Opening Nights - 2017 Fall Program

F L O R I D A S TAT E UNIVERSITY FA L L 2 0 1 7 C E L E B R AT I N G 20 YEARS OF THE ARTS

OpeningNights2017_PRINT.pdf 1 9/8/2017 5:00:55 PM

The City of Tallahassee

Congratulates Florida State University on the

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The artists, direction, and outstanding performances continue to enrich the lives of our citizens and shine a spotlight on the cultural connection between the city and university.

17/18

SPONSORS P L AT I N U M L E V E L

GOLD LEVEL KE N KATO & NAN NAGY

WEALTH MANAGEMENT ADVISORS

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ARCHITECTURE INTERIOR DESIGN PLANNING

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GRANT SUPPORT

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OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 3

, Marisa Chanin, B.S. 17 President’s Undergraduate Humanitarian of the Year Award Winner

What does preeminence mean?

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It means some of the finest arts programs in the world. It means being one of only four U.S. universities to receive the most prestigious award for internationalization. It means elite research and the world record-breaking National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. It means a $10 billion economic impact on our state. And it means stellar alumni shaping the future like Marisa Chanin. Preeminence means Florida State University.

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One of the nation’s great universities: wide-ranging in academic excellence, tenaciously entrepreneurial, and a trailblazer in preparing one of the most diverse student populations in the nation to become globally competent and competitive. Preeminence means vaulting 10 spots in two years among Top 50 public universities. It means a 4-year graduation rate that is 15th in the country.

A Season to Remember D

uring the past 20 years, Opening Nights at Florida State University has distinguished itself as one of the premier performing arts programs in the country. The program provides unique educational experiences for our students and brings world-class performers to our campus. Opening Nights provides tremendous visibility for FSU and our community. In fact, through Opening Nights, Tallahassee is joining the ranks of our nation’s biggest cities in the caliber of performers it attracts.

The 20th anniversary season continues this tradition of excellence.

It will be a season to remember, with a diverse lineup of popular favorites and new, emerging best-in-class artists.

The fall program features a variety of outstanding bluegrass favorites. Triple-threat fiddle champions, the Quebe Sisters (Oct. 16), launch the season followed by “A Prairie Home Companion” host and mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (Oct. 24) and rising international stars Mile Twelve (Nov. 14). Concluding the fall program is ON favorite and repeat performer Sierra Hull, who will perform at FSU Panama City (Dec. 9).

We are fortunate to host another season of Southern Circuit Film Tour screenings, co-presented by the Askew Student Life Cinema and provided through South Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Films include Score: A Film Music Documentary (Oct. 22), Romeo is Bleeding (Nov. 5) and Pushing Dead (Nov. 19). Following each film will be a Q&A session with their respective filmmakers.

Two original, new works co-commissioned by ON will be performed this fall. Grammy-nominated string orchestra A Far Cry and Grammy-winning vocalist Luciana Souza will perform “The Blue Hour” (Nov. 21). New Work for Goldberg Variations (Dec. 1 & 2) created by choreographer Pam Tanowitz and pianist Simone Dinnerstein combines live music and dance on stage.

To get us in the holiday spirit, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will spread cheer with its Big Band Holidays concert (Dec. 5).

The fall program is a terrific start to what is sure to be an incredible season, thanks to the unwavering support from Opening Nights’ sponsors, members and patrons. Thank you for all you do to ensure that the performing arts remain integral to the quality of life for our campus and community.

John Thrasher President, Florida State University

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 5

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Florida State University

CONTENTS

John Thrasher, President Opening Nights Staff Bethany Atwell Interim Director Caroline Conway Director of Development Lori Elliott Marketing & Communications Manager Calla MacNamara Education & Engagement Manager Grace Atkins Operations Assistant Amanda Hartsfield Multimedia Design Specialist University Communications, Creative Services Rodney Johnson Assistant Director of Creative Services University Communications, Creative Services Opening Nights Development Council

Romeo is Bleeding

19

Mile Twelve

21

Gus Corbella, Chair Michael Obrecht, Chair-elect Ruth Akers Teresa Atkins Lauren Bacon Sara Bayliss Brandi Brown Kimberly Criser Eric Friall Heather Mitchell Nan Nagy Ron Sachs Susan Stratton Erin VanSickle Brian Wolfe

13

Quebe Sisters

15

SCORE: A Film Music Documentary

17

Chris Thile

23

Pushing Dead

25

A Far Cry & Luciana Souza

27

Pam Tanowitz Dance with Simone Dinnerstein

Florida State University Office of the President College of Arts and Sciences College of Fine Arts College of Motion Picture Arts College of Music Askew Student Life Cinema Fine Arts Ticket Office Florida State University Foundation University Communications

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

29

Sierra Hull

(Panama City)

31

DIRECTOR’S CHOICE SOUTHERN CIRCUIT FILM TOUR

Cover: Chris Thile by Brantley Gutierrez OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 7

2017-18 MEMBERS A S O F 9 / 2 1 / 2 0 1 7 Producer’s Circle

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Friend Level

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8 | OPENING NIGHTS FALL 2017

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OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 9

2017-18 MEMBERS

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Dr. Kevin Jones & Dr. Michele Dames

CONTINUED Ben & Leah Smith John & Maggie Stewart Val Sullivan & Val Kibler Dan Taylor & Tony Archer Ben & Joy Watkins David & Jane Watson Forrest Watson

John & Libby Woodward Marilyn Young & Michael Launer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar Kathy & Richard Zorn

Margaret & Russell Dancy JuliAnne DelMonego Carol & John DeLoach The Deyo Family Richard & Nora Doran

Debut Level Francisco Alarcon Jerry Altman & Ellen Berkowitz Thomas & Dana Ando Jim & Marsha Antista Randy & Cathy Armour Florence Helen Ashby Tiffany Baker & Johnathan Grandage Libby & Sid Bigham Bloch Piano Tuning/ Restoration/Sales

Rodney & Virlindia Doss Thomas & Staci Duggar Jane & Mike Dunn Jessica Ervin-Hang Richard Feezel Mark Fontaine Tim & Jamela Fordyce Scott Frazier & Kelly Jones Leah Gentry John & Mary Geringer Daniel Gidaro Jacque & Mitchell Gilberg

S. Bole

Paige Gill & Beau Jackson

Alan & Susan Bowers

Dean Gioia & Amy Weatherby

Keith & Valerie Bowers

Howard Glassman & Diane Salz

James & Sheila Boylan

Trimmel Gomes

Bill & Lisa Branch

Steven & Dale Grigas

William Brandt

Allison Hankinson

Ann & Bill Brattain

Lynda Hartnig & Tom Nicholson

Richard Brightman

Eileen & Chris Hawkins

Laura E. Brock

Karen Hawkins

Walt & Debbie Bunnell

Elizabeth Herbert

Ansje Burdick & Andy Opel

Stephen Hodges & Elizabeth

Betty Serow

Mark & Jan LeBar Terence Leland

Leah Reilly Sherman & Noreen Reilly

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Leah Sibbitt & Chris Grubb

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Jan Taylor & Tom Long Tiffany Lynn

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Margaret Stalvey

Melanie Mason & Blake Canter

Dana Farmer & Karen Stanford

Glenn Mayne

Bayard Stern & Rachelle McClure

Grover & Judy McKee John & Kathi McMillan Neal & Jane Meadows Lisa Medley Lee Kendall Metcalf Corbin & Murray Moore David & Kacelle Moore Mike & Judi Moss Dr. Angela Murphy Rodney & Almasi Vickers Drs. Robert & Janet Newburgh Lee & Lisa Nichols Jerilyn & Greg Nikiel Cliff & Lynn Nilson Bobbie & John O’Dea Jane & John Ohlin Stan & Lisa Peacock M. L. Pearson Thomas & Vivian Pelham Dr. Christine Peterson Sunny Carol Phillips Bill Pike & B.J. Vickers Gary & Debbie Pullen Lisa Qualls & Matthew Scheiner

Shaw Stiller Jesse & Catherine Hope Suber Mary Helen Sukhia Lon Sweat & Nancy Brand Priscilla & William Tharpe Beth & Fred Tedio Heather Terhune Anita Favors Thompson Train. Fight. Win. Tallahassee Brian & Jennifer Traft Karen & Mark Trammell Marianna Tutwiler James & Judith Underhill Erin VanSickle Tommy & Kim Verran Dan & Denise Vollmer Bob & Suzi Wattendorf Ann Weichelt Zach & Stacy Wheeler Andrea & Pete White Arthur Wiedinger Bill Woolley & Maria Jimenez Nancy Wright Ted Zateslo OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 11

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MONDAY

October

16 7:30 P.M. LOCATION

Goodwood Museum and Gardens TICKETS

$40

openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE Photo by Stewart Cohen

americana, western swing, country

Quebe Sisters “Give them your undivided attention, and if you’re not already, you too, will become a fan.” - Eddie Stubbs, Famed Opry Announcer When the Quebe (rhymes with “maybe”) Sisters from Texas take the stage and the triplethreat fiddle champions start playing and singing in multi-part close harmony, audiences are transfixed, then blown away. It’s partly because the trio’s vocal and instrumental performances are authentic all-Americana, all the time, respectful of the artists that inspired them the most.

SPONSORED BY

Continued on page 33

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 13

WAKE UP

YOUR DAY!

CHARLENE CRISTOBAL

ART MYERS

VENISE TOUSSAINT

ROB NUCATOLA

WEEKDAYS BEGINNING AT 5AM

COVERAGE YOU CAN COUNT ON! 14 | OPENING NIGHTS FALL 2017

SUNDAY

October

22 5:00 P.M. LOCATION

Askew Student Life Cinema TICKETS

$10 | Free for Students openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE

film

SCORE: A Film Music Documentary South Arts Southern Circuit Film Festival

SPONSORED BY

PRESENTED BY OPENING NIGHTS AND THE ASKEW STUDENT LIFE CINEMA This documentary brings Hollywood’s premier composers together to give viewers a privileged look inside the musical challenges and creative secrecy of the world’s most widely known music genre: the film score.

Filmmaker: Matt Schrader Continued on page 33 OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 15

WE M AKE NORTHWEST FLORIDA A WONDERFUL PL ACE TO LIVE, WORK AND PL AY.

WE M AKE NORTHWEST FLORIDA A WONDERFUL PL ACE TO LIVE, WORK AND PL AY.

ARTS

E D U C ATI O N

ARTS

E D U C ATI O N

ENVIRONMENT ENVIRONMENT

H E A LT H C A R H E A LT H C A R E

The St. Joe Community Foundation was created with the express purpose of making Northwest Florida a wonderful place to live, work and play. Over the Sponsor ofover Opening Nights to enhance past 16 years, the FoundationProud has contributed $18 Million The St. Joe Community Foundation was createdatwith the express performances Florida Statepurpose of cultural strengthen improve the makingarts, Northwest Florida aeducation, wonderful place to live, healthcare work Overprotect the University Panama Cityand play.and environment. can we help nonprofit organization? past 16 years,How the Foundation has your contributed over $18 Million toArts, enhance Providing funding for Education, Cultural Healthcare and the Environment. Over $18 million cultural arts, strengthen education, improve healthcare and protect the granted in Northwest Florida since 1999. environment. How can we help your nonprofit organization?

How can we Help You? How can we Help You? FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT JOEFOUNDATION.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT JOEFOUNDATION.COM © The St. Joe Company 20157 All Rights Reserved. “St. Joe Community Foundation” is a service mark of The St. Joe Company or its affiliates. © The St. Joe Company 2015 All Rights Reserved. “St. Joe Community Foundation” is a service mark of The St. Joe Company or its affiliates.

TUESDAY

October

24 7:30 P.M.

LOCATION

Opperman Music Hall TICKETS

$65

openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500

Photo by Brantley Gutierrez

GENRE

classical, rock, jazz, bluegrass

Chris Thile “The most impressive musicians are often versatile, but few match the breadth of the brilliant mandolinist Chris Thile.” - The New York Times Multiple Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur Fellow Chris Thile, a member of Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek and host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” is a mandolin virtuoso, composer and vocalist. With his broad outlook that encompasses classical, rock, jazz and bluegrass, Thile transcends the border of conventionally circumscribed genres, creating a distinctly American canon and a new musical aesthetic for performers and audiences alike. On this new program, Thile performs Bach solo violin works on the mandolin as well as his own compositions and contemporary music.

Continued on page 35

SPONSORED BY

Dave Montrois, Bobby Dick, Mark Webb, Kim Dixon and Dee Dee Rudd WEALTH MANAGEMENT ADVISORS

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 17

FINE &

Performing Arts AT TALLAHASSEE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

ART EXHIBIT: IN THE THICK OF IT LILIAN GARCIA-ROIG (FSU faculty member) Oct. 12 – Dec. 14 Monday – Friday 12:30 – 4:30 p.m.

TCC Fine Art Gallery

CAPITOL CITY BAND OF TCC: HOLIDAY CONCERT Dec. 2 | 5 – 6:30. p.m.

Tallahassee’s Winter Festival

TCC AFRICAN DRUM & DANCE ENSEMBLE Dec. 8 | 7:30 p.m.

TCC JAZZ BAND

Turner Auditorium

Nov. 5 | 2 – 4 p.m.

North Florida Fair

THEATRE TCC! PRESENTS: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S THE TAMING OF THE SHREW Nov. 16 – 17 | 8 p.m.

Nov. 18 | 2 p.m.

Nov. 30 – Dec. 2 | 8 p.m.

Dec. 1 – 2 | 8 p.m.

Turner Auditorium

THE CIVIC CHORALE PRESENTS: A RUTTER CHRISTMAS Dec. 12 | 7:30 p.m.

Turner Auditorium

ART EXHIBIT: ROOPALI KAMBO (TCC faculty member) Jan. 11 – Feb. 8 Monday – Friday 12:30 – 4:30 p.m.

TCC Fine Art Gallery

SUNDAY

November

5

5:00 P.M. LOCATION

Askew Student Life Cinema TICKETS

$10 | Free for Students openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE

film

Romeo is Bleeding

South Arts Southern Circuit Film Festival PRESENTED BY OPENING NIGHTS AND THE ASKEW STUDENT LIFE CINEMA

SPONSORED BY

A fatal turf war between neighborhoods haunts the city of Richmond, Calif. Donté Clark transcends the violence in his hometown by writing poetry about his experiences. Using his voice to inspire those around him, he and the like-minded youth of the city mount an urban adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with the hope of starting a real dialogue about violence in the city.

Filmmaker: Jason Zeldes Continued on page 35 OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 19

TUESDAY

November

14 7:30 P.M. LOCATION

Goodwood Museum and Gardens TICKETS

$40

openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE

bluegrass

Mile Twelve “Mile Twelve is carrying the bluegrass tradition forward with creativity and integrity.� - Banjo luminary, Tony Trischka Beautifully walking the line between original and traditional bluegrass, Mile Twelve is fast gaining recognition for their outstanding performances in bluegrass and folk circles.

Evan Murphy, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Nate Sabat, BB Bowness and David Benedict write captivating songs and daring instrumental pieces from diverse influences. In 2015, they were selected as formal showcase artists at the North East Folk Alliance, and in 2016, the group won the Podunk Bluegrass Festival Band Contest.

SPONSORED BY

Continued on page 37 OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 21

Giving back to your community is important to you - and to us.

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When you’re ready to make a difference, we’re ready to help Merrill Lynch applauds Opening Nights Performing Arts on 20 years!!.

MDWD Wealth Management Grp Merrill Lynch 215 S. Monroe Street Suite 300 Tallahassee, Fl 32301 850.599.8917 www.fa.ml.com/MDWD

Life’s better when we’re connected® Merrill Lynch Wealth Management makes available products and services offered by Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, a registered broker-dealer and Member SIPC, and other subsidiaries of Bank of America Corporation.

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© 2017 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

ARQ6GJR8 | MLWM-101-AD | 470945PM-1016 | 10/2016

Congratulations Congratulations on the 20th anniversary of Opening Nights Performing Arts.

When members of the community support the arts, they help inspire and enrich everyone. Artistic diversity can be a powerful force for unity, creating shared experiences and a desire for excellence.

Bank of America is proud to support Opening Nights at Florida State University for its success in bringing the arts to performers and audiences throughout our community.

Visit us at bankofamerica.com/local Life’s better when we’re connected®

©2017 Bank of America Corporation | SPN-129-AD | ARMWTPSR

SUNDAY

November

19 5:00 P.M. LOCATION

Askew Student Life Cinema TICKETS

$10 | Free for Students openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE

film

Pushing Dead

South Arts Southern Circuit Film Festival PRESENTED BY OPENING NIGHTS AND THE ASKEW STUDENT LIFE CINEMA

SPONSORED BY

When a struggling writer, HIV positive for over 20 years, accidentally deposits a $100 birthday check, he is dropped from his health plan for earning too much. In this new era of sort-of universal care, can he take on a helpless bureaucracy or come up with $3,000 a month to buy meds on his own?

Filmmaker: Tom E. Brown Continued on page 37 OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 23

TUESDAY

November

21 7:30 P.M.

Photo by Yoon S. Byun

LOCATION

Ruby Diamond Concert Hall DIRECTOR’S CHOICE

TICKETS

$55 | $45 | $35 | $25

A Far Cry & Luciana Souza

openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE

classical

The Blue Hour

“...brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied.”

- The New York Times The Boston-based GRAMMY®-nominated string orchestra A Far Cry has commissioned a new work for its 11th season. The Blue Hour will feature Grammy-winning vocalist Luciana Souza in a song-cycle created by a collaborative of five leading female composers—Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. The text of the work, by 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize winner Carolyn Forché, is the poem “On Earth” from the 2003 collection Blue Hour, which takes the form of an abecedarium, a listing of images, thousands of them, in alphabetical order, like a flurry of memories from a life coming to its end. Opening Nights at Florida State University is a co-commissioner of this work.

A Far Cry is represented by Middleton Arts Management middletonartsmanagement.com | Vocalist Luciana Souza is represented

by Unlimited Myles unlimitedmyles.com | Composer Rachel Grimes is represented by Left Bank Artists rachelgrimespiano.com Composer Angelica Negron’s music is published by Good Child Music goodchildmusic.com | Composer Shara Nova is represented

by Ekonomisk Management ekonmgmt.com | Composer Caroline Shaw is represented by First Chair Promotion firstchairpromo.com Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s music is published by G. Schirmer/Music Sales musicsalesclassical.com | Poet Carolyn Forché is represented by Blue Flower Arts blueflowerarts.com | Special thanks to Joseph Cermatori for text adaptation consultation josephcermatori.com | Special thanks to Zoe Knight at St. Rose Management strosemusic.com

ENCORE PERFORMER LUCIANA SOUZA 2011

SPONSORED BY

Continued on page 39

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 25

BRAV

What a season! Opening Nights, you’ve got our standing ovation!

Proud Partner In Bringing World-Class Arts To Tallahassee

SachsMedia.com

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850.222.1996

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FRIDAY-SATURDAY

December

1&2 7:30 P.M. LOCATION

Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre TICKETS

$45 | $25

openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500

Photo by Ian Douglas

GENRE

classical, dance

DIRECTOR’S CHOICE

Pam Tanowitz Dance with Simone Dinnerstein New Work for Goldberg Variations

New Work For Goldberg Variations is an evening-length piece for piano and a sextet of dancers, inspired by and set to the live performance of Bach’s iconic and commanding score Goldberg Variations, performed by Simone Dinnerstein and Pam Tanowitz Dance.

Dinnerstein and Tanowitz are equal and integral collaborators, Dinnerstein bringing her expertise, nuanced understanding, and singular interpretation of The Goldberg Variations to the project, and Tanowitz reconstructing classical movement vocabularies and expanding these movements to highlight tension and emotion in new ways.

ENCORE PERFORMER SIMONE DINNERSTEIN 2009, 2011

SPONSORED BY

The presentation of Pam Tanowitz Dance with Simone Dinnerstein was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Continued on page 43

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 27

Ken Kato & Nan Nagy Proud Supporters of Opening Nights Performing Arts AND SPONSORS OF J A Z Z AT L I N C O L N C E N T E R O R C H E S T R A WITH WYNTON MARSALIS

TUESDAY

December

5

7:30 P.M. LOCATION

Ruby Diamond Concert Hall Photo by Joe Martinez

TICKETS

$85 | $65 | $55 | $25 openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

GENRE

jazz

Special Guests Catherine Russell and Kenny Washington

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis spreads holiday cheer on its national Big Band Holidays tour. With soulful renditions of holiday classics, playful improvisation and entertaining storytelling, they bring out the magic in such favorites as Count Basie’s “Jingle Bells,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and Billie Holiday’s “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” Jazz royalty Catherine Russell joins as special guest vocalist, continuing a spirited partnership that has spread Yuletide cheer in dozens of cities across the country. She’ll be joined by fellow vocalist Kenny Washington from New Orleans. Enjoyed by audiences of all ages, these uplifting holiday performances create lasting memories that will keep you feeling good throughout the season.

Continued on page 47

ENCORE PERFORMER JLCO 2013

SPONSORED BY

K E N K ATO & N AN N AGY

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 29

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PANAMA CITY PERFORMANCE SATURDAY

December

9

7:30 P.M. LOCATION

The St. Joe Community Foundation Lecture Hall

(FSU Panama City Campus)

TICKETS

$45

openingnights.fsu.edu 850.644.6500 GENRE

bluegrass, folk-pop

Photo by Gina Binkley

Sierra Hull Sierra Hull has been recognized from age 11 as a virtuoso mandolin-player, astonishing audiences and fellow-musicians alike. Now a seasoned touring musician in her mid-20s, Hull has delivered her most inspired, accomplished, and mature recorded work to date; no small feat. “Weighted Mind,” which was nominated for a GRAMMY® for best folk album, is a landmark achievement, not just in Sierra Hull’s career, but in the world of folk-pop, bluegrass, and acoustic music overall. With instrumentation comprised largely of mandolin, bass and vocals, this is genre-transcending music at its best, with production by Béla Fleck and special harmony vocal guests Alison Krauss, Abigail Washburn and Rhiannon Giddens adding to the luster. Hull speaks eloquently, in her challenging and sensitive originals, her heartfelt vocals, and once again breaks new ground on the mandolin.

ENCORE PERFORMER 2014

SPONSORED BY

Continued on page 57 OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 31

Carlton Fields is pleased to sponsor the 2017-2018 season of Opening Nights Performing Arts Series and Festival.

We celebrate the arts as an essential cornerstone of creativity and innovation.

www.carltonfields.com Atlanta • Hartford • Los Angeles • Miami • New York • Orlando Tallahassee • Tampa • Washington, D.C. • West Palm Beach Carlton Fields practices law in California through Carlton Fields Jorden Burt, LLP.

Photo by Stewart Cohen After more than a decade of traveling the United States and the world and recording three acclaimed albums, Grace, Sophia and Hulda Quebe are pros in a variety of genres.

Quebe Sisters Continued from pg. 13

Not surprisingly, the Quebe (rhymes with “maybe”) Sisters win standing ovations at just about every show. It’s been that way since 2000, when they started fiddling together as preteens. The sisters’ past is as colorful and eventful as their future is bright. Growing up in Burleson, a southern suburb of Fort Worth, Hulda, Sophia and Grace were ages 7, 10 and 12 in 1998 when they attended their first local fiddle competition in nearby Denton, and decided fiddling was what they wanted to do.

The girls earned solo and group accolades early on, winning state and national championships in their respective age groups in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. Along with headlining their own shows to ever-growing audiences, they’ve shared stages with American music legends like Willie Nelson, George Strait, Merle Haggard, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Ray Price, Connie Smith, Marty Stuart, Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers, Ray Benson, Asleep at the Wheel, Riders in the Sky and many others.

Today, after more than a decade of traveling the United States and the world, and recording three acclaimed albums, Grace, Sophia and

Hulda Quebe are pros in a variety of genres, and count many famous musicians among their biggest boosters. The Quebes’ unbridled passion for American music, along with their talent, skills and a lot of hard work, has taken them far beyond their wildest early aspirations. “One thing is for sure, you don’t see a group like the Quebe Sisters come along every day,” famed Opry announcer Eddie Stubbs told listeners on his own show on Nashville’s WSM.

SCORE: A Film Music Documentary Continued from pg. 15

What makes a score unforgettable? Taking a peek at how composers developed some of the most iconic scores in history, Score: A Film Music Documentary follows the creative struggles of designing a modern soundtrack from scratch, featuring some of cinema’s most recognized names in film music. Score explores the power and influence of film scores in the modern world while revealing the evolution of sound and how composers assemble music that complements a picture to achieve powerful reactions from worldwide audiences.

FILMMAKER STATEMENT

“Goosebumps. In more ways than one, this film was born from them. Like many a cinephile, I remember the stirring rhythms of The Good The Bad and The Ugly, the spine-tingling orchestral finale of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and the pounding, adrenaline-pumping awe of The Dark Knight’s final ride. These are moments where, almost inexplicably, we as viewers transcend the story we’re being told. The music speaks to us in ways we can’t intellectually grasp—but in ways our heart still can.

These moments prove that the right picture paired with the right sound can create a physical change in our heartbeats, our tear ducts, even our arms and legs. They create chills.

Cold shivers. Goosebumps. Film music speaks to us in a language we can understand, but few of us can speak. But what if we could?

How much more could we appreciate the talents of those musical storytellers?

Score: A Film Music Documentary grew from a personal exploration of film music’s power into a focused examination of why we feel these moments, and what goes into making them. Told entirely through the perspectives of film composers, directors and musicians, Score reveals the inspiration, instrumentation, ideas, challenges and triumphs of creating the modern Hollywood soundtrack.

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 33

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movies.fsu.edu

Beginning in fall of 2016, Thile took the helm of A Prairie Home Companion, a public radio favorite since 1974. Garrison Keillor, the show’s creator and host announced: “He is, I think, the great bluegrass performer of our time and he is a beautiful jazz player. There just isn’t anything he can’t do — and he is very enthusiastic about live radio.”

Romeo is Bleeding Continued from pg. 19

FILMMAKER STATEMENT

Score explores the power and influence of film scores in the modern world while revealing the evolution of sound and how composers assemble music that complements a picture to achieve powerful reactions from worldwide audiences.

In one of Score’s early interviews, legendary composer Hans Zimmer made a careful distinction between music’s role in film versus its performance. After scoring 150 films— including Rain Man, The Lion King, Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight and Inception—Zimmer expressed film doesn’t just allow for a score to exist; the film medium sets the stage for it. “Film music can elevate,” he said.

Over two years, Score’s team has left jobs, sacrificed thousands of hours, and traveled around the world to collect the most definitive body of interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and archival collections ever compiled for this feature-length documentary. The result is a testament to the small, unpaid team that saw potential in an idea about why film music gives us goosebumps — and a testament to the composers who shape these powerful, awe-inspiring moments. We hope you’ll enjoy Score: A Film Music Documentary not only as a privileged look at a secretive and little-known art form, but as an exploration of music’s ability to evoke powerful emotions in us, and a tuneful celebration of film scores beloved the world over.”

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of South Arts. This screening is supported in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Chris Thile Continued from pg. 17

A child prodigy, Thile first rose to fame as a member of Grammy Award-winning trio Nickel Creek, with whom he released four albums and sold over two million records. In 2014, along with a national tour, the trio released a new album, A Dotted Line, their first since 2005.

As a soloist, Thile has released five albums including his most recent, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol.1, which was produced by renowned bassist Edgar Meyer. In February 2013, Thile won a Grammy for his work on The Goat Rodeo Sessions, collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan. In September 2014, Thile and Meyer released their latest album collaboration, Bass + Mandolin, which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. Punch Brothers released their latest album, The Phosphorescent Blues, in January 2015, and a follow up EP, The Wireless, in November of the same year. Most recently, Thile released a double-album with Brad Mehldau, titled Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau, in January 2017 and a collection of works from Bach with Yo-Yo Ma & Edgar Meyer in April 2017 called Bach Trios.

Poverty takes on different forms depending on the landscape, but the narratives are the same. I’ve seen it first hand while living in Detroit, Chicago, and now the East Bay, and I recognize that Richmond, Calif., is a microcosm for the injustices seen in African American communities nationwide. The African American narrative is generational, rooted in a culture bred on plantations, which has been evolving with the times ever since, but always achieving the same effect: the marginalization of black men. Originally this was accomplished through slavery, then segregation and Jim Crow, now the prison system, but black men are always labeled as “other” or worse — criminal — and abandoned as society’s outcasts.

And then there are leaders like Donté, who derive pride from this history of oppression but refuse to be labeled by it. I am drawn to Donté because within him I see this convergence of a dark past and an optimistic future, battling for dominance in his heart and mind.

I see an eternal conflict, a brilliant man who is both inspired and confined by his environment. He writes about this conflict in his poem titled “Find Me Guilty”: ‘I don’t know who I’m supposed to be, see?

I’m like half kingdom - half slave!

Have some Pride, no! Have shame!

I’m half alive and half grave, I battle with life and death everyday.’

I’m recently realizing that “Romeo is Bleeding” is about this convergence, which happens within everyone as they form their identity.

Will you let your constraints define you, or will you redefine them? It’s a universal question, but when it plays out in poverty strickOPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 35

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performed extensively throughout the United States, Ireland and Canada, including several major festivals; Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, FreshGrass Festival, Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival and Joe Val Bluegrass Festival. A track from their debut EP was featured on Sirius XM Bluegrass Junction’s “Hand Picked with Del McCoury”, while another track was featured on Spotify’s “Fresh Bluegrass” 2015

Donté Clark, artistic director of RAW Talent Creative Arts Program, works with young people in his community to find their voice through performance. Director Jason Zeldes (left) and film subject Donté Clark (right) take a break while filming Romeo is Bleeding.

en communities, the stakes are high and the results are often tragic. For all the talent that lives in Richmond, or inner cities anywhere in America for that matter, there are so few outlets, forcing many youth to surrender to the constraints of their environment, depriving the world of their beauty while the ugliness remains.

Using the arts to heal communities isn’t a new idea, but in practice it is still shockingly rare, and communities like Richmond sorely need outlets like RAW Talent. It’s my hope that “Romeo is Bleeding” can multiply the local and regional effect that Donté had with “Té’s Harmony”, and ultimately extend Donté’s influence as wide as the film can take it. Just as Donté inspired me to make a film I hope my film will inspire people everywhere to create beauty where they recognize the need, so that future generations can inherit a cultural fabric made of poetry and empowerment, rather than hatred and despair. – Jason Zeldes, Director

DONTÉ CLARK

Donté Clark is a poet, emcee, educator and activist from Richmond, Calif. As a student in

high school, he was a founding member of the RAW Talent Creative Arts Program, a youth arts resource. Today, as the artistic director of RAW, he works with young people in his community to find their voice through performance. A spoken-word artist who performs at schools, conferences, poetry readings and hip-hop shows, Clark is an alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), a prestigious conference for writers of color. Clark’s primary focus is to end the violence in Richmond as he continues to spark critical dialogue and encourages his students to do the same.

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of South Arts. This screening is supported in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Mile Twelve has Bluegrass’ best interests at heart. Really good songs that mean something, picking that makes you grin and twitch, plenty of scalp-zinging moments... what more could you ask for America’s best drivin’ music? I’d be fine sending this to aliens.” - Darol Anger playlist. That same year, they were selected as formal showcase artists at the North East Folk Alliance. The summer of 2016 has held more milestones for this young group: opening for Tim O’Brien at the Station Inn in Nashville, winning the Podunk Bluegrass Festival Band Contest and being nominated for a Momentum Award by the International Bluegrass Music Association and adding a fifth band member: mandolin player David Benedict.

This winter they will be heading into the studio in Nashville to record their debut fulllength album with producer Stephen Mougin at the helm.

Pushing Dead Continued from pg. 23

Mile Twelve Continued from pg. 21

Since their formation in the fall of 2014, Mile Twelve has quickly been on the rise. They released their debut 6-track self titled EP, and

FILMMAKER STATEMENT

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, I started writing the AIDS film that I was craving—a film without IV bags and skin lesions. I wanted to make a different kind of AIDS movie, a comedy—in which nobody OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 37

Building STRONGER COMMUNITIES Through the Arts Congratulations to Opening Nights on its 20th Season of presenting outstanding creative experiences for our community. Capital City Bank is proud to have supported the festival since its inception and to present Rufus Wainwright during the 2017-2018 Season. Here’s to a fantastic season and many more opening nights!

402.7500 l www.ccbg.com

Mikey Bestebreurtje & Wilson Baker Proud Supporters of Opening Nights at Florida State University

Danny Glover (left) and James Roday (right) star in Pushing Dead, a film that’s more than an AIDS flick; it’s a picture about how we cope with the bad stuff and our need for support systems.

dies. I’ve been positive for most of my life, so many people assume this story is about me.

Although it’s not autobiographical, I do have the inside scoop, and it’s hard to resist tossing in some of those personal HIV experiences.

The most important experience I wanted to share was my relationship with AIDS. At some point I started thinking of this thing between AIDS and me as a marriage. It becomes a part of you, you make peace, you get hitched, and you push forward.

The healthcare system in the United States has improved in recent years, but much like the lead character in Pushing Dead, huge numbers of low-income people across the country are still forced—at times—to pay thousands of dollars for their meds or go without. And with current threats to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the film is more topical than ever.

Pushing Dead is much more than an AIDS flick.

It’s a picture about how we cope with the bad stuff, our need for support systems, and the hunt for a mate. When I was watching those AIDS films with characters dying, what I really wanted to see was a movie about real, funny people living and dealing with big problems—my wife left me, I have AIDS, I’m in love with a stuffed animal—so that’s what I wrote. - Tom E. Brown, Director

TOM E. BROWN

Tom E. Brown has been making films since the age of 10 when he picked up his dad’s 8mm movie camera, a superhero cape, and a handful of smoke bombs. His films have been featured at the American Museum of Natural

History, the Walker Art Center, and the Guggenheim. His work has been televised nationally and internationally, airing on PBS, Bravo, and The Independent Film Channel. He attended the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors Labs to workshop Pushing Dead.

He is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for this pioneering project. Brown was previously named one of the “25 New Faces of Indie Film” by Filmmaker Magazine.

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of South Arts. This screening is supported in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

A Far Cry and Luciana Souza Continued from pg. 25

The text that serves as the libretto is by 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize winner Carolyn Forché. The excerpted poem, “On Earth,” is from Forché’s 2003 collection Blue Hour. The remarkable poem takes the form of an abecedarium: a listing of images, thousands of them, in alphabetical order, like a flurry of memories from a life coming to its end.

Through multiple “retreats” and consistent communication, A Far Cry and the composers have embarked on a truly collaborative work. The composers worked together to develop the text adaptation from Forche’s

poem for this musical setting, maintaining the abecedary form. While each composer is creating individual songs, they are also working together on instrumental transitions, refrains, and musical themes to create a continuous, integrated work.

The world premiere of the work will be presented by co-commissioner Washington Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2017. In addition to Florida State University’s Opening Nights, the other co-commissioners are Bucknell University and University of Iowa’s Hancher Performances.

THE BLUE HOUR

A group of Criers (A Far Cry musicians) met with the composers in July 2016 to begin work on the project. Everyone agreed that the new work should be as collaborative as possible.

The composers wanted some freedom to create individual songs on their own, yet they also really wanted to immerse themselves in the collective process to sculpt the larger experience with each other and with the orchestra. The Criers will also embody a dynamic link between the music and text, including passages of spoken word and stage choreography, possibly reciting poem fragments in the concert space as the audience enters.

The group has also talked a great deal about structure: the orderly alphabetical structure of the poem juxtaposed with the nonlinear narrative of the subject’s life, remembered haphazardly, but gradually coming into focus. Scale then becomes a critical element, considering the enormity of the poem, making it possible OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 39

CELEBRATING

20

YEARS OF THE ARTS

Ber n ad ette R o g er L uc a

PROUD SUPPORTERS OF O P E N I N G N I G H T S AT F L O R I DA S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y

Take Center Stage with an FSU License Plate Proceeds support scholarships for FSU students. Go to mytag.fsu.edu or simply visit any tax collector’s office and request an FSU license plate today. Rebates are offered for first-time buyers.

to zoom in on a single image, but also to zoom out and see thousands. That sense of dimension­—from the micro to the macro—will be a core guiding principle for the eventual work.

Finally, at the meeting in July, the group asked themselves, “Why do this project? What does it represent?” and from that, the following statement emerged:

“In a time when we are seeing masses of people dehumanized—by war, displacement, poverty—we are looking here at a single Luciana Souza life, the beautiful detail of one human existence. There LUCIANA SOUZA is something precious in Grammy-winner Luciana Souza is one of jazz’s that; that through our sense leading singers and interpreters. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, in the late sixties, she grew up of empathy with this one individual, we are given a in a family of Bossa Nova innovators—her father, a singer and songwriter, her mother, a lens through which to see poet and lyricist. Luciana’s work as a performour own world with greater er transcends traditional boundaries around musical styles, offering solid roots in jazz, soclarity.” - A Far Cry phisticated lineage in world music, and an A FAR CRY

In its 10 years, the Grammy-nominated

self-conducted A Far Cry orchestra has taken

an omnivorous approach, leading to collabo-

rations with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Jake Shimabukuro, Gabriel Kahane, and Urbanity Dance. Known for high energy, according to

The New York Times, A Far Cry “brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and

varied.” A Far Cry was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of young professional musicians, and since the beginning has fostered

enlightened approach to new music.

As a leader, Luciana Souza has been releasing acclaimed recordings since 2002—including her six Grammy-nominated records Brazilian Duos, North and South, Duos II, Tide, Duos III, and The Book of Chet. Her debut recording for Universal, The New Bossa Nova, was produced by her husband, Larry Klein, and was met with widespread critical acclaim. Luciana’s recordings also include two works based on poetry—The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop And Other Songs, and Neruda.

has helped generate consistently thoughtful,

Speaking in Tongues, a collaboration with Lionel Loueke, Grégoire Maret, Massimo Biolcati and Kendrick Scott, was also produced by Larry Klein. The recording is comprised of all original music and features Luciana’s musical setting of two poems by Leonard Cohen.

Whether playing a new commission from

COMPOSERS

those personalities. The orchestra has devel-

oped an innovative process where decisions are made collectively and leadership rotates

among the “Criers.” This democratic structure

innovative, and unpredictable programming.

er, and arranger based in Kentucky. Widely known for her role in the ground-breaking chamber ensemble Rachel’s, (six albums on Quarterstick/Touch and Go), she has since toured worldwide as a solo pianist, and as a collaborator with various artists. Her work has been performed by ensembles such as the Louisville Orchestra, Longleash, Portland Cello Project, Amsterdam Sinfonietta Trio, Dublin Guitar Quartet, Borusan Quartet and Önder sisters. Releases include The Clearing (Temporary Residence), Book of Leaves, Marion County 1938, and Compound Leaves. Collaborators include Matthew Nolan, Loscil, SITI Company, astrid, Chris Wells, and Julia Kent with the artist Peter Liversidge. She is also a member of Louisville band King’s Daughters & Sons (Chemikal Underground). She scores for film and multi-media installations and has licensed music to numerous film and TV works internationally.

A N G É L I CA N EG R Ó N Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) and “mesmerizing and affecting” (Feast of Music) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise” and her “quirky approach to scoring.” Her music has been performed at the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Ecstatic Music Festival and the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial and she has collaborated with artists like Sō Percussion, loadbang, American Composers Orchestra and Face the Music, among others. Angélica is currently a doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center (CUNY), where she studies composition with Tania León. She is a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program and Lincoln Center Education working with learners of all ages on creative composition projects. Angélica was the 2014-2015 Van Lier Fellow at American Composers Orchestra and was recently selected as one of the recipients for NYFA’s 2016 Artists Fellowship Program.

composers such as Ted Hearne, Caroline Shaw,

RAC H E L G R I M ES

S H A R A N O VA

Haydn, or Piazzolla­—A Far Cry takes audi-

Heralded “one of American independent music’s few truly inspired technicians” by WIRE Magazine, Rachel Grimes is a pianist, compos-

Born in “The Diamond State” of Arkansas to a family of musical traveling evangelists, Shara Nova moved across America throughout her

or Andrew Norman; or a work by Mozart, ences on a unique ride.

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 41

r u o g n i c n u Anno n o s a e S 8 /l1tickets.fsu.edu 17 .6500 850.644

A Day in the Deathof

Joe Egg

By Peter Nichols October 6 - 15, 2017 in the Lab Theatre

Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser October 20 - 29, 2017 in the Fallon Theatre

Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern Are Dead

By Tom Stoppard November 3 - 12, 2017 in the Lab Theatre

Based on the book by Dr. Seuss November 16 - 19, 2017 in the Fallon Theatre

A NEW MUSICAL COMEDY

Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa February 16 - March 4, 2018 in the Fallon Theatre

Tartuffe

by Moliére Translated by Richard Wilbur March 30 - April 8, 2018 in the Lab Theatre

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youth, then went on to study classical voice at The University of North Texas. In New York, she began composition lessons with Padma Newsome and assembled her chamber pop band, My Brightest Diamond in 2001, subsequently releasing four albums on Asthmatic Kitty Records. Nova has received composer commissions from yMusic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota, Sō Percussion and Roomful of Teeth. She has performed with the San Francisco, Indianapolis, North Carolina Symphony among others. Many artists have sought out Nova’s distinctive voice, including David Lang, David Byrne, The Decemberists, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sufjan Stevens and Matthew Barney.

Nova’s latest project, a baroque opera titled You Us We All (2015), made its U.S. debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

C A R O L I N E S H AW Caroline Adelaide Shaw is a New York-based musician. She is the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for her enigmatic composition Partita for 8 Voices. Her career defies categorization—she performs as a violin soloist, chamber musician, and as a vocalist in the Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Recent commissions include works for Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with Jonathan Biss, and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. She also frequently collaborates with Kanye West. Currently a doctoral candidate at Princeton, Caroline also studied at Rice and Yale.

Caroline loves the color yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin.

SARAH KIRKLAND SNIDER Recently deemed “one of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers” (Pitchfork) and “a potentially significant voice on the American music landscape” (Philadelphia Inquirer), composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “haunting” (Los Angeles Times), and “strikingly beautiful” (Time Out New York). With an ear for both the structural and the poetic, Snider’s music draws upon a variety of influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling. Of her orchestral song cycle, Penelope, Pitchfork‘s

Jayson Greene proclaimed: “Snider’s music lives in…an increasingly populous inter-genre space that, as of yet, has produced only a few clear, confident voices. Snider is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all.”

C A R O LY N F O R C H É Carolyn Forché is the author of four award-winning collections of poetry. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages. She has given poetry readings throughout the United States and the world. She is also the editor of two poetry anthologies: Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, collecting the work of poets who endured conditions of extremity during the past century, and The Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 15002001. A human rights activist for over 30 years, she was presented in 1998 with the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture in Stockholm for her work on behalf of human rights and the preservation of memory and culture. She has received fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. She is a University Professor at Georgetown University, where she also directs The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice.

Pam Tanowitz Dance with Simone Dinnerstein

C O ST U M E D E S I G N Reid & Harriet

P E R FO R M E D BY Maggie Cloud Jason Collins Christine Flores Lindsey Jones Maile Okamura Melissa Toogood Netta Yerushalmy Sienna Blaw, understudy

PRODUCED BY Aaron Mattocks

SIMONE DINNERSTEIN A R T I ST STAT E M E N T The wonderful thing about great music is its sense of potential. Masterpieces contain more than is possible to realize in one performance.

That is the beautiful thing that keeps music fresh for me, even though I spend many hours every day living with it. As an interpreter, my goal is not to get a piece of music “right.” That final resting place of a fully and finally satisfying performance is an illusion. Instead my goal is to satisfy some of the potential in the music. By changing one thing, you quickly discover that other things have changed too.

Through the accretion of those changes new aspects of the music reveal themselves.

I have been playing the Goldberg Variations for 16 years. Recently I’ve begun to feel that there is no need to keep the piece solely to the key-

Continued from pg. 27

NEW WORK FOR GOLDBERG VARIATIONS CO-CONCEIVED BY Simone Dinnerstein and Pam Tanowitz

G O L D B E R G VA R I AT I O N S BWV 988, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

PIANO Simone Dinnerstein

C H O R EO G RA P H Y Pam Tanowitz

LIGHTING/VISUAL DESIGN Davison Scandrett

Simone Dinnerstein, photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 43

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board. Last year I collaborated with some great string players to create a Goldberg Variations for string orchestra and this year I’ve had the joy of working with Pam Tanowitz to create a three dimensional Goldbergs with music and human bodies intertwined. The many voices of the Goldbergs are so vibrant and distinct that it made wonderful sense for them to be embodied.

Pam has been the perfect person to discover a new Goldbergs with dance. She was not interested in a literal illustration of the piece and neither was she interested in a strict metrical response. I was thrilled to discover that she didn’t even want her dancers to count. Instead she has looked for density and irregularity in her work. I find that a lot of discussion about music, whether through historical or harmonic analysis, has the effect of taking music from world of aural abstraction and placing it in something more ordered and prosaic: what kind of trills Bach would have used, for example, or which voice ought to have primacy at any one moment. Pam has ignored all of that and created her own physical world full of its own abstractions.

What a pleasure it has been to escape the solitude of the piano. Instead of experiencing the Goldbergs alone in a room I’ve done it in the company of dancers all of whom have their own response to the music and their own physical discipline that extends beyond ears and fingers. On the first page of the score Bach writes that the variations are written for the refreshment of the spirit. That has been my experience of this collaboration with Pam.

BIOGRAPHY American pianist Simone Dinnerstein is a searching and inventive artist who is motivated by a desire to find the musical core of every work she approaches. The New York-based pianist gained an international following because of the remarkable success of her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which she raised the funds to record. Released in 2007 on Telarc, it ranked No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was named to many “Best of 2007” lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Her latest Sony album, Mozart in Havana, was released in April and reached number two on the Billboard Classical chart.

Since then, Dinnerstein has released five acclaimed albums: The Berlin Concert (Telarc), Bach: A Strange Beauty (Sony), Something Almost Being Said (Sony), Bach: Inventions & Sinfonias (Sony) and, this year, Mozart in Havana (Sony). Dinnerstein was the bestselling instrumentalist of 2011 on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart and was included in NPR’s 2011 100 Favorite Songs from all genres. In spring 2013, Simone Dinnerstein and singer-songwriter Tift Merritt released an album together on Sony called Night, a unique collaboration uniting classical, folk, and rock worlds, exploring common terrain and uncovering new musical landscapes. Dinnerstein was among the top ten best-selling artists of 2014 on the Billboard Classical Chart. In February 2015, Sony Classical released Dinnerstein’s newest album Broadway-Lafayette, which celebrates the time- honored transatlantic link between France and America and includes Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Philip Lasser’s The Circle and the Child: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, written for Dinnerstein.

The album was recorded with conductor Kristjan Järvi and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra by GRAMMY-winning producer Adam Abeshouse.

music to non-traditional venues. She gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center, and performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Dedicated to her community, in 2009 Dinnerstein founded Neighborhood Classics, a concert series open to the public hosted by New York public schools, which raises funds for the schools.

Dinnerstein’s performance schedule has taken her around the world since her triumphant New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2005 to venues including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and London’s Wigmore Hall; festivals that include the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen, Verbier, and Ravinia festivals, and the Stuttgart Bach Festival; and performances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Kristjan Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony.

BIOGRAPHY

Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the U.S. for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical

Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio. She is on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music and is a Sony Classical Artists. In September 2017, Dinnerstein gave the World Premiere of Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No.3, a work which she commissioned in partnership with twelve North American orchestras.

Simone Dinnerstein is represented worldwide

by Andrea Troolin/Ekonomisk Mgmt. For more information please visit: simonedinnerstein.com

PAM TANOWITZ Over the past 15 years choreographer Pam Tanowitz has become known for her unflinchingly post-modern treatment of classical dance vocabulary. Her abstract movement challenges stylistic expectations, conventions of composition as well as the concert-going experi-

Pam Tanowitz, photo by Brad Paris OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 45

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Photo by Ian Douglas New Work For Goldberg Variations is an evening-length piece for piano and a sextet of dancers, inspired by and set to the live performance of Bach’s iconic and commanding score Goldberg Variations, performed by Simone Dinnerstein and Pam Tanowitz Dance.

ence itself. Tanowitz’ mission is to revitalize abstraction and formalism by obliterating the self-imposed dialectical boundaries of each, while stretching the material into uncharted territory. In 2009 she received a Bessie Award for her dance “Be in the Gray With Me” at Dance Theater Workshop. She was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in 2010, Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, and the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013-14.

She has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater, Bard Summerscape Festival, New York Live Arts, The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Chicago Dancing Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Duke Performances, Peak Performances, FSU’s Opening Nights Series, and the Institute for Contemporary Art/ Boston. Her work was selected by The New York Times Best of Dance series in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

In 2016, Tanowitz was a Resident Fellow at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, the Juried Bessie Award Winner for her work “the story progresses as if in a dream of glittering surfaces”, and a recipient of the National Dance Project production grant. In 2017, Tanowitz was chosen as the first female recipient of the Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Cage Cunningham Fellowship.

In the 2017-2018 season, Tanowitz premieres new works at Vail International Dance Festival (August, 2017), and for Ballet Austin (February, 2018). Her newest collaborative project with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, New Work for Goldberg Variations, will premiere and tour nationally in fall 2017.

Tanowitz has also created or set work for City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, New York Theater Ballet and Saint Louis Ballet; and has been a guest choreographer at Barnard College, Princeton University, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Marymount Manhattan College and Purchase College. She holds dance degrees from The Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and currently teaches at Rutgers University.

port from the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University, The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard, the NYU Center for Ballet & the Arts & New York City Center. New Work for Goldberg Variations was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation & The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

General Operating support for Pam Tanowitz Dance was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

New Work for Goldberg Variations premiered at Duke Performances’ Reynolds Industries Theater on October 6, 2017.

SPECIAL THANKS Thanks to all the dancers and collaborators, and very special thanks to Dan & Gemma Siegler.

FUNDING CREDITS New Work for Goldberg Variations was commissioned by Duke Performances / Duke University & Peak Performances / Montclair State University, co-commissioned by Opening Nights Performing Arts / Florida State University & Summer Stages Dance at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston & received creative development sup-

JLCO with Wynton Marsalis Continued from pg. 29

Wynton Marsalis, Music Director, Trumpet Greg Gisbert, Trumpet Kenny Rampton, Trumpet Marcus Printup, Trumpet Vincent Gardner, Trombone OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 47

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Chris Crenshaw, Trombone Elliot Mason, Trombone Sherman Irby, Alto and Soprano Saxophones, Flute, Clarinet Ted Nash, Alto and Soprano Saxophones, Flute, Clarinet Victor Goines, Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet Walter Blanding, Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, Clarinet Paul Nedzela, Baritone and Soprano Saxophones, Bass Clarinet Dan Nimmer, Piano Carlos Henriquez, Bass Marion Felder, Drums *All JLCO solo photos credited to Joe Martinez

JLCO

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (JLCO) comprises 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today.

Led by Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Managing and Artistic Director, this remarkably versatile orchestra performs a vast repertoire ranging from original compositions and Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works to rare historic compositions and masterworks by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and many others. The JLCO has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1988, performing and leading educational events in New York, across the United States, and around the globe.

Alongside symphony orchestras, ballet troupes, local students, and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists, the JLCO has toured over 300 cities across six continents. Guest conductors have included Benny Carter, John Lewis, Jimmy Heath, Chico O’Farrill, Ray Santos, Paquito D’Rivera, Jon Faddis, Robert Sadin, David Berger, Gerald Wilson, and Loren Schoenberg.

The JLCO has been voted best Big Band in the annual DownBeat Readers’ Poll for the past four years (2013–2016).

In 2015, Jazz at Lincoln Center announced the launch of Blue Engine Records, a new platform to make its archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere.

The first release from Blue Engine Records,

Live in Cuba, was recorded on an historic 2010 trip to Havana by JLCO and was released in October 2015. Big Band Holidays was released in December 2015, The Abyssinian Mass came out in March 2016, and The Music of John Lewis came out in March 2017. Handful of Keys, featuring a group of all-star guest pianists, arrived in September 2017. To date, 14 other recordings featuring the JLCO have been released and internationally distributed: Vitoria Suite (2010); Portrait in Seven Shades (2010); Congo Square (2007); Don’t Be Afraid...

The Music of Charles Mingus (2005); A Love Supreme (2005); All Rise (2002); Big Train (1999); Sweet Release & Ghost Story (1999); Live in Swing City (1999); Jump Start and Jazz (1997); Blood on the Fields (1997); They Came to Swing (1994); The Fire of the Fundamentals (1993); and Portraits by Ellington (1992). Visit jazz.org for more information.

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER

Jazz at Lincoln Center is dedicated to inspiring and growing audiences for jazz. With the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and a comprehensive array of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center advances a unique vision for the continued development of the art of jazz by producing a year-round schedule of performance, education, and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly na-

tional radio programs, television broadcasts, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, jazz appreciation curricula for students, music publishing, children’s concerts and classes, lectures, adult education courses, student and educator workshops, a record label, and interactive websites. Under the leadership of Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, Chairman Robert J. Appel, and Executive Director Greg Scholl, Jazz at Lincoln Center produces thousands of events each season in its home in New York City, Frederick P. Rose Hall, and around the world. For more information, visit jazz.org.

WYNTON MARSALIS

Wynton Marsalis (Music Director, Trumpet) is the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and a world-renowned trumpeter and composer. Born in New Orleans, La., in 1961, Marsalis began his classical training on trumpet at age 12, entered The Juilliard School at age 17, and then joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He made his recording debut as a leader in 1982, and has since recorded more than 60 jazz and classical recordings, which have won him nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 he became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz Grammys in the same year and repeated this feat in 1984.

Marsalis is also an internationally respected teacher and spokesman for music education,

Wynton Marsalis

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 49

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and has received honorary doctorates from dozens of U.S. universities and colleges. He has written six books; his most recent are Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!, illustrated by Paul Rogers and published by Candlewick Press in 2012, and Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life with Geoffrey C. Ward, published by Random House in 2008. In 1997 Marsalis became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields, which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 2001 he was appointed Messenger of Peace by Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and he has also been designated cultural ambassador to the United States of America by the U.S. State Department through their Culture Connect program. Marsalis was instrumental in the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief concert, produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. The event raised more than $3 million for the Higher Ground Relief Fund to benefit the musicians, music industry-related enterprises, and other individuals and entities from the areas in Greater New Orleans who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Marsalis helped lead the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home— Frederick P. Rose Hall—the first education, performance, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz, which opened in October 2004.

CATHERINE RUSSELL

Vocalist Catherine Russell is a native New Yorker, born into musical royalty. Her father, the late Luis Russell, was a legendary pianist/ composer/band leader, and Louis Armstrong’s

Catherine Russell, photo by Frank Stewart

long-time musical director. Her mother, Carline Ray, was a pioneering vocalist/guitarist/bassist who performed with International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Mary Lou Williams, and Sy Oliver. Catherine’s professional life began early. After graduating with honors from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she embarked upon musical adventures with Carrie Smith, Steely Dan, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Michael Feinstein, Levon Helm, and Rosanne Cash, among others, touring the world and appearing on over 200 albums. Her 2006 debut album Cat, (World Village/Harmonia Mundi), garnered rave reviews, paving the way for her 2008 sophomore release, Sentimental Streak. Catherine was a guest on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”, PBS-TV’s “Tavis Smiley Show”, and NPR’s “Fresh Air”, “Piano Jazz”, “Mountain Stage”, “World Café”, and “JazzSet”. She has won a prestigious German Record Critics’ Award and a Living Blues magazine’s critics’ poll. Catherine Russell’s third album, Inside This Heart of Mine, reached #1 on JazzWeek and Roots Music Report’s radio charts, while also charting on Billboard and reaching #1 on iTunes jazz charts. A fourth album, Strictly Romancin’ was released in February 2012, and was awarded Prix du Jazz Vocal (Vocal Album of The Year) by the French Jazz Academy, Grand Prix du Hot Club de France, and a Bistro Award for Outstanding Recording. Also in 2012, Catherine Russell won a Grammy Award as a featured artist on the soundtrack album for the HBOTV series, Boardwalk Empire. In 2013, Catherine contributed three songs to the soundtrack

of the film, Kill Your Darlings. Her 5th solo album, Bring It Back, was released worldwide in February of 2014 on the Jazz Village label, receiving a 5-Star Review in DownBeat Magazine. In September 2016, Catherine Russell released her 6th solo album, titled Harlem On My Mind, featuring songs from the Great African American Songbook, receiving a Grammy Nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

With universal acclaim, Catherine Russell has performed on four continents. She’s been a hit at major Jazz Festivals including Monterey, Newport, North Sea, JazzAscona, Montreal, Bern, Rochester International, Panama, Tanglewood, and at sold-out venues like The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Scullers in Boston, The Dakota in Minneapolis, Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC, SFJazz in San Francisco, and Pasadena Pops in Los Angeles. All Music Guide says, “Russell emerged as a retro old school vocalist for the ages.” Her repertoire features a selection of gems from the 1920s through the Present; vital interpretations, bursting with soul and humor. With an off-the-beaten-path song selection, sparkling acoustic swing, and a stunning vocal approach, Catherine Russell has joined the ranks of the greatest interpreters and performers of American Popular Song.

KENNY WASHINGTON

Kenny Washington (Vocals), a native of New Orleans, developed a deep love for music at a young age and grew up singing and performing gospel music in church. He played saxophone and sang with the school band, and after graduating from high school he contin-

Kenny Washington, photo by Jim Dennis

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ued his studies in music at Xavier University.

While at Xavier, he studied styles of music ranging from traditional and contemporary jazz to classical, rhythm and blues, and pop.

Joining the honorary U.S. Navy Band in 1986, Washington performed and toured throughout the United States and in Asia, Russia, and Australia. After nine years as a musician in the U.S. Navy, Washington moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he began performing and recording in various jazz clubs with other well-known artists. He appeared in Roy Nathanson’s off-Broadway production of Fire at Keaton’s Bar and Grill with Elvis Costello and Deborah Harry in London and New York.

Washington was the featured vocalist at San Francisco’s world-famous Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel’s Top of the Mark for eight years. Washington is the featured vocalist on saxophonist Michael O’Neill’s albums The Long and the Short of It and Still Dancin’.

Washington is also one of the featured vocalists on the Slammin’ All Body Band album with Keith Terry. Washington is a jazz vocalist virtuoso, with a range that exceeds four octaves, who emulates the classic styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, while infusing colors of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway in a free, playful approach. A truly versatile artist, he is at home with both the blues and jazz, from liquid ballads to rapid-fire scatting.

WALTER BLANDING

Walter Blanding (Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, Clarinet) was born into a musical family on Aug. 14, 1971, in Cleveland, Ohio, and began playing the saxophone at age six.

In 1981, he moved with his family to New York City; by age 16, he was performing regularly with his parents at the Village Gate.

Blanding attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and continued his studies at the New School for Social Research, where he earned a B.F.A. in 2005.

His 1991 debut release, Tough Young Tenors,

Walter Blanding

was acclaimed as one of the best jazz albums of the year, and his artistry began to impress listeners and critics alike. He has been a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra since 1998 and has performed, toured, and/or recorded with his own groups and with such renowned artists as the Cab Calloway Orchestra, Roy Hargrove, Hilton Ruiz, Count Basie Orchestra, Illinois Jacquet Big Band, Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Roberts, Wynton Marsalis Quintet, Isaac Hayes, and many others. Blanding lived in Israel for four years and had a major impact on the music scene while touring the country with his own ensemble and with U.S. artists such as Louis Hayes, Eric Reed, Vanessa Rubin, and others invited to perform there. He taught music in several Israeli schools and eventually opened his own private school in Tel Aviv. During this period, Newsweek International called him a “Jazz Ambassador to Israel.” During Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2016–17 season, Blanding was commissioned to write and premiere The Happiness of Being, a work inspired by jazz of the 1960s.

CHRIS CRENSHAW

Chris Crenshaw (Trombone) was born in Thomson, Ga., on Dec. 20, 1982. Since birth, he has been driven by and surrounded by music. When he started playing piano at age three, his teachers and fellow students noticed his aptitude for the instrument. This love for piano led to his first gig with Echoes of Joy, his father Casper’s gospel quartet group.

He started playing the trombone at 11, receiving honors and awards along the way. He graduated from Thomson High School in 2001 and received his Bachelor’s degree with honors in Jazz Performance from Valdosta State University in 2005. Crenshaw was awarded Most Outstanding Student in the VSU Music Department and College of Arts. In 2007, he received his Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from The Juilliard School, where his teachers included Dr. Douglas Farwell and Wycliffe

Chris Crenshaw

Gordon. He has appeared as a sideman on fellow JLCO trumpeter Marcus Printup’s Ballads All Night and on Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues. In 2006, Crenshaw joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Since then he has been commissioned to write God’s Trombones (2012), a spiritually focused work, and The Fifties: A Prism (2017). Both major works were premiered by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Vincent Gardner

VINCENT GARDNER

Vincent Gardner (Trombone) was born in Chicago in 1972 and was raised in Hampton, Virginia. After singing, playing piano, violin, saxophone, and French horn at an early age, he decided on the trombone at age 12. He attended Florida A&M University and the University of North Florida. He soon caught the ear of Mercer Ellington, who hired Gardner for his first professional job. He moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., after graduating from college, completed a world tour with Lauryn Hill in 2000, and then joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Gardner has served as Instructor at The Juilliard School, as Visiting Instructor at Florida State University and Michigan State University, and as Adjunct Instructor at The New School. He is currently the Director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra, and he has contributed many arrangements to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and other ensembles. He has been commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center to write The Jesse B. Semple Suite, a 60-minute suite inspired by the short stories of Langston Hughes (2009), and Ooh-Yadoodle-E-Blu For Me and You: A Bop Celebration, a work inspired by the invention of bebop (2017). Gardner is featured on a number of notable recordings and has recorded five CDs as a leader for Steeplechase Records. He has performed with The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Bobby McFerrin, Harry Connick Jr., The Saturday Night Live Band, Chaka Khan, A Tribe Called Quest, OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 53

Cynthia Tie & John Taylor

Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts

Proud Supporter of Opening Nights

~Aubrey Beardsley, Battling Knights, from Le Morte Darthur, 1893-1894, line block.

Aubrey Beardsley T h e Ae s t h e t i c s of D ec a d e nce a n d t h e L i ne B l o c k Pr i n t October 13-November 12, 2017

Selected Works from the Patrick M. Rowe Collection

~Trevor Bell, detail of Southern Light, 1976, acrylic on canvas.

Bell & Belman

October 13-November 19, 2017 Trevor Bell's multi-panel, 125 foot painting, Southern Light, will fill the upper level of the Museum as School of Dance professor Rodger Belman, colleagues and students work out choreographic sketches with a performance on October 20.

Opening Reception

October 13, 2017 from 6-8pm

Museum Hours

Mon.-Fri. 9-4 • Sat. & Sun. 1-4 Closed November 10, 2017

Tours

For tours & accessibility visitation please call: (850) 645-4681 mofa.fsu.edu 850-644-6836 530 West Call Street

Admission is always free

and many others. Gardner was chosen as the #1 Rising Star Trombonist in the 2014 DownBeat Critics Poll and nominated for Rising Star Male Vocalist.

GREG GISBERT

Greg Gisbert (Trumpet) has performed, toured, and recorded with some of the biggest names in jazz and popular music. The list includes Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Maria Schneider, Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, James Moody, Ron Carter, Buddy Rich, Horace Silver, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Bobby Short, Mel Tormé, Harry Connick, Jr., David Bowie, and Lady Gaga. His Broadway credits include After Midnight, On a Clear Day, State Fair, Leap of Faith, and The Life. As a studio musician he has played on You’ve Got Mail, Glengary Glenn Ross, Naked Gun 2, and Bullets Over Broadway, as well as playing sports theme music for the NFL, NHL, and MLB. He has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and on Good Morning America with pop music legend Paul Anka. Gisbert is an active educator and is frequently in demand as a guest clinician and teacher at colleges, universities, conservatories, and music academies around the world.

VICTOR GOINES

Victor Goines (Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet) is a native of New Orleans, La. He has been a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Wynton Marsalis Septet since 1993, touring throughout the world and recording over 20 albums. As a leader, Goines has recorded seven albums including his latest releases, Pastels of Ballads and Blues (2007) and Love Dance (2007) on Criss Cross Records, and Twilight (2012) on Rosemary Joseph Records. A gifted composer, Goines has more than 50 original works to his credit, including 2014’s Crescent City and 2016’s Untamed Elegance, both premiered by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He has recorded and/or performed with

Victor Goines

many noted jazz and popular artists including Ahmad Jamal, Ruth Brown, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie, Lenny Kravitz, Branford Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Willie Nelson, Marcus Roberts, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and a host of others. Currently, he is the Director of Jazz Studies/Professor of Music at Northwestern University. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Loyola University in New Orleans in 1984 and a Master of Music degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in 1990.

MARION FELDER

Marion Felder (Drums) was born in 1984 in Orangeburg, S.C., and raised in Detroit, Mich., Felder began playing drums at the age of three.

His earliest influences range from gospel music to Motown. He graduated from the world-famous Cass Technical High School, which has produced many jazz greats over the years. During high school, Felder began performing with legendary trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who encouraged him to move to New York City. Felder received his bachelor and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School and has since performed, recorded, or toured with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Marcus Belgrave, Michael Bublé, David Ostwald, Shayna Steele, John Alred, Victor Goines, Wynton Marsalis, Delfeayo Marsalis, Christian McBride, Grady Tate, Catherine Russell, Sara Gazarek, Hank Jones, Bobby Watson, Paul Simon, Nile Rodgers, Carla Cooke, Vanessa Rubin, Frank Wess, Regina Carter, Martha Reeves, Tom Harrell, Donald Brown, Marcus Printup, Randy Sandke, Vincent Gardner, Ben Wolfe, Carl Allen, Eddie Henderson, Lalah Hathaway, the Clarke Sisters, Ernestine Anderson, Jim Rotondi, Jim Snidero, and Allan Harris. Felder has been a regular member in the Wycliffe Gordon Quintet and Count Basie Orchestra.

CARLOS HENRIQUEZ

Carlos Henriquez (Bass) was born in 1979 in the Bronx, New York. He studied music at a young age, played guitar through junior high school and took up the bass while enrolled in The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program. He entered LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts and was involved with the LaGuardia Concert Jazz Ensemble, which went on to win first place

Carlos Henriquez

in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival in 1996. In 1998, swiftly after high school, Henriquez joined the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, touring the world and featured on more than 25 albums. Henriquez has performed with artists including Chucho Valdés, Paco De Lucía, Tito Puente, the Marsalis Family, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, Marc Anthony, and many others. He has been a member of the music faculty at Northwestern University School of Music since 2008, and was music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s cultural exchange with the Cuban Institute of Music with Chucho Valdés in 2010. His debut album as a band leader, The Bronx Pyramid, came out in September 2015 on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records.

SHERMAN IRBY

Sherman Irby (Alto and Soprano Saxophones, Flute, Clarinet) was born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He found his musical calling at age 12 and in high school he played and recorded with gospel immortal James Cleveland.

He graduated from Clark Atlanta University with a B.A. in music education. In 1991 he joined Johnny O’Neal’s Atlanta-based quintet.

In 1994 he moved to New York City and recorded his first two albums, Full Circle (1996) and Big Mama’s Biscuits (1998), on Blue Note Records. Irby toured the United States and the Caribbean with the Boys Choir of Harlem in 1995, and was a member of the Jazz at Lincoln

Sherman Irby OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 55

Center Orchestra from 1995 to 1997. During that tenure he also recorded and toured with Marcus Roberts, and was part of Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Program and Roy Hargrove’s ensemble. After a four-year stint with Roy Hargrove, Irby focused on his own group in addition to being a member of Elvin Jones’ ensemble in 2004 and then Papo Vazquez’ Vazquez’s Pirates Troubadours after Jones’ passing. From 2003–11 Irby was the regional director for Jazz Masters Workshop, mentoring young children. He has also served as artist-in-residence for Jazz Camp West and an instructor for Monterey Jazz Festival Band Camp. Irby is a former board member for the Cuba NOLA Collective. He formed Black Warrior Records and released Black Warrior, Faith, Organ Starter, Live at the Otto Club, and Andy Farber’s This Could Be the Start of Something Big. Since rejoining, Irby has arranged much of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s music, and he has been commissioned to compose new works, including 2010’s Twilight Sounds (For Norman Lewis) and his Dante-inspired ballet, Inferno (2012).

ELLIOT MASON

Elliot Mason (Trombone) was born in England in 1977 and began trumpet lessons at age four with his father. At age seven, he switched his focus from trumpet to trombone. At 11 years old, he was performing professionally, concentrating on jazz and improvisation. At 16, Mason received a full tuition scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, and after graduating he moved to New York City. Mason is a member of The Juilliard School Jazz Faculty as a jazz trombone professor, and he is also a part of the Jazz Faculty at New York University. Mason has served as a clinician worldwide, performing workshops, master classes and clinics. Mason is endorsed

by B.A.C. musical instruments and currently plays his own co-designed custom line of trombones. Mason has performed with the

Elliot Mason 56 | OPENING NIGH TS FALL 2017

Count Basie Orchestra, the Mingus Big Band, the Maria Schneider Orchestra, the Maynard Ferguson Big Bop Nouveau, Chick Corea, Kenny Garrett, Bobby Hutcherson, Ahmad Jamal, Randy Brecker, and Carl Fontana. A member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra since 2006, Mason also continues to co-lead the Mason Brothers Quintet with his brother Brad. The Mason Brothers recently released their second album, titled Efflorescence.

Grammy Award. Nash’s arrangement of “We Three Kings,” featured on the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis’ Big Band Holidays album (2015, Blue Engine Records), was nominated for the 2017 Best Instrumental Or A Cappella Arrangement Grammy Award.

Paul Nedzela

PAUL NEDZELA Ted Nash

TED NASH

Ted Nash (Alto and Soprano Saxophones, Flute, Clarinet,) enjoys an extraordinary career as a performer, conductor, composer, arranger, and educator. Born in Los Angeles into a musical family (his father, Dick Nash, and uncle, the late Ted Nash, were both wellknown jazz and studio musicians), Nash blossomed early, a “young lion” before the term became jazz vernacular. Nash has that uncanny ability to mix freedom with accessibility, blues with intellect, and risk-taking with clarity. His group Odeon has often been cited as a creative focus of jazz. Many of Nash’s recordings have received critical acclaim, and have appeared on the “best-of” lists in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and The Boston Globe. His recordings The Mancini Project (2008, Palmetto Records) and Sidewalk Meeting (2001, Plastic Sax Records) have been placed on several “best-of-decade” lists. His album Portrait in Seven Shades was recorded and self-released by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2010. The album is the first JLCO recording to feature original compositions by a band member other than band leader Wynton Marsalis. Nash released Chakra in 2013 on Plastic Sax Records. His most recent big band recording, Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom (2016, Motéma Music), won the 2017 Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album Grammy Award. The album includes “Spoken at Midnight,” which won the 2017 Best Instrumental Composition

Paul Nedzela (Baritone and Soprano Saxophones, Bass Clarinet)has become one of today’s top baritone saxophone players. He has played with many renowned artists and ensembles, including Wess Anderson, George Benson, The Birdland Big Band, Bill Charlap, Chick Corea, Paquito D’Rivera, Michael Feinstein, Benny Golson, Wycliffe Gordon, Roy Haynes, Christian McBride, Eric Reed, Dianne Reeves, Herlin Riley, Maria Schneider, Frank Sinatra Jr., The Temptations, The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Reginald Veal, and Max Weinberg. Nedzela has performed in Twyla Tharp’s Broadway show, Come Fly Away, and in major festivals around the world. He has studied with some of the foremost baritone saxophonists in the world, including Joe Temperley, Gary Smulyan, and Roger Rosenberg.

Nedzela graduated with honors from McGill University in Montreal with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 2006. A recipient of the Samuel L. Jackson Scholarship Award, he continued his musical studies at The Juilliard School and graduated with a Master of Music degree in 2008.

DAN NIMMER

Dan Nimmer (Piano) was born in 1982 in Milwaukee, Wis. With prodigious technique and an innate sense of swing, his playing often recalls that of his own heroes, specifically Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, Erroll Garner, and Art Tatum. As a young man, Nimmer’s family inherited a piano and he started playing by ear. He studied classical piano and eventually became interested in jazz. At the same

Dan Nimmer

time, he began playing gigs around Milwaukee. Upon graduation from high school, Nimmer left Milwaukee to study music at Northern Illinois University. It didn’t take him long to become one of Chicago’s busiest piano players. Working a lot in the Chicago scene, Nimmer decided to leave school and make the big move to New York City where he immediately emerged in the New York scene. A year after moving to New York City, he became a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Wynton Marsalis Quintet.

Nimmer has worked with Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Dianne Reeves,George Benson, Frank Wess, Clark Terry, Tom Jones, Benny Golson, Lewis Nash, Peter Washington, Ed Thigpen, Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson, Fareed Haque, and many more. He has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman, The View, The Kennedy Center Honors, Live from Abbey Road, and PBS’ Live from Lincoln Center, among other broadcasts. He has released four of his own albums on the Venus label (Japan).

MARCUS PRINTUP

Marcus Printup (Trumpet) was born and raised in Conyers, Ga. (which has declared August 22 “Marcus Printup Day” in his honor). His first musical experiences were hearing the fiery gospel music his parents sang in church.

While attending the University of North Florida on a music scholarship, he won the International Trumpet Guild Jazz Trumpet competition. In 1991, Printup’s life changed when he met his mentor,the great pianist Marcus

Marcus Printup

Roberts, who introduced him to Wynton Marsalis. This led to Printup’s induction into the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 1993.

Printup has recorded with Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Eric Reed, Madeline Peyroux, Ted Nash, Cyrus Chestnut, Wycliffe Gordon, and Roberts, among others. As a leader, he has recorded Song for the Beautiful Woman (1994), Unveiled (1996), Hub Songs 1998), and Nocturnal Traces (1998) on Blue Note Records; The New Boogaloo (2002 on Nagel Heyer Records; and for Steeple Chase Records he has recorded Peace in the Abstract (2006), Bird of Paradise (2007), London Lullaby (2009), Ballads All Night (2010), A Time for Love (2011), and his most recent, Homage (2012) and Desire (2013, featuring Riza Printupon the Harp. Printup made a big screen appearance in the 1999 movie Playing by Heart and recorded on the film’s soundtrack. Education is important to Printup, as he is an in-demand clinician teaching middle schools, high schools,and colleges across the United States. He teaches privately at the prestigious Mannes New School of Music. In 2016, Printup was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center to write Forever Swing, a piece inspired by the Swing Era, for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

KENNY RAMPTON

Kenny Rampton (Trumpet) joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2010. In addition to performing in the JLCO, Rampton leads several of his own groups. He released his debut solo CD Moon Over Babylon in 2013.

He is also the trumpet voice for the popular TV series Sesame Street. In the summer of 2010, Rampton performed with The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival, and was the featured soloist on the Miles Davis/Gil Evans classic version of “Porgy and Bess.” Rampton has been a regular member of The Mingus Big Band/Orchestra/Dynasty, Mingus Epitaph (under the direction of Gunther Schuller), George Gruntz’ Concert Jazz Band, Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, Bebo Valdés’ Latin Jazz All-Stars, and The Manhattan Jazz Orchestra.

He spent much of the 1990s touring the world with The Ray Charles Orchestra, The Jimmy McGriff Quartet, legendary jazz drummer Panama Francis (and the Savoy Sultans), as well as jazz greats Jon Hendricks, Lionel Hampton, and Illinois Jacquet. As a sideman, Rampton has also performed with Dr. John,

Kenny Rampton

Christian McBride, The Maria Schneider Orchestra, Charles Earland, Geoff Keezer, and a host of others. Some of Rampton’s Broadway credits include Anything Goes, Finian’s Rainbow, The Wiz, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Young Frankenstein, and The Color Purple.

Sierra Hull Continued from pg. 31

This is the turning point.

This is where a preternatural talent becomes a natural woman.

This is Sierra Hull’s Weighted Mind. It is nothing like what we thought it would be. It is nothing like what we’ve heard before, from anyone. It is singular and emphatic, harmonious and dissonant. It is the realization of promise, and the affirmation of individuality.

It is born of difficulty and indecision, yet it rings with ease, decisiveness, and beauty.

“She plays the mandolin with a degree of refined elegance and freedom that few have achieved,” says Bela Fleck, the genre-leaping banjo master who produced Weighted Mind.

“And now her vocals and songwriting have matured to the level of her virtuosity.”

Alison Krauss, who has won more Grammy awards than any female artist in history, says of Hull, “I think she’s endless. I don’t see any boundaries. Talent like hers is so rare, and I don’t think it stops. It’s round.”

Hull came to us as a bluegrass thrush, a teen prodigy. Krauss called her to the Grand Ole Opry stage when Hull was 11-years-old. Two years later, she signed with Rounder Records, and soon became known as a remarkable mandolin player, a tone-true vocalist, and a recording artist of high order. She made two acclaimed albums. She played the White House, and Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 57

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Center, and she became the first bluegrass musician to receive a Presidential Scholarship at the Berklee College of Music.

She was celebrated, yet adrift. Stranded, even.

What she felt at 22 was not what she felt at 12, and the music Sierra Hull was writing and playing at home was different from the music she was making on stages.

“In some way, I was needing to run from the thing that everybody thought I was being,” she says now, at 24.

But she wasn’t running so much as plodding.

She fielded myriad opinions about hypothetical courses. She grew vulnerable, and weighted, and she wrote songs about all of that. She found solace in an antique Brenda Ueland book that advised, “Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself.”

And she talked with Krauss, the childhood hero who had become an adult confidante.

“Sierra did well in music very fast and very young,” says Krauss. “Sometimes when that happens, people don’t want you to change.

It’s, ‘We know you as this, and now you’re scaring us.’ But there wasn’t a question about what she wanted. She just needed somebody to listen to her and say, ‘What you have to say is valuable. If this is what you feel and what you want to say, you wait until you get to say it.’” Krauss also suggested she talk with Fleck.

“Sierra lives in the border area where new ideas mix to create hybrids, and sometimes brand new directions,” he says. “Her own voice was quietly telling her something that was hard to hear over all the advice she was getting.” Fleck asked her to play him her new songs, without accompaniment: Just voice and mandolin.

“Even when I was fronting a band, I’d always been an ensemble player,” Hull says. “To do something by myself made me rethink everything.”

And so she rethought, and she found new ways to play the new songs she’d written. In short time, what had been arduous now seemed genuine and innate. The C.S. Lewis quote about how “the longest way round is the shortest way home” made sense. And a dazzling and atypical album was made possible.

Hull’s songs did not remain bare of all but mandolin and voice, though those are the essential elements here. Bass-marvel Ethan

Sierra Hull was 2016 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Mandolin Player of the Year, the first female to ever win, and has been nominated again for IBMA’s 2017 Mandolin Player of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year.

Jodziewicz came on, providing resonance and rhythmic complexity. Fleck’s banjo adorns the courtly “Queen of Hearts/Royal Tea.” And Krauss, Abigail Washburn and Rhiannon Giddens add enchanting harmonies.

Bluegrass roots inform and inspire this soundscape, but bluegrass does not define or limit Weighted Mind. This is not bluegrass music, or chamber music, or pop music. This is original music, from a virtuoso who tells the truth and speaks from within.

“If you won’t go where I’m going, then I’ll have to go alone,” she sings. “Choices and changes/ I’m tired of trying to be someone else.” Then she unleashes an octave mandolin solo—first fluttering, then tense and troubled— that could come from no one else.

Hull wrote 11 of Weighted Mind’s 12 songs

(and she arranged the twelfth tune), penning some with co-writers Jon Weisberger, Zac Bevill, and Josh Shilling, and writing “Stranded,” “Wings of the Dawn,” “Birthday,” “Lullaby,” “I’ll Be Fine,” and “Black River” on her own.

“The moment you start to be yourself, there’s an honesty about that, that people connect with,” she says. “This album feels like the story of my early twenties, of that searching.

Now, it feels like everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”

“I’d like to say to you, ‘Come follow,’” Hull sings on “Compass.” “But you may find my heart’s been hollowed out.” Now, she knows.

If her heart was hollowed, it was only so it might be filled anew, and then revealed.

Welcome to a Weighted Mind, at ease.

OPENINGNIGHTS.FSU.EDU | 59

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PATRON SERVICES Frequently Asked Questions WHERE DO I PARK? Members are eligible to park in either Concierge or Preferred parking lots based on membership level. Parking options vary from venue to venue, but general parking is available for the majority of performances in the St. Augustine garage located on the corner of Pensacola and Copeland Streets and the Call Street garage located on the corner of Call and Macomb Streets. To learn more about parking specific to each venue, please visit openingnights.fsu.edu.

WHEN DO DOORS OPEN? Venue doors open 30 minutes prior to a performance. Guests are encouraged to arrive at least 15 minutes before a performance begins.

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WHAT HAPPENS IF I ARRIVE LATE TO A PERFORMANCE? Latecomers to events will be seated at the discretion of the house manager or ushers and in accordance with artist preferences at a suitable break in the performance.

WHAT IF I’VE LOST MY TICKETS?

ONLINE openingnights.fsu.edu

Lost or misplaced tickets may be reprinted. Service fees may apply. Contact the FSU Fine Arts Ticket Office at tickets@fsu.edu or 850.644.6500 for details. If you are a member and lost your parking pass, it can be replaced for $50.

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MAY I BRING FOOD OR DRINKS INTO THE VENUE? Most Opening Nights’ venues prohibit food and drinks unless otherwise noted.

Please visit our website to find out if food and/or beverages are permitted at your event of interest.

CAN I BRING MY CHILDREN? We offer many events enjoyable to audiences of all ages. Children must have tickets regardless of age and must be able to sit quietly throughout a performance. Children (and adults) who cause any disturbances will be politely asked to leave.

ARE EVENTS ACCESSIBLE TO PATRONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS? We are committed to ensuring our performances are accessible and enjoyable to all patrons.

• Accessible parking is available at all venues on a first-come, first-served basis.

• Accessible seats are available in all price ranges in all venues. Please contact the Fine Arts Ticket Office at 850.644.6500 to purchase tickets.

• Seats for visually impaired patrons are reserved for each performance. Please contact the Fine Arts Ticket Office at 850.644.6500 to purchase tickets.

• Assistive listening devices (ALDs) are available at many venues, including Ruby Diamond Concert Hall, the Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre and the Richard G. Fallon Theatre. Please ask a house manager at the performance about acquiring an ALD. • Braille Programs are available at every performance upon request.

HOW CAN I VOLUNTEER MY TIME TO HELP OPENING NIGHTS? Please visit our website at openingnights.fsu.edu/connect and complete the volunteer registration form.

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