Performing Arts

Martin Dosh, Andrew Bird and Jeremy Ylvisaker at the Wilco Loft in Chicago. Photographs by and courtesy of Jason Tobias.

From NYTimes online article “Cheap Thrills”

“Writing songs and performing live have with time become almost the same process for me. The improvisation and conversation with the audience from show to show keep the songs fluid and alive. On the other hand, making a record is like a show that gets drawn out over a year or more, but with no cathartic resolution. When I'm in the studio things can quickly unravel and that's not surprising. The audience has disappeared and you are given the attractive, but dangerous option to control everything. This is why I decided to start in Nashville with the basics - voice and guitar - because it's easy to lose your rudder in overdub realm. Knowing that the mostly unadorned Nashville songs sound great frees me up to indulge myself a bit. Sometimes you make the song better; more often than not things can get over-wrought.” - Andrew Bird
Click here to read more.

Bon Iver who will be featured in Walker’s sold out Rock the Garden 2008 recently stopped by The Current Studio for a Minnesota Public Radio/ KCMP live session.

You can download from Live Indie Sessions here.

Electronic one-man band Martin Dosh steps out of the background and into the spotlight

In a booth at a neighborhood pub in south Minneapolis, a slumped and bearded Martin Dosh is staring into his beer, tapping his fingers on the table, and talking about a coming performance at the Walker Art Center. It’s an evening devoted entirely to his music. The May 3 event has a title, “The World of Dosh,” and he’s effectively been asked by the museum to curate a tribute to himself, with special appearances by past and current collaborators like whistling indie-rock song-master Andrew Bird and underground hip-hop phenomenon Jel.

“He’s been this enigmatic, brilliant figure in the background,” says Philip Bither, curator for performing arts at the Walker. “He’s somewhere between the worlds of experimental music and pop.” Bither lists the genres Dosh’s music and collaborations have inhabited: contemporary classical, electronic, improvisational jazz, hip hop, and rock. “He’s somebody who can find links between all of those styles and do something fresh and intelligent,” says Bither, “and that’s rare.” Read more here.
- Jeff Severns Guntzel.

The World of Dosh at Walker Art Center
Saturday, May 3 at 8pm & 11pm
click here for tickets or Have a listen!

This Wednesday, April 23rd Trisha Brown an icon of contemporary dance will be on Midmorning with Kerri Miller.
Tune in to 91.1 at 9 AM or Click here to listen.

This Friday’s Dance Performance by Trisha Brown’s Dance Company will include music/score by John Cage and Laurie Anderson.
click here for tickets

Pitchfork Media, the groundbreaking, national on-line bible for all things indie-rock gives a shout out to the Rock the Garden line up, the Sculpture Garden, and Walker’s upcoming Dosh engagement to boot.

“The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden– adjacent to the Twin Cities’ Walker Art Center– is one of the more beautiful spots in the Midwest (that picture doesn’t really do it justice). Featuring ornate landscaping and gargantuan sculptures from the likes of Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and others, it’s a surreal, almost magisterial spot, and sounds just about perfect for a concert.

What luck, then, that in celebration of its 20th birthday, the Sculpture Garden is hosting a pretty great one. On June 21, the New Pornographers, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, and hometown heroes Cloud Cult will, rain or shine, hit the outdoor stage for the Rock the Garden celebration. Happy birthday, place with the big cherry spoon!

Oh, and if you happen to call the Twin Cities home or happen to be in town for a Twins game or something, you’ll have a chance to see local boy Dosh– along with Andrew Bird, Jel, Fog, and others– at the Garden’s World of Dosh concert May 3.”
Posted by Paul Thompson See the complete article here.

Click here for tickets to Rock the Garden and World of Dosh.

Join Marc Bamuthi Joseph and the cast of the break/s following the Friday show at this special event!

What:Afterparty with KRS ONE Live in Concert
When: Friday, April 11: 10 pm-1 am after the break/s at the Walker.
Where: Trocaderos Night Club Downtown Mpls. 107 3rd Ave No, Minneapolis

Tickets for the 18+ afterparty / concert available at 612.465.0440 and by clicking here

The event’s myspace page : click here for a listen.

Click here for tickets to the break/s at Walker

Andrew Bird, the headliner of this years Rock the Garden, blogs on the New York Times music opinion page.

How to write a song and other mysteries: Words Will Tell

“In about a week I will load up my car with amplifiers and guitars and drive to Nashville to begin recording my next record. I don't drive much anymore and I'm glad for that except that I used to write a lot while on the road. Solitude, boredom, and the desperate need to entertain oneself are ideal stimuli for songwriting.

I'll spend days at my farm creating loops with my violin where I record a phrase and layer on top of it, often starting with pizzicato followed by multiple string lines. This is a handy compositional tool I also use in performance. I can follow any whim and instantly hear how it works in counterpoint with other ideas. It's perfect for someone who plays by ear and improvises as I do and who is too impatient for notation. This helps keep ideas fluid and ephemeral but with an instant gratification playback option. I've found that I can be completely satisfied for weeks by the simplest four-bar phrase repeating over and over again. It's a fragile thing where your perception of it can change it completely. You can reconstruct all the elements the following day, note for note and go by physical memory but the feel can be elusive.” - Andrew Bird Click here to read more.

Have a Listen on his website’s A/V page or myspace.

Rock the Garden!
Featuring : Andrew Bird, The New Pornographers, Cloud Cult, and Bon Iver
Walker Art Center/Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Saturday, June 21, 2008 | 4:00 pm to 11:00 pm
For more information / tickets click here

Andrew Bird, playing in Austin 2007 | Photo by Gary Miller

David Torn performing his new album at Joe’s Pub.

A night of chaos and coalescence

(At the Regattabar jazz club in Cambridge) On Thursday night, all hell broke loose. David Torn, a ridiculously adventurous electric guitarist who sculpts his sound with electronics, brought his quartet Prezens to the club, and a heavy metal concert nearly happened. It was loud and crazy. To compare these musicians to a rock band, however, is to do them a disservice. They play a brand of free jazz that’s primal and sophisticated.

Torn, alto saxophonist Tim Berne, keyboard player Craig Taborn, and drummer Tom Rainey engaged in extended improvisations that developed without predetermined structures or song titles. Their atonal, polyrhythmic jams reeked of chaos, and yet there was, in fact, structure beneath all the madness. Rainey bashed out irregular rock beats. Taborn stabbed the keys of his Fender Rhodes, eliciting blurts and beeps. Berne blew furiously, sometimes in circular patterns, sometimes randomly. Torn - wearing a Russian fur hat - did everything to his guitar short of ripping off the strings. When he ran out of phrases, he dragged the pick up and down the neck, manipulating the noise by twiddling the knobs on the bank of equipment that separated him from the audience.

It was the kind of music that could make a laid-back jazz aficionado go out and break stuff.
- The Boston Globe

read the complete article here or have a listen.

Performance Information
Prezens Quartet (David Torn/Tim Berne/Craig Taborn/Tom Rainey)
and Drew Gress’ 7 Black Butterflies featuring Ralph Alessi
Date: Friday, March 28
Time: 8:00 pm
Place: McGuire Theater
Click here for tickets and more show information.

“Hip hop music appeals to a wider audience than ever. Poet and dancer Marc Bamuthi Joseph says he hopes to teach people of all ages and races that hip hop is not monolithic, and not all negative.” - MPR

Click here to listen

Marc Bamuthi Joseph: Arts activist, dancer, hip hop and spoken word artist. The Walker Art Center recently was awarded a Joyce Foundation grant to support the world premiere of “the break/s” as well as Joseph’s artist-in-residency. Joseph will perform the work April 10 - 12 at the Walker in Minneapolis. Click here for tickets

“To most people a bus stop might seem a mundane place. For Romeo Castellucci, the experimental Italian stage director, the sight of listless teenagers waiting for their ride was mind-altering.

Mr. Castellucci, 47, sat in his car while braked at a traffic light in his native city, Cesena. Adolescent girls clustered a few feet away. Studying their body language and facial expressions, and noting how they were positioned in relation to the surrounding physical space, Mr. Castellucci was inspired to create an original theater production evoking their states of mind.

For this project Mr. Castellucci wanted to try something new. He built visual sequences for "Hey Girl!" around various symbols of femininity. Scenes reel through time and space, traversing the young woman's mind. One moment she appears in beatific bliss; the next she is deformed by eerily unreal acts of male aggression and violence.” -New York Times Click here to read more

Hey Girl is at Walker Art Center February 14 - 17. Click here to purchase tickets.

Participate in a stunning and powerful performance at Walker Art Center this February!

Acclaimed Italian theater director Romeo Castellucci is looking for male volunteers of any age to perform in a short section of Hey Girl!, which is being presented next month in the McGuire Theater. No experience is necessary, all are welcome. Click here to see the trailer

40 Male Extras Needed (Hurry, spaces are filling quickly)

• Where: Walker Art Center, McGuire Theater
• Please bring you own regular street cloths ( without logos or writing ) for the performance
• The volunteer performance time is no more than 15 minutes per show
• A great resume addition
• Small stipend given to cover parking/gas
• Must be available on all of the following dates:

o Rehearsal: Meet in McGuire theater lobby on the 3rd floor of the new building. Rehearsal times are: Wednesday, February 13 from 8pm-11pm
o Performances: February 14 - 17, 2008. Meet one hour before curtain each night. Performances begin at 8pm ( 7pm on Sunday) and last 90 mins.

For additional information or to volunteer contact Natalie Bowers at Natalie.bowers@walkerart.org or at 612.375.7695

Hypnotically beautiful [with] a visual resonance that you find all too rarely on stage. . . . Exquisite intensity flows through much of what Castellucci calls his drama of movement. - Financial Times, London

Become enveloped in a stunning tour-de-force by Italy's acclaimed director Romeo Castellucci. This unforgettable theater of the subconscious unfolds fascinating and frightening visual landscapes equally profound, enigmatic, and dreamlike that provoke the imagination and make the senses swirl. With raw architectural sets, surreal costuming, film projections, exploding glass, and riveting performances by two actresses (and 40 male performers), Hey Girl! constructs a world that alternates between the beautiful and the horrific. Note: Contains nudity and simulated violence. Copresented with the University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts.

Jérôme Bel is receiving rave reviews in New York this week!

“The fascination of the must-see Pichet Klunchun and myself should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Mr. Bel's career as an endearingly rumpled, brilliant enfant terrible and master of wry, sly minimalism. But he has found his perfect complement in Mr. Klunchun, a practitioner of khon, a form of classical Thai masked dance, who wanders serenely with Mr. Bel through a series of cultural collisions until the gentle cataclysm that suddenly and amusingly ends the conversation.” - NY Times

Click to read the entire review

Don’t miss next weeks show at Walker on Wednesday and Thursday November 14 & 15 at 8:00 pm. Walker’s McGuire theater and 2-for-1 tickets are available online by clicking here or at the box office by requesting the 'Killing me Softly' special!

In December 2007 Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula will be presented with the 2007 Principal Prince Claus Award. The Prince Claus Fund has selected Culture and Conflict as an area of special interest and as the theme for their 2007 awards.

Culture, for the Prince Claus Fund, is a basic human need. Culture has the power either to provoke or diminish conflict. This year the Prince Claus Awards honour artists and organisations that have worked to counteract the destructive power of conflict by opposing beauty to devastation, opening spaces and forms of dialogue, restoring respect for others and enhancing dignity and self-esteem.

Faustin Linyekula and Studios Kabako / Photo by Joachim Montessuis

Faustin Linyekula (1974, Democratic Republic of Congo) Describing himself as a storyteller, Faustin Linyekula uses movements, text, sound and images to communicate the complex experience of living in the violent conflict that has gripped his country for decades, and to help people examine and reconstruct their lives. The Prince Claus Fund honours Faustin Linyekula for his outstanding choreography, his bold return to Congo, his innovative stimulation of culture despite instability and turbulence, and his commitment to the development of his country. Read more

Join celebrated Congo-based choreographer Faustin Linyekula as he turns the Cedar Cultural Center into a Kinshasa social club and combines a spirited soukous party with an intensive performance installation.

Date: November 1 - 2
Time: 8:00 pm
Place: Cedar Cultural Center

and

Date: Saturday, November 3
Time: 8:00 pm to 2:00 am
Place: Cedar Cultural Center
Click here for tickets and more show information

This Saturday October 27th at Walker Art Center’s McGuire Theater

An eccentric and an outsider, photographer Mike Disfarmer took portraits of the residents of Heber Springs, Arkansas, in the 1940s, chronicling heartland America’s working poor.

Inspired by these arresting portrayals of postwar rural life, guitar genius Bill Frisell created an evening of new compositions.

His atmospheric and innovative musical language offers a perfect complement to the photographer’s images dissolving across multiple screens framing onstage.
Click here for Performance Information

Disfarmer: A Biography
by Richard B. Woodward

It’s a puzzle that Mike Meyer, better known as Mike Disfarmer, fell into this gregarious profession and a miracle that he succeeded at it, for most reports indicate that he lacked even basic social skills. The people in the small town of Heber Springs, Arkansas, where he made photographic portraits for more than forty years, remember neither the places he worked nor the man himself as attractive. For a good part of his life (1884-1959) he seems to have been more feared than liked. Click here to read more

This text is excerpted from Richard B. Woodward’s essay "American Metamorphosis: Disfarmer and the Art of Studio Photography" in the book Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints.

click to see the slideshow! Excellent photos by Daniel Corrigan.

Read the City Pages review and comments