December 2021
In the 2020–2021 academic year, the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Foundation Artist-in-Residence Program rose to the challenge presented by the times, expanding formats to ensure that our Emory and Atlanta communities continued to have access to the arts and artistic process. Without the ability to present in-person events, we intentionally curated the season to focus on two projects that could still be incredibly impactful in a virtual environment. During these online master classes, artist talks, and conversations, Emory students were able to perform for and receive critique from acclaimed jazz guitarist Bobby Broom and take part in an intimate conversation with artist Manjari Sharma. Emory jazz studies student Sawyer Gray remarked, “Building connections to the broader music community is the most important role of Emory’s Music program,” --- it is the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Artist-in-Residence Program that makes this possible for our students. This report details the eighth full year of this program—the impact on Emory’s campus and our community continues to multiply, and while we are delighted to return to live performances, we are incredibly grateful that these funds allowed us ways to create meaningful engagement opportunities for our students, while also expanding its reach to the thousands of additional people who viewed these programs online. We remain incredibly grateful to Donna and Marvin for their vision and generosity in cultivating future generations of arts-minded citizens, while simultaneously raising the visibility of the Arts at Emory to unprecedented levels.
With deep appreciation,
Rachael Brightwell Chair, Donna and Marvin Schwartz Foundation Artist-in-Residence Program Managing Director, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts
MISSION STATEMENT The Donna and Marvin Schwartz Foundation Artist-in-Residence Program at Emory University seeks to increase substantially the depth, diversity and profile of performing arts education in the Emory and greater Atlanta communities by providing opportunities for meaningful contact with performing artists, composers, and art scholars from throughout the world. Artists whose work reflects international and diverse cultural dimensions will be engaged for extended periods of time during which they provide Emory and Atlanta area students with teaching, master classes, lectures, and demonstrations often culminating in a public performance of their work in the Schwartz Center. The committee will entertain residency applications for artists of any discipline or artistic scholars. A meaningful portion of the residency must take place on Emory University campus. This includes lectures, workshops, film showings, classes, and art installations. Projects should supplement or enhance planned programmatic content or create unique opportunities for the Emory student and the community.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS Rachael Brightwell, Chair Managing Director, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts Carla Freeman Executive Associate Dean, Emory College of Arts and Sciences Goodrich C. White Professor of Women's Gender & Sexuality Studies Kevin Karnes Associate Dean for the Arts, Arts at Emory, Emory College of Arts and Sciences
Cover image courtesy of Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, 2021 Emory Jazz Fest
Emory Jazz Festival | February 12–13, 2021
Jazz guitarist Bobby Broom headlined this year’s virtual 2021 Jazz Festival with returning guest artist bassist Kenny Davis rounding out the Gary Motley Trio. From Gary Motley, Director of Jazz Studies The annual Emory Jazz Festival has established a tradition as a staple of the music experience on campus and as an outreach vehicle in our community. It allows us to connect to patrons and aspiring area students in ways that were previously unavailable. The pandemic posed a significant challenge to our mission of continuing the festival this year. We confronted this limitation by presenting the jazz fest virtually. I solicited two renown artists, guitarist Bobby Broom and bassist Kenny Davis. In addition to their stellar musicianship, both were capable of navigating online technology skill needed for virtual performance delivery. We selected music and recorded our parts (audio and video) from our respective locations (Atlanta, Chicago, New York). With the assistance of my production team, I edited and mixed both video and audio and produced a virtual concert. The mission was to create a ‘Schwartz Center’ experience. Feedback received from students and the community at large regarding the concert and master class suggests that they were a resounding success. My thanks to SAIR for its support in maintaining our annual tradition. From Sawyer Gray, Emory Jazz Student On Saturday, February 13th, professor Motley hosted a master class featuring guitarist Bobby Broom and invited me to play Blue Bossa at the event. We had been working on improvising on the tune that week, and I was very excited to play for Mr. Broom. I had already listened to his album My Shining Hour at the recommendation of prof. Motley, and had seen their performance with bassist Kenny Davis the night before on the Schwartz Center's Virtual Stage platform. Upon meeting him, Mr. Broom was congenial and not intimidating, and the conversation that he, prof. Motley, and Kenny Davis had for the master class was insightful and enjoyable. They compared improvisation to learning a language, with vocabulary and conventional phrases, but also an oral history that is reformed and substantiated by each new generation that comes along. Just like learning a language, learning to improvise takes time and dedication. I've found this to be especially true this semester because studying bebop improvisation is especially contingent on listening to it on a regular basis. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet Bobby Broom and can't complain too much that it was through a zoom call given the circumstances. Building connections to the broader music community is the most important role of Emory's music program, and I'm incredibly thankful that the jazz program is continuing this goal, even if online, through the pandemic. RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES | Professor Gary Motley, Bobby Broom, and Kenny Davis gave a virtual master class for Emory Jazz Studies students and the community on Saturday, February 13, 2021.
Manjari Sharma | Spring and Fall 2020
Artist Manjari Sharma expanded her residency to accommodate virtual conversations on her works at the Carlos Museum and Schwartz Center Chace Gallery.
From Elizabeth Hornor, Ingram Senior Director of Education, Michael C. Carlos Museum In spite of the chaos of the world, we were able to conduct the two programs that were part of this grant although they were over Zoom and not in person. Over 1,800 people have viewed the spring program. We tried to take advantage of the things that Zoom could make possible, so we brought into the conversation from Mumbai the woman who portrayed Kali in Manjari's photograph. Candy Tate moderated the [fall 2020} conversation between Manjari and Whitney Wharton of the nursing school about the series “Loss and Resurrection”, which documents Manjari's mother's ongoing battle with prefrontal dementia. It was wonderful. 88 people attended via Zoom, but I imagine many more will view on YouTube from our website. RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES | Works from Sharma’s series, Loss and Resurrection: A Letter to My Daughter, were on view in the Chace Upper Gallery of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. This series of intimate photographic portraits documents Sharma’s mother’s nine-year, and ongoing, battle with prefrontal temporal dementia. These intimate portraits convey both her mother’s strength and her turning inward as well as the relationships between her and Manjari’s father, her primary caregiver, and her grandchild, the “daughter” of the title. Her large-scale photographs of Hindu deities were featured in the exhibition Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Occurrence of the Divine at the Carlos Museum. The works are photographically recreated classical images of nine of the Hindu gods and goddesses that are pivotal to mythological stories in Hindu culture. To create the series, Sharma conducted exhaustive research on each deity and developed sketches and maquettes. She returned to India to work with a team of approximately thirty-five Indian craftsmen who created props, sets, prosthetics, make-up, costumes, and jewelry to exacting specifications to create an elaborate set for the shoots. She chose her subjects carefully: the man who portrays Brahma, creator of worlds, is an architect; the woman who portrays Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity, is Miss India. Printed on a massive scale, these photographs are presented in deep and elaborately embossed brass frames that re-create the experience of a Hindu temple. April 16, 2020 | In this artist talk, held in conjunction with the exhibition Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Occurrence of the Divine, Sharma discusses the genesis and execution of the project and is joined from India by Payal Bhattacharya, the woman who portrayed one of the most challenging characters in the series, Maa Kali. Artist Manjari Sharma's Darshan series is the result of a multi-year project to photographically recreate a temple-like experience of nine Hindu deities, which required the cross-continental organization of a large team of models and craftspeople. WATCH HERE. September 30, 2020 | In virtual conversation with Dr. Whitney Wharton, a cognitive neuroscientist at Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff Nursing School, and Dr. Candy Tate of Emory’s Center for Creativity and the Arts who has been involved with Alzheimer’s in the Black community, Manjari Sharma discussed the images in Loss and Resurrection from a number of perspectives. WATCH HERE.
2021–2022 | SCHWARTZ ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE SEASON Geneva Lewis, violin November 11–12, 2021 Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, violinist Geneva Lewis has performed throughout the United States and Europe. Geneva has been the recipient of a number of awards, winning the grand prize at the 2020 Victor Elmaleh Concert Artists Guild Competition, as well as being named a finalist at the 2018 Naumburg Competition. As a soloist, she has performed with the Pasadena Symphony, Symphony New Hampshire, Diablo Symphony Orchestra, Culver City Symphony, Sierra Summer Festival Orchestra, Brentwood Westwood Symphony Orchestra, and Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra. Jazz Fest 2022 with Raul Midón, guitar February 4–5, 2022 Along with releasing 10 studio albums as a solo artist, Grammy Nominated Raul Midón—dubbed “an eclectic adventurist” by People magazine—has collaborated with such heroes as Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers, along with contributing to recordings by Queen Latifah, Snoop Dogg and the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s She Hate Me. A native of New Mexico who was educated in the jazz program of the University of Miami, Midón has earned acclaim the world over, with a fanbase that stretches from San Francisco to India, Amsterdam to Tokyo. A rapt critic for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper wrote,“Midón has a lovely voice, a beautifully controlled tenor that can express anything from tenderness to passion. . . and the guy can play. His strumming has a flamenco flourish, but after a while, you realize he can do every kind of accompaniment he needs on acoustic guitar.” Brittany Greene, composer April 22, 2022 Inspired by discussions at Emory related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the performing arts, the Emory University Symphony Orchestra (EUSO) will undertake a three-year commissioning project focusing entirely on the work of emerging BIPOC women composers premiering at least one commissioned work per year, including a particularly high-profile commission in celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the EUSO in 2023. Alan Chow, piano March 4–5, 2022 The Emory University Young Artist Piano Competition brings together exceptional young pianists aged 13–18 with the opportunity to advance their skills through adjudication and public performance. A Steinway Artist, Alan Chow has performed to critical acclaim in recital and in concert in such major venues as New York’s Lincoln Center and Merkin Hall and Chicago’s Symphony Center and Ravinia and with orchestras throughout the United States and Asia. With a long history of conducting master classes and serving as a juror for piano competitions throughout North America and Asia, Chow will be in residence on March 4–5 to work with Emory students in addition to serving as a piano competition juror. Flow State, featuring Timuçin Şahin, composer February 11–12, 2022 Timuçin Şahin has been recognized as one of today’s truly unique voices of contemporary jazz music by publications such as San Francisco Bay Guardian, All about Jazz, Jazzwise and Jazz-Times as well as by many others. His unique sound on fretless electric guitar and his emotional content in his composing made him noncomparable and his music almost impossible to categorize.
2022–2023 | SCHWARTZ CENTER 20TH ANNIVERSARY SCHWARTZ ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE SEASON PREVIEW GIORGIO MAGNANENSI, composer: RISONANZE
AN EVENING WITH FRED HERSCH AND ESPERANZA SPALDING
EMORY JAZZ FEST 2023
LAWRENCE BROWNLEE, tenor: RISING
COMPOSER COMMISSION PROJECT: EUSO @ 100