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CURTAIN Vol. 12, Issue 2, spring 2017 carolinaperformingarts.org
A Glass-y Celebration Also in This Issue:
Glass Everywhere: Entire UNC Campus Engaged in “Glass at 80” Join Us for Our Season Preview Meet CPA’s New Associate Director of Development Ketura Parker
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EMIL UNPLUGGED
A Journey of Discovery Emil Kang
Executive and Artistic Director, Carolina Performing Arts Special Assistant to the Chancellor for the Arts Professor of the Practice, Department of Music
By Laura Zolman Kirk and Tatjana Zimbelius-Klem
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Philip Glass based his chamber opera Monsters of Grace on the Sufi poet Rumi’s writings.
n a time when the word “Islam” is mentioned in a variety of contexts, more often than not as a vague notion and with little attention being paid to specifics, its multiple facets and its diverse practices, it is more than timely for Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) to invite the audience on a year-long artistic voyage exploring one of the aspects of Islam, Sufism, in Sacred/Secular: A Sufi Journey. Since he took over CPA in 2005, Emil Kang has consistently set as its goal to invite audience members to move outside of their comfort zones and to forge a path of discovery. “A lot of us tend to want to participate in the entertainment we are familiar with,” Emil says. But CPA thrives on curiosity: the kind that gets audience members to performances and the curiosity that audience members take with them after the shows – the questions and dialogue that follow. “We want to popularize a way of engaging with the arts and with culture that is based on curiosity and an interest in the yet unknown. I appreciate all our audiences and our supporters for understanding that desire of ours to support the acts of discovery and changing perspectives, revealing the questions that exist in our world,” he adds. “At a university, our job is about teaching knowledge, not about re-hashing old knowledge.” A Sufi Journey is a prime example for this core value of inspiring curiosity and building bridges through the arts. “People here understand that there is no single Christian faith, and we wanted to bring awareness to the fact that Islam is not monolithic either. Many think of it as being exclusively Arab: we challenge this idea by inviting only artists who are not Arab for this series.” 2
“Our hope is that people aren’t so quick to judge the things they don’t understand as being something they don’t like,” Emil says, noting that the performances in the Sufism series might have seemed quite alien to most. “I think there is an analogy in that, as to how we hope people see the world as well,” he continues. “When you think about what’s happening in the world right now, that’s what fear mongers are trying to do: make you afraid of the things you don’t know.” The arts are one of the most effective ways to connect between cultures and to inspire empathy, yet Emil’s motivation is not solely pedagogical: “For me, discovery is fun,” he says, and he hopes to make discovery fun for the audience members, too, by adding elements in upcoming series that will help facilitate this journey of exploration. “We’re looking to convey – starting next year – the importance of multiple interactions with artists,” Emil shares. In an effort to humanize artists and to show that they are real people beyond the stage, CPA will offer more opportunities for ticketholders to engage with the artists over lunches, lectures and classes. “We’re focused on this new model,” he says, “not a single performance but a series of interactions.” The goal is to deepen our understanding of the artists, and, thus, their art. So, in the coming 2017/2018 season, look forward to discover, question, learn, and… have fun! – Laura Zolman Kirk is Assistant Editor at Chapel Hill Magazine and Durham Magazine. Tatjana Zimbelius-Klem is a Chapel Hill-based writer and editor.
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Before the festival even began, Kim Korzen, one of CPA’s Engagement Coordinators, organized three pop-up performances on UNC’s campus, bringing together two groups of student dancers with student musicians. They performed in public places in all parts of campus—Graham Memorial’s lounge, the South Building steps, and in the atrium of Gillings School of Public Health—at peak class change times, both alerting their fellow students to the Glass festival and bringing small art interventions into otherwise possibly difficult, midtermladen days. As artists began to arrive in Chapel Hill, the engagement department’s many other modes of outreach kicked into high gear. We held pre-performance talks at four of the five major concerts that happened during the festival, both under the auspices of our own Performance Notes Live! series and as part of the Concerts in Context talks, a wonderful series of pre-performance events organized through our collaboration with Honors Carolina that aims to bring UNC faculty from multiple departments into conversation about the content of that evening’s event.
Glass Everywhere by Sara Levavy
It was a rare treat to be able to hear three of the ten artists performing Glass’ Études present their experiences with those pieces. Timo Andres, Aaron Diehl, and UNC’s own Associate Professor of Music Clara Yang each shared compelling stories of how they came to Glass’s music and how they approached the études they would be playing that night.
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he ten days of Carolina Performing Arts’ (CPA) “Glass at 80” festival were replete with artists—and audiences—from all over the world, full houses at Memorial Hall and in the newly-inaugurated Moeser Auditorium, and underlying excitement at all that was happening around us. As Glass himself remarked, in any other context it would take years for audiences to be able to see the grouping of artists and performances that came together in Chapel Hill over the course of less than a fortnight. Yet those were just the parts that happened in the evenings. “Glass at 80” had CPA’s Engagement Department staff working on multiple fronts to ensure that as many UNC students, faculty, as well as members of the Triangle community as possible had access to events and programs that contextualized, informed, and educated our audiences about Glass’s decades of continued on page 7 3
A Glass-y Celebration by Tatjana Zimbelius-Klem Above: Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass celebrating their artistic friendship in an evening of “Words and Music.” Below: Lucinda Childs Dance Company performing Dance, the seminal cooperation between Childs, Sol LeWitt and Philip Glass.
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f you were in New York City it would take you about three, four years to see all the works that are being performed here in Chapel Hill in little over a week. So it’s actually a great package deal!” In his usual self-effacing and humorous way Philip Glass makes a valid point, of course: the celebration put on by Carolina Performing Arts in honor of his 80th birthday would be considered a major feat even in the Big Apple; for a college town the size of ours it’s a minor miracle. CPA Director of Programming Amy Russell had been working for close to two years on putting the festival together, and over the course of ten days Chapel Hill saw five performances (a sixth, the “Heroes Tribute” needed to be cancelled due to the water crisis and was rescheduled for March 5th), four pre-performance talks, two public talks with Philip Glass, one conversation with early career artists streamed live on Facebook, and two post-performance conversations. UNC students had the opportunity to attend a masterclass with Lucinda Childs Dance Company, 13 classes went to see performances as part of their curriculum, and modern dance icon Lucinda Childs herself visited two courses in the American Studies department. When it comes to contemporary art music, the works of few composers are as ubiquitous in popular culture while at the same time being remarkably underrepresented in the performance schedule as the music of Philip Glass. A prolific composer of soundtracks, Glass has created the sonic atmosphere for dozens of films, Mishima, Kundun, Koyaanisqatsi, The Hours, and The Truman Show the best-known among them. Glass’s specific musical idiom with its repetitive structures and elegant melodic patterns weaving in and out of a silken fabric of sound makes his compositions easy to recognize while not drawing attention away from the visuals, complementing them instead in the most ingenious way. It is not unusual for the unsuspecting film lover to realize, “Oh THAT’S Philip Glass, of course I know his music!” Glass made a name for himself in the Seventies with large-scale works such as Music in Twelve Parts, a piece for instrumental ensemble, and Einstein on the Beach, an opera without a traditional narrative plot structure or lyrics. The opera, produced by Robert Wilson, premiered in 1976 and marked the first collaboration between Philip Glass and choreographer Lucinda Childs. Three years later they would pair up with visual artist Sol behind the curtain
Kronos Quartet performing Glass’s score to Todd Browning’s classic Dracula with the composer at the keyboard. LeWitt to create a seminal piece of dance history: Dance. The work was received to great critical acclaim, and Alan M. Kriegsman wrote in a review for the Washington Post, “a few times, at most, in the course of a decade a work of art comes along that makes a genuine breakthrough, defining for us new modes of perception and feeling and clearly belonging as much to the future as to the present. Such a work is Dance.” Chapel Hill was fortunate enough to see a restaging of the piece. A showpiece of minimalist art, Dance is governed by the formal structure of the grid. LeWitt’s visual restraint and his reliance on simple structures such as a lattice of white lines on the floor, seemingly steering the movements of the dancers, and the film duplicating the dance being performed on stage are the sparse visual elements that emphasize Childs’s reductionist choreography which relies on simple pirouettes The Bruckner Orchester Linz, led by Dennis Russell Davies, playing Glass’s new and dancers skipping across the stage in a joyful expression of Symphony No. 11 at Memorial Hall, one evening after its world premiere at Carnegie Hall. the basic elements of dance. Glass’s spare music complements the visual elements and creates a Gesamtkunstwerk for the senses. As the symphony.” Lucky for us! Dennis Russell Davies and the Bruckner Orchester composer said in an interview, “Sol is about seeing, Lucinda is about moving, Linz under his aegis treated the audience at Memorial Hall on the opening and I’m about hearing.” night of the festival to a glorious evening, performing the little-known tone Lucinda Childs was not the only long-time partner of Glass’s who made poem Days and Nights in Rocinha as well as what is probably Glass’s most their appearance. The composer is renowned for his collaborative spirit and popular composition, the Violin Concerto No. 1, with the highly expressive the strong bonds he develops with his artistic partners. One such important Robert McDuffie playing his Ladenbach, a magnificent 1735 Guarneri del Gesù collaborator is Dennis Russell Davies who commissioned most of his with its own enticing backstory: at a value of $ 3.5 million, the instrument symphonies. Their first encounter was at the German premiere of the opera is loaned to the violinist by its owners, a group of investors, UNC alumnus Satyagraha, with Davies conducting, and he supposedly told the composer: John Townsend among them, who officially purchased the Ladenburg for the “I’m not going to let you be one of those opera composers that never writes a express purpose of leasing it to Mr. McDuffie. The program concluded with the carolinaperformingarts.org
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All 10 pianists receiving standing ovations after their interpretations of Glass’s Piano Études. ebullient Symphony No. 11 which had had its world premiere just the night before at Carnegie Hall to great critical acclaim and standing ovations. The joyous piece left the Chapel Hill audience elated and grateful that the director had insisted on the composer’s exploration of the symphonic format. Glass likes to be inspired by a plotline when creating new works, be they for film or theatre. The abstract form of the symphony poses an extra challenge. As he told William Robin earlier this year, it’s easier for him to work with librettos and filmmakers because of the structure and content provided. “When you write a symphony, you’ve gotta make it up – I make up pretty much all of it,” Glass adds jokingly. Another more abstract format that the composer has been exploring for decades is the piano étude. Between 1991 and 2012 he wrote 20 pieces, not only to improve his technique, CPA Executive and Artistic Director Emil Kang with maestro Dennis Russell Davies, violinist Robert McDuffie, and performance benefactors Marree and John Townsend. but also to explore the basic materials available to him, the language of music itself, and to develop new strategies regarding rhythmic and harmonic movement. In performance, Glass likes to performance in the program, and while many faces seemed familiar after a emphasize the variety of the musical material by having a number of pianists couple of days, it was exciting to see how diverse the respective audiences play the pieces. For the performance in Chapel Hill, Glass brought UNC were and how different a crowd each of the works drew to the concert hall. assistant professor of music Clara Yang and her student Margaret Lynch on his The glorious conclusion to this Glassapalooza was “Words and Music in Two team of ten (himself included), along with internationally acclaimed performers Parts” which featured boundary-crossing artist Laurie Anderson. Having been such as Anton Batagov, Jenny Lin, and Maki Namekawa, exciting young talents friends and artistic partners for decades, this was their first major collaboration like Timo Andres and Aaron Diehl, and long-time collaborators Mick Rossi on stage. It was a poetic journey with Glass at the piano, reciting poems by and Michael Riesman. With the newly renovated James and Susan Moeser Anderson and various mutual friends such as Lou Reed and Allen Ginsberg, Auditorium in Hill Hall, UNC now has the ideal performance space for chamber and Anderson sharing her famously individual artistic voice and the sound of music, and the evening of the complete Piano Études was the perfect way for her electric violin and synthesizer. The evening concluded with a performance the town’s music lovers to appreciate the improved acoustics. of Monsters of Grace, Glass’s 1997 chamber opera with poetry by 13th century In a survey of Glass’s work film has to make its appearance, naturally, and Sufi mystic Rumi, and standing ovations for the composer who was ostensibly the showing of Dracula with the Kronos Quartet placed behind the screen touched by the warm welcome he had received in Chapel Hill – finally, as he that the film was projected on, performing his score live on stage, meant had joked in an interview with Executive and Artistic Director for the Arts Emil another packed auditorium with yet another new set of Glass-loving audience Kang earlier that week who in turn assured the maestro that he would still members. CPA’s marketing department checked the numbers and found happily carry his suitcases and vacuum the maestro’s floors as he did many that there was a core group of fifty Glass lovers who attended every single moons ago, should the need arise. 6
behind the curtain
meet your cpa staff
Ketura Parker What was your previous role prior to returning to Carolina? I served as a director of development for NCSU’s College of Engineering and raised private support for the College with a particular focus on the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering. I helped build meaningful relationships with alumni and friends, reconnected them to NCSU and matched their interests with the College of Engineering’s programmatic needs and top priorities.
What drew you to your role as associate director of development at CPA? I started my development career at UNC School of the Arts, and this role at CPA is dually inspiring as it allows me to work again in the arts and to return home to UNC, my alma mater. Equally important, this position creates a wonderful opportunity to give back to the institution that has contributed so much to my life.
Have a question about CPA’s top fundraising priorities? Need to make a gift before the end of the calendar or fiscal year? Get to know our new Associate Director of Development Ketura Parker! by Susin Seow
Why do you think the arts are important? The arts enliven the senses, embrace the depths of humanity and evoke rare optimism throughout eras. The arts are ageless and unwaveringly demand response, expression and expectation—all core components of being human.
What performance are you most looking forward to this spring? I am a huge jazz fan and most looking forward to the Marcus Roberts and the Modern Jazz Generation performance. Marcus Roberts collaborated and toured with Wynton Marsalis for years, and having attended the Wynton Marsalis/Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performance this past December, I cannot wait to experience the continuance of this preeminent music.
What’s something people might not know about you? My name, Ketura, is from the Bible. It means “fragrant incense” and to be an agent of adhesion, bringing people and things together. - Susin Seow is Director of Development for CPA
Glass Everywhere cont’d from page 3 work, his collaborators, the reach of his music, and the generosity of his spirit as an artist. We are delighted with how many people were able to attend all of the engagement activities around campus. Just as Glass has spent his professional career collaborating and building his work through dynamic conversations with members of different creative communities, CPA has been fortunate to have such a rich community with whom we can dive into so many different and exciting artistic ideas! - Sara Levavy is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Carolina Performing Arts and Arts@TheCore
The most exhilarating CPA Engagement event of the “Glass at 80” festival for me personally was Lucinda Childs’s visit to my classroom. The students in my Movement in Media class joined with Associate Prof. Michelle Robinson’s Literary Approaches to American Studies course for a joint session with Childs, where the students heard her describe her personal history with modern dance, her choreography process, and the ways in which she worked with Glass and Sol LeWitt on Dance, the piece all of the students would see at Memorial Hall that night.
In addition to the two public conversations Director of Programming Amy Russell held with him over the course of the week, Glass led a conversation with fifteen early-career artists—writers, painters, musicians, photographers, and dancers—about how to effectively forge a career in those fields through collaboration and making creative choices. This event also marked a new milestone for us at CPA; though it was closed to the public, this conversation, moderated by recent UNC-graduate Will Robin (now Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Maryland) was streamed online through Facebook Live, where thousands of people from around the world tuned in!
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Campus Box 3233 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3233
MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR
CPA’s 2017/18 Season Announcement May 17, 2017 Tickets go on sale first to donors at the Silver level and above (gifts of $1,000+).
FOR QUESTIONS, CONTACT LINDSEY WOMACK AT 919.843.1869
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behind the curtain