August 29, 2005 6:10 a.m. CDT

To mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we present a performance by Aaron Neville of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" from the September 2, 2005 "Concert for Hurricane Relief."

Katrina reached New Orleans on August 29, 2005 at 6:10 a.m.

The Sopranos

[from the Humanities and Social Sciences Web site H-Net, with thanks to '2050' in Berkeley for the tip:]

"Title: The Sopranos: A Wake
Location: New York
Deadline: 2007-10-01
Description: David Lavery, convener, Paul Levinson and Douglas L. Howard co-conveners, solicit your proposals for an academic conference on The Sopranos to be held at Fordham University's Lincoln Center Campus in New York, May 23-25, 2008 (Memorial Day Weekend).
Contact: sopranos.wake_at_gmail.com.
URL: davidlavery.net/Sopranos_Wake/"

more

[image first return from a google image search for "The Sopranos"]

Students Bring Your Instruments!

Sunday, August 26
12:30-3:30

Tipitina's Uptown
501 Napoleon Ave
New Orleans, LA
"Tipitina's Foundation presents
Music Workshop Series

Featuring Feufollet*

Workshop - FREE!
All Ages

Students bring your instruments! Open to the public. No smoking/drinking.

"Resurrecting a program that was popular in the early '90s, the Tipitina's Foundation proudly announces the Sunday Music Workshop Series, the brainchild of Stanton Moore and Johnny and Deborah Vidacovich. These free workshops take place every Sunday from 12:30-3:30 at Tipitina's Uptown, where students have the opportunity to play with and learn from the best musicians in the city. As many of the city's various music programs have been put on hold since the storm, these workshops are serving a vital need in the rebuilding process: passing on the musical traditions to a younger generation. Featured artists so far have included Stanton Moore, Johnny Vidacovich, Kirk Joseph, and Theresa Anderson. The on-stage workshops are only for students, who are encouraged to bring their insruments, but all members of the public are welcome to attend."

* Common interests in French language, music, and Louisiana heritage brought together the young members of La Bande "Feufollet". The group performs original and traditional songs in the French language including twin fiddle pieces from the 1800's and early 1900's in addition to traditional accordion pieces. Audiences enjoy the performances of "Feufollet" for their fine musicianship along with the energy and spirit that the band portrays."

Calendar

[photograph of Feufollet from Tipitina's Web site.]

Celebrity Sightings, Widgets in DC – and Iowa!

[With thanks to ace 'Data Stream' scout MFC in Saugus, below is a 'celebritology widget' from the Washington Post. For Mac users familiar with the 'F12' function of their keyboards, widgets are a daily convenience, and another important sign of the evolving state of the Internet to a post browser window environment.]

Click here to sample less trivial 'WaPo' widgets.

[And for what the Iowa Arts Council refers to as a "daily Iowa arts fix," may I invite you to visit "The Daily Palette and consider downloading its widget.

In the spirit of full disclosure: note that the editor of The Data Stream also directs The Daily Palette at The University of Iowa.]

Aurora Picture Show
Houston Center for Photography

SPIN 3 Txt Me L8r
Friday August 24, 2007, 8:00 PM - 11:00 PM

This summer's SPIN party, entitled Txt Me L8r, will be like no other! Have a cell phone with a camera and want to participate? Bring it to the party on August 24 at HCP!

Co-curated by Aurora Picture Show and HCP, Txt Me L8r explores the potential for distributed creativity through the use of cell phone technology. Artists and the general public are invited to sign-up to receive text messages with specific photography assignments sent throughout the course of the exhibition. Participants will use their camera phones to complete the assignment and upload their results to a photosharing site which will be video projected as slideshows in HCP's galleries. Combining crowdsourcing with networked communication, Txt Me L8r invites artists and the general public alike to adapt new technologies for spontaneous, geographically-dispersed collaboration. Exhibition continues through August 26.

more

[image: screen grab from Aurora Web site.]

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
De Young Museum
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco, California

Hiroshi Sugimoto
July 7, 2007 — September 23, 2007

"The extraordinary 30-year career of Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948) is celebrated in this retrospective of more than 100 luminous photographs, made from 1976 to the present. This presentation, in an installation designed by Sugimoto, constitutes the first major survey of Sugimoto’s oeuvre.

One of Japan’s most important contemporary artists, Sugimoto is known for his ongoing multiple series of hauntingly beautiful black-and-white photographs exploring the themes of time, memory, dreams, and natural histories. Working with a large-format camera, he produces glowing images, ranging from the richly detailed to the starkly minimal, which are often suffused with expanses of light and space."

more

[Image from FAMSF Web site. Caption: Hiroshi Sugimoto, "Union City Drive-In, Union City," 1993. Gelatin silver print. Edition 21/25. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist]

The King at 30

[On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Rock 'n Roll icon Elvis Presley, Elvis Week comes to a thundering climax with the finale of:]
The Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest
August 17 7:00 PM. (Doors open at 6 p.m.)
The Cannon Center for the Performing Arts
Memphis Cook Convention Center
Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

"The finale of the first-ever official Elvis tribute artist contest. Ten finalists from qualifying rounds earlier in the week compete for the title of Elvis Tribute Artist of the Year. Attendees at the show will see the best Elvis Tribute Artists from around the world perform on stage in a first-class contest. Elvis Tribute Artists will receive their chance to showcase their talents and why they should be named Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist of 2007."

Meet the contestants

[photo from contest Web Site of August 9, 2007 Majorstuen, Fredrikstad, Norway Last Man Standing Ultimate Elvis Tribute Contest winner Kjell Bjornestad, Lyngdal, Norway. More: "Kjell was born in 1968 in Vanse, Norway, and started his ETA* career when he was 19 years old and in the army. Kjell spent a lot of years working and perfecting his performance, working in small clubs and venues in Norway and across Europe. He hopes his love of Elvis shines through in ever performance he does."

*ETA = Elvis Tribute Artist]

Little Jewel Cinema

Waygood Gallery
31 High Bridge
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1EW
England

Little Jewel Cinema Moldovite Season
18 august - 9 november 2007


Preview Saturday 18 august 4.30 - 8pm

"Look through the peepholes to see a short film every day
Daily (except Sundays) 10am - 10pm
Films change on fortnightly Saturdays
FREE TO PASSERS-BY"

[photo from Waygood Web site.]

Thriller

[Submitted for your viewing, an astoundingly complex artifact from the astoundingly complex and fascinating time in which we are living. While I am rarely tempted to avert my eyes while observing culture, this one tested my mettle. I do note that at least 4,700,000 viewers worldwide preceded me. My thanks to ETN in New York for the tip.

For context is a link to the 1983 original, written by John Landis and Michael Jackson, directed by John Landis.

While searching for some additional context, I turned up another Hollywood staging of this dance number, this time in the 2004 romantic comedy 13 Going on 30 featuring Alias' Jennifer Garner portraying a young teen caught in the body of a grown-up.

And as it turns out, this is something of a genre. For your consideration, a "Wedding Thriller."

YouTube Caption: "1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser."

Note that the action picks up 2:10 of the video.

And as always, comments welcome.]

New Orleans Parallax

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
Buffalo, New York

Sat., August 25, 8 p.m.
New Orleans Parallax

"Co-curated by Courtney Egan (New Orleans) and Sullivan Sheehan (Buffalo), this program of films and videos—organized with an awareness of the city's split psyche of before and after—supports the personal visions of media makers living with the daily reality of a city struggling to survive."

[image from Hallwalls Web site]

Burning Man Warm-up

Reality Sandwich & Souldish presents

Burning Briefs: Tales of The Burning Man

Friday, August 10
8:30pm - doors; 9:00p - performance
Jivamukti Yoga School
841 Broadway, 2nd floor (btw 13th & 14th St)
New York, New York
212-353-0214 ext. 0
$10 advance, $15 Door


Five storytellers will lay bare what happens when they venture into the desert to live and revel in America's most celebrated Mecca for "radical free expression," the Burning Man Festival. Come hear mythic tales of late-night vision-quests, impossible synchronicities, playa melt-downs, art car chases, shade structure blow-outs, life-altering epiphanies, and all the magic and mischief that happens when 30,000-plus people converge in one place to manifest their dreams.

Featuring:
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid: Artist, Writer, and Musician. Albums include "Dubtometry" and "Songs of a Dead Dreamer," Author of "Rhythm Science." His artwork is in The Venice Biennial 2007

Daniel Pinchbeck: Editorial Director of Reality Sandwich, Author of "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" & "Breaking Open the Head: Psychedelics and Contemporary Shamanism"

Catherine Burns: Artistic Director of the Moth, Storyteller at The Aspen Comedy Festival, Central Park SummerStage, and The Players Club, Spearheaded 2004-2006 NYC Burning Man Fire Conclave.

Sandhi Ferreira: Jivamukti Yoga Teacher, Fire Hoop Performer, Hoop Yoga Instructor and Creator, Aerial Dancer
Bill Kennedy: Grand Space Events Coordinator, Reality Sandwich Networking Liaison, Intrepid Cultural Maven, Writer, Actor, Bartender

Martin Dockery: Storyteller for Hearsay, Four-time Finalist in The Moth's Grandslam Storytelling Championship, Author/Performer of one-man show Wanderlust

Hosted by Jonathan Phillips: Managing Editor of Reality Sandwich, Executive Editor of Souldish.com, Founder of The NYC Gnostics

[image from George Hart Web Site]

The Tipitina's Foundation

[The Tipitina's Foundation, which we've long been proud to highlight–see right hand column, is the focus of an in depth article on New Orleans' musicians in today's New York Times. Reprinted in its entirety below.]

August 5, 2007
The Katrina Effect, Measured in Gigs
By Andrew Park

New Orleans

ON a recent sultry afternoon here, Tipitina’s — arguably the most famous musical haunt in a city famous for its music — is eerily quiet. This ramshackle, two-story yellow joint at the corner of Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas won’t start jumping until after dark, when Ivan Neville and his band, Dumpstaphunk, take center stage.

But upstairs, past balconies smelling of stale beer and cigarettes, past walls plastered with yellowed concert posters, musicians are working. Some edit concert fliers, tweak Web sites or research overseas jazz festivals; others get legal advice or mix audio and video; others simply chatter about who has found gigs and who is still struggling.

Since late 2005, just a few months after Hurricane Katrina tore through this city, more than 1,000 New Orleans musicians have become members of Tipitina’s three cooperative music offices. “I go in sometimes and all I’m doing is checking my e-mails,” says Margie Perez, an effervescent blues singer.

For Ms. Perez and others trying to rebuild fragile livelihoods as artists, grass-roots efforts like the co-ops have been a boon, helping them to replace lost or damaged instruments and sound equipment, arranging and subsidizing gigs and providing transportation, health care and housing. The Tipitina’s Foundation, the club’s charitable arm, has distributed about $1.5 million in aid; in all, Tipitina’s and other nonprofit groups have marshaled tens of millions of dollars in relief from around the world to help bolster the music business here.

But it remains to be seen how long a loose-knit band of charities can stand in for coordinated economic development in one of New Orleans’s most important business sectors. Although New Orleans is one of the country’s most culturally distinct cities, a large-scale recording industry never took root here, even before Katrina. Yet the informal music sector, the kind visitors find in clubs and bars, and large-scale musical events like Jazz Fest, is a mainstay of the city’s tourism business.

In fact, local authorities say, music and cuisine are the twin pillars of the tourism industry here; the leisure and hospitality businesses account for almost 63,000 jobs in the city and for about 35 percent of the sales taxes. Both of those figures are larger than those of any other business sector, including the energy industry.

Still, nearly two years after Katrina, there are fewer restaurants and bars offering live music, and the ones that do are paying less, musicians say. As the reality of the slow recovery has set in, fewer locals feel that they can afford cover charges or even tips, so clubs that used to have live music four or five nights a week have cut back to two or three.

Conventions, typically a strong source of music gigs, are running at 70 percent of 2004 levels, but leisure travel remains far below pre-Katrina levels, according to the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. Over all, visitors generated $2.9 billion in spending in 2006, down from $4.9 billion in 2004, according to the bureau. About 3.7 million people visited the city in 2006, compared with more than 10 million in 2004.

Compounding the music scene’s slow revival is the challenge of tracking musicians — who are typically paid in cash and often hold down other jobs — in order to get them financial support. Habitat for Humanity, which is building what it describes as a “musicians’ village” in the Ninth Ward, initially struggled to find creditworthy applicants — just one instance of relief for artists failing to meet its mark.

“It’s kind of like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle,” says Roland von Kurnatowski, who owns Tipitina’s with his wife, Mary. “New Orleans musicians are unique and if you try to mess with what makes them unique too much, it’s not a good thing. What they need is revenue opportunities.”

Economic development leaders for the city and the state of Louisiana praise the efforts of Tipitina’s at a time when governmental resources are strained. “With the demise of the venues and the lack of tourism, we’ve got to find a way to get people back to work,” says Lynn Ourso, executive director of the Louisiana Music Commission. “They’re putting these musicians to work on computers, showing how they can globally transmit and distribute — they’re teaching job skills.”

MR. KURNATOWSKI, 56, is an unlikely anchor of the local music business. A New Orleans native and Tulane graduate, he says he had never heard of Tipitina’s until he was asked to invest in the club in 1995. By then it was a beloved venue known for rollicking performances by locals like Dr. John and the Meters as well as touring acts like James Brown and Widespread Panic, but it had a spotty financial history. It was started by friends of the influential New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair as a place for him to play late in his career, but struggled under novice management and closed for a year in the mid-1980s.

Mr. Kurnatowski, a real estate investor who owns about 35 apartment complexes in the Gulf Coast region, had begun marketing storage units in a converted hotel as rehearsal space and thought that having a connection with Tipitina’s might lure musicians into renting. But the deteriorating club, facing new competition from the House of Blues, needed a new sound system and air-conditioning system. Mr. Kurnatowski agreed to make an equity investment; within a year he bought it outright for about $500,000.

He soon realized that he had neither the expertise nor the time to run Tipitina’s properly — especially because he was a morning person. “It’s a different routine,” he says. “It’s working nights, and it just wasn’t very practical.”

Intrigued by the club’s history and its intense following, he couldn’t bring himself to sell it. He also says that his other real estate investments gave him enough financial breathing room to think creatively about what to do with Tipitina’s. So, in 1997, he and his wife formed the Tipitina’s Foundation, which would begin to use the club, still for-profit, to serve the nonprofit mission of helping musicians. The move provided a rationale for holding on to Tipitina’s, even if it only broke even, and marked a return to the club’s early purpose of supporting the local music scene.

Its projects included an internship program for children wanting to get into the music business and a fund-raiser to buy instruments for local school bands. The first of its co-ops, a collaboration between the foundation and the city, opened in 2003. (Branches in Shreveport and Alexandria, La., opened later.)

The foundation could have easily fallen victim to Katrina’s devastation. Many of the city’s cultural organizations suffered extensive damage to facilities and had to cut their payrolls. Tipitina’s suffered only limited wind damage, and the foundation’s services were in demand. Many musicians lived in devastated neighborhoods like Gentilly and the Ninth Ward; those in other parts of town still lost instruments, amplifiers and CD collections to the flooding. Bands were scattered around the country, and some meager savings accounts were obliterated.

After Katrina struck in August 2005, Mr. Kurnatowski and the executive director, Bill Taylor, decided to try to reconstitute the foundation’s work. By late October, they had reopened the club and the co-op, both of which quickly became hubs of activity for musicians returning to town. A legal clinic that provided musicians with free help with contracts, copyright issues and licensing agreements became a popular service.

“Even if they lost everything, they still had their intellectual property,” says Ashlye M. Keaton, a lawyer who runs the clinic. “You could see the look in people’s eyes: ‘This is all I have, this is my career, and I’m going to do everything I can to protect it.’ ”

For his part, Mr. Kurnatowski pledged to plow all profits from Tipitina’s, which scaled back its staff and eliminated guaranteed payouts to musicians, into the foundation. The club has cut its number of shows to four nights a week from six, but has seen total attendance and bar sales stay steady. Even so, Mr. Kurnatowski says, Tipitina’s operates on razor-thin margins: he says the club earned about $40,000 last year on revenue of about $500,000.

Other organizations also tried to put some financial muscle behind the local music business. The New Orleans Musicians Clinic paid musicians to play at the airport and offered $100 guarantees to musicians who could find gigs for themselves elsewhere. The Jazz Foundation of America also subsidized performances. The New Orleans Musician’s Relief Fund, a charity started by the former dB’s bassist Jeff Beninato, offered a temporary apartment to musicians. Renew Our Music, another relief fund, gave financial grants to musicians, while funds from Gibson Guitar and MusiCares, a charitable organization affiliated with the Recording Academy, helped buy scores of new instruments.

For artists dependent on support, such backing was invaluable.

Margie Perez, a former travel agent, had arrived in New Orleans just eight months before the storm. She returned to town in January 2006 to discover that her apartment in the Broadmoor neighborhood had been badly flooded. Determined to stay, she found other housing — for twice what she paid pre-Katrina — went to work cleaning damaged houses and started visiting the Tipitina’s co-op. She picked up work in different bands and this last spring was invited to sing with the pianist and producer Allen Toussaint at Jazz Fest.

Ms. Perez, 42, also has a part-time job at a clothing boutique and is training to be a tour guide; the music business here is still too anemic for her to depend on it for her livelihood. “You just get into as many projects as you can,” Ms. Perez says. “I’m in, like, five different bands and that’s kind of the case with a lot of musicians in town.”

Indeed, even as crowds come back, littering Bourbon Street with beer cans and daiquiri cups, musicians say they’re not seeing their incomes rebound. Wil Kennedy, a guitarist and singer who plays for passers-by in Jackson Square, says the situation is still “as bad as it was after 9/11,” with his tips down as much as 75 percent from the peak period before 9/11. In the clubs, guarantees of a minimum payout are now less common; many clubs offer musicians just the take at the door or a percentage of drink sales.

“They’ve kind of gotten used to getting the music cheap when people were so desperate they’d play for a sandwich and a $20 bill,” says Kim Foreman, secretary and treasurer of a local branch of the American Federation of Musicians, which has lost about 120 of its 800 dues-paying members. Poverty keeps many musicians living with substandard housing and health care, Mr. Foreman says.

Katrina left as many as half of the city’s roughly 5,000 working musicians marooned elsewhere, says Jordan Hirsch, executive director of Sweet Home New Orleans, an organization that provides financial support to musicians.

“A lot of people in Texas and Georgia and around the country want to be back, feel that their best economic opportunities are here, but just can’t get from A to B,” Mr. Hirsch says.

Others are scared off by the rampant crime and lack of basic services here, despite an economic need to be back in the Big Easy’s cultural stew. “Right now, New Orleans is not fit for my family,” says the Hot 8 Brass Band trombonist Jerome Jones, who has relocated to Houston with his wife and four of his five children. Mr. Jones, whose bandmate Dinerral Shavers was murdered here last December, says he plans to commute to New Orleans for gigs and band business.

IT’S an article of faith among New Orleanians that the music scene is an indelible part of the city’s appeal. But the city and state historically haven’t recognized the role that musicians and other creative workers play in driving tourism and improving the quality of life, advocates say. As a result, they say, the city and state have underinvested in the cultural sector of the economy.

“People don’t think of artists as a category of workers,” says Maria-Rosario Jackson, director of the Urban Institute’s Culture, Creativity, and Communities Program, which found that the city’s infrastructure for “cultural vitality” even before Katrina rated in the bottom half of the country’s metropolitan areas.

Figuring how “to translate that authenticity to economic development has been the challenge for all these years,” says Scott Aiges, who headed the city’s music office before Katrina and is now director of marketing and communications for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, which owns Jazz Fest.

Just weeks before the storm, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu unveiled a new strategy for developing what was described as the “cultural economy.” Since then, the state has pushed through tax breaks for arts districts, musical and theatrical productions and sound recordings and made sure that events like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, which provide work for many musicians, survived.

But a separate individual tax break for artistic earnings failed in the State Legislature because of concerns that it wasn’t fair to other working people, and other large-scale attempts have languished because of a lack of financing. In May 2006, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which was formed by Mayor C. Ray Nagin, recommended plowing $648 million into the cultural sector to create jobs, rebuild damaged facilities and open a national jazz center. But those ideas were shelved with the rest of the commission’s work, and subsequent, scaled-back proposals still await financing.

New Orleans “needs some anchors around which the economy can begin to rebuild, and arts and culture are an obvious one,” says Holly Sidford, a principal at AEA Consulting in New York, which developed the recommendations for the commission’s cultural subcommittee at the request of the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. “But without investment, really deliberate and coherent investment, that won’t happen.”

Ernest Collins, the city’s executive director for arts and entertainment, says of the commission’s recommendations, which Mr. Nagin endorsed: “That was a very large price tag. And needless to say, we don’t have that money.”

Leaders of nonprofit groups and organizations like Tipitina’s say they are resigned to filling the void left by the public and private sectors as long as they can. Mr. Aiges, whose group owns Jazz Fest, is using receipts from the event to add new festivals, build an Internet-based system that will allow musicians to connect with talent coordinators and potential licensees, and put on a networking event for musicians during next year’s festival. Sweet Home New Orleans is compiling the first database of local musicians, which should help it to distribute relief faster and more effectively, and hopes to get part-time work for them in other businesses.

Next month, the Tipitina’s Foundation will release a new CD honoring Fats Domino, with proceeds from it earmarked for resurrecting his music publishing company and opening a co-op near the singer’s home in the Lower Ninth Ward.

But musicians say they wonder if New Orleans will ever nurture their careers the way it once did. The Hot 8 Brass Band, which was featured prominently in Spike Lee’s documentary film “When the Levees Broke,” is concentrating on touring elsewhere in the United States and abroad — even if that might mean missing Mardi Gras — so it can play for outsiders. Outsiders, say band members, seem to value them more than their hometown.

“They make you feel how valuable you are to New Orleans,” says Raymond Williams, a trumpeter for the band. “I feel like maybe the city should treat musicians in the same way.”

[image, an 1878 plan of New Orleans, from the Maps from the Library of Congress and the University of Alabama Web site.]

La danse de la vie

[As part of our continuing celebration of southern Louisiana culture, follow-up to an earlier post showcasing the brilliant Cajun musician and cultural animator Michael Doucet of Beausoleil: La Danse de la Vie with Sharon Shannon, Aly Bain, Jerry Douglas, Russ Barenberg, Tommy Hayes,Danny Thompson and Mr. Doucet. Credit for the information goes to YouTube contributor 'steamhauled68.']

Shark Tale

[follow-up to an earlier post on the 'Stream,' from the July 25, 2007 edition of artkrush]

Cohen Lends Met Hirst Shark

Hedge-fund manager and art collector Steven A. Cohen has agreed to loan Damien Hirst's 1991 work, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a period of three years. One of the most well-known works in contemporary art, the sculpture, purchased by Cohen in 2005 for $8 million, features a 13-foot tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde. The shark in the tank is not the original, which had started to deteriorate. "It should be especially revealing and stimulating to confront this work in the context of the entire history of art,'' Metropolitan director Philippe de Montebello said. In related news, Hirst purportedly sold $265 million worth of art from his recent exhibition at London's White Cube.

more: from Bloomberg.com, July 13, 2007:

Cohen Lends Hirst's $8 Million Shark to Metropolitan Museum article by Martin Gayford

[photograph of installation view of The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, from Bloomberg.com Web site]

Night Vision

MOCA
250 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012

August 4
6 pm - 11 pm

Night Vision: MOCA After Dark

[image from a google image search for 'night vision;' from Profound Effects Web site.]