shared this video medley with me:
Juana Molina’s former comedy show, Juana y Sus Hermanas (!) The clips are funnier to me than, say, most SNL skits in recent memory, and I only speak un poco. Ms. Molina’s comic genius speaks a language of universal incoherence.
Molina is better known in the U.S. for her music than for television, which she left in 1996 to release her first album; it was a metamorphosis executed with astonishing aplomb, although the medium-swap was less radical to her than her (T.V.) fans. She grew up in a musical home, and her tango-player father has said in an interview (regarding the backlash of her switch from television to music) that “People are too conservative in what they think of as music, and I wanted her to hear everything and to feel free.”
Throughout her music career, Molina has elliptically re-envisioned the singer-songwriter paradigm, traversing to its farthest borders on her latest album, Un Día. But on her first album, Rara (currently unavailable), we find equally compelling albeit more traditional tweaks of the same theme. “En los días de humedad” (scroll up after clicking this link to download) has been on repeat for months now with me: the haunting, tremulous uncertainty at 0:38 and throughout, her voice at 1:03 and 2:06 capturing a delicate anguish with inertia. Her voice navigates unexpected intervals, the more oblique entanglements of song structure in general, and the vagaries of existence itself.
I saw Juana Molina at her last show in Minneapolis, at the Whole Music Club, and it was easily among the best shows I’ve ever seen, perhaps the best. It’s difficult to explain why some live music is so much more essential than others, but for her Whole appearance, the groove—in all its moving, shifting, tapestry dimensions—was flawless, and belied the unique conceptual underpinnings of her harmonic understanding. She explains:
“When I started to write the songs for [the] record ‘Son’, a new element that may have been hidden for a long time appeared; the randomness of the combination of sounds in nature. Each bird has a particular singing; nevertheless this singing is always different. It is not a pattern; it’s a drawing, a sound and a mode, only a few elements that each bird combines in a new way each time.
In the same way, sometimes I chose to sing a melodic drawing I develop for the song. Verses are alike, but never the same (rios seco, no seas antipática) other times I chose to sing a repetitive melody. What changes here and moves randomly is, for example, a keyboard. It is like overlapping two different loops, with no synchronicity at all. One very rhythmic and the other one more loose. When you play both, at the same time, the loose loop will provoke a changing harmony, because their beats will never be in the same place. This causes a moving harmony.”
This video illustrates her moving harmony concept:
Juana Molina’s concert at the Walker this Saturday night is a nice tie-in to fellow Argentinian and visual artist Guillermo Kuitca’s opening at the Walker this Friday night. The two even interviewed each other for the Star Tribune.
Tickets for Juana Molina are still available. Click here.
As mentioned in this blog, Eiko & Koma’s retrospective launched last month, and will be making its way to the Walker starting in October. Mark McCloughan, prior Walker Art Center Performing Arts Intern, had this to share about Eiko & Koma: “As a Walker Art Center intern in the summer of 2009, I worked in [...]
Eiko and Koma photos by Anna Lee Campbell
As mentioned in this blog, Eiko & Koma’s retrospective launched last month, and will be making its way to the Walker starting in October.
Mark McCloughan, prior Walker Art Center Performing Arts Intern, had this to share about Eiko & Koma:
“As a Walker Art Center intern in the summer of 2009, I worked in the performing arts department, supporting the wonderful staff as they planned events for the 2009-2010 season and beyond. One of the projects that was on the horizon for late 2010 was a residency by Eiko & Koma, two Japanese-American dancer-choreographers who have a long history with the Walker. Over the course of Eiko & Koma’s career, the Walker has been a great supporter, presenting and even commissioning new work from the duo.
Now, almost a year, later, I find myself working as an assistant to these great artists, who are gearing up to make the planned residency a reality. As part of Eiko & Koma’s Retrospective Project (which you can read more about here) the Walker has commissioned a new piece from the artists, which will take the form of a living installation titled ‘Naked’. Eiko and Koma have been hard at work over the last few months conceptualizing and designing the piece, and will spend the next few months asartists-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory building the installation before it arrives in Minneapolis in November.
It’s been really exciting for me to get to know Eiko & Koma, both through exploring their history at the Walker and assisting them with their current work. ‘Naked’ is shaping up to be something really special, and I hope many of you can make it to the installation in November to see the most recent product of the decades-long collaboration between Eiko & Koma and the Walker.”
While plans for their month-long installation here in November, Naked, are already in place, Eiko and Koma are exploring ways to add additional components to the piece. They’ve been chosen by United States Artists to participate in a unique fundraising strategy that may be “the first Internet site that allows direct public donations between art patrons and pre-selected artists” according to the Eiko and Koma website.
Part of their residency plans at the Walker also include a retrospective catalog of their work.
A final note of interest is that Eiko and Koma have put together a video anthologizing their entire body of work, nice for those new to the oeuvre. Check the first clip to see White Dance, with Koma “throwing potatoes with abandon” as Gia Kourlas wrote in the New York Times.
Inspired by outdoor events covering the Twin Cities summer calendar, in 1998 the Walker put together a concert that brought the Garden and the Center together for a day of drinking and snacking and mingling and, of course, rocking out. That first Rock the Garden, featuring the Jayhawks, was a relatively small-scale endeavor: Put up a [...]
Inspired by outdoor events covering the Twin Cities summer calendar, in 1998 the Walker put together a concert that brought the Garden and the Center together for a day of drinking and snacking and mingling and, of course, rocking out.
Rock the Garden, 1998, on Vineland Place
That first Rock the Garden, featuring the Jayhawks, was a relatively small-scale endeavor: Put up a stage on Vineland Place, bring in a band, show some Garden visitors and music fans a new side of our contemporary arts center. It was an immediate sucess, and in fact drew larger crowds than expected, thus inspiring another outdoor show in 2000.
Jayhawks in 1998
For Rock the Garden 2000, Sonic Youth came around and were joined by Stereolab, and the Walker had another success on its hands as masses of concert-goers flooded Vineland Place.
Sonic Youth in 2000
Sterolab in 2000
During Rock the Garden 2002, Martin Medeski & Wood brought their funky jazz jams to the Walker, inspiring yet another summer of awesome music & incredible scenery.
Medeski Martin & Wood in 2002
The next year, Rock the Garden 2003 became a full-on, multiple-band festival. Still rocking Vineland Place as a sweetly oversized block party, the Walker hosted Fog, The Bad Plus, and Wilco as guests crammed together in sweaty celebration of indie music.
Wilco in 2003
In 2004, Barbara Cohen, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, and David Byrne gave their own interpretations of what it means to rock the garden.
David Byrne in 2004
RTG, as it’s known to Walker staff, was on hiatus for 2005, 2006, and 2007, as Vineland Place transformed. The Walker’s expansion went up, along with an underground parking ramp, and the ’60s-era Guthrie came down. In 2008, the festival was revived in a new partnership with a public radio station that had gone on the air in 2005 — 89.3 The Current – and welcomed not three but four bands: Bon Iver, Cloud Cult, The New Pornographers, and Andrew Bird.
Andrew Bird in 2008
Last year, Rock the Garden’s stage was turned 90 degrees to face the rolling green hill along on the west side of the Walker. This seemingly minor adjustment made for a whole new kind of experience as fans got off the street and spread out on the lawn — and the festival escalated to grande proportions in a fantastic show put on by Solid Gold, Yeasayer, Calexico, and The Decemberists.
The masses at Rock the Garden ’09I hope you’re excited for Retribution Gospel Choir, OK Go, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and MGMT because they’ll be here before you know it to Rock the Garden with you.
