BLIND VISIONARIES Daniel Kelly in collaboration with THE SEEING WITH PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTIVE
2 TheSharon.com ©2022 The Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center. CONTENTS Theatre Staff ......................................................................................................... 2 Whitney Morse on The Sharon® L. Morse Performing Arts Center ....................... 3 History & Project Description .......................................................................... 4-5 Creative Collaborators ....................................................................................... 6-7 Coming Soon ....................................................................................................... 8 THEATRE STAFF Director of Operations .................................................................. Jason Goedken Artistic Director ............................................................................ Whitney Morse Production Manager ............................................................................. Jon Cronin Senior Booking Manager ......................................................... Elizabeth Constant Senior Marketing Coordinator ...................................................... Taylor Gunnell Executive Administrator ................................................................... Sean Graham Lighting Director ............................................................................... Mason Shell Assistant Lighting Directors ....................................................... AlisonColinSouthgateHall Senior Production Coordinator ............................................... Cassandra Francois Production Coordinator .......................................................... Morgan Thompson Audio Visual Director .......................................................................... Luke Bezio House Manager .................................................................................. Heather Ard Assistant House Manager ................................................................ Sierra Baggins Director of Ticketing & Customer Relations .............................. Yasmeen Stogden Promotion & Marketing ..................................... The Villages Sales & Marketing Ad Sales ........................................................................ The Villages Media Group
We welcome you to The Sharon: a place for you to see an old favorite, but also a place to discover your new favorite. I sincerely hope you enjoy the show today, and I look forward to seeing you here again soon!
See You at The Sharon, Artistic Director
Dear Patron of the Arts,
Much like the building’s namesake, my grandmother, Sharon L. Morse, we love all varieties of the performing arts here. It is in her memory that I, along with my amazing team of artists and arts administrators, strive to bring many different types of the highest quality entertainment here to The Sharon. Since opening in 2015, we have strived to establish your trust, that a show at The Sharon is a show worth seeing. Perhaps you find yourself here today to see a concert of one of your favorite musicians, or to take in the national tour of a Broadway show. Either way, we encourage you to consider trying out a new show that perhaps you haven’t heard of before, knowing that it has been intentionally curated by our team.
PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
W hitney Morse
Welcome to The Sharon® L. Morse Performing Arts Center!
WHITNEY MORSE on The Sharon®L. Morse
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Kelly poured through the entire body of work created by The Seeing With Photography Collective over four decades. From several thousand photos, he selected the 200 images featured in Blind Visionaries. He meticulously curated and ordered the photos using visual themes and different photographic techniques as his Withguides.thephotos
selected and organized by themes and techniques, he created 10 different films that are projected onto the video screen during the performance of Blind Visionaries. Viewers are immersed into the stunning visual world of The Seeing with Photography Collective as the film delves into each photo, weaving, zooming in and out, and across different parts of each image to reveal the rich visual language and surreal world created by these extraordinary photographers.
But seeing the photography was not enough. Kelly felt audiences would want to know more about these visually impaired photographers and how they could create such stunning photos with their limited ability (or complete inability) to see. He interviewed several members of the Collective and wove the recorded audio interviews throughout the performance. Audience members hear the photographers describe, in their own words, their personal experience of losing
Daniel Kelly created Blind Visionaries because of his passion for the stunning images made by the blind and visually impaired photographers of The Seeing With Photography Collective. Kelly first encountered their work more than 15 years ago in New York City and made several visits to the Collective’s weekly photography-making sessions at the Center for the Blind in Manhattan led by the Collective’s director, Mark Andres. Daniel was invited to perform for a gallery exhibition at the Soho Gallery. Kelly and his band performed in the dark as people attending the opening created photos with members of the Collective who use a unique process to create their photos called “light painting.” Photos created by the Collective are also on the front cover and booklet of Kelly’s CD Duets with Ghosts.
HISTORY & PROJECT DESCRIPTION
is one of Kelly’s strengths. He has an uncanny ear for music and storytelling and his deep sense of empathy and humanity make for performances that leave audiences uplifted and curious for more.
Daniel Kelly is an innovative composer, pianist and conceptualist who has been called “stunningly original” with “a visionary imagination.” His ability to create multi-faceted works that brilliantly incorporate music with literature, visual art and journalism have captivated audiences across the country. A prolific composer and tireless musical explorer, Kelly continually seeks out new avenues for his Makingcreativity.connections
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Inspired by these incredible photos and the fascinating process of “light painting” used to create them, and his gallery performance experience, Kelly further developed his ideas that led to the creation of Blind Visionaries.
One of Kelly’s core values and mission as an artist is engaging with audiences and communities. He wanted to the audience to have the experience of creating a light painting photo, therefore each performance of Blind Visionaries includes a participatory segment where patrons are chosen to come on stage to create a photo with members of The Seeing With Photography Collective while the trio continues to play. The images are created on digital cameras, and the newly made photos are projected onto the video screen later in the performance, delighting audiences as they see themselves, their friends and neighbors transported into the captivating visual world they have been experiencing all throughout the Theperformance.
Blind Visionaries touring cast consists of three members of the Daniel Kelly Trio (piano, bass, drums), Mark Andres, Director of The Seeing with Photography Collective and one visually impaired photographer from the Collective. www.siegelartist.com/blind-visionarieswww.danielkellymusic.com
their sight and how they draw meaning from the process of creating photos which have been exhibited in galleries throughout the world.
HISTORY & PROJECT
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After Kelly selected the photos, created the films, and recorded the interviews, he composed music that captures and amplifies the emotional quality of the photos, immersing the audience into a musical dialogue between the imagery in the photos and the compositions performed by his trio.
DESCRIPTION
6 TheSharon.com CREATIVE COLLABORATORS
Kelly has released five CDs of original compositions, including World, which blends Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music and features guest DJ, RJD2; Duets with Ghosts, which combines samples of voices from old archival recordings with a hard-edged Downtown New York electric quartet; Portal, an improvised solo piano suite that arose from his series of improvised solo piano concerts; Emerge, a new take on the jazz piano trio, infusing it with the energy and drive of rock music; and Rakonto: A Sounding of Community Voices which features the voices and stories of immigrants living in one of New York City’s most ethnically diverse communities.
DANIEL KELLY Creative Director, Composer, Pianist, Filmmaker, Interviewer
Daniel Kelly’s music has been declared “powerfully moving” by Time Out New York. He has created a prolific body of work that includes Shakespeare in Jazz, Blind Visionaries, and Rakonto, meaning “story” in Esperanto, an interview-based, concert-length performance that has been commissioned by 13 different performing arts centers across the United States.
The most recent Rakonto, commissioned by The King Center in Melbourne, FL, resulted in a 90-minute film that celebrates the lives of people in the community living with various disabilities which was aired locally in June Kelly2021.is
a recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award and has received funding from Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Grant and the New York State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. He has produced more than 350 concerts as co-Founding Artistic Director of Connection Works, an artist-run music organization based in Brooklyn that has received generous support from the Aaron Copland Fund. He has worked with Grammy award-winner Joe Lovano, NEA Jazz Masters Dave Liebman & Shelia Jordan, and MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipients Dafnis Prieto and Steve Coleman. He has performed with Grammy award-winning jazz legends Michael Brecker and Joe Lovano, hip-hop star Lauryn Hill, and modern classical giants the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
7352-751-7799 CREATIVE COLLABORATORS
THE SEEING WITH PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTIVE
MARK ANDRES
Mark Andres studied photography at Brown University and at the New York University/International Center of Photography graduate program. He began working with the legally blind in 1985 and teaches at the Visions Services for the Blind. He has been director of the Collective for over 30 years.
Exhibited in galleries around the world, the haunting and poetic images of The Seeing with Photography Collective are created by a group of visually impaired, sighted and totally blind photographers. They use a dynamic process called “light painting” which transports the viewer into their unique dream world of surreal portraits. The visually impaired or blind photographers work with a sighted assistant to create an image based on a vision in their mind’s eye. The results are riveting, dramatic images that have helped these artists to heal through their work. Coming from diverse backgrounds and life experiences, they share an awareness of sight loss, along with the determination to dialogue and integrate their images into a more universal context. The Collective’s work has been exhibited worldwide and can be seen in the book Shooting Blind published by Aperture. www.flickr.com/people/seeingwithphotography/
Photographer and Director, The Seeing with Photography Collective
8 TheSharon.com COMING SOON
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