TAC showcase presents variety of entertainers at Renaissance Center June 15
Release Date: 6/2/2004. Expired: 6/15/2004
With the most diverse collection of performers ever brought to the stage of The Renaissance Center for one showcase, the Tennessee Arts Commission will demonstrate the wide variety of Tennessee-based talent during a one-day presenter’s conference in Dickson.
Tennessee Stages... Tennessee Stars will conclude with a public showcase featuring acts ranging from bluegrass and folk to contemporary country and gospel, from comedy and theatre to Appalachian music and a Chinese dance troupe. The showcase is at 7:30 p.m. June 15 in the Performance Hall of The Renaissance Center in Dickson. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $7 for children under 13.
“Tennessee is home to a diverse group of talented artists in the areas of music, dance and theater,” said Bob Kucher, deputy director of the Tennessee Arts Commission and former director of Visual Arts and Theatre at The Renaissance Center. “All too often these performers do not receive the recognition they deserve, or the performance opportunities they need to advance their careers. We hope to begin the process of changing that with this conference.”
Tennessee Stages… Tennessee Stars is a one-day conference presented by the commission to bring performers and presenting organizations together. The focus of the conference is to increase exposure for Tennessee-based performing artists through showcases, provide technical assistance to Tennessee presenters and touring artists, encourage Tennessee presenters to book artists from within the state, provide networking and resource opportunities and to assist in the establishment of a statewide presenter consortium, according to Kucher.
The schedule will include workshops for presenting organizations throughout the day as well as a series of showcases for Tennessee-based artists. The evening showcase will be open to the public with tickets available at The Renaissance Center’s box office, (615)740-5570. Showcase admission is included for conference participants.
More than 30 artists have been selected to perform in three showcases as well as during the conference participants’ lunch and dinner breaks in The Renaissance Center’s rotunda.
“These artists represent a diverse group of performers in all disciplines,” Kucher said. “They bring to the showcases a variety of styles, original ideas and an abundance of creative energy. The audience will be in for a real treat and will experience an evening of great entertainment.”
The lineup for the evening showcase includes:
7:30 p.m. - Introduction and welcome from the Tennessee Arts Commission;
7:45 p.m. - The Roland White Band. Maine native Roland White began playing bluegrass music in the 1950s beginning with a family band called the Country Boys. He and two brothers later became the nucleus of a group called the Kentucky Colonels, which played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. White would later play as part of the bands for Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt before joining Country Gazette. In 1989 White joined the Nashville Bluegrass Band where he played mandolin for 11 years, during which the band won the Grammys for Best Bluegrass Album in 1993 and ’95. White left NBB in 2000 to form The Roland White Band and its May 2002 CD Jelly on My Tofu was nominated for a Grammy in 2003;
8:00 p.m. - Joby Saad. A Tennessee native, Saad has made a name for himself on both coasts as one of standup comedy’s more engaging performers. He has appeared on Comedy Central and in clubs across the United States.
8:15 p.m. - Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville. Organized to promote the awareness, understanding and appreciation of the Chinese visual and performing arts, the Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville blends modern dance, Chinese dance, Chinese martial arts and Chinese opera elements to present Chinese folk tales;
8:30 p.m. - Barbara Bailey Hutchison. Detroit native singer/songwriter Hutchinson can be heard across the country as the voice of hundreds of commercials for companies such as McDonald’s, Hallmark Cards and other national advertisers. She received the Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children in 1995 for her CD Sleepy Time Lullabys and has been voted Best Solo Performer and Best Acoustic Performer in a national magazine poll of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The National Association of Campus Activities named her Coffeehouse Entertainer of the Year for four years in a row. Over the course of a career that includes 16 albums, she has been compared to Shawn Colvin, Jewel, Joni Mitchell and Mary-Chapin Carpenter;
8:45 p.m. - jeff obafemi carr. An original member of the American Negro Playwright Theatre based at Tennessee State University, actor and playwright carr has now formed Amun Ra Theatre to celebrate African-American culture and to focus on issues of importance to the community. His original one-man show, How Blak Kin Eye Bee, explores what it means to be African-American in a changing world through a variety of characters, music and multimedia imagery;
9:00 p.m. - Carol Ponder. Growing up in southern Appalachia, Ponder learned the traditional songs of the region and other folk music along with a taste for classical music. She made her first public performance on the autoharp at the Mountain Youth Jamboree in Asheville, N.C., in 1958. As a teen she learned to play guitar and spoons and while at the University of North Carolina she turned to a cappella ballad singing. Since 1998, Ponder has appeared regularly in Nashville and has produced two critically acclaimed albums of Appalachian music. She represented Tennessee at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the Millennium Stage in 2000;
9:15 p.m. - The Cantrells. Al and Emily Cantrell put a pop spin on acoustic folk and bluegrass music, with detours into Celtic, western swing and Americana. They return to The Renaissance Center stage after appearing in May 2003 as the opening act for The Time Jumpers. Emily grew up on her family’s cotton and soybean farm near Memphis while Al was raised in a rural area outside Seattle. They met when Al became a fiddler in Emily’s band in Colorado and married in 1985. They have released three albums, been featured on numerous nationally syndicated radio shows and were chosen by Robert Redford to appear playing fiddle tunes in his movie A River Runs Through It;
9:30 p.m. - Princely Players. Featured on National Public Radio and the BBC, the Princely Players offer evocative and stunning programs on the enslavement and liberation of African-Americans in the tradition of the Jubilee Singers and the Fairfield Four. The eight-member ensemble has performed its unique program of spirituals and poetry from the earliest sources of African-American music in this country to the Civil War and the civil rights movement from Nashville to Washington, D.C., among other places. The group has collaborated with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Nashville Symphony as well as recording with Randy Travis, Danny O’Keefe and Kathy Mattea;
9:45 p.m. - Templeton Thompson and Sam Gray. Dickson residents Thompson and Gray return to The Renaissance Center after appearing last year as part of the Sing-O de Mayo Festival. Thompson also recently performed as part of a benefit for the Dickson County Humane Society, emphasizing her love of animals since she also is a certified professional in the field of equine assisted psychotherapy. She has written songs for Reba McEntire, Jo Dee Messina and Sherrie Austin. As a singer, she is one of Nashville’s most in-demand session vocalists and has performed on stage across the U.S., in Europe and Japan;
10:00 p.m. - Nashville Mandolin Ensemble. America’s only large, professional touring mandolin group, the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble features up to six mandolins, mandola, mando-cello, guitar and upright bass in expressing the aural spectrum of the mandolin family of instruments. The NME has appeared on stage with the Nashville Symphony, played on the nationally syndicated Riders in the Sky Radio Theater and played twice at Nashville’s Summer Lights music festival. “NME is a fabulous listening experience,” said award-winning fiddler Mark O’Connor.
Artists included in some of the day’s earlier showcases, which are open only to conference participants, include the Rory Partin Band (big band dance music), Kit Lough (jazz), Glenn “Wailin’ Wood” Woodland (harmonica national champion), Johnny Microwave (pop rock band), Swamp Stories and Songs (music and storytelling), Stephanie Pruitt (performance poetry), Michael Jefry Stevens (jazz quartet), Craig Carroll (classical guitarist), Carrissia and Company (jazz and blues), Doc McConnell (storytelling), Allison Kerr and Hot Biscuits (southern jazz), Voices of the South (theatre), Estelle Condra (actress/storyteller), Bosch Institute (performance art), Southern Fly-By-Night Singers (southern rhythm vocals), Sara Elisabeth (mountain dulcimer), John Holleman and Company (theatre), Terra Nova (fiddle ensemble), Ginger Newman (cabaret), Jerry Tachoir and Van Manakas (jazz) and Gypsy Hombres (string jazz).
The Tennessee Presenter’s Conference is free to all presenting organizations and Tennessee-based performing artists. There is a $25 per person fee to cover hospitality, lunch and dinner. For more information on Tennessee Stages... Tennessee Stars, call the Tennessee Arts Commission at (615)741-2093, send email to or visit the commission’s Web site at www.arts.state.tn.us/presentersconference.htm.
To purchase tickets for the public showcase, contact The Renaissance Center at (615)740-5570. The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.
Visit the Events - Concerts and Recitals page for more about musical performances.
News
| Date Released | Expiration | Headline |
|---|---|---|
| No Press Releases to show... | ||