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Celebrating The Performing Arts in January 2016

Details: Category: Other Festivals; Published on Monday, 04 January 2016 18:54; Written by Brad Balfour

A convergence of 12 major performing arts forums and public festivals titled January In NYC, runs the 5th through Jan. 19th.

This annual two-week long celebration of a dozen major performing arts industry forums and public festivals takes place this January 5-19 as performing arts presenters begin gathering in Manhattan for the 59th annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters global conference and marketplace (APAP|NYC 2016), January 15-19. This event draws 45,000 performing arts leaders, artists, professionals and avid fans of dance, theater, music and opera to New York City.

These events include:

conferences

workshops

networking

keynote speakers

festivals

concerts

programs for the public

More than 1,500 showcases and fully produced performance works featuring world-class performing artists offer a sampling of what’s new and on trend for industry professionals to select from and book in their communities in the coming year and beyond. They share their experience with audiences attending in New York City.

In date order, forums and festivals of January In NYC include the following. Locations not included below will be listed on each individual website.

Some events take place in multiple locations:

COIL 2016, Jan. 5-17, ps122.org/coil

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now, Jan. 6-17, prototypefestival.org

The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival (UTR), Jan. 6-17, undertheradarfestival.com

Chamber Music America (CMA), Jan. 7-10, chamber-music.org

American Realness,Jan. 7-17, americanrealness.com

New York 2016 ISPA Congress, Jan. 12-14, ispa.org

American Dance Platform, Jan. 12-17,Joyce.org

NYC Winter Jazzfest, Jan. 13-17, winterjazzfest.com

Wavelengths: APAP Global Music Pre-conference, Jan. 14-15, APAPNYC.org

Jazz Connect Conference, Jan. 14-15, jazz-connect.com

APAP|NYC 2016, Jan. 15-19, APAPNYC.org

globalFEST, Jan. 17, globalfest.org

Performance venues, conference hotels and meeting rooms in more than 350 locations throughout Manhattan and extending into Brooklyn will host presentations, workshops, performances and showcases.

January In NYC grew organically as live arts festivals and professional events were scheduled around the annual APAP conference, building on the concentration of artists and presenters already traveling to New York. In January 2014, nine such organizations formed a deliberate collaboration to more effectively and efficiently serve the performing arts community. A dozen groups now comprise the consortium.

Details are available at the January In NYC webpage and individual event websites.

The New Yorker Festival 2014

Details: Category: Other Festivals; Published on Thursday, 09 October 2014 00:02; Written by Jessica Beard

The New Yorker announced this week that there is still time to get tickets to the 15th annual New Yorker Festival that will be held Friday, October 10 - Sunday, October 12. Authors, actors, activists, playwrights, muscicians and commentators will all appear for interviews, panels and signings. The box office will sell the remaining tickets to all events throughout the festival weekend.

The slate of speakers represents The New Yorker's iconic cultural digest of literature, entertainment, politics and commentary focused through a monocle that doesn't perch too high on the brow to examine the mainstream, popular, or even zeitgeist-y. Notable speakers cover the spectrum from GIRLS creator Lena Dunham (Friday, 10 PM, Acura at SIR Stage37 at 508 West 37th Street) and Outliers author Malcom Gladwell (Saturday, 10 AM, MasterCard® Stage at SVA Theatre 1 on 333 West 23rd Street) to Beijing-based artist and political activist Ai Weiwei (Saturday, 10 AM, MasterCard Stage at SVA® Theatre 2).

Sting gives a premiere performance of his Broadway show The Last Ship on Saturday afternoon followed by a panel talk (2 PM, Neil Simon Theatre, West 52nd Street). Director and screenwriter David O. Russel appears at The Directors Guild Theatre (110 West 57th Street) at 7 PM on Saturday to discuss his films, the last three of which — American Hustle (2013), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), and The Fighter (2010) — have twenty-five Academy Award nominations between them.

Book signings will be held on Saturday and Sunday from 12 - 4 PM at Mcnally Jackson Books on 52 Prince Street.

Tickets can be purchased in two ways: at the MasterCard® Stage at SVA Theatre box office, or at the door to the events one hour before start time (exceptions here). Either way, ticket purchases are cash-only and on a first-come, first-served basis. The free New Yorker Festival app, available from iTunes and Google Play, will send mobile alerts if tickets to sold-out events become available.

For more information, go to: http://festival.newyorker.com/

The New Yorker Festival
October 10 - 12, 2014

Acura at SIR Stage37
508 West 37th Street
New York, NY 10018

Directors Guild Theatre
110 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010

MasterCard Stage at SVA Theatre 1
333 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

MasterCard Stage at SVA Theatre 2
New York, NY 10011

Sheen Center
18 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012

Charming Charleston—The Spoleto Festival…and so much more

Details: Category: Other Festivals; Published on Friday, 27 June 2014 20:40; Written by Kevin Filipski

Fort Sumter (photo: Kevin Filipski)

The charms of Charleston—stemming from its dual role as a laidback southern city and bustling college town—make it the ideal setting for the annual Spoleto Festival, which presents dozens of concert, theater, opera and dance performances over two weeks each May and June.

The 39^th edition of Spoleto Festival USA (May 22 to June 8) included operas by Leos Janacek, Michael Nyman and John Adams; theater from Ireland’s renowned Gate Theatre; various dance troupes; and concerts by Lucinda Williams, Bela Fleck, Michael Nyman and the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

Conversely, it was difficult to sit through Facing Goya, Michael Nyman’s unlistenably tedious opera that—via Victoria Hardie’s impossibly pretentious libretto—combined the eponymous 18^th century Spanish painter of genius, Nazi eugenics and modern science’s ability to play God, garbled together to no discernible point. I felt sorry for the talented quintet of singers, especially soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, who amazingly nailed some treacherously high notes; Nyman’s minimalist music, which can be quite diverting in the context of Peter Greenaway’s visually entrancing films, becomes unbearable when it pounds away unrelievedly for two-plus hours.

I sampled a recital from the Bank of America Chamber Music series, which is curated and introduced by the personable Geoff Nuttall. The hour-long afternoon program comprised Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio, George Crumb’s bizarre Voice of the Whale—which must be seen to be truly appreciated—and Ottorino Respighi’s lush setting of a Shelley poem, Il tramonto, beautifully sung by mezzo Charlotte Hellekant and sensitively played by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, with Nuttall playing the first violin part.

I also caught an hour-long Intermezzi concert, consisting of Richard Strauss’s melodrama Enoch Arden: actor Stephen Brennan spoke the text to Tennyson’s narrative poem, accompanied by pianist Lydia Brown. Just getting the chance to hear Respighi’s and Strauss’s musical rarities performed on the same day at two splendid settings—the Dock Street Theater (built in 1809) and the Grace Episcopal Church (completed in 1848)—made attending Spoleto worth it by itself.

The versatile Brennan was also onstage for the Gate Theatre’s thrilling dramatization of Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, which was as seductive as the eponymous title character. Shrewdly adapted by Joseph O’Connor and slickly staged by director Toby Frow, the drama kept its vice-like grip thanks to estimable acting across the board, led by Hannah Yelland as an Italian countess whose arrival at an Irish family’s estate won’t quash rumors that she was complicit in her husband’s suspicious death.

Checking out Charleston’s attractions was easy enough thanks to the layout of the eminently walkable city, whose narrow streets are lined by a ridiculous array of fine restaurants, high-end shopping, art galleries and historic buildings.

For a history buff like me, a visit to Fort Sumter was a must. Located three miles offshore in Charleston Harbor, the place where the first shots of the Civil War were fired can only be reached by boat, and Fort Sumter Tours provides several trips daily from two locations. I boarded at Liberty Square, right behind the Fort Sumter Visitor’s Center, and was treated to a leisurely ride and narrated tour of the area before reaching the fort, which—though only a ghost of its former formidable self—remains a treasured artifact of the inglorious War Between the States.

Named for James Shoolbred Gibbes, Sr., who bequeathed funds for its founding, the Gibbes Museum of Art (which opened in 1905, six years after Gibbes’ death) has a manageable and enticing collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs. Highlights are Italian sculptor Pietro Rossi’s stunningly detailed Veiled Lady, Childe Hassam’s voluptuous painting April (The Green Gown), and the gorgeous stained-glass rotunda dome, which looks like a gigantic Tiffany lamp hanging overhead.

Walking through Charleston’s streets is also an immersion in American history, with historic houses everywhere—several are available for tours—along with remnants of the original fortifications of the Colonial era walled city, which date back to the early 1700s. Walking through the old Unitarian Church cemetery—whose many gravesites, some centuries old, are grown over by mosses, trees and plants of all types—is a ghostly but do-not-miss detour; a walk through another cemetery yielded the grave of one of the signers of the U.S. Constitution, John Rutledge.

For art, culture and history (as well as scrumptious food), Charleston has few equals

International Film Fest Summit & Music Fest Con Converge on Austin

Details: Category: Other Festivals; Published on Monday, 02 December 2013 18:45; Written by Brad Balfour

As the world gets smaller and smaller, we tend to forget about the power of gathering like minds in one place. Here at Film Festival Traveler we embrace the idea of the festival as a communicative and all-encompassing experience. Whether it’s an art-house theater showing Pasolini films or an international music summit, festivals bring together great artistic minds and let the public join in the experience. But putting together a film fest or a huge multi-act concert is not the easiest task, so to help learn how to better manage these experiences are the International Film Festival Summit and the International Music Festival Conference. Both are happening December 8 – 10, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency Austin.

IMFCON includes panel discussions on how to better improve safety at concerts, keynotes by the President of Global Touring and Chairman of Global Music at Live Nation, Arthur Fogel and boxing manager Shelly Finkel, a at in-house ticketing vs. giant ticket companies, how to book talent, the difference between managing a festival versus a tour, and much more.

The IFFS investigates how to utilize digital distribution for film, how the acclaimed Toronto International Film Festival selects its programming, a conversation with acclaimed writer John Sayles and Associate Dean of Entrepreneurship and Special Initiatives for the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA, Barbara Boyle, and how to effectively utilize sponsors.

Both events are must-sees for anyone looking to break into the festival industry and provide valuable expertise.

To learn more, go to: http://www.filmfestivalsummit.com/ or http://www.imfcon.com/

The International Film Festival Summit & The International Music Festival Conference

December 8 – 10, 2013

Hyatt Regency Austin
208 Barton Springs Rd.
Austin, Texas 78704

Here are some pictures from IMFCON and IFFS 2012