UH Mitchell Center Commissions Experimental Music

Houston, get ready: A student marching band turned experimental musical cadre is poised to create free-form, funky, soulful, danceable rhythms at downtown’s Discovery Green later this month. This parade-gone-wild is the creation of world-renowned musician and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain who, as University of Houston Mitchell Center for the Arts Artist-in-Residence is deconstructing conventional modes of music-making and taking artistic freedom to the highest level…

Read the full article on En Masse in April’s A+C Houston magazine here.

In Detroit a contemporary-art museum is completing a monument to an influential artist that will not feature his work but will instead provide food, haircuts, education programs and other social services to the general public.

In New York an art organization that commissions public installations has been dispatching a journalist to politically precarious places around the world where she enlists artists and activists — often one and the same — to write for a Web site that can read more like a policy journal than an art portal. And in St. Louis an art institution known primarily for its monumental Richard Serra sculpture is turning itself into a hub of social activism, recently organizing a town-hall meeting where 350 people crowded in to talk about de facto segregation, one of the city’s most intractable problems.

If none of these projects sound much like art — or the art you are used to seeing in museums — that is precisely the point.

Read the full New York Times article here.

The Daily Cougar sat down with artist and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain to discuss En Masse, working with the Spirit of Houston marching band, and what it means to be in residence at the Mitchell Center. Read the full interview here.

Oprah sits down with New York Times bestselling author and nationally acclaimed speaker, Dr. Brené Brown, to discuss her latest book “Daring Greatly.”  For the past twelve years, she’s studied vulnerability, worthiness, shame and courage as a professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work.  At the 2010 TEDx Talk in Houston, she opened up about her own vulnerabilities and her quest to better understand herself.  Her story of personal discovery resonated with people beyond those in attendance, garnering more than seven million views on TED.com.

The Emmy® award-winning series “Super Soul Sunday” premieres an all-new episode ‘Oprah & Brené Brown: Daring Greatly’ on Sunday, March 17 at 11a.m. ET/PT on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network

Watch a preview of the show!

A Literary Event Presented in Conjunction with the FotoFest Exhibition Crónicas

Magnitud/e is one of the major programs for FotoFest’s new original multi-media exhibition “Crónicas,” showcasing seven contemporary Mexican visual artists who are interpreting, rather than documenting, the violence of the Mexican drug war.

This bilingual poetry event features three acclaimed poets from Northern Mexico and two from the Houston area. The work of each of these poets creates a dialogue around the on-going violence in Mexico using a variety of techniques from appropriation to translation, from slam poetry to post-conceptual writing.

FEATURED POETS:
Marco Antonio Huerta (Cd. Victoria, Mexico) – Translated by John Pluecker
Lupe Méndez (Houston)
John Pluecker (Houston)
Minerva Reynosa (Monterrey, Mexico) – Translated by Stalina Villarreal
Sara Uribe (Cd. Victoria, Mexico) – Translated by John Pluecker
Magnitud/e is co-sponsored with Make.Play.Speak and John Pluecker

For more information click here.

Special support from Nuestra Palabra. This event is supported by a grant from Poets & Writers, Inc.

IART professor Nick Flynn will be discussing his new book, THE REENACTMENTS—a memoir about glass flowers, memory, and the making of a movie—with David Eagleman at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Sunday, January 13 at 2pm.

Congratulations to UH faculty member Toni Leago Valle, the new general manager of Karen Stokes Dance (KSD). Valle brings 12 years of professional experience on and off the stage to KSD. As project director of Dance Source Houston for 11 years, Valle oversaw A Weekend of Texas Contemporary Dance at Miller Outdoor Theatre, the Dance Card, the Dance Source website and the Dance Table.

For its latest production, arts group Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB) is hoping to shed light on Freedmen’s Town — one of the most historically dynamic (and most historically overlooked) neighborhoods in Houston.

Read the entire article on CultureMap here.

The chancellor and president of the University of Houston has had a very good year.

Read the interview in Texas Monthly this month by Jake Silverstein.

Engaging local musicians and poets to perform and read to native plants, the immersive Mitchell Center booth installation at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair this past weekend played with the framework that positions both audience and performer in the context of contemporary art.

Houston Press ranked the Mitchell Center among the 15 best pieces of the Fair, see the full list here.

“Booth: Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Performing Arts at University of Houston 
While this “exhibit” was not technically one of the pieces on display at the Fair, it could and should have been included. A man sat in a chair, surrounded by green foliage — most likely an homage to The Woodlands, the home of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion — and played off-tune notes, some long, and some short. All the while, he seemed to be quite enjoying himself. The message most likely being pushed out, through the scene, as a whole? “Check out the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Performing Arts Center at University of Houston”. Bravo, marketing whiz. Way to get the point across via art.”

RESONATE in 2012

This year, we’re excited to announce several new surprises. A new time of year, a new location, and new ideas to resonate with the world. We’ll explore the relationships between simplicity and complexity; we’ll search within and imagine without; and we’ll once again examine the full spectrum of diverse voices that resonate around us.

Applications close Wednesday, October 10th.  Click here to apply to attend TEDx Houston on November 3rd.