By Emily Borchers (@emilyborchers)
Spring cleaning came early this year and we were on a mission—a mission to get our artist residency archive in order. Although Montalvo opened its doors to artists in 1939, making it the oldest artist residency program on the West Coast, the new LAP facility at Montalvo was inaugurated in 2004 as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program, and since then has hosted over a thousand artists from more than thirty countries.
We had quite a bit of work to go through—almost 15 years worth. That's a lot of boxes! Cobwebs were dusted off, piles were stacked high, excel sheets were filled, and past artists were rediscovered. So for this month's playlist, we celebrate some of the Composer & Musician Fellows and guest artists from the earlier years of our residency. Get nostalgic with us! Give our blast-from-the-past playlist a listen below (or on our Spotify @lucasartistsprogram) and don't forget to follow us on our other platforms to hear what next month’s mixtape will be. See you next month!
FEATURED ARTISTS:
HELADO NEGRO
Born as Roberto Lange, the LAP Composer & Musician Fellow performs under the pseudonym Helado Negro. The artist was raised in Florida of Ecuadoran parents, and his music often incorporates Spanish and English lyrics. AGUSTIN LIRA Originally focusing on the power of music for farm-working communities, LAP Composer & Musician Fellow Agustin Lira went on to be a major voice for the Chicano movement. FRANCOIS HOULE Widely known for his improvisational avant garde jazz compositions on the clarinet, LAP Composer & Musician Fellow Francois Houle was well-known in the 1990s contemporary Canadian music scene. AMIR ELSAFFAR Composer, trumpeter, santur player, vocalist—and LAP Guest Artist—Amir ElSaffar has been described as “uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music,” (the Wire) and “one of the most promising figures in jazz today” (Chicago Tribune). CARLOS AGUIRRE Throughout his 19-year hip-hop career, actor, musician, vocal percussionist, educator and LAP Composer & Musician Fellow Carlos Aguirre has worked with hip-hop stars such as Mary J. Blinge, L.L. Cool J, and The Black Eyed Peas. PAOLO ANGELI LAP Composer & Musician Fellow Paolo Angeli began his musical career at the age of nine when he first learned to play guitar. Angeli is a virtuoso on Sardinian prepared guitar: an "orchestra-instrument with 18 cords, a hybrid between guitar, baritone, violoncello and drums." LAETITIA SONAMI French-born LAP Composer & Musician Fellow Laetitia Sonami is a sound artist and performer. Her sound performances, live-film collaborations and sound installations explore ideas of presence and participation. ASHLEY BELLOUIN Interested in the way sound interacts with architecture, Guest Artist Ashley Bellouin creates electro-acoustic and sound art compositions. TOM RECCHION Working at an intersection between visual and sound art since the 1970s, LAP Composer & Musician Fellow Tom Recchion went on to create the 1970s underground music collective Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS).
0 Comments
Photo: Isaiah Plaza Listening to poets talking among themselves is a rare pleasure. On their last day at the LAP, after a rainy winter, poets Julian Talamantez Brolaski and Ariana Reines sit down and consider the question: What can poets do? Ariana takes a deep breath and begins. "This just came to me yesterday, so I still have to try it out..." What ensues is a remarkable moment of a poet working something out in conversation with another. Listen to an excerpt of the conversation here. You have to be at the very edge of what can be said.
-Ariana Reines Creation is unpredictable. It’s a non-linear process. Filmmakers, poets, visual artists often set out on a new body of work without knowing quite what’s coming. What is it like to navigate that uncertainty? At the Lucas Artists Programs at Montalvo, artists of all disciplines work in their studios on the quiet hillside. They tell stories of creations that snuck up on them, a film that took an unexpected right turn, poems that wanted to be maps, characters that changed their minds, paths that refused to be taken.
Our Visual Arts Fellows have been busy this month! In this month's Fellows in the News, we feature: a musical announcement, a mention in Vogue magazine, and not one, but three exhibitions in California!
✨Happy New Year!✨ Since we missed our January Fellows in the News, we've accumulated quite a few shoutout-worthy news stories from our Lucas Artists Fellows. So for this Fellows in the News, we feature: a play turned opera on PBS, a large-scale sequin sculpture, narrative-rich paintings in Oakland, a Chinese-Jewish musical performance, a San Francisco Public Library commission, an Art Basel write-up, and a composer of the year award!
December has been such an astonishing month for our Lucas Artists Fellows and Guest Artists, we had to assemble a second Fellows in the News post! In this edition, we celebrate accolades garnered by Lucas Artists Fellows in music/composition, visual arts, and literary arts in the form of a major grant, a performance festival, coverage in the New York Times Style Magazine, and an article appearing in the New York Times Magazine.
It's that time again...the holiday season! Matching hats and scarves reappear in our wardrobes, wrapping paper is strewn over the floor, and the lack of desire to leave the warmth of one's house in the morning is at an all time high.
Last year we focused on jazz as our seasonal music of choice, but this year we are broadening our horizons. For this December, we've included choral, orchestral, and classical music by our composer fellows that aims to exude a wintery calmness (something not often found during this month!). And in celebration of our Lucas Artists Composer & Musician Fellow Henry Threadgill, whose latest jazz album Dirt...And More Dirt (2018) was named one of the best jazz albums of 2018 by The New York Times, we've included a few of his recent jazz hits! Give our playlist a listen below and be sure to follow us on our other platforms to hear what next month’s mixtape will be. Last month we focused our attention on our new commission by RADIOEE.net, AUTOPILOTO, a 24-hour radio broadcast. The artist group, consisting of Sebastian Bellver, Agustina Woodgate, and Stephanie Elyse Sherman, traveled the Bay Area where they discussed all things autonomous, from cars to mental states to parking lot robots. XO Happy Holidays and we'll see you next year!
FEATURED ARTISTS
DAVID BENOIT
Beginning his musical career in the 1970s as a musical director/composer, LAP fellow David Benoit didn't create his first album Freedom at Midnight until 1987. Known for his smooth, easy listening jazz, his songs are perfect background music for any activity. KURT ROHDE Not only known for his contribution to several chamber ensembles and string quartets, violinist and LAP Fellow Kurt Rohde is also a composer for operas. In his spare time, he teaches composition at the University of California, Davis. DAVID EVAN THOMAS Known for his skillfully crafted orchestral pieces, LAP Fellow David Evan Thomas is also a recipient of several music awards, including two McKnight Foundation Fellowships. He currently lives in Minneapolis and is a program annotator, chroal singer and pianist. EVE BEGLARIAN Mainly recognized by her chamber, choral, and orchestral music, LAP Fellow Eve Beglarian has also worked in theatre and visual arts. Some past project collaborators include David Neumann, Cory Arcangel, and Barabara Hammer, to name a few. MARY ROWELL Not tied down to one genre, LAP Fellow and violinist Mary Rowell constantly astounds audiences with her exciting performances. In addition to her solo work, she also performs with LAP Fellow Eve Beglarian in their experimental Americana duo BRIM. DAN VISCONTI Although he only began learning violin at the age of 14, LAP Fellow Dan Visconti soon transitioned into composition, winning several awards and scholarships for his works. Most recently, he was named the winner of the Kronos Under 30 Project for his work with the Kronos Quartet. DOUGLAS CUOMO Widely known as the composer of the Sex and the City theme music, LAP Fellow Douglas Cuomo is a composer and musician with a long history of composing scores for film, theatre, and television shows. Although he has a background in jazz, his influences range from classical to world music. HENRY THREADGILL With a jazz career that has spanned over 40 years, LAP Fellow Henry Threadgill is known for his experimental work in the field of jazz. GEOFF GALLEGOS Also known as "Double G," LAP Fellow Geoff Gallegos aims to redesign hip-hop. Through the group he co-founded in 1999, the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra, Gallegos combines hip-hop with that of jazz, classical, and electronic. For this edition of Fellows in the News, we feature a New York Times accolade, a cookbook club pick, a sociopolitical art lecture series, a historical architectural drawing exhibition, a large-scale installation, a digital sculpture exhibition, and an Hyperallergic interview!
For this edition of Fellows in the News, we feature a library re-opening with a new mural, two 2018 Goodreads Choice Awards, a chaotic operatic re-imagining of a 19th-century poem premiering in Brooklyn, NY, a brand new artist-in-residence program at the Haas Institute, a group exhibition at the Nevada Art Museum, and a TBA award!
THE SALLY & DON LUCAS ARTISTS PROGRAM AT MONTALVO ARTS CENTER PRESENTS A NEW PROJECT BY RADIOEE.NET AUTOPILOTO November 15-16, 2018 SARATOGA, CA (1 October 2018) — This November, the Sally & Don Lucas Artists Program at Montalvo Arts Center presents a new commission from international creative collective Radioee.net: AUTOPILOTO, a marathon radio transmission broadcast while on the move in a semi-autonomous vehicle traversing the Bay Area, examining how emerging autopilot technologies are transforming the world. Live streaming on November 15 and 16, AUTOPILOTO will include interviews with drivers, designers, technologists, municipal agents, researchers, artists, scientists, mechanics and more, as well as soundscapes and music. Through storytelling and sonic experiments, it will compose an audio portrait of the Bay Area at a specific moment in time. The live-stream of the broadcast will be available on both radioee.net and montalvoarts.org. AUTOPILOTO is a commissioned project by the Lucas Artist Program at the Montalvo Arts Center, and is presented as part of New Terrains: Mobility and Migration, a series of cross-disciplinary exhibitions, programs and experiences that explore how bodies move through spaces—social, political, literal, and figurative. The broadcast is co-hosted with Trami Cron of Chopsticks Alley Art. Special guests will include voices from ARUP; fka SV Inc; Nissan Research Center; SETI Institute; Transportation Sustainability Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, Yu-Ai Kai Community Center, and others. It will feature music and live performance by such artists as Anna Fritz, Taylor Ho Bynum, Philip Hermans, Motoko Honda, Shane A. Myrbeck & Emily Shisko, and San Jose Jazz. For more information, the public may visit Radioee.net or montalvoarts.org or call Donna Conwell at 408-777-2100. Autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator. Though Silicon Valley is the birthplace of autonomous vehicles and auto-pilot technologies, they are now being actively engineered and publically negotiated all over the world. Transmitted in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, AUTOPILOTO takes up questions of how autonomy and automatic movement will shape geographies, societies, and cultures in the Bay Area and beyond—questions such as What will our cities sound like in a driverless future? How will society and infrastructure systems adapt? What might humans do during newfound transit time? In what ways do machines imitate human auto-pilot modes, and vice versa? How can we build equitable, planetary, intelligent transit for all? AUTOPILOTO will feature interviews with scientists and technologists about these important questions, but they will also include conversations with individuals often left out of such discussions, including the elderly, commuters, rideshare drivers, car mechanics, artists, and others. “Humans are constantly navigating and adapting to technological shifts” said Radioee.net. “We want to de-mystify certain ideas about technology through conversations with scientists, technologists and city leaders, and complicate them through parallel dialogues with artists, workers, and those who are experiencing the technology firsthand. Automation and self-driving cars are disrupting multiple industries, including parking, law enforcement, insurance, and real estate. This technology is not only transforming the transportation vehicles we will use, but also what our cities and streets will look like. It is informing new thinking about myriad topics, including labor, leisure, our bodies, legal and ethical responsibility, and so on. Unless we begin to have critical conversations about what we want a future with automation to look like and what we want from this technology, we will lose the opportunity to use it as a tool to shape life and society for the better. Automation has the potential to transform society—but it is unclear whether we will escape some of our tired and failing 20th century models in designing new infrastructures and policies.” AUTOPILOTO represents the Lucas Artists Program’s continued commitment to supporting artists to create and present innovative and challenging public work,” said Lucas Artists Program curator Donna Conwell. “Radioee.net and their new work AUTOPILOTO reflects our belief that artists are important catalysts for igniting meaningful and urgent social conversations about the issues shaping our collective future.” AUTOPILOTO is supported, in part, by the San José Office of Cultural Affairs.
About Montalvo Arts Center and the Lucas Artists Program Montalvo Arts Center is a member-supported non-profit institution whose mission is to engage people in the creative process, acting as a catalyst for exploring the arts, unleashing creativity, and advancing different cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. Located on 175 acres in Silicon Valley's Saratoga Hills, Montalvo is home to the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program (LAP), a creative incubator and cultural producer dedicated to supporting artists from all creative disciplines and geographical locations to create and present new and challenging contemporary work. For more information about the Lucas Artists Program and Montalvo Arts Center, the public can call 408-961-5858 or visit montalvoarts.org. About New Terrains Through “New Terrains: Mobility and Migration,” South Bay arts organizations band together to present a series of cross-disciplinary exhibitions, programs and experiences that explore how bodies move through spaces—social, political, literal, and figurative. Projects address timely topics such as transportation and urban planning, navigation and orientation, public protest, immigration and migration, and mobility in its many forms. With expanding partnerships, “New Terrains” will embrace multidisciplinary thinkers and cultural producers through a growing range of events. Collaboratively presented through summer 2019 by organizations of all sizes and types — from museums and artist residencies to community centers and civic think tanks — events and programs will take place across the greater Silicon Valley. “New Terrains” was developed collaboratively by Art Ark Gallery, San José; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University; History San José, MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultural Latino Americana), San José; Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga; Palo Alto Art Center, San José Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San José; Institute of the Arts and Sciences of the University of California Santa Cruz Arts Division, and ZERO1. Additional partners include Art Object Gallery, San José; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto; Chamber Music Silicon Valley, San José; Children’s Discovery Museum, San José; Chopsticks Alley Art, San José; City Lights Theater Company, San José; College of Adaptive Arts, San José; Consulado General de México en San José; FWD.us/Welcome.us, San Francisco; genARTS Silicon Valley, San José; New Museum of Los Gatos; Pajaro Valley Arts, Watsonville; Play on Words, San José; Research Center for the Americas/UC Santa Cruz; San Jose Jazz, San José; San José Public Library; Sangam Arts, Saratoga; Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History; SETI Institute, Mountain View; Soul Focus Sports, Capitola; South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition, San José; Teatro Vision, San José; Institute of Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz Arts Division and the Arboretum at UCSC; Walk San Jose; Works/San José; and Yu-Ai Kai Senior Community Center, San José.
-30-
|