OZ ARTS NASHVILLE, THE CITY’S FIRST CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER, ANNOUNCES 2015-16 SEASON

NASHVILLE, TENN. – June 2015 – Warehouse Venue Will Bring The Modern School of Film, Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion, SITI Company & Bang on a Can All-Stars, Taylor Mac, Mike Daisey, The Moth, Kaki King and Kid Koala to Nashville, and Will Present the City’s Own New Dialect

Local Spotlight Series, TNT, Will Feature Stephanie Pruitt, Bryce McCloud, Tony Youngblood and More

(Nashville, TN, June 1, 2015) OZ Arts Nashville, the city’s pioneering contemporary arts center, is pleased to announce its 2015-16 season, which will bring to the warehouse venue an array of celebrated artists from around the world and the city, and will feature dance, storytelling, film, genre-spanning music, visual art and inter-disciplinary works.

To kick off the season, OZ Arts is partnering with the New York City-based The Modern School of Film and its founder, Robert Milazzo, to present Nashville-focused evenings of screenings and discussions (September 10-12), for which OZ Arts and MSF have invited guest artists to select films that inspire them and their work. These in-depth, stimulating screenings and conversations aim to explore a deeper insight into both filmmaking craft and the human conditions from which it arises, by going right to the source: the very artists whose work and legacy inform film, music and culture as we know it.

Over the course of the season, OZ Arts will present several young, groundbreaking artists who are pushing the boundaries of their art forms, including choreographer and 2013 MacArthur Fellow Kyle Abraham, whose company Abraham.In.Motion will perform When the Wolves Came In, on October 8 & 9. The trio of works explore the legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation and the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa, draws inspiration from jazz legend Max Roach’s iconic 1960 protest album We Insist: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, and features music by Nico Muhly and a reimagining of Freedom Now Suite by GRAMMY^® award-winning jazz musician Robert Glasper.

Director Anne Bogart and the iconic SITI Company, along with the electric (and electrifying) chamber ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars, give 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe’s art balled Steel Hammer a thrilling dramatic incarnation in a stage work of the same name, November 20 & 21. Wolfe‘s piece is culled from the many iterations of the century-old John Henry folk hero, and her music incorporates elements of minimalism, Appalachian folk music and rock. Intersecting the music is text commissioned from four remarkable American playwrights: Kia Corthron, Will Power, Carl Hancock Rux and Regina Taylor.

On January 22 & 23, 2016, the virtuosic, boldly imaginative young guitarist and composer Kaki King will perform The Neck is a Bridge to the Body, a moving new multi-media performance that uses projection mapping to present the guitar as an ontological tabula rasa in a creation myth unlike any other.

On February 19 & 20, 2016, OZ Arts will present the Nashville debut of playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, cabaret performer, performance artist, director and producer Taylor Mac. Mac will premiere a three-hour performance covering three decades—1806-1836—that OZ Arts commissioned in part for Mac’s remarkably ambitious project A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: a unique mash-up of music, history, performance and art that will reach its zenith in Fall 2016 in a 24-hour concert spectacle covering the last 240 years of popular music in America.

Montreal-based DJ, graphic artist, composer, and music producer Kid Koala comes to OZ Arts March 4 & 5, 2016 with a magical, multidisciplinary adaptation of his graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall. Directed by the Oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett (Her, Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, Being John Malkovich), the story centers around a lonesome, music-obsessed, headphones-sporting robot on the verge of obsolescence who falls in love with a winsome office worker.

Spring at OZ Arts will continue on April 1 & 2, 2016 when New Dialect—Nashville’s own contemporary dance collective—premieres an evening of work created in collaboration with a cast of renowned guest artists, including: choreographer Peter Chu, dancer Ana Maria Lucaciu, Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson and viola virtuoso LJOVA.

OZ Arts launches a new writers and storytellers series, Speak Easy, May 4-7, 2016, welcoming American monologist and raconteur Mike Daisey for two distinct performances, including one created specially for OZ Arts and Nashville; and the Nashville debut of the Moth Mainstage.

OZ Arts’ TNT (Thursday Night Things) series, which spotlights Tennessee-based artists and encourages experimentation and the creation of new work, will offer several events that will transform the 10,000-square-foot warehouse space. Among these will be Stephanie Pruitt’s collaborative em-bo-d-i-ment: Poetry Through the Five Senses (July 23), Bryce McCloud’s Together Heroic: The World’s Largest Stamp Portrait Project (December 7-11), and the anticipated re-imagination of Tony Youngblood’s Modular Art Pods project (June 21-25, 2016).

OZ Arts will present a major visual art installation, the In-Site Visual Art Festival, which will fill the venue’s interior and exterior spaces with interactive works of scale (June 21-25, 2016).

The centerpiece of the institution’s annual Family Day, on August 15, 2016, will be Paul Dresher Ensemble’s Sound Maze, an interactive experience of sound and mechanics consisting of 15 musical instruments and sound sculptures invented by Dresher. The award-winning artist Rinde Eckert will give a performance on them, and audience members are invited to interact with and improvise upon them.

Since it opened in February 2014, OZ Arts Nashville “has fundamentally changed the creative landscape of Music City” (ArtsNash). Under the artistic leadership of Lauren Snelling, its first two-seasons have brought to the city luminaries such as Philip Glass and Tim Fain, Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Vijay Iyer, Laurie Anderson, Wayne McGregor’s company Random Dance, ETHEL and BANDALOOP. These programs have consistently played to sold-out audiences and local and national acclaim.

OZ ARTS NASHVILLE’S 2015-16 SEASON

FILM / CONVERSATION

The Modern School of Film

Film:Masters

September 10, 11, 12

“Best Movie Outing”—New York Magazine

What films have made an impact on the great artists of our time? Robert Milazzo, founder of The Modern School of Film, has engaged more than 100 luminaries—Willem Dafoe, Feist, Glenn Close and Wayne Coyne, to name a few—in investigating films’ roles in their careers and lives. For each of three nights in September, OZ Arts hosts Milazzo in conversation with a different guest artist, immediately following a screening of a film that has influenced them. Film:Masters explores a deeper insight into filmmaking craft and the human conditions from which it arises by going right to the source: the very artists whose work and legacy inform cinema as we know it.

Guest artists and their film selections will be announced soon at www.ozartsnashville.org.

DANCE

Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion

When the Wolves Came In
October 8 &9

“Bold and…fearless”—The Los Angeles Times

MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning choreographer Kyle Abraham creates dance works using highly physical dance styles that reflect the youthful energy of hip-hop and speak to a new generation of dancers and audiences.

When the Wolves Came In is a suite of new, original, dance works for ensemble that explores the legacy of two totemic triumphs in the international history of Civil Rights: the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 20^th anniversary of the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa. This gripping performance draws inspiration from jazz legend Max Roach’s iconic protest album We Insist: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, released in 1960 in response to the urgency of the growing civil rights movement in the U.S. and South Africa. The potent themes inherent in these historical milestones are evident in Abraham’s choreography, visual artist Glenn Ligon’s evocative scenery, the visceral power of Roach’s masterwork, and original compositions by GRAMMY Award-winning jazz innovator Robert Glasper.

THEATER / MUSIC

Julia Wolfe, SITI Company and Bang on a Can All-Stars

Steel Hammer

November 20 & 21

“Astonishingly compelling”—The Washington Post

Since the 1870s, Appalachian folklore has immortalized the legend of John Henry, the steel-driving man, through song, illustration and tall tale. In Steel Hammer, the composer Julia Wolfe, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in music, joins forces with renowned ensemble theater group SITI Company and electric chamber ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars to present a dramatic music-theater piece that creatively explores the subject of human vs. machine and the cost of hard labor on the human body and soul. Culling from the vibrant oral traditions of Appalachia, Steel Hammer incorporates lyrics by Julia Wolfe and text from four remarkable American playwrights—Kia Corthron, Will Power, Carl Hancock Rux and Regina Taylor—based on hearsay, recollection and legend.

At OZ Arts, the production centers around a circular stage as the Bang on a Can All-Stars perform Wolfe’s score live with inspiring vocals by three singers. Directed by SITI Company Co-Artistic Director Anne Bogart, performers take on wooden bones, mountain dulcimer, step dancing and complex patterns for stage tableaux as they explore the human impulse to tell stories through this quintessential American tale.

MUSIC

Kaki King
The Neck is a Bridge to the Body

January 22 & 23, 2016

“I’ve never seen anything like it… a sumptuous feast for the senses, a dizzying display of sound and vision by a guitarist already renowned for her innovation… I repeat: Do not miss this.” – Boston Globe

“It’s a beautiful thing when two entirely different art forms fit so well together that the boundaries between vision and sound, hand and ear, line and note, begin to blur. We’re feeling that particular kind of synesthesia…” – Huffington Post

Provocative and moving, surprising and beautiful, “The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body” is Kaki King at her visionary best. This groundbreaking new multi-media performance uses projection mapping to present the guitar as an ontological tabula rasa in a creation myth unlike any other, where luminous visions of genesis and death, textures and skins, are cast onto an Ovation Adamas 1581-KK Kaki King Signature 6-String Acoustic guitar customized specifically for this production.

PERFORMANCE ART / MUSIC

Taylor Mac

A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1806-1836

February 19 & 20, 2016

Taylor Mac “doesn’t just defy categorization; he makes the categories themselves seem irrelevant.”—Time Out NY

Taylor Mac is a performance artist like no other. A playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, cabaret performer, director and producer, Mac has embarked on a mammoth musical journey to chart a 24-decade history of popular music from 1776 to 2016. This unique mash-up of music, history, performance and art will culminate, in the fall of 2016, with a 24-hour concert spectacle covering the last 240 years of popular music in America.

OZ Arts, a co-commissioner Mac’s Herculean undertaking, is honored to present two three-hour performances covering three decades of music (1806-1836), in which Mac will be backed by a five-piece band and joined by special guests.

MUSIC

Kid Koala

Nufonia Must Fall

March 4 & 5, 2016

“Delightful…The film, small and tender, could stand strong on its own, but the heart of the production lies in watching it being created.”—The Guardian (UK)

Montreal-based DJ, graphic artist, composer, and music producer Kid Koala presents a magical, multidisciplinary adaptation of his graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall. Directed by the Oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett (Her, Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, Being John Malkovich) the story centers around a lonesome, music-obsessed, headphones-sporting robot on the verge of obsolescence who falls in love with a winsome office worker.

After a chance encounter, their precarious courtship unfolds via real-time filming of more than a dozen miniature stage settings and a cast of meticulously crafted puppets. Kid Koala and the dynamic Canadian ensemble the Afiara Quartet provide the live score for piano, strings and turntables, creating an unforgettably heartwarming performance experience that provides a fresh look at contemporary relationships, technology and existential relevance.

DANCE

New Dialect

New Works
April 1 & 2, 2016

“Banning Bouldin has given Nashville something to talk about—a new dance language with its own accent.”—Nashville Arts Magazine

Since their premiere performance in OZ Arts’ TNT series in 2014, Nashville’s own New Dialect has attained world-class status as contemporary dance-makers. Led by artistic director Banning Bouldin, a native of the city, New Dialect returns with fresh works and compelling collaborations. Featuring an original commission by acclaimed Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson with live performance by viola virtuoso Ljova (Lev Zhurbin), New Dialect premieres a new dance work for ensemble. Partnering with renowned guest choreographer Peter Chu, Bouldin then takes the stage with revered Romanian-born dancer Ana Maria Lucaciu in a duet made for the strikingly similar pair.

STORYTELLING / LITERATURE

Mike Daisey / The Moth

Speak Easy
May 4-7, 2016

“The master storyteller [Mike Daisey] is one of the finest solo performers of his generation.”—The New York Times

[The Moth is] “New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket”—The Wall Street Journal

What was is now again! A well-honed skill in letterpress, creating vinyl LPs, knitting or storytelling is to be respected, but each has now returned to hip status. OZ Arts announces Speak Easy, a new series for age-old pastimes—writing and storytelling—including national and local innovators.

American monologist and raconteur Mike Daisey opens the series on May 4. May 6 boasts the first-ever Nashville program of The Moth Mainstage, including five handpicked storytellers. Speak Easy concludes on May 7 with Mike Daisey’s newest work, created especially for Nashville and this OZ Arts series. Audiences are invited to join OZ Arts for the entire series and take home special prizes reserved only for those with perfect attendance.

Kahn and the Whale: The Wrath of Moby Dick

Mike Daisey takes on Herman Melville’s masterpiece of revenge, fate and whaling terminology in a hilarious and breathtaking ninety minutes. He weaves Melville’s epic saga together with the greatest and most perfect film of the twentieth century—Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Ornate nautical slipknots, space worms that crawl into your ears, tattooed harpooners, and Ricardo Montalban’s rich Corinthian leather chest all combine with Melville’s gorgeous language to tell a sweeping story of revenge and at what temperature that dish is best served. (Spoiler alert: the answer is “cold.” Also, the whale wins.)

The Moth Mainstage

Dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling, The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. The lineup for this Nashville debut of the Moth Mainstage will feature true stories from local and out-of-state tellers.

Mike Daisey on Nashville

Mike Daisey’s extemporaneous monologues skewer, illuminate and ultimately celebrate our world with equal parts humor and heart. On the final night of OZ Arts Nashville’s inaugural Speak Easy, Daisey will deliver the city back to its people—with no holds barred.

TNT (Thursday Night Things)

featuring Tennessee-based artists

OZ Arts’ TNT (Thursday Night Things) series spotlights Tennessee-based artists, encouraging experimentation and the creation of new work. Artists are challenged to transform the 10,000-square-foot warehouse space from a blank canvas into an environment of their own making

LITERATURE / MULTIMEDIA

Stephanie Pruitt

em-bo-d-i-ment: Poetry Through the Five Senses

July 23, 2015

Words move from the two-dimensional page and become an experience to touch, taste, smell, hear and see. Poet and social practice artist Stephanie Pruitt collaborates with a chef, musicians, an architect, an aromatherapist, visual artists, and a new proximity-based technology to create a multi-sensory arts adventure. Each artistic partner interprets Pruitt’s poem Close Reading, written for this program. Audiences are invited to explore the space, led by the collaborators’ guiding question: What is it like to be immersed inside of a poem? Pruitt’s curated adventure presents new work by: Chef Josh Habiger, alt-classical ensemble CHATTERBIRD, country singer/songwriter Joy Styles, former Fisk Jubilee Singer and jazz/funk recording artist Curtis Fields, landscape architect Mike Kahnle, aromatherapist Whitney Simpson, BKON’s iBeacon technology and more than 10 visual artists including Jamaal Sheats, Kristin Llamas, and Randy Purcell.

ART / DESIGN

Bryce McCloud

Together Heroic: The World’s Largest Stamp Portrait Project
December 7-11, 2015

Bryce McCloud transforms OZ Arts into a workshop for the creation of large-scale tapestries. Inspired by his Our Town project, in which Nashvillians created self-portraits using small, simple-shaped rubber stamps, Bryce and his Isle of Printing team once again capture a “portrait of a city.” This time, McCloud’s toolkit includes massive canvases and specially-fabricated “uber stamps” that require two people to operate. Audiences will experience the canvases being made—and may be engaged to help make them—at the discretion of an “art caller” who directs the movement and placement of stamps on the canvas. Once complete, the canvases will be displayed throughout the interior of the warehouse. Expect the unexpected, and check ozartsnashville.org for a schedule of performances by some of Nashville’s finest as the tapestries are brought to life throughout the week.

In creation: Dec 7-10

TNT presentation: Dec 10

ART / DESIGN

Tony Youngblood

Modular Art Pods

June 21-25, 2016

“When everybody’s talking about the crawl at the drinking fountain on Monday morning, they’ll undoubtedly be talking about the Modular Art Pods installation.”—Nashville Scene

As a follow up to the wildly successful, one-night collaborative installation curator Tony Youngblood assembled at Abrasive Media in February 2015, OZ Arts is proud to present a reimagined installation of Modular Art Pods. Described as a “gallery tunnel,” MAPs captured imaginations as each attendee crawled from one 4’x4’ cube to another, the interiors of which represented an immersive view into an artist’s mind. The structural parameters for each artist to create his/her own individual “pod gallery” remain, but this time the audience will also be given a set of rules for engagement. In addition to the interactivity inherent within each pod, audiences will be given multiple opportunities to “choose their own adventure” within the journey through and around more than 50 unique pods, each designed and constructed by a different artist or collective.

Special Program

In-Site Visual Art Festival

June 21-25, 2016

Taking advantage of its unique facility and location, OZ Arts mounts a major installation of visual arts with large interactive pieces created for both interior and exterior spaces. From massive murals to light installations, street art to pod galleries, this program reaches beyond the warehouse, creating customized artworks connected to the city’s diverse neighborhoods. An outdoor stage will feature live performances on Friday, June 24 and Saturday, June 25.

Education and Outreach

Family Day at OZ Arts

Paul Dresher Ensemble’s Sound Maze with Rinde Eckert

August 15, 2016

Family Day is OZ Arts’ annual public festival of indoor and outdoor arts activities for young people and families. The program is designed to spark creativity, activity and interaction. Dispersed throughout the grounds of OZ Arts, dozens of local artists and community organizations set up activity stations enabling kids to tap into their imagination while having fun with friends and family members.

The centerpiece of this year’s Family Day is Paul Dresher Ensemble’s Sound Maze, an interactive experience of sound and mechanics consisting of 15 invented musical instruments and sound sculptures that audience members are invited to interact with and improvise upon. Rinde Eckert, 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama and the winner of an OBIE Award, will perform on the plethora of instruments at 1pm. There will also be an installation of Sound Maze from August 16 – 18.

OZ School Days

“A perfect partnership to allow students an opportunity to explore in a hands-on environment.”—The Tennessean

OZ School Days is an interdisciplinary arts workshop created for students ages 5-15. When Metro Nashville Public Schools are closed and parents seek fun, educational activities for their children, OZ School Days provide one-on-one art-making with some of Nashville’s finest teaching artists. The program is often connected thematically to OZ’s artistic presentations, with teaching artists leading activities in visual art, music making, movement, theater, creative writing and more.

These daylong programs are presented in partnership with Metro Parks Cultural Arts Division.

ABOUT OZ ARTS NASHVILLE

As the newest 501(c)3 contemporary arts institution in the midsouth region, OZ Arts’ particular style of programming has begun to transform the cultural landscape of Nashville. Utilizing the venue’s flexibility, OZ Arts presents the work of leading artists from around the world, offering an intimate context for performing and visual art programs that challenge and inspire a diverse range of curious audiences.

OZ Arts also serves as a catalyst for local creativity through a program called TNT (Thursday Night Things). TNT is a quarterly series of unexpected collaborations with Nashville-based artists from varying creative disciplines. OZ Arts’ “blank slate” provides a platform onto which these artists can create, develop and present a one-time-only event that would traditionally not be seen in a visual art gallery or theatre.

OZ Arts is located in the former C.A.O. cigar warehouse owned by Nashville’s Ozgener family. Their generosity provided the seed money that breathed new life into the column-free, 10,000 square-foot space nestled amidst artfully landscaped grounds.

http://www.ozartsnashville.org/