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Roll Call: Bay Area Arts and Culture
PLAYLIST
JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND, known as “V” a new solo album, Dendrophile. Dendrophilia is a person who is sexually aroused by trees. Dendrophile incorporates a range of material that Bond has performed, including a song from John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, in which V starred; a Karen Carpenter song, and interpretations of songs associated with Nina Simone, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell. Perhaps best known as one-half of the performance duo Kiki and Herb.
INTERVIEW
Dj Margaret is joined with artist KALUP LINZY, composer LUCIANO CHESSA and SFMOMAs Associate Curator of Public Programs FRANK SMIGIEL to chat about their current project Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera Installation. An Ensemble Parallèle production with Nicole Paiement, conductor/artistic director; Brian Staufenbiel, director; music by Virgil Thomson and Luciano Chessa; Libretto by Gertrude Stein; and featuring artist Kalup Linzy. On the occasion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s major exhibition The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Bay Area Now 6 (BAN6). SFMOMA in association with YBCA present this new production of Stein and Thomson’s opera at YBCA’s Novellus Theater, August 18-21, 2011.
Why did Gertrude Stein and I decide to write an opera about saints? Simply because we viewed a saint’s life as related to our own. In all times the consecrated artist has tended to live surrounded by younger artists and to guide them into the ways of spontaneity. And thus to characterize one’s gift is indeed to invite “inspiration” and just possibly, through art, make “miracles.”
— Virgil Thomson
Composer, conductor, musicologist, and pianist LUCIANO CHESSA has worked extensively throughout Europe, the United States, and Australia. Recent premieres include a large orchestral piece commissioned by the Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino, Italy; TomBoy, for piano with video by Terry Berlier; and Movements, a multimedia work for 16mm film, Vietnamese dan bau, and amplified film-projectors, produced in collaboration with filmmaker Rick Bahto. As a music historian, Chessa has written Luigi Russolo Futurista: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult, the first monograph of Russolo and his art of noise, forthcoming from the University of California Press. Chessa was invited by Performa in 2009 to direct the first reconstruction project of Russolo's earliest intonarumori orchestra and to curate a series of related concerts—a project hailed by The New York Times as one of the best art events of the year. In March 2011, Chessa's Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners was presented in a sold-out concert by Berliner Festspiele-Maerzmusik Festival; other European appearances of the orchestra have been scheduled. He teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and often collaborates with San Francisco's Italian Cultural Institute.
Brooklyn-based video and performance artist KALUP LINZY looks to soap operas, southern and African American vernacular speech, queer culture, and disco to create his own stylized and highly personal dramas. His characters, played by friends or by himself, regularly appear in his YouTube video series and in his popular live performances. He often performs, in character, songs from his 2008 album SweetBerry Sonnet. He has recently appeared on General Hospital and has begun a creative collaboration known as Kalup & Franco with actor and friend James Franco. Linzy has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial, and the Creative Capital foundations. His work has been shown in exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; the Athens Biennale; and the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, among others, and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2009, the Studio Museum in Harlem presented Kalup Linzy: If It Don't Fit, the first museum survey of his work. (www.kaluplinzy.net)
FRANK SMIGIEL is Associate Curator of Public Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art where he designs and implements artist’s talks and public projects, visual arts-based performance, and film. His major Live Art projects include the city-wide festival and Performa 09 preview which included both the OPENrestaurant banquet and a concert by Blixa Bargeld, Carla Khilstedt, Mike Patton, Text of Light, and Teresa Wong, among many others; Mika Tajima/New Humans with Charles Atlas; Judith Butler, and the Golden Gate Toastmasters for the installation/performance William Kentridge’s solo lecture/performance plus a revival of his collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company; Claudio Monteverdi’s opera; Tony Labat’s competition; Fritz Haeg’s workshops and publication; Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation’s film and concert; and Earl Dax’s cabaret with Justin Bond, Ana Matronic, Penny Arcade, Taylor Mac, and many more. Prior to coming to SFMOMA, he was the interim director of the Education Department at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he curated the museum’s public programs. Prior to the Whitney, he established public programming at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. He is currently an adjunct assistant professor at both the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute. He holds a PhD in literature from the University of Delaware.
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