The Speed Art Museum is honored to present In the Garden, a special installation centered around Amy Sherald’s portrait of the late Breonna Taylor. The painting was originally commissioned for Vanity Fair magazine’s September 2020 issue as a public memorial to Taylor’s life and the ongoing quest for social justice. In the Garden is a special presentation mounted to invite reflection, dialogue, and community contemplation. This installation, which also features artworks by leading contemporary artists Anthony Akinbola, Firelei Báez, Andrea Bowers, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, vanessa german, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ebony G. Patterson, Nari Ward, T.A. Yero, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, explores themes of loss, joy, injustice, growth, and sorrow.
Throughout the course of this installation, the Speed will offer public and community programming around the topics of personal healing, gun violence, and empowerment.
“Amy Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor may prove to be one of the most important paintings of the 21st century.”
Forbes
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THEATRE INFORMATION
The Kentucky Center (Whitney Hall, Bomhard Theater, Clark-Todd Hall, MeX Theater) 501 West Main Street; Brown Theatre, 315 W. Broadway; and Old Forester’s Paristown Hall, 724 Brent Street. Tickets: The Kentucky Performing Arts Box Office, 502.584.7777 or KentuckyPerformingArts.org. Reserve wheelchair seating or hearing devices at time of ticket purchase.
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Yes, friends, this season we celebrate the Ruby Anniversary of The Kentucky Center building and the Kentucky Performing Arts organization. We are celebrating the big 4-0 in style with a number of events that will awaken the shared humanity, empathy, and limitless creativity in everyone.
To kick off the party we hope you will join us at our 40th Anniversary Community Celebration, Sunday, August 27 from 1:00-6:00pm at The Kentucky Center. This free event welcomes everyone to enjoy a day full of events for the whole family. Enjoy live performances from local artists, unique activities with our Governor’s School for the Arts alumni, a silent disco, backstage tours, dance classes, and more!
And that’s just the beginning of an amazing season filled with unique experiences, new artists and returning favorites. I encourage you to check our website KentuckyPerformingArts.org to see the full season.
We thank you for joining us this evening. With your support we can continue our mission of connecting and inspiring through the arts.
Enjoy the show and we look forward to seeing you again soon.
Kim Baker President and CEO, Kentucky Performing Arts
To learn more about Kentucky Performing Arts, please scan the QR code or visit KentuckyPerformingArts.org/About-KPA
NS2 and Kentucky Performing Arts present
TOMMY EMMANUEL, CGP WITH SPECIAL GUEST RICHARD SMITH
Friday, July 14, 2023 | 8:00PM | The Brown Theatre
“Music is the medicine of the soul,” wrote Plato. “It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, joy to sadness, and life to everything.” Remarkably, Plato recognized this truth somehow more than 2000 years before Tommy Emmanuel was even born, but it could have been written about him.
The real-time exuberance Tommy brings to every note of every song he plays is palpable and infectious. His fans are in love with his unbound talent as a guitarist of multitudes, his ability to play three parts at once, always with pure heart and real soul. He is a true virtuoso. But he seems as delighted always with the magic
of the music as the audience, if not more, and his joy illuminates everything.
It’s one thing to play these multidimensional arrangements flawlessly on an acoustic guitar. But to do it with that smile of the ages, that evidence of authentic, unbridled delight, is an irresistibly infectious invitation to feel his music as deeply as he does. “The joy," he says, “is there always because I’m chasing it through music. Seeing the surprise in peoples’ eyes is worth living and working for... I can’t help but play to the people with all my heart, which is overflowing with joy of being in that moment that I’ve worked all my life for. And here it is!”
That authentic exuberance Tommy brings to every show and every record is especially powerful, given the profound deficit of real joy in so many lives. Tommy’s happiness, like his music, is pure and expressed in real-time. Nothing is phony. It’s a quality that does reach far beyond any one language, and it’s instantly understood by all his fellow humans. It’s the reason he smiles so much while playing, and why his audience does as well. As many have said, it’s hard not to be happy at his shows. Because his joy, and the timeless river of inspiration, which is the source, is universally recognized. And it feels good.
In 2018, Tommy made the great album, Accomplice One, a series of duets with musicians great and varied, and all at his level. An inspired idea, it seemed to answer the question: What could Tommy possibly record that would match the energy and greatness he’s already achieved? How about bringing in other virtuoso musicians and artists to duet with him? It’s a concept that worked, as the range of artists reflected Tommy’s expansive love of all kinds of
music, including Rodney Crowell, Mark Knopfler, Amanda Shires, Jason Isbell, Jerry Douglas, Jake Shimabukuro and more. Each of his accomplices seemed as inspired by his energy and passion as much as Tommy was by theirs, and he played with effortless grace.
The long-awaited sequel, Accomplice Two, was released in April of 2023. It shares the same exuberance, diversity, and sense of adventure as the first album, with a great range of artists. This album features rock legends Michael McDonald, Jorma Kaukonen, and Little Feat; bluegrass superstars such as Billy Strings, The Del McCoury Band, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, and David Grisman; country icons such as Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jamey Johnson, and Raul Malo; and guitar heavyweights like Yasmin Williams, Larry Campbell, and Richard Smith. The first single “White Freight Liner Blues” is out now and features the Grammy award winning, claw hammer guitarist, Molly Tuttle.
Tommy also has a new television special called Accomplice LIVE! which began airing on PBS in March of 2023. This special features some of Tommy’s best-known songs and duets with his accomplices such as Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Sierra Hull, Yasmin Williams, and many others.
Tommy was born in 1955 in Muswellbrook, New South Wales Australia. His father, an engineer who loved music and musicians, brought home an electric guitar one day with the intention of finding out how it worked. Piece by piece, he took it apart to discover its secrets. But Tommy and his older brother Phil, were much more interested in music than mechanics, so when their dad was away at work, they’d surreptitiously sneak away with the guitar.
They both took to it like they already played. Their mother, who played steel guitar, had shown them chords which got them started. Driven somewhat by a sibling rivalry, they developed contests that were both fun and educational and they became exceptional guitarists rapidly, and without formal training. Though they assumed their father would be angry if he found out, which he did, they were wrong. He was surprised and thrilled his sons could play music.
Soon their big brother Chris was enlisted to play drums, and with their sister Virginia playing lap-steel, a family band was born. They joyously rocked hip guitar instrumentals such as “Apache'' by The Shadows, featuring Hank Marvin on guitar, who both Phil and Tommy adored and emulated. They called themselves The Emmanuel Quartet. But when people kept mistaking them for a classical string quartet, they changed the name to The Midget Surfaries.
They entered a band competition, and easily surpassed all contenders to take first prize, a national TV appearance. On that show they burned through “Apache” with such aplomb that the producer told their dad he should take the band on the road. He agreed.
Back home he told everyone the plan. To sell the house and hit the road, and around age six Tommy went on tour. It seemed to be a dream, yet it was true. What they didn’t know was that their dad had learned recently that he had an incurable heart disease and was not expected to live for much longer. His doctor said if there was ever anything he really wanted to do; he should do it. When his father’s heart finally gave out, Tommy remembered, his mother grieved for a few hours alone, and then emerged to give them the choice of a “normal life” or staying on the road.
They chose the road, of course, and signed up with a successful traveling show, which kept them gainfully employed for a good stretch. But that came to an end when the child welfare department forced them off the road for perceived child labor violations.
From these origins, Tommy’s music expanded in every direction. In his twenties, he was the most sought-after performer and session musician in Sydney. By age 30, he was burning on electric guitar with several rock bands in stadiums across Europe. He could have gone on to live the rock star life. Yet, he yearned for something purer and closer to his heart. Casting off the reliable rock band engine of monstrous sonics blasting with chains of effects through monstrous stacks of amps, Tommy went acoustic.
Stripping away everything but the essentials: one acoustic guitar in standard tuning played by one ambitiously unchained guitarist and a lover of song. Always it’s about melody, of expressing the tune not with a barrage of notes, but with those which touch the heart. And it’s about his singular greatness at translating the dimensional dynamics and dimensions of arrangements onto the six strings of his guitar. Although many scoffed that it was possible, Tommy made a series of hit albums as a solo guitarist, and became a major star first in Australia, and soon everywhere.
The inspiration for Tommy’s transformation was his hero, Chet Atkins, who represented the purity of one man, one guitar, and unlimited passionate for serving the song. Soon as he was able, he went to meet the man himself, in Nashville. Their bond was immediate, and like their music, existed beyond words. Chet picked up his guitar, and the two men jammed joyously for hours.
It started a lifelong friendship which shaped Tommy’s music forever. Chet welcomed Tommy into guitarist knighthood by bestowing upon him the coveted title of CGP (Certified Guitar Player), an honor awarded only to four other humans ever, and they recorded an album together, The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World. Though already devoted to the life of a solo player,
receiving the love and esteem of Chet lifted Tommy into a different realm. Because, as Chet recognized instantly and told the world, musicians like this don’t come along that often; pay attention to this man. And people have paid attention from sold out shows all over the world to multiple Grammy nominations, ARIA Awards, IBMA Awards, and countless “Best Acoustic Guitarist” wins in numerous music magazine readers polls…. the world is taking notice.
Of course, Chet knew of what he spoke. Tommy’s triumph on his singular solo path has been extraordinary. From the Midget Surfaries, he’s become beloved and revered around the planet. Tommy said, “When I was a kid, I wanted to be in show business. Now, I just want to be in the happiness business. I play music, and you get happy. That's a good job.”
"Chet [Atkins] welcomed Tommy into guitarist knighthood by bestowing upon him the coveted title of CGP (Certified Guitar Player), an honor awarded only to four other humans ever."
MARTHA REDBONE – ROOTS PROJECT
Saturday, July 15, 2023 | 7:30PM | The Kentucky Center
Martha Redbone is a Native & AfricanAmerican vocalist/songwriter/composer/ educator. She is known for her unique gumbo of folk, blues, and gospel from her childhood in Harlan County, Kentucky infused with the eclectic grit of pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Inheriting the powerful vocal range of her gospelsinging African American father and the resilient spirit of her mother’s
Southeastern Cherokee/Choctaw culture, Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music. With songs and storytelling that share her life experience as a Native and Black woman and mother in the new millennium, Redbone gives voice to issues of social justice, bridging traditions from past to present, connecting cultures, and celebrating the human spirit.
Her album The Garden of Love- Songs of William Blake, produced by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder/Grammy Winner John McEuen is an unexpected twist –“a brilliant collision of cultures” (The New Yorker) – features Redbone’s magnificent voice, Blake's immortal words and a masterful cornucopia of roots music (blues, gospel, bluegrass, soul and traditional Southeastern Woodlands). Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, the album released on her own indie label imprint rose to the Top Ten on Amazon Folk Charts for several weeks and has become the bedrock of her live shows bringing audiences to their feet with her fiery old-time mountain gospel singing and foot-stomping energy.
Redbone and her long-term collaborator/ husband, composer/pianist/producer Aaron Whitby are called “the little engine that could [by their] band of NYC’s finest blues and jazz musicians” (Larry Blumenthal/Wall Street Journal). From grassroots beginnings at powwows across Indian Country and in the underground clubs of NYC Redbone has built a passionate fan base with her mesmerizing presence and explosive live shows. Her debut Home of the Brave –“Stunning album, the kind of woman who sets trends” (Billboard) – garnered extremely positive critical attention while her sophomore album Skintalk –described as the soulful sound of “Earth, Wind and Fire on the Rez” (J Poet/Native Peoples Magazine) – took her music to Europe and the Far East. Albums Skintalk and The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake are included in the Library Collection and “Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians in Popular Culture” exhibits in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.
Redbone is Composer for the Public Theater’s 2019 production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuff, a revival/reimagining of the 1976 classic choreopoem by the late Ntozake Shange. Redbone joined the all-women-of-color Creative Team to celebrate the author’s historical work and legacy, and enjoyed a 4-week extended run through December that received rave reviews with notable mentions for their team's original compositions and score — "supreme music...brilliant" (NY Daily News).
Redbone and Whitby’s recent work is Bone Hill – The Concert, an interdisciplinary musical theater work inspired by the lives of Redbone’s family in the hills of coal-mining Appalachia. A multi-racial Cherokee and African American family, they are permanently
bonded to their culture, identity and the mountain despite its violent past and the ever-changing laws of the land that threaten to extinguish them. Commissioned by Joe’s Pub/NEA and Lincoln Center for the Arts, Bone Hill –The Concert is touring extensively nationwide and is a recipient of the NEFA National Theater Project Creation and Touring Grant and National Performance Network Creation Fund. Other theatrical commissions include compositions for the Goethe Institute / New York Theater Workshop collaboration, Plurality of Privacy; Primer for a Failed Superpower directed by Rachel Chavkin; a ChineseAmerican musical collaboration Flood in the Valley which premiered in Beijing in 2018; New Musical work, Black Mountain Women, currently in development at the Public Theater.
Over the years Martha has performed and recorded with many great artists including; Bonnie Raitt, George Clinton, Judy Collins, Joan Osborne, Steven Van Zandt, Me’Shell Ndegeocello, Nona Hendryx, Lisa Fischer, Steve Martin, David Amram, Randy Brecker, Tony Trischka, John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, John Carter Cash, Ben Sollee and Tom Chapin amongst many others.
Martha guest lectures on subjects ranging from Indigenous rights to the role of the arts in politics and Native American Identity at many institutions including New York University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, to name a few. Redbone includes workshops and motivational talks with grade school children as part of her touring schedule on numerous reservations including Red Lake, Minn., Cherokee, N.C., Yuma, Ariz., and Menominee, Wisc., among others.
An exemplary ambassador for both Native and African-American Youth for the National HIV/Aids Partnership, she was awarded the Red Ribbon Award for Outstanding Leadership presented on World AIDS Day at the United Nations in 2005. Currently Martha advocates for Why Hunger’s Artists Against Hunger and Poverty program which raises and awareness of poverty and hunger in the United States and abroad. Redbone is an Advisory Board member of the ManUp Campaign, the global youth movement to eradicate violence against women and girls for whom she served as the indigenous affairs consultant and creative advisor. She is particularly proud of her accomplishment in working with founder Jimmie Briggs and the Campaign’s Board of Directors to include an Indigenous North American contingent (independent of the USA) to the roll call of 50 countries taking part in their Youth Leadership Summit held at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Redbone serves as an Advisory Board member of The Carlisle Indian School Project, Association on American Indian Affairs, Voices − A Peoples’ History of the United States/ Howard Zinn, a 2016 Fellow of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and is the 2018 MAPfund and 2018 Creative Capital awardee.
Redbone and Whitby are the 2020 Drama Desk Award recipients for Outstanding Music in a Play and the 2020 Audelco Award recipient for Outstanding Composer of Original Music and Score for Public Theater revival For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuff by Ntozake Shange. Redbone is an Awardee of Creative Capital, NEFA, NPN, NACF, MAPFund and NYC Womens Fund for Music.
Kentucky Performing Arts presents
Huffington Post, and in the Veronica Mars reboot, as “Chattanooga Charlie,” among many others.
Trae Crowder first gained international attention (or notoriety depending on your politics) in 2016 for his hugely viral series of “Liberal Redneck” comedic “porch rant” videos. Since then, Trae has written a best-selling book, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin Dixie Outta
The Dark, toured the country thrice over playing sold out theatre shows under the WellRED Comedy Tour banner, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO), Nightline (ABC), The View, Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC), NPR, WTF with Marc Maron, MTV, CNN,
Initially from rural Celina, TN, Trae now lives in Los Angeles, CA and has developed and sold five scripted pilots for Warner Bros TV, ABC, and FOX and continues to work as a writer. Trae stars in and produces regular sketches for Comedy Central, Funny or Die, ATTN, Facebook Watch, New York Daily News which have garnered tens of millions of views online. Crowder also co-wrote and produced an hour-long documentary titled Inherent Good, featuring Crowder and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, about universal basic income. Additionally, Trae co-hosts the hugely popular WellRED, Evening Skews, and Puttin’ On Airs podcasts. His debut 30-minute standup comedy special was taped in 2021 in Nashville, TN. He also continues to rant and rave on the internet to the mostly-delight of his lovely fanbase.
