|
In this issue:
Seun Kuti, Fela's Son,
Brings Afrobeat to Madison
Seun Kuti and Egypt 80
Wednesday, June 27, 8:30pm
Tickets: $21 in advance, $24 at the door,
UW-Madison students: $10
Go to box office
No need to wait till
September to dance to some hot African music. Here's something you don't want
to miss: Nigerian Seun Kuti and the 18 musicians of his famed father Fela
Kuti's band, Egypt 80, bring Afrobeat to the theater in the opening show of
their United States tour on Wednesday, June 27, at 8:30 pm.
Seun Kuti, an accomplished saxophonist and son of
Africa's biggest star in the 1970's and 80's, has
been performing with the band since he was nine years old. The
group boasts a jazzy horn section, rhythmic drums, amazing dancers, and
powerfully moving lyrics. The music is irresistible--perfect for a warm June
night.
Be prepared to get up
and dance! This performance will knock you out of your seats! The show is a
kick-off event to the 2007 World Music Festival. Buy tickets here.
back to top
Above: Andrew Bird
Rah's Choices for 2007-2008
In the next few
months, various members of the Theater staff will highlight their three picks
of next season. Our extern, Sarah Smogoleski, shares the following:
Edgar Meyer &
Mike Marshall
Edgar Meyer is a remarkable bassist and prolific composer
who has toured with Bela Fleck among
others. This time around he joins forces with Mike Marshall, without a question
one of the best mandolinists of our time (and the co-founder of the Mandolin
Symposium), to kick off the 2007-2008 concert series on October 10 at 8 pm. I'll be there and so should you.
Andrew Bird
Why is Andrew Bird so irresistible? Maybe it's his voice.
Maybe it's his lyrics. Maybe it's just the sheer genius of his work. Whatever
it is, you do not want to miss his performance on September 20 at 8 pm. Did I
mention he is tall, dark, and handsome? You didn't hear that from me.
Roy Haynes
Louis Armstrong. John Coltrane. Dizzy Gillespie. Roy Haynes
has performed with some of the greatest artists in jazz. The 81 year-old
drummer takes the stage on June 7th as the 2008 Isthmus Jazz
Festival headliner. Don't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to see one
of jazz's living legends!
back to top
Report: Student Participation during
2006-2007 Season
We value students at the theater for so
many reasons. Their curiosity,
enthusiasm, and hard work bring vibrancy to everything that we do. And we're
making a connection to last for a lifetime. Often our current audience members
and donors tell us that they first came to the theater as students, and they
share their appreciation for how the theater introduced them to new art forms
and artists.
During the 2006-2007 Season,
UW-Madison students made up 26% of our total audiences for Season events:
UW-Madison Students as Percentage of Total Audience of 06-07 Season:
- Concert Series (8 events) - Students: 867, Total
Attendance: 5694, Students as % of total: 15%
- World Stage Series (4 events) - Students: 787,
Total Attendance: 2600, Students as % of total: 30%
- Special Events/Dance (4 events) - Students: 1505,
Total Attendance: 3321, Students as % of total: 45%
- Isthmus Jazz Series (3 events) - Students: 658,
Total Attendance: 2914, Students as % of total: 23%
- Keyboard Conversations (4 events) - Students: 400,
Total Attendance: 1443, Students as % of total: 28%
We served many additional students through free programs such as the
Madison World Music Festival and Isthmus Jazz Festival.
Students were visible not only in our audiences, but behind the scenes
as well, serving in a number of essential roles:
- Wisconsin
Union Directorate Theater Committee: These
students' active involvement in the Season kept a visible student presence in
the Theater and helped us maintain relevance to the campus.
- Interns: Our 2006-2007 interns included Lauren Zink, "marketing
maven" and creator of the theater's Marquee Blog; Sarah Christ, marketing
intern, and Sarah Smogoleski, an Arts Management student at UW-Stevens Point
who spent the spring working with many aspects of theater administration.
- Student
Employees: The theater employed undergraduate
students as stage hands, technicians, ushers, door staff, and box office staff.
We also had a graduate student on staff: Education and Outreach Coordinator
Derek Kwan, who recently finished his MBA through the Bolz Center for Arts Administration and has taken a job as the
Director of the Interlochen Arts Festival & Presentations.
Donors to the Theater Endowment Fund help us keep students at
the center of all we do.
Heather Good
back to top
Photo courtesy of Paula A. White
Madisalsaing Into the
Night
The air was filled
with the sounds of music from Cuba, Puerto Rico
and the Dominican Republic. The Terrace was covered with hundreds of
people dancing the salsa and every Terrace chair was filled. This was the scene
as Madisalsa took the stage on the night of Saturday, June 9, to perform during
the 2007 Isthmus Jazz Fest.
Mario D. Mendoza, the band's
lead vocalist, described the festival by saying, "It's the energy here; it's one
of my favorite places to play, anywhere." He added that, "High school kids
ditched their prom to come here!"
Madisalsa was just one
of many great performances during the Isthmus Jazz Fest. Madeleine Peyroux,
Roscoe Mitchell, Tim Whalen and Hanah Jon Taylor, as well as many local groups,
were among the artists who performed. Mendoza said that the festival "gives us a chance to
take notice of both local artists and the talent that comes here from all over
the world."
When asked how they
felt about their music's ability to make every man and woman believe they are
professional salsa dancers, the band members simply chuckled, adding that it
was their music's goal.
Sarah Crist
back to top
Above: Piffaro
Summer Heats Up with Music from the Low Countries
Come in from the heat and enjoy some fascinating melodies,
motets, and polyphony of Dutch composers of the 15th and 16th
centuries as the Madison Early Music Festival celebrates its 8th
season with music from the Low Countries. The Festival
Concert Series consists of seven concerts and features guests artists-in-residence
Fortune's Wheel, The King's Noyse, Piffaro, and recorder virtuoso Marion
Verbruggen. Enjoy the grand finale All-Festival Concert in which faculty, guest
artists, and participants perform large scale works together. Click
here to
read more about the festival and lineup. For tickets,
click here.
|
|
Fela Kuti's Exceptional Life
and Music Presented in
Free
Documentary Screening
Seun Kuti will rock the theater on Wednesday, June 27, at 8:30pm. But you're
also invited to attend a
special free presentation of Fela Kuti:
Music is the Weapon, a film about the life of his father, Fela Kuti, on
June 19 at dusk on the Terrace.
This 1982 documentary about the legendary Fela shows some of
his celebrated performances and discusses his life, politics and art. Fela was
an outspoken human rights activist who fought against the monstrous treatment
of the Nigerian people by the country's military dictatorship through his
inventive and powerful music as well as his party, Movement of the People. He
continued to perform and campaign despite imprisonment, beatings and torture.
The film also lets us into Fela's private life as we get to see several of his
27 wives (yes, that's no typo!) and glimpse into life in his Kala Kuti commune.
Fela died of AIDS in 1997 but his son, Seun, continues in
the spirit of his father, playing Afrobeat with Fela's famed band, Egypt
80. Buy tickets here.
The Stuff of Legends: Putting the Season
Together
How does a season come together, you ask.
Ralph Russo, our Cultural Arts and Theater Director, the
student members of the Theater Committee and other staff members such as yours
truly are always gathering information--an easy task since every major and
not-so-major artist seems to want to play here and our mail boxes are
constantly full with solicitations from all over the world. Each of the
committee members has their own responsibility (classical, world, dance etc.)
and we pass to them information about relevant artists.
In fall, after the national conference of Arts Presenters
(and the start of the school year), Ralph and the students start refining and
identifying priorities and gathering information regarding fees and
availability. That's when the puzzle starts taking shape: who's available when,
can we afford them, what's the male-to-female ratio, what instruments do they
play, what countries do they represent, do we have a good cultural diversity
and, let's not forget, would a good number of them be of interest to students?
It is, says Ralph, "a fine balance of satisfying our long-time customers and
developing new audiences."
This process is done in consultation with other presenters
who've had the artists in their venues or are thinking of inviting them, arts
reporters, radio programmers, music, theater and dance faculty, various aficionados
and, of course, audience surveys.
After checking dates with other venues in town, we set dates
for the season. And the rest, as you know, is the stuff of legends.
Esty Dinur
back to top
Theater Endowment Fund
During the 2007-2008 Season, patrons have the opportunity to
donate to the Theater Endowment Fund on the ticket order form. The Theater
Endowment impacts both current and future programming at the theater by
supporting two vital functions:
Keeping ticket prices
affordable to UW-Madison students. By making tickets available to students
for $10 or less, we encourage them to take advantage of our outstanding
performing arts programs and help them develop interests that can last a lifetime.
The student ticket discount program supports us in maintaining healthy student
attendance at Season events.
Maintaining the high
quality of our programs. Ticket income covers 70% of the theater's direct
programming expenses. The Theater Endowment, along with grant support and
corporate sponsorship, helps underwrite the 30% of programming expense that is
not covered by ticket revenue. This cushion of support allows us stay focused
on bringing the highest quality programs to our audiences.
If you appreciate our unique vibe and you want to share it
with the next generation of arts enthusiasts, you can support our efforts by
making a contribution to the Theater Endowment Fund. It's easy to do simply by
filling in the appropriate box on the Season ticket order
form.
back to top
Meet our staff: Courtney Byelich
We are delighted to
welcome Courtney as our new student Theater Director. A fun person, she served
last year on the Theater Committee as the Concert Series Associate Director.
What got you interested in WUD
Theater Committee?
To be quite honest, cookies. Freshman year, my good friend Shelly (the incoming
Concert Series Associate Director) and I were looking through our piles of
kickoff meeting announcements that we had obtained from the Student Organization
Fair. We both had done a fair share of theater things in high school, both back-
and on-stage, so we were interested in continuing to be around theaters in
college. We saw that WUD Theater Committee offered a kickoff meeting on the
Union Theater Stage and provided cookies and milk... we were sold!
What has been your most memorable experience at the Theater?
This past fall, the Union Theater hosted 'Acoustic Africa' as part of the
World Stage Series. It was on a rather dreary Sunday night...and I knew I had a
lot to do in the coming week. Nonetheless I was at the show, and helping with
our coming events table. Most of the people coming into the theater sort of
looked like I felt, tired and dreading the week ahead. As the show began, you
could see that sense of foreboding lift off of the people in the audience.
Before long, everyone was up and dancing and having a great time, me included!
As people left the theater that night, they were smiling, laughing and looked
reinvigorated for the coming week. That experience really showed me what the
performing arts are about... not only giving people an escape from their
everyday lives, but also providing them with a sense of renewal, and a new
perspective with which to look at the world.
Why should people join the committee?
People should join the committee because, first and foremost, we're an awesome
group, which gets to work with awesome people at the theater....and we have a
darned good time doing it! As a committee member, I've had the opportunity not
only to meet various artists and attend all sorts of performances (for free!),
but also to dress up in a gorilla suit, participate in a supersized Union
Theater themed cake walk, dress in 80's theme, and toss t-shirts into a massive
crowd at the Jazz fest. Crazy things aside, the Theater Committee
provides an incredible opportunity to learn about, and experience first hand
all kinds of music, to learn about and participate in promoting and
marketing our shows, and an excellent opportunity to get involved on campus in
a significant way that has impact not only on campus, but throughout the entire
Madison community.
Newsletter staff:
Editor: Esty Dinur
Layout Designer: Claire Weissenfluh
back to top
|
