Newman Center for the Performing Arts

"1969" -- Alarm Will Sound, the past and the future

2011-04-25T14:43:00.003-06:00

While it may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, “1969,” performed by Alarm Will Sound Saturday night at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts was challenging, thought-provoking, and expertly performed. I was transfixed, as were many others.

This dense mixed media work (music, acting, video projections) explored two conceptual threads. First, what is, or should be, the relationship between a composer (or any artist) and the polity? What is the role of art in the civic dialogue? Has the composer become, as the Luciano Berio character suggests in “1969,” “only a decorative figure in society”? He clearly believed that artists are essential and urged that we never stop trying to find the connections between music and “the price of bread.”

Second, how do “popular” and “serious” music intersect with and influence each other? If Karlheinz Stockhausen thought that John Lennon was the most important mediator between popular and serious music in the 20th century, who am I to argue? And if Paul McCartney thought Berio’s experiments in contemporary classical music were intriguing enough to incorporate into what The Beatles were doing, how can anyone simply dismiss “Revolution 9” from The White Album?

The music and the dialogue were imaginatively stitched together in a kind of collage, appropriate for the period and reflective of musical works from the general period including "Revolution 9," Berio's "Sinfonia," and the Bernstein "Mass." Was it overly intellectual? Was it pretentious? Some thought so. Others were excited to talk about the many ideas it brought to mind.

At the end of the show half the audience were on their feet applauding and the other half remained seated. Several simply found it overwhelming, filled with a tremendous amount of information and feelings to process. I suspect that some people’s opinions will ripen as they rethink the experience and talk about it with their friends. Perhaps seeing the full production of the Bernstein “Mass,” which will take place Tuesday April 26 thanks to the CU Opera, will hone some judgments.

Here are a few of the comments we received in survey responses Saturday evening:

“Exact and expertly performed. The full experience of the 60s and 70s.”
“Went to Mennonite college 1967-1972. Politically active. Went to march on Washington among others. Dated C.O. (conscientious objector). Visited in Canada.”
“Transforming!”
“Diverse and intense.”
“1969 was fabulous – now I want to see it again! Bravo!”

The desire to see it again was expressed by quite a few, as there’s so much to digest in just one hearing. And like the person who recounted visiting a C.O. in Canada suggests, quite a few people in the audience were taken back in their memories to those turbulent times, recalling where they were when MLK and Bobby Kennedy were shot, their children’s reactions to those events, the war in Vietnam, the riots….

The composers whose stories were told in “1969” were responding to those times. We now live in turbulent times of our own. Are citizens engaging with each other and their government in the same way; are artists? If not, why not? What about us has changed? Or has art and its role changed?

The fact that there were divergent reactions to “1969” is fine – the process of creating and performing music and theater and dance matters because people engage with it and with each other about it. Berio says during the show that “the problems are big and the composer’s responsibilities are big.” So are all of our responsibilities.

Thoughts on the Troubling and the Hopeful in the Performing Arts

2011-01-11T16:59:00.001-07:00

The news from the performing arts world is a mix of troubling and hopeful. On the troubling side of things, a number of traditional performing arts institutions have been suffering some well-publicized difficulties and contractions. For instance, the 110-year old Honolulu Symphony was recently forced into liquidation in its bankruptcy proceeding. The Louisville Symphony is in Chapter 11 reorganization, but apparently with insufficient cash to pay all its current obligations. The musicians of the Detroit Symphony are on strike. The musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra went on a brief strike. The venerable Philadelphia Orchestra suggested that bankruptcy was a possibility. Its average attendance fell to 65% of capacity last season. A $15 million bridge fund was put together to cover anticipated deficits. The orchestras in New York and Atlanta, along with the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and others ran multi-million dollar deficits. Carnegie Hall has reduced its performing arts presenting 10 to 15%; the Miller Theater at Columbia University has reduced its presenting by over 40%. Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series has been reduced by over 50%, and similar contractions can be seen all around the country.

What, you might ask, is hopeful? Well, some of these traditional or legacy performing arts organizations are trying innovative things. For instance, Lincoln Center has created two festivals, the White Light Festival and the TullyScope Festival, partly to try to appeal to single ticket buyers, recognizing that the trend in the market is against season subscriptions. The Metropolitan Opera has invested large sums in its Live HD broadcasts to movie theaters, and reportedly that project now generates net positive revenue. The San Francisco Opera has launched a similar effort, as has the LA Philharmonic. Some uncharacteristic programming by the New York Philharmonic, for example a semi-staged production of Ligeti’s Le grand macabre, has proved very successful at generating attention and attendance.

And many new organizations and young musicians are creating experiments of their own, some of which could be models for both other new cultural entrepreneurs and seasoned artists and administrators struggling to find a way to survive. The Bang on a Can folks have been doing this kind of thing for a number of years, and now others are imitating them. Next week in New York the Ecstatic Music Festival will be inaugurated with a free 7-hour marathon concert of music exploring the boundaries between popular and classical music. Classical Revolution, founded in San Francisco to create a series of “open mic” chamber music events in informal and unexpected venues, has birthed numerous similar organizations in other cities. The club Le Poisson Rouge in New York has almost come to define this kind of approach to contemporary classical music, both as to iconoclastic content and iconoclastic venue.

And cultural service organizations are actively engaging artists, administrators, and the rest of the cultural infrastructure in dialogues about what can be done to innovate and to support the efforts of those who don’t simply want to exist in the “non-profit space” that has dominated the creation and delivery of culture in the U.S. for over 50 years. The Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) teamed up with the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs on the Denver Music Summit in late 2010, exploring what the latest generation of artists and audiences need and want, and how the City of Denver could facilitate that. Colorado Creative Industries, what used to be known as the Colorado Council on the Arts, now embraces, as its name suggests, creative industries of all kinds. CCI is actively exploring ways to integrate new and traditional activities, non-profit and for-profit, design, music, literature, dance, culinary arts, and more.

In other words, the old models are under severe pressure. Legacy cultural organizations have to innovate and diversify. Some won’t manage to do so, and some will decay and even disappear. But we won’t ever be without cultural expressions, even if what used to be considered the ne plus ultra of culture assumes a lesser status or is less frequently present. What will exist, the kinds of things appearing in experiments across the country now, and others yet to come, will be of different sizes and shapes and flavors and colors. As Stravinsky once said, “You should try to discover whatever new thing it is that makes the new generation new.”

Make Something New

2010-06-29T12:55:00.002-06:00

Saturday night I saw the penultimate performance of the Tony Award winning play "Red." The last line is "Make something new." It's poetic, therefore, that the next day I sat (all day) in the Wintergarden at the World Financial Center in New York for the Bang on a Can Marathon. In "Red," the artist Mark Rothko recounts how he and his contemporaries overthrew the Cubists and created what we refer to now as Abstract Expressionism. Rothko drew on the heritage of civilization - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Freud, Turgenyev, Nietzsche.... He says that painting is 90% thinking and only 10% about putting paint on canvas. One assume the great Cubists before him did the same, thinking a lot, that is. As did the Impressionists, and Velasquez, and Rembrandt, and Michelangelo.... Each struggled with his own existence, his own tragedies, his own effort to find truth. What each did also, however, was to make something new.

The musicians at the BOAC Marathon are all about making something new. Stravinsky, late in his own long life, said "you should try to discover whatever new thing it is that makes the new generation new." That was on full display for over 12 hours in New York. He also said, "when you're 75 and your generation has overlapped with 3 other ones, you shouldn't decide in advance how far composers can go."

There's a lot of angst these days among people who run cultural institutions. How do we get audiences? How do we get, especially, new audiences? So many of these institutions represent the legacies of civilization in most of their programming, and they are organized and seek support based on models for such organizations created 50 years ago. But are such organizations the dinosaurs the Cubists were to Rothko, or that Rothko was to the Pop Artists? What is the next big idea? How can our cultural organizations be optimistic and forward-looking, not defensive? How can we unleash the creative potential of the next generation?

It's going on all around us anyway. It has to. As Rothko recounts to his young assistant in "Red," when he was young he didn't have access to museums and galleries. He just had to find his own way, and he did. The institutions caught up to him.

We have to emphasize the now and the future. As John Lennon said:

"The people who got hung up on the Beatles and the '60s dream missed the whole point when the Beatles and the '60s dream became the point. To live in that dream is the twilight zone, an illusion. There is only now. If the Beatles and the '60s had a message, it's to learn to swim, period. And once you've learned to swim, just swim."

The same can be said of people who believe only in Mozart and Beethoven, as if they alone were the point. Luciano Berio added:

"The constant search in music for a deep unity of things is the most exciting and profoundly experimental part of its practice. This is why we can receive music as a miraculous gift, the gift of answering questions with other questions."

Make something new. Question. Propose an answer. Discover another question. The artistic process is an exercise in living in the now, striving to understand ourselves and each other, with whom we share the planet -- "the deep unity of things."

[The quotations from Stravinsky, John Lennon, and Luciano Berio came to me through "1969," the multimedia work that will be performed by Alarm Will Sound in April 2011 as part of the Newman Center Presents series. It's amazing how the things they said, what I heard at "Red," and what happened at the Bang on a Can Marathon sound so similar. Are we listening?]

TEDxDU

2010-06-03T13:21:00.003-06:00

The University of Denver recently produced TEDxDU in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts. Modeled after the internationally renowned TED conferences, TEDxDU, held in Gates Concert Hall, was a fast-paced afternoon of eclectic content, with entrepreneurs, scientists, innovators and activists sharing their personal stories and the passion that drives them to action to improve our world.

You may already be familiar with TED, a non-profit dedicated to Ideas Worth Sharing. TEDTalk videos shared online at www.ted.com have become a new media form, with the world's leading thinkers and doers challenged to give the talk of their lives, in 18 minutes or less. TEDx events are independently organized, under license from the TED organization.

TEDxDU was an ambitious presentation of the ways in which the University of Denver’s identity as a change agent and action leader is manifested. It showcased our commitment to improving the human condition through the lives of our graduates and the work of our faculty, students, and staff.

We hope you all have had a chance to see the TEDxDUTalks that have been posted on both the TEDxDU website (www.tedxdu.com) and TED's own YouTube channel for TEDxTalks (http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxTalks) -- DU is featured in the right hand "Highlights" section.

Why People Attend Performances

2010-04-22T13:55:00.003-06:00

A couple of years ago I became aware of a survey developed for a consortium of 14 major university performing arts presenters. It was designed to unearth the personal, values-based reasons that people come to the performing arts. In other words, instead of evaluating audiences based on such demographic characteristics as age, sex, income level, etc., this survey wanted to find out, irrespective of such traits, what motivated people to come.

I thought it would be interesting to see what kinds of responses we would get from our Newman Center Presents audiences if we asked them to rank their reasons for attending among the same choices. Our survey wasn't professionally run, and it only sought responses to that question, that is it didn't go into all the many other areas explored by the project undertaken by those 14 universities. It also wasn't scientific -- we provide a survey card in each program asking a variety of questions and those who are motivated to do so fill it out and give it to us.

The reason for attendance most often given by our audience was "to broaden myself culturally." The next most frequent answer was "to be intellectually stimulated." And in third place was "to spend quality time with the person I came with," followed closely by "to be emotionally moved."

What, you may wonder, were the other choices, not as often given as the most important reasons for being in attendance? They were:

To expose others to the artistic experience.
To feel spiritually renewed.
To celebrate my cultural heritage.
To see other friends.

And they were well back in the statistics from those noted above. I should also note that every once in a while someone responds on the survey form not by selecting any of these pre-defined choices, but rather by scolding us for not including in that list "hearing beautiful music," or words to that effect.

I've always said that we try to present performers and performances that are entertaining, but that are more than just entertainment. It appears that at least those answering our survey are looking for just that. I think this shows that our audiences expect experiences with intrinsic value beyond the diversional -- they want aesthetic and educational growth first, along with the social and relational part of the performing arts experience. Providing opportunities for such growth are in fact part of our mission, and goals not measurable by mere attendance statistics or ticket revenue results.

What Is Classical Music Today, After All?

2009-12-11T09:37:00.008-07:00

MUSIC!

Indie-souled, world, African electronica,

ambient grooves… in the concert hall.

Newman Center Presents

The Mile High Voltage Festival

February 19-20, 2010

What is Classical Music, After All?

In the world of classical music, what is being composed today is pretty hard to categorize. While it is the current manifestation of the classical tradition, the edges of it blur into many different genres, such as indie rock, jazz, ambient music, folk, and even pop. The criteria for defining what constitutes classical music composed today are pretty malleable. The composers and performers creating this exciting and entertaining music come with all the chops needed to play Bach and Brahms, but they just don’t want to limit themselves that way. They are more interested in bringing to the concert hall their own ideas and expressions, which are often influenced by other traditions in music.

Whether that’s really new or unusual in classical music is something we can debate. For instance, Mozart was well aware of popular music in his own age, and he built what was popular into, for instance, his operas. Just think of Papageno’s whistleable and popular tunes in The Magic Flute, or the Turkish-style music in The Abduction from the Seraglio, for which there was a huge popular craze in Vienna in the 1780s. Folk music has long been a source of inspiration for classical composers. It’s easy to identify folk tunes and rhythms in Haydn, Dvorak, Mahler, Copland….

Cantaloupe Artists

The Mile High Voltage Festival, part of the 2009-10 season of Newman Center Presents, explores this creative boundary world using some of the many great performers from the Cantaloupe Music label (see below for a complete list of the artists). Cantaloupe Music is the record label created in 2001 by the three founders of New York's legendary Bang on a Can Festival: composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, and Bang on a Can managing director Kenny Savelson.

Cantaloupe’s mission is to spread the gospel of risk-taking new music. Dedicated to the work of composers across the entire aesthetic spectrum, Cantaloupe has created a home for musical inventors, misfits, and pioneers. Cantaloupe has been recognized by critics and fans around the globe for its adventurous sounds. Cantaloupe has repeatedly received "Top 10 of the Year" accolades from publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian (UK), The Wire, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Mojo, Gramophone, Billboard, Stereophile, and Time Out NY. Its releases have also been featured on CNN, PitchforkMedia, NPR, PaperThinWalls, and the BBC, among others.

How Do We Experience This Music?

The ways that audiences experience “classical music” have changed a lot over time. In the Baroque period, for instance, seating areas in opera houses were not just for sitting quietly and listening to the performance. Audiences talked, ate, gambled, made business deals…. We won’t even talk about what happened in the private boxes. In the classical period a lot of concert music was written for social occasions, usually hosted by royalty or the aristocracy, but the socializing was part of the experience.

The way we tend to think of classical music, with an audience sitting in a darkened auditorium in stoic silence, is a tradition born in the late 19^th century thanks to the advent of electric lighting and the artistic attitudes of, especially, Richard Wagner (for his purpose-built opera theater at Bayreuth) and Gustav Mahler (when he was the Music Director of several European opera houses culminating at the Vienna State Opera).

But what if audiences could experience today’s classical music more the way they experience jazz or other music in a club? What if today’s classical music experience were freer, more akin to that of the Baroque or Classical period? That’s part of what we’ll explore in the Mile High Voltage Festival too. So if you want to text your friends about what you’re hearing and seeing, please feel free to do so. Want to leave the concert hall, get something to eat and drink but still experience the music? OK, join us in our Cantaloupe Café, where we’ll have signature food and drink (how about a Cantaloupe-tini?) available for purchase and a live simulcast of what’s going on in the concert hall.

So join us, experiment with us, enjoy the Mile High Voltage Festival, only in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Denver. Friday and Saturday, February 19 and 20, 2010, 7:30 p.m. 2344 E. Iliff Ave., Denver, CO 80208. General Admission tickets $25 each night, or buy a Festival pass for $38 for both nights.

Mile High Voltage Festival Artists:

Andy Akiho, virtuosic steel pan player and composer.

Burkina Electric, African electronica band led by Artistic Director Lukas Ligeti who also plays the unique Marimba Luminata.

Michael Harrison, pianist and composer whose specially tuned piano creates a sound world closer to Indian music than Western music.

The Playground, Denver’s own new music chamber ensemble.

So Percussion, which was a hit in our 2006-07 season, returns with a new work co-commissioned by the Newman Center, which will be performed on an instrument they build as they play it, and including video.

Evan Ziporyn, a founding member of Bang on a Can All Stars, composer, clarinetist, professor at MIT whose influences range from Bach to Balinese gamelan music.

Alec Bemis, visionary Label Manager, Cantaloupe Music.

Tom Moon, Festival Moderator, Author of 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die and music critic for Rolling Stone, NPR, and others.

Peter Robles, Artists Manager, Composer, Festival Curator.

Mile High Voltage Festival is Supported by a Grant from

the National Endowment for the Arts

“Imaginary City,” to be performed by So Percussion, is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents in partnership with Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Newman Center for the Performing Arts, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and DiverseWorks

O Gente da Minha Terra

2009-11-30T15:13:00.003-07:00

At her concert in the Newman Center Presents series on November 14, Mariza, a wonderful Portuguese singer, ended her program with a song called "O Gente da Minha Terra," words by an earlier great Portuguese fado singer, Amalia Rodrigues. The title means "Oh People of My Land." Mariza carries on the tradition of Portuguese fado, but she is equally adept in other types of song.

Just a song or two before she had asked people in the audience to call out their countries of origin. "Romania," was the first shout, soon followed by cries of "Brazil," "Angola," "Mexico," "Russia," "Ecuador"....

She introduced this last piece in a way to warm the heart of this presenter, telling everyone in the audience why she performs, thanking them for participating, and explaining our motivation for being in this business too.

"Music doesn't have borders, it's for everyone," she said. "Thank you for being here; thank you for trying to understand me, and my culture, and us." "My Land," referring to the title of the Rodrigues song, "is not just the people of Portugal, whom I love and adore, but it's all of you too."

Amen.

Colorado Lt. Gov. Hosts Creative Economy Advisory Panel

2009-11-18T08:38:00.012-07:00

I have the pleasure of serving as a member of the Creative Economy Advisory Panel convened by Colorado's Lt. Gov. and the Office of Economic Development, and you can participate too. The panel is comprised of over 50 leaders from the design, literary & publishing, film & media, heritage, and performing and visual arts industries. Together, we will help the Colorado Office of Economic Development formulate a plan to capitalize on the creative sector’s immense potential for innovation, and ultimately job growth, in the state.

Dubbed “the Creative Economy," these industries already represent over 122,000 jobs in almost 8,000 enterprises, and comprise the 5^th largest employment cluster in Colorado. Add to that another 64,000 creative occupations in businesses not labeled as a “creative enterprise,” such as designers in manufacturing companies, and you have a large and robust sector of our state economy.

Recognizing this is a clean, fast-growing sector, other states are working to attract these businesses and to develop new creative talent. For instance, aggressive film and entertainment industry incentives are attracting productions and revenue to Louisiana and New Mexico. Oklahoma recently coined itself “State of Creativity” and seeks to establish the state as a “world-renowned center of creativity and innovation in commerce, culture, and education.” Massachusetts and Hawaii have both established “Creative Industries” divisions in their state Office of Economic Development.

Colorado’s Creative Economy Advisory Panel will help identify areas of significant opportunity and recommend strategies and policies to build Colorado’s creative economy. As part of their charge they will also explore the linkages between the creative talent in the state and other important clusters, such as renewable energy. They will also look at what is needed to ensure that K-12 and higher education institutions can fill the pipeline needed to build the creative sector.

The Panel members represent the six identified sectors of the creative economy, with additional representation from the foundation and education sectors. There were 66 participants at the Nov. 12 meeting, representing commercial and nonprofit businesses from across the state. Legislators serving on the panel include Senators Nancy Spence and Pat Steadman, and Representatives Cheri Girou, Tom Massey and Ellen Roberts.

At the November 12 meeting, the Louisiana Secretary of Culture, Recreation and Tourism presented a case study on their state’s Cultural Economy Initiative, which has been a primary economic recovery strategy following the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Over the next two meetings, the Advisory Panel will work with a facilitator to develop goals and specific policy recommendations for the Office of Economic Development.

An online presence has been established at www.thecivicnetwork.org/creativeeconomy to provide access to background readings and meeting minutes, and to solicit ongoing feedback from the panel members and input from the broader public. Please lend your voice to this important effort!

Entertainment is Still in Order

2009-08-13T16:58:00.002-06:00

Whatever the true state of the economy (which economist should you believe???), people still want to be entertained and want to participate in their communities. We are pleased that ticket sales for the upcoming Newman Center Presents season are up compared to sales for the previous season at the same time!

We have 20% more subscription accounts than we had at the end of last season. We have sold 10% more subscription seats than at the end of last season. And our ticket sales overall, including single tickets, are up over 10% compared to the same time last season. Pilobolus, in January, is already 74% sold.

You have responded to our choice of shows very positively. In addition, we have reduced most ticket prices and we have increased the ways that you can subscribe. You now have more flexibility than ever in creating a subscription package of as few as 3 shows that works on your schedule. And parking to Newman Center Presents shows is always FREE.

We're excited by the upcoming season, which starts NEXT MONTH!! And we're excited by the vote of confidence you've made in the season through advance ticket sales. We can't wait to see you here at the Newman Center (bring an economist as your guest!).

Whew! Season Over

2009-05-14T13:45:00.004-06:00

So, we ended the 6th season of Newman Center Presents last Saturday! It was, no surprise, a challenging year. Everyone knows that when the wheels came off the economy in September many people simply stopped spending. That could be seen at many a performing arts box office. In Colorado the decline was also attributable in part to the general election campaign. Colorado was a "battleground state," so our TVs were saturated with political ads, our email and text message inboxes were filled with requests for donations to political causes and invitations to volunteer. Enormous amounts of time, attention, energy, and money were spent, especially in battleground states, on the campaign. That, also, made bringing folks to theaters a bit harder.

But life went on and by January or so I sensed less general fear and reticence. People still want to, need to, be entertained and taken out of their daily routines. We saw that as we sold out a couple of shows after the first of the year. But we also saw that on the whole people are cautious and selective. The trend in favor of last-minute, single-ticket buying that preceded the economic collapse has only been enhanced by that collapse. And shows that are "comfortable" are in especially high demand. Generally speaking those performances that come with a well-known brand name artist or title are even more in demand than they were before September, and those things that invite exploration of the new and involve some risk of the unknown are even harder to sell than they were before then.

We are trying to keep a long-term focus on what we are about. We are building an audience whose shared demographic characteristic is their curiosity, their desire to try new things, their delight in discovery, even when there are risks inherent in such a journey. So we announced our 09-10 season, much of which had been programmed before the economic kerfuffle hit, and we intend to stay on mission. We lowered a number of our prices, we added an intermediate price category for seats in the Orchestra sides, we increased the number of "make-your-own" subscription package options, and we continue to provide free parking for all NCP shows. With the exception of the Russian National Orchestra, even a full-price, center Orchetra seat will cost less than $50.

Will the community support a performing arts series that is entertaining, but more than entertainment, that over half the time presents artists who have never appeared in Denver (often never in our time zone) before, that mixes great and well-known and -loved chestnuts from our heritage with the brand new? That has always been the challenge and the mission. The fluctuations in the economy don't change the need we perceive in the community for such a performing arts presenter.

Reflections on Kronos and Alternative Radio

2008-12-01T11:09:00.006-07:00

Back from Thanksgiving vacation, buried in emails, trying to catch up. One of those things I have to make more of a habit is writing this blog!!

Anyway, on Saturday November 8 we presented the famed Kronos Quartet in an unusual program that proved particularly hard to sell. The show was called "Alternative Radio" and featured host David Barsamian from Boulder's KGNU program of the same name. He interviewed Diane Wilson, a Texas Gulf Coast fisherman who set out on her own to change the extraordinary amount of pollution created by chemical companies located in her home county. Kronos curated the music that broke the interview into 5 to 10 minute segments. With different guests, Barsamian and Kronos have done "Alternative Radio" at Carnegie Hall, the Barbican in London, and Kulturhaus in Vienna, among other places.

We programmed this show because the theme for our current season is "What Should I Do? Art in the Civic Dialogue." When I described this theme to the L.A. agent who represents Kronos, he replied that Kronos was interested in precisely the same issues, and that we should consider incorporating Alternative Radio into our season. We agreed and Kronos and Barsamian set out to find their guest. They wanted the topic to be the environment, and they were happy to find Diane Wilson, partly because of her battles regarding the environment, but even more because she exemplified the power of activism, i.e. the power of one person to change the world.

Kronos has been around since 1973. They have recorded over 50 albums, have won countless awards, and have performed throughout the world in the most prestigious venues. Kronos opened the Friends of Chamber Music's first season in the Newman Center in 2003. And yet, we couldn't give this show away. I was reminded of the statement attributed to the famous New York impresario Sol Hurok: "If the public don't want to come, you can't prevent 'em."

This fall has been hard generally -- the economic meltdown has made people very selective. The election sucked money and attention out of people's regular routines. But we had large audiences for Soweto Gospel Choir and Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. Something about this show kept people away. (Though as I write this I hear that we have only distributed 400 tickets for Turtle Island Quartet's performance this coming Saturday, so perhaps this is mostly about the uncertainties of the economy.)

I found this very frustrating. This show was directly in keeping witn our season theme and it involved one of the most important and influential musical ensembles of our time. Friends of Chamber Music are sold out on subscription, and here was the famed Kronos Quartet. Where were the members of the Friends audience? Were our likely audience members at Opera Colorado's opening night? Were they afraid of the "Alternative Radio" angle? Were they afraid of what the music might have been? Equally frustrating was the very low participation by students of the University's music school in the 4 master classes that Kronos provided for their benefit.

This experience highlights some of the risks of the arts. Do people on the whole only "know what they like and like what they know"? Will audiences take the risk of new experiences? Will audiences who come here for dance sometimes come for music? If they don't have we been a failure? Have I mis-read the community or the times? Should we progam based more on the lowest common denominator and less aspirationally?

The 400 or so people here had an unusual experience of Kronos, though saying that is being redundant. Kronos is always pushing boundaries and creating new kinds of experiences. The review in The Denver Post concluded that the event deserved an A for effort, but ultimately failed to satisy. I share some of the criticisms. For instance, I thought many of the questions by Mr. Barsamian came out of a strong, pre-determined, and to my mind relatively over-simplified political perspective. The interview, therefore, was more of an exercise in getting Diane to reveal how her actions demonstrated Barsamian's political views than in getting her to reveal to us what brought this one citizen to stand up and fight for what she believed in. I, too, wished for more discussion about the musical selections and what the members of Kronos intended or hoped for in picking those pieces as counterpoints to the conversation. As the second half of the evening began, I thought that we could have done with just the first half as Alternative Radio, and that perhaps the second half should have been just Kronos.

On the other hand, I thought that the performance showed how a musical experience can be different from the usual things we see and hear. The speaking provided a context in which to listen to each separate work, and I wondered if we in the audience would have been as intent in our listening if the music had come to us without the conversational context. Also, though I had not anticipated this, I felt during the performance that the music helped us listen to the conversation differently too. The breathing space made by the music gave time to think, to decide if you agreed or disagreed with what had been said, to formulate the questions you might have asked.

I also felt an interesting interplay between the way we narturally react to music, and an individual's interpretation of a piece of music, and the way I reacted to Diane's comments and her points of view about business, corporations, the law, and politics. It was as if the point became perfectly clear that Diane's comments were no more than her point of view and that I wasn't required to agree with that point of view any more than I was required to like a piece of music or a particular interpretation of a piece of music. In our hyper-divided society, I think we've become used to almost caustic disagreements on political and social issues. But when was the last time you fought with anyone over a musical interpretation? Perhaps hearing the discussion in a musical context actually made it more civil?

Smiles!!

2008-10-28T22:01:00.002-06:00

The Soweto Gospel Choir concert just ended 20 minutes ago. Everyone came out of the hall smiling, anxious to greet the performers, shake their hands, hug them....

This is why we do what we do, because open, honest expressions of humanity, even if in another language (or about 7 other languages, as tonight!), connect people across continents, time zones, cultures, ages, races....

How satisfying it was to be tonight in a community of people, performers and audience alike, who shared such an experience and expressed their hope for one world living in peace.

May there be many more such experiences.

Campaigns, the Economy, and the Performing Arts

2008-09-25T09:06:00.002-06:00

Well, as someone once said about the campaign period, it's silly season again. And this year, as Colorado is a "battleground state," it's even sillier than usual here. Not only do we have the presidential campaign and a hotly contested senatorial campaign buying up ad time on TV, but 19 proposed state constitutional issues clog the ballot. I dread receiving the "blue book" this year, which I expect will rival the phone book in heft.

And if all that drama weren't enough, Wall Street is adding a third ring to the circus. I've turned from the cable news to the cable business channels.

Meanwhile, life does go on, and that includes the performing arts. Regular life is actually a healthy antidote to all the sturm und drang from Washington and Wall Street. But so far the beginning of this performing arts season has been very soft around the country. Stay engaged. Come to the theater and see friends. And vote!

6th Season About to Begin

2008-08-25T10:12:00.003-06:00

You know that we have always striven to be eclectic. The first three shows in our 6th season prove that we remain eclectic!

The 6th seaon of Newman Center Presents starts at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 12 with a special added performance by acclaimed British actor Michael Pennington of his one-man show "Sweet William." Pennington created this piece as a paean to William Shakespeare, and so it includes famous and less famous speeches from some of The Bard's plays, a bit from his Sonnets, and musings about both Shakespeare's life and Pennington's own life on the stage. We are collaborating with the Colorado Festival of World Theater from Colorado Springs in this presentation. I have not seen this show, but we were urged by legendary theater impresario Donald Seawell, who serves on the CFWT board, to offer it in Denver. It will take place in our intimate Byron Theatre and will be preceded at 6:30 p.m. by a "Behind the Curtain" lectue on Shakespeare by DU Theatre Department faculty member Rick Barbour. All seats are general admission, $15.

The previously announced season gets under way with San Francisco-based dance company Robert Moses' Kin ("RMK") at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 27 in June Swaner Gates Concert Hall. Continuing our commitment to bring to Denver great artists who have not previously had the chance to perform here, we have also co-commissioned a new work which Robert has entitled "Reign Forest." Our partners in this commission are the Lincoln Center performing arts center in Fort Collins and EcoArts, a Boulder-based organization that brings together artists, scientists, and citizens to investigate climate change and sustainable living.

We are very excited by all the educational activities which RMK will participate in leading up to the performance. For instance, on Thursday the 25th at 7:00 p.m. in The Dairy Center in Boulder, the company will offer a workshop/lecture/demonstration performance of Reign Forest along with excerpts of other works and will engage the audience in discussion. Tickets to this event are $10, general admission. On Friday morning RMK will give a lecture/demonstration and master class at Montbello High School. And on Friday afternoon, from 5:00-7:00, at the Blair Caldwell African American Research Library, Robert will be joined by Denver's own Cleo Parker Robinson and famed 5 Points tap dancer Harriet Butcher in a panel discussed entitled "An Open Discussion on Dance and Race." This session is free and open to the public.

I saw RMK at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival a few summers ago and was riveted by their performance of "Lucifer's Prance." The Behind the Curtain lecture on Saturday will be given by Marda Kirn, founder of the Colorado Dance Festival and EcoArts. Robert will also participate in a post-performance Q&A with the audience.

We are proud once again to collaborate with Denver's own El Centro Su Teatro to present Bronx-based Universes. Its groundbreaking show "Slanguage" will appear in June Swaner Gates Concert Hall on Thursday, October 2. Their work is gritty (lots of R-rated language), poetic, and pulls no punches. Their form of theater is inspired by hip-hop culture and slam poetry. The music draws from jazz, blues, Spanish boleros, gospel, and more. Their stories come from urban America. Their hearts and souls draw from American culture in all its diversity. Universes will be doing 4 residencies at Denver area high schools (which ones remain to be determined) leading up to the performance. The evening of the performance the Behind the Curtain lecture will be given by Tony Garcia, Artistic Director of El Centro Su Teatro and Bobby Lefebre, member of the Slam Nuba! Team, finalists in the 2007 National Poetry Slam. The cast of Universes will also do a Q&A with the audience after the performance.

I saw an early workshop version of "Slanguage" in New York at The Kitchen a few years ago. That version was less complex and more about the storyline of a subway ride from Brooklyn to the Bronx than is the finished version. The final piece rides that train, but stops for passionate individual and ensemble explorations of tough issues.

Denver Center of the US and its Performing Arts World

2008-07-17T16:04:00.001-06:00

For most of the week of June 10, Denver was not only just about the geographic center of the U.S., but it was also the center of attention for the nation's performing arts community. Denver hosted the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC), the first time something of its magnitude and ambition had ever been held. Many Denver area cultural organizations, including the University of Denver's Newman Center for the Performing Arts, were involved as volunteers in the years of planning involved in hosting this gathering of nearly 4,000 performing artists, arts organization administrators and trustees, journalists, educators, and businesses that serve the arts.

NPAC would not have been possible without the volunteer efforts of hundreds of Denver artists, arts administrators and citizens, along with the generous and loyal financial and in-kind support of our foundation, corporate, and individual philanthropic communities.

Based on comments we received during and immediately after the NPAC, we account it a great success. Over 125 public performances were offered during the week which included the NPAC. Scores of performances were arranged for NPAC delegates by Denver area performing artists. NPAC delegates who had not spent any time here before were uniformly impressed by the quality of life we enjoy, the hospitality we offered, and the friendliness of everyone they encountered.

Excellent work was done throughout the NPAC to help craft a vision and action plan for the performing arts nationwide. Specific steps were agreed upon in the areas of Advocacy, Education, and Diversity, steps to be taken at the national level, the local level, and by individual organizations and artists. We will be meeting soon to consider how to carry forward the promise of those steps here in Denver. (A summary of the voting on the specific steps is posted on the NPAC Blog: http://www.artsjournal.com/npac/ )

This first-ever step to create such a vision and action plan will forever be tied to Denver. It all started here. As Ann Meier-Baker, Co-Chairman of the National Steering Committee remarked after the final session, “the place where you are born is always special, and the birth certificate for this process and vision will always have Denver’s name on it.”

In addition, working with Arts for Colorado and Colorado Citizens for Culture, we have teams of arts, business, education, and government leaders from eight communities around Colorado involved in a one-year project which began at the NPAC to build community plans that embrace arts and culture. The communities involved in this CCPP are: Aurora, Colorado Springs, Cortez, Englewood, Glenwood Springs, Lakewood, Monte Vista, and Steamboat Springs.

Press coverage leading up to and during the NPAC was excellent. And we overheard or were told of a few things that illustrate the quality and affect of the NPAC experience. Here are just some examples:“A man came up to me after the final session and said that he had been a volunteer for a week at Ground Zero in New York after 9-11. He wanted me to know that his time at NPAC had been the most meaningful period he had spent doing anything since then.”
Marc Scorca, Opera America

“I concluded after attending NPAC that I am going to run for public office. It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when.’”
NPAC delegate from Colorado Springs

“The Denver volunteers were the best I’ve ever seen in nine years of doing events around the country – helpful, tireless, friendly, just a joy to work with!”
NPAC Registration Coordinator

“The Thursday night dance showcase at the Newman Center was the best dance in Denver that I have ever witnessed. Congratulations.”
Denver dance supporter

“I asked each person in the performing arts community at the table from around the country if he could identify his state representative, senator, city councilman, and school board member. Not one could name any of them. That’s where this work on participation in the civic process needs to begin.”
Tina Poe-Obermeier, Arts for Colorado

We are perhaps most pleased at how the very process of working together to plan Denver’s participation in the NPAC brought our own performing arts community closer. We know and understand each other even better than before. We are even more supportive of each other’s work. Our challenge is now to carry on the vision crafted at the Denver 2008 NPAC right here in Denver!

Cracker Jack

2008-05-12T11:35:00.001-06:00

We ended our fifth season of Newman Center Presents with a performance by the storyteller Rik Reppe of his tales of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest, pre- and post-Katrina, called “Glorious Noise.” Rik began going to the Fest before “the bitch” (what locals call Katrina in order not to dignify it with a formal name) hit the city, and he came to know a local songster called only Cracker Jack. That old black man sat most days on a bench on the banks of the Mississippi with his guitar, watching the river roll by, talking with strangers, singing for coins. After the storm, Rik went back to help in relief efforts, and to try to find Cracker Jack. He returns to this day for the Fest, and is still looking for Cracker Jack.

I sat in Gates Concert Hall Saturday night watching and listening to Rik’s riveting stories and songs. I thought to myself how different it was from other things we have presented that involve many more people, very fancy theatrical lights, sets and props, numerous people backstage…. Live performance art can be very complex and full of “wow” visual moments, or it can be as simple as a single passionate person (Rik actually was accompanied by a piano player and saxophone player, but these were his stories) telling us about another place and time, about people we haven’t met but who underwent extraordinary experiences, and what all those things meant to the storyteller, how they changed him and what he learned about himself.

Among the events at the Fest Rik described was a new song performed for a crowd of 25,000 people. It immediately brought those people together in community. And that happened Saturday night at “Glorious Noise.” People laughed and cried together, they sat in rapt silence, and they hooted and hollered. We all lived through the media reporting of Katrina, but Rik was there himself for the aftermath. One of our ushers told me after the show how great it was to be able to hear a personal, non-corporate media view of what happened and how it affected people. It was reporting by an artist, though, with feelings and emotions and self-reflection on display. That made it especially meaningful reporting.

This was a hard show to sell, as Rik hadn’t performed in Denver before, and as it doesn’t have the big “wow” visuals to use in marketing campaigns. But it’s a good example of what we do in a season when we mix the very well known with the artists who are new to us. Art presenting by focus group isn’t what we’re about. Instead, we look each season for artists we believe will move, entertain, inform, and maybe even transform audiences. We present artists who share with us their humanity as well as their artistry.

The very first show we ever presented, in September 2002, was the play “The Guys,” a small, two-person show about September 11, 2001. In the talk-back session with the actors after one of the performances a member of the audience said, “I just want to thank the University for presenting a show like this which isn’t just entertainment, but rather is about something important.” I remembered that comment Saturday night during Rik’s show. We hope our artists are always entertaining, but we also hope that we present more than just entertainment.

What about the "Presents" in "Newman Center Presents"?

2008-03-27T09:39:00.002-06:00

Being a "presenter" of the performing arts has a particular meaning. This issue often comes back to me when I talk with patrons and realize that they sometimes have assumptions about our presented series of shows that are incorrect.

First, a presenter in the performing arts is different from both a "producer" and a "promoter." A producing company would be something like the Colorado Symphony or Opera Colorado. Those organizations produce their shows from the ground up. They choose which individuals, one by one, will play in the orchestra, sing in the chorus, conduct, direct, design, and take the solo parts. In the end, what you see on stage is "Opera Colorado's" production of Gounod's Faust, or whatever opera it is OC chose to produce. A promoter typically has a major role in touring popular and rock and roll shows. Live Nation, AEG, and similar entities are middle-men who put touring acts together with appropriate venues. They usually guarantee a minimum payment to the act, and then share the net income over that amount with the act. They take on the responsibility to advertise the show.

Presenters have most often been universities, though some municipalities do it, and some stand-alone non-profit organizations do it. But for at least 125 years, universities in the U.S. have been among the most important patrons of the arts because they give artists from all disciplines many chances to perform their own works -- works that those artists have produced, to use the terminology that I describe above. There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in North America, and over 2,300 of them have a presented series in the performing arts. The University of Denver's "Newman Center Presents" series is one of those.

So, what we do as a presenter is, in essence, to go shopping. We look at the huge variety of performers and performances from around the world that are offered for performances around the U.S. and we select which ones we want to present in a multi-disciplinary season for our Denver community. Sometimes we know precisely what the show will be because we have seen it performed in another city, or because we have seen an excerpt of it performed in one of the several booking conferences we attend each year. At those booking conferences we get the chance to meet with artists and their agents, and often to see at least some part of the artists' work.

Sometimes, however, we can't see a specific work because the artists are in the process of making it. For instance, we recently presented Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi, an American and a Senagalese dance company which collaborated over the course of 4 years to make a new work. None of the universities and other presenters involved in the U.S. tour which started in late January 2008 had seen the work, called "The Scales of Memory," because it hadn't been finished when we all had to choose which artists we would present in our 07-08 seasons. Instead, we invested in the reputation and history of the artists, and we supported the creative process itself by giving the artists guaranteed performance opportunities.

A patron remarked to me a few days after seeing The Scales of Memory that she was nervous during the first 3-5 minutes of the show because what was happening on stage, or perhaps more accurately, what was not happening on stage, made her worry about what the rest of the performance would be like. During the first few minutes a tableau was presented, with very little movement, and no music. What I told her was that she and I were both seeing it for the very first time.

I tried to explain that presenters serve an important and sometimes misunderstood role in the cultural ecology of a community, and frankly of the nation. We present entertainment, to be sure, but we are also an essential part of the creative process itself, supporting artists in the risky enterprise of making new art. And for the enterprise to work, presenters, and artists, need the support of audiences who are willing to be part of that journey. Some of what you see on a university presenter's series will be time-tested classics. Some of what you see will be works that the presenter has commissioned (Newman Center Presents has done that and will continue to do that) and the presenter has a very good idea about what that performance will look and feel and sound like. And some of what you see will be works that the presenters haven't commissioned, but that they have supported by providing performance opportunities.

Making art can be risky. Ultimately we want our patrons to participate in the creative process of making art itself. Sometimes you will love what you see even though you had never been exposed to such a thing before. Sometimes you'll hate it. Sometimes I'll hate it. But the point is that some portion of the creative ecology has to be about taking those risks. I think that's exciting.

Arts Advocacy Day 2008 Big Success!

2008-03-12T11:01:00.000-06:00

On Friday, March 7 over 100 Arts Supporters from around the State (Colorado Springs, Montrose, Craig, Denver, Dillon, Greeley, Fort Collins…) gathered at the State Capitol to tell elected officials how important State support of the arts is. We gathered in the Denver Art Museum for a greeting from Rep. Mike Merryfield and some basic training on arts advocacy.

We then walked over to the Capitol and broke into two groups, one of which started in the Senate and the other of which went to the House. Everyone had a great time sending cards or short messages into their elected officials and then meeting with them as they came out of the Chamber in response to the calling cards.

We thanked our elected officials for their support of State funding for the Colorado Council on the Arts. We encouraged them to support the Long Bill provisions which permit the Department of Education and the Colorado Council on the Arts each to hire an arts learning specialist (paid for by NEA money in the case of the Council). We urged them to ensure that the upcoming education standards bill include all kinds of visual and performing arts. We reminded them how important the arts are to economic development, education, cultural tourism, quality of life, and community identity.

We then returned to the Art Museum for lunch with several legislators and presentations about upcoming legislative issues important to the arts. Arts Advocacy Day 2008 was a wonderful success and we will build on it in ensuing years.

Denver Hosts National Performing Arts Convention

2008-03-11T09:04:00.004-06:00

From June 10-14, Denver will host the first large-scale National Performing Arts Convention ever held. Denver performing arts institutions, including the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, have been closely involved with the planning for the NPAC over several years. I serve, with Peter Russell, as Co-Chairman of the Local Steering Committee.

Everyone is welcome to register! We encourage Denver and Colorado residents who care about the future of the performing arts in the United States to register for and attend the Convention! The "early bird" registration deadline is March 31. Registration is all online at http://www.performingartsconvention.org/

NPAC will bring together over 4,000 people, with a diverse range of interests in the non-profit performing arts, to shape the direction for the industry over the next decade. Attendance is open to anyone, including: actors, agents, arts administrators, businesses, composers, conductors, critics, dancers, directors, educators, fundraisers, marketers, musicians, producers, singers, trustees and volunteers.

Speakers from around the world will participate. Examples of some of the 60 planned sessions include: Taking Art Off the Shelf: Making the Arts Relevant Again; The Art of Living, or Living for Art: A Survival Guide for Individual Artists; The Value of A Seat; Design, Evaluation and Research on Arts Education Programs; Playwriting Bootcamp; Fun with Critics; The Changing Technological Universe and its Potential for the Arts Sector; Boomers: A Blooming Audience, or Fading Flowers in the Cultural Scene?; Artists from Abroad: Everything You Need to Know about Visa and Tax Issues; Opera: From Soap to Nuts; It Ain't Easy Being Green!; and, Art and Activism: Making Art, Making a Difference.

NPAC is made possible through the generous support of a range of Colorado and national donors and sponsors. A full list is available at www.performingartsconvention.org/sponsors.htm .

Performing arts in all disciplines will be presented during NPAC. Dance will be highlighted at two dance showcases featuring ten-minute performances by exciting jury-selected dance companies from Colorado and around the nation. The "Mile High Movement I & II" Dance Showcases are being presented by The Newman Center for the Performing Arts and the Dance Agents Council of Dance/USA.

Mile High Movement I
Thursday, June 12, 2008, 7:30 p.m., Newman Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Denver:

Battleworks Dance Company; Brian Brooks Moving Company; Moraporvida Contemporary Dance; PARADIGM; Rosanna Gamson/World Wide; 3rd Law Dance/Theater

[Special Bonus Performance for NPAC Registrants Only:
Thursday, June 12, 2008, 9:00 p.m., Byron Theatre, Newman Center for the Performing Arts, University of Denver

“GLOW” by Chunky Move from Australia]

Mile High Movement II
Friday, June 13, 2008, 7:30 p.m., Buell Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex:

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet; Cleo Parker Robinson Dance; Colorado Ballet; Evidence Dance Company/Ronald K. Brown; Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet; Kota Yamazaki/Fluid Hug-Hug.

$30 Package (both Mile High Movement I AND II); $20 single (either Mile High Movement I OR II). All seats are General Admission.

Tickets may be ordered in person at the Newman Center Box Office (2344 E. Iliff Ave., Denver), by phone at 303/357-ARTS or 303/871-7720, or online at http://www.ticketmaster.com/search?tm_link=tm_header_search&keyword=mile+high+movement.
Information: www.du.edu/newmancenter

Arts Advocacy Day in Colorado - March 7

2008-02-27T14:18:00.002-07:00

I serve as Co-Chairman of Arts for Colorado, a state-wide, volunteer, non-partisan arts advocacy organization. We provide a voice for arts and culture, and the public funding of arts and culture, in the State Legislature. (www.artsforcolorado.org )

Friday, March 7, 2008, is Arts Advocacy Day in Colorado. This is an opportunity for the general public to let our elected representatives in the Colorado Legislature know that we value arts and culture in our communities, and that we support public funding of arts and culture, such as through the budgetary appropriation for the Colorado Council on the Arts.

On March 7, begin at 7:45 a.m. for coffee and "Advocacy 101" at the Denver Art Museum's Lower4 Level Classroom. There you will hear from some State legislators about arts-related issues pending before the General Assembly. Afterward, walk up to Capitol Hill with your colleagues to speak directly to your elected officials. Call them in advance to let them know that you will be there that day and would like to see them. Return to the DAM for lunch ($15) with your colleagues and legislators. Invite your elected officials to join you. Please RSVP to vieda.mcgowan@unco.edu.

I hope you will also consider supporting the year-round work of Arts for Colorado by becoming a member. Information on individual and business memberships is available on the Arts for Colorado website. (Memberships in and donations to AFC are not tax deductible. AFC's sister organization, Colorado Citizens for Culture, is a 501(c)(3) which engages in education activities and is able to accept tax deductible donations.)

2008-09 Newman Center Presents Season Announced

2008-02-26T09:25:00.016-07:00

We are pleased to announce the 6th season of Newman Center Presents!

Theme:
We embrace a mission both to entertain and challenge, by offering an eclectic mix of artists from different disciplines and cultures. In the 2008-09 season, a number of shows ask a question voiced by the artists and inherent to many of their works - “What should I do?” Artists ask themselves, “What should I do as an artist who is also a citizen?” “What should I do as an artist whose craft is challenged by technology and rapid cultural shifts?” “What should I do to engage people in the important dialogues and issues we face?” Audiences then ask, “What should I do in response to this art?” “What should I do as a citizen?” Presenters of the performing arts ask, “What should I do as the person responsible for choosing artists to present?”

Art and artists have a place in the civic dialogue. They might engage social and political issues, or personal issues and matters of spirituality, or strictly practical matters. Many of the artists we will present in the 2008-09 season address the question in all those ways and more. We invite our community to engage and participate.

14 Different Performances:

Robert Moses' Kin
Saturday, September 27, 2008

Combining breathtaking athleticism, luscious music, and compelling poetry, Robert Moses’ Kin (RMK) is dedicated to moving forward the forms of dance and performance with attention to provoking and meaningful themes. The company's mission is to produce work that speaks to what is unique in human nature. For Robert Moses, movement is the medium through which race, class, culture, gender, and the environment give voice to our potential and unfulfilled possibilities. Moses explains, "My work expresses my concern with the honor, dignity, truth and potential of real people. Human lives and beliefs are the material, the choreographic elements, of my work."

Tonight’s performance will include “Rainforest,” co-commissioned by EcoArts, Lincoln Center Fort Collins, and the Newman Center for the Performing Arts.

Our partners in creating residency activities for RMK include EcoArts, a Boulder-based organization bringing together people from all walks of life to investigate the realities of climate change and celebrate the delights of a sustainable future in a conversation sparked by the arts.

Universes, Slanguage
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Co-presented with El Centro Su Teatro
With the support of The Center for Multicultural Excellence, University of Denver

An ensemble of multi-disciplinary writers and performers who create moving, challenging and entertaining theatrical works, the group breaks the bounds of traditional theater to create their own brand of performance. They invite old and new generations of theater-makers, as well as theater-goers and new comers, to reshape the face of American theater. The boundary-smashing Slanguage, Universes’ tour-de-force, brings together the unique mix of language and culture that is life on the American streets. Built loosely around the structure of a subway ride from Brooklyn to the Bronx, Slanguage synthesizes traditional theater with poetry, storytelling, rap, gospel, jazz riffs, bluesy laments, Spanish boleros, and other poetic forms, to paint a rich portrait of the sights and sounds of New York City. Through Slanguage, Universes integrates theatre and street humor with emotional truth, amplifying the issues of poverty, family, drugs, racism, and street violence, yet finding hope in the contemporary urban landscape.

“… exuberant, insightful … they have created something special, a work of heart and soul that distills the essence of the city.” – The New York Times

London Symphony Chorus
Lamont Symphony Orchestra
Verdi, Requiem
Wednesday, October 15-Thursday, October 16, 2008

Lawrence Golan, Conductor
Ken Cox, Bass
Margaret Lattimore, Mezzo Soprano
Philip Webb, Tenor
Erin Wood, Soprano

The Newman Center proudly continues its collaboration with the Lamont Symphony Orchestra by once again presenting that award-winning orchestra in concert with the 100-member London Symphony Chorus. The assembled throng will offer two performances of Verdi’s monumental Requiem. This spectacular, chilling, and ethereal work will highlight the unparalleled acoustics of Gates Concert Hall and the talents of both the University’s music students and one of the world’s most distinguished choruses.

Sponsored by:
Office of the Chancellor, University of Denver
Mr. Daniel L. Ritchie
Anna and John J. Sie Foundation
Four Points by Sheraton Denver Southeast

With Additional Support From:
American Friends of the London Symphony Chorus
Ms. Eleanor Caulkins

Soweto Gospel Choir
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

South Africa is known as the “Rainbow Nation” for its diversity of races, cultures and languages. The colorful costumes of the Soweto Gospel Choir are but one reflection of the diversity that becomes one nation. Singing in a number of languages, from English and Zulu, to Xhosa and Sotho, their music stems from traditional African, Western church and gospel music from around the globe. The choir supports their charity Nkosi’s Haven/Vukani (meaning “Arise, do something!”), which distributes cash, food and essential goods in South Africa to HIV-positive children and those orphaned by AIDS.

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Saturday, November 1, 2008

Newman Center Presents favorite Aspen Santa Fe Ballet returns! Nationally renowned as an eclectic, innovative dance company with a solid foundation in classical ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet has made a lasting impression with a company of versatile, energetic dancers performing a sophisticated repertoire featuring some of the world’s foremost choreographers.

Kronos Quartet & Alternative Radio
With host David Barsamian and special guest to be announced
Saturday, November 8, 2008

Issues and insights neglected by mainstream media find voice on the worldwide independent radio program Alternative Radio. Host and creator David Barsamian transforms his sound format for the stage, interweaving performances by Kronos Quartet with a discussion by with a special guest to be announced. Global issues are musically engaged, as the people on stage respond to each other in discussion and music with sharp insight, and daring and radical hope. The musical program is chosen jointly by the artists no more than 24 hours before the performance and might include music from Afghanistan, Argentina, China Ethiopia, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Mexico, Nubia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Turkey, United States and Uzbekistan.

Turtle Island Quartet, Solstice Celebration
Saturday, December 6, 2008

This joyous voyage through world holiday music celebrates the quartet members’ ancestral roots with music ranging from English carols and 16th century Scottish reels, to Jewish and Hindu songs of Chanukah and India’s Dewali. This Grammy® Award-winning ensemble gloriously fuses the classical string quartet with the adventurous spirit of jazz. Its members are extraordinary instrumentalists, improvisers, composers and arrangers. In this concert, they explore the timeless music that has been part of winter holiday celebrations for centuries.

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Saturday, January 31, 2009

Celebrating their 27th year on the concert stage, the members of the Grammy® Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet continue to set the standard for expression and virtuosity among guitar ensembles, while perennially redefining themselves in their musical explorations. With over a dozen recordings over the past two decades, they have established themselves as masters of the classics, as well as the creators of the unique syntheses of world-music and contemporary styles that have made the "LAGQ-sound" a favorite around the world. (The LAGQ will offer a master class for guitar students at the University’s Lamont School of Music.)

Either/Orchestra, Ethiopiques
Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Either/Orchestra is a 10-piece jazz ensemble – two trumpets, trombone, three saxophones, piano, acoustic bass, drums and congas – based in Cambridge, MA. Founded in 1985, by saxophonist/composer Russ Gershon, the E/O combines the agility and freedom of a jazz combo, raw power and subtle coloring of a jazz orchestra and deep grooves of Afro-Latin music. They have performed in clubs, concert halls and festivals in 34 states plus Canada, Italy, Portugal, Holland, Finland, Russia, Ethiopia and Uganda. Neither a tribute band nor a neo-classical museum piece, the group is constantly finding new inspirations. Among their explorations has been the rich world of Ethiopian music, which finds a natural home in an American jazz band. Their leader has described it as “exotic and inexplicably familiar, warm and inviting but spicy and spiky… spinning tales of love and heartache.” American jazz was heavily influenced by African roots, and Ethiopian big band music completes a circle through the influence of American jazz. (Either/Orchestra will also perform at a general Convocation of the students and faculty of the University’s Lamont School of Music.)

David Dorfman Dance, underground
Saturday, February 28, 2009

Founder David Dorfman says of underground, "Although I was only 13 during the ‘Days of Rage’ in 1969, too young to be protesting in the Chicago streets, I remember being awed by the audacity of the Weathermen. Now I am interested in the legacy of the Weather Underground's principles, and also in its foibles and its regrets. Looking back at the ‘60s and how it was the core of my emotional and artistic formation will be my entry point into this exploration – in essence, a return to my own ‘movement’ roots." underground explores the generational gap between those who grew up in the 1960s and the over 162 million Americans born after December 31, 1969. How should one compare the widespread, though sometimes violent, activism of four decades ago with today’s world? Going inside radical social activism, underground asks when does activism become terrorism, when is lack of action to be condemned, and is action which leads to damage ever justified? The performance will include numerous community participants on stage and a lively post-performance discussion with the artists.

Academy of Ancient Music
J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concertos 1-6
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Richard Egarr, Director

The AAM is one of the world’s first period-instrument ensembles, now in its fourth decade as one of the world’s finest. This concert provides a rare opportunity to hear all six of Bach’s landmark Brandenburg Concertos. No two are the same, either in style or instrumentation. From the horns in No. 1 and the dazzling trumpet solo in No. 2, to the virtuosic harpsichord solo in No. 5, and the dark, violin-less texture of No. 6, there is more contrast packed into this famous set than you can imagine.

Aquila Theatre Company, The Iliad
Friday, March 27-Saturday, March 28, 2009

The stirring tales of Achilles and Agamemnon, Hector and Patroclus, Odysseus and Zeus, are brought to life on stage. Stylized movement, light and sound combine with Stanley Lombardo’s translation to give a passionate account of Homer’s timeless epic. Aquila was inspired by the somber photograph Into the Jaws of Death, shot from a landing craft by a member of the United States Coast Guard on D-Day at Normandy. Thus, the gods and heroes wear the garb of the Second World War. (Aquila will provide a master class for the students of the University’s Department of Theatre as part of its visit to campus.)

Australian Chamber Orchestra
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director and Lead Violin
Andreas Scholl, Countertenor

With an average player age of 30, the ACO brings a refreshing energy and stylistic flair to every corner of the chamber orchestra repertoire, bringing audiences to their feet around the world. The year 2009 marks the 250th anniversary of the death of Georg Friedrich Handel, and tonight’s program celebrates his irrepressible gifts with a Concerto grosso and several arias from Handel’s immense operatic output, sung by German countertenor Andreas Scholl.

Herr Scholl sings all over the world with the finest ensembles. Other works on the program include Pavel Haas’ From the Monkey Mountains Suite. Haas was a Czech composer murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944.

Maya Beiser, cello
Provenance
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Co-commissioned by the Newman Center for the Performing Arts
Jamey Haddad, Percussion
Bassam Saba, Oud
Shahrokh Yadegari, Live electronics

In a world troubled by religious strife and division, the period between the 8th and 15th centuries in the Iberian Peninsula offers a hopeful historical reminder: Muslims, Christians and Jews once lived together, creating a centuries-long flowering of commerce, culture, art and architecture. Cellist Maya Beiser, who grew up in an Israeli kibbutz at the foothills of the Galilee Mountains, living in harmony with neighboring Muslim and Christian Arab villages,. asked herself what we might learn from that experience. Her new project, Provenance, is inspired by this panoramic sweep of history and the glory of a multi-religious, multicultural civilization.

Beiser has been active in creating a new global repertoire in music, and for Provenance she has commissioned young composers from Israel, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, Iran and the U.S. to create music inspired by this Golden Age in Medieval Spain. Also included are arrangements of masterpieces by Hamza el Din, Djivan Gasparyan and 9th century Galician troubadour Martin Codax. Joining her, will be Lebanese-American master oud player Bassam Saba, and hand drummer virtuoso Jamey Haddad. The pieces will be united by Iranian-American sound designer and computer specialist Shahrokh Yadegari, who will create a cohesive and shared sonic space. Provenance seeks to create an environment in which varied cultural traditions are not simply tolerated, but rather explicitly sought. The work embraces co-existence not as a luxury, but as a necessity.

Season Subscription Details:
Director’s Choice season tickets (nine performances Sept-May) start at $187 per person and entitle the subscriber to a 20% discount to additional Presents performances, with five currently scheduled.

Patron’s Choice is a “create-your-own” series consisting of four or more shows, and entitles the subscriber to a 10% discount to additional Presents performances.

New subscriptions go on sale May 1, 2008, and tickets to individual performances will be released on August 1. Students, faculty, seniors and groups receive discounts.

For more information, call 303.871.7720, Option 2. Newman Center Presents 2008-2009All performances take place in Gates Concert Hall (except as noted) at 7:30 p.m. and include a free Behind the Curtain discussion at 6:30 p.m. with guest lecturers.