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Recent News
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- National Endowment of the Arts Grant
- Spontaneous Combustion Choir
- The Department of Cultural Affairs Grant
- Two-Year Grant Awarded to Overtone by LACAC
- Interview with O-Lan Jones
- CD tracks available for download
- Overtone Records Its First CD: 'The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater'
- Annenberg Foundation Awards Overtone Three-Year Grant
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National Endowment of the Arts Grant
Overtone Industries has officially been awarded the NEA Grant for the production on 'Woman In the Wall'!!!
Spontaneous Combustion Choir
The Spontaneous Combustion Choir is a group of singers creating instant music built from a series of exercises invented by Miz Jones and evolving during rehearsal. It brings together singers of all styles and levels of training in a format that allows for wonderfully unique cohesive and spontaneous choral improvisation.
We are looking toward performing in the early summer.
Performances and rehearsals contain various configurations of the following singers:
- Eric Castro
- Julie Christensen
- Patty Cornell
- Halldor Enard
- Max Faugno
- John Fleck
- Karole Foreman
- Gregory Franklin
- Elizabeth Guilliams
- Alan House
- Brian Reid
- Ken Roht
- Heidi Swedberg
- Cesili Williams
- Silvie Zamora
The Department of Cultural Affairs Grant
We have also received a generous grant from The Department of Cultural Affairs to help finish up The Woman In The Wall.
Two-Year Grant Awarded to Overtone by LACAC
We are delighted to announce that a two-year grant totally $12,400 has been awarded to Overtone Industries by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. The grant, which covers 2009-2010, will go toward the development and production of our mammoth, epic opera, Songs and Dance of Imaginary Lands, a work that involves 21 librettists and composers from around the country.
Although we have been the recipient of sev eral other grants from the Commission, this is the first time we have been awarded a two-year grant.
We are grateful to the agency, and look forward to introducing Los Angeles to our exciting new opera.
Interview with O-Lan Jones
Martin Perlich, host of Arts & Roots Forum (ARF!) and program director for KCSN FM 88.5, interviewed Miz Jones about our new CD. Perlich has commented that the opera …"is a work at once determinedly modern, yet accessible for its originality, freshness, depth of feeling and unique blend of rhythmic vitality and compelling lyricism. I was, I confess, moved to tears. I commend Miz Jones and Ms. Cramer for …such a forward-looking yet timeless work…"
Click below to download the complete interview (sans music):
CD tracks available for download
The following tracks from the CD are now available for download. Click below to listen, to download the songs, right-click (ctrl-click on a mac) and choose "save link as".
Overtone Records Its First CD: 'The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater'
We're very excited to announce that the first of a projected five CDs has been recorded thanks, in part, to a $15,000 grant from the Argosy Foundation's Contemporary Music Fund.
The completed CD is now available, just in time for holiday! Donation will be $20 per CD and advance orders may be requested by contacting CD Project Manager, Nicole Roehm at nicole@[remove this text]overtoneindustries.org. Look for a postcard announcement in your mailbox in a few weeks. You may also order CDs online through PayPal.
Important Note: Shipping and handling is $2 for the first disk and $1.50 for each additional disk. You may only purchase up to 5 CDs at a time through PayPal, for larger quantities please contact Nicole Roehm at nicole@[remove this text]overtoneindustries.org.
The recording is of The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater which premiered at the [INSIDE] the Ford Theatre in 2001 starring our resident diva, Gretchen Johnson, with Lioness-Goddesses Melody Butiu, Patty Cornell, Michele Mais, Wanda-Lee Evans, and Silvie Zamora. Richard Miro as The Husband and Julie Christensen as Claire recreate their roles on the CD. Newcomers (to Overtone) are Nmon Ford who sings the role of the Overseer and Mary Joy Deocariza who sang the role of the Maid.
Musical conductor for the CD was David O and Producer was John Ballinger. Our esteemed composer O-Lan Jones and incredible librettist Kathleen Cramer created new words and music to develop an expansive battle between the Lionesses and The Woman that made a wonderful addition to the work.
The recording includes the use of five unique “invented instruments” created by the inimitable musicologist Bart Hopkin. Also contributing music were percussionist James Snodgrass who repeats his Ford Theatre performance plus harpist Paul Baker, cellist April Guthrie, flutist Jen Roth, plus Ballinger on clarinet and David O on piano.
We had the very able assistance of Anna Woo as stage manager and Eric Arm was our resident studio engineer-genius at Headroom Audio where we recorded the opera.
The story of "Sweater," as many of you may remember, centers around The Woman who arrives too late to speak to her dying mother. Her return to the family estate in the jungle is threatened by the presence of fearsome lioness-goddesses. She leaves the safe family home to retrieve her sweater in an outbuilding only to be surrounded by the lionesses who demand she take her place among them. Her husband realizes she's been gone too long, stops dallying with The Woman's sister, Claire, and goes to find her. When The Woman sees him, she doubts her abilities to take her place, loses her footing in the lionesses' dances, and is destroyed. There is, of course, much more to the story that is best heard on our new CD!
Annenberg Foundation Awards Overtone Three-Year Grant
The Annenberg Foundation has awarded Overtone Industries a three-year unrestricted grant of $150,000 to support the company's programming and general operating expenses The grant began with a $75,000 check received in April and will be followed by a $50,000 check in 2008 and $25,000 in 2009.
The grant is a validating one that will help Overtone build a very strong infrastructure to support our many programming goals in the future. Part of the funding is being used to bring on Corbett Barklie as our development director, and part supports our new CD recording and booking venue projects for developed works.
The Foundation's grant is to "Support [Overtone's] mission to create original stories that resonate today," said Wallis Annenberg, Vice President and a Trustee of the Foundation.
Established in 1989 by Walter H. Annenberg, the Foundation provides funding to nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and globally through its headquarters in Radnor, Pennsylvania and offices in Los Angeles. Its major program areas are education and youth development; arts and culture; civic; community and the environment, and health and human services. In addition, the Foundation operates a number of initiatives which expand and complement these program areas. The Annenberg Foundation exists to advance public well-being through improved communication. As the principal means of achieving this goal, the Foundation encourages the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge.
A $25,000 grant from the Foundation was previously awarded to Overtone in 2006.
Wendy Phillips Joins Board
We are delighted to introduce our newest board member, Wendy Phillips, who joined the board of directors of Overtone Industries in November, 2007. We thank Mitch Ryan for bringing Overtone to Wendy's attention and encouraging her to join our growing board!
Wendy is a prolific actress on stage and screen and is currently the Artistic Director of 2nd Story Theater in Los Angeles which she founded in 2001.
She recently appeared in the HBO series, Big Love, and the NBC series Studio 60. She has played the female lead in seven network television series, including the Emmy Award winning NBC series, A Year in the Life and starred in the Falcon Crest, Homefront, and Promised Land.
She has had principal roles in such feature films as Midnight Run, Bugsy, and I am Sam, Airplane II and Fraternity Row and Rendition. Recent theatrical activities include both acting (Horton Foote’s The Roads to Home, The Visible Horse at The Court Theater in Los Angeles, Death of a Salesman at Shakespeare of the South at Auburn University) and directing (her first play, The Dumbwaiter, was followed by Blind Date and Spring Dance by Horton Foote at 2nd Story Theater.
Wendy was born in Brooklyn, New York, and is the daughter of Wendell Phillips, an actor and acting teacher, and Jean Shelton, an actress and acting teacher. She is married to fellow thespian and director Scott Paul and they have one daughter, Virginia Dare.
Board Welcomes New Member
Artist, neighborhood activist, and Overtone enthusiast Shane Guffogg joined the Board of Directors as a member in March 2007. He has already shown his enthusiasm and savvy by introducing us to some stellar folk who are offering support, great advice for our future growth, and may be potential members of the board.
Guffogg is the representative for the Los Angeles First District Neighborhood Council charged with revitalizing the downtown area with theatre, art galleries, and other exciting venues. He is a founding member of Pharmaka-Art Gallery and a prolific artist.
An L.A. native raised on an exotic bird farm in the San Joaquin Valley, Shane first showed an interesting in painting while a teenager traveling to Europe and the former Soviet Union where he was exposed to many of the Masters. He pursued an art education earning his BFA from Cal Arts followed by an internship with Gary Stephan and a Studio Assistant gig for Ed Rucha from 1989 until 1995.
Working in oil on canvas and paper, and also in watercolor, gouache, and pastels on paper, Shane has experimented also with traditional etchings on zinc plates. The size of his work ranges from the intimacy of a 10"x8" painting to the monumental work spanning 10'x8'. His oils typically have 50-60 layers of translucent colors mixed with a glazing medium that causes the paintings to appear illuminated from within. His works have been shown in 45 group exhibitions and nine solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Rome.
He has somehow found the time to open his own gallery, Pharmaka-Art with a group of diverse painters embracing many styles who were brought together with the profound belief in the power of painting as a visual and emotional language. Current members are Fumiko Amano, Randall Cabe, Christopher Cousins, Stanley Dorfman, Stephen Fife, Bert Green, Adam Gross, Guffogg, Patricia Howard, Tim Isham, Christoph Kapeller, Maureen Maki, Christopher Monger, Anna Osgood, Michael Rosenfeld, Luke Rothschild, John Scane and Vonn Summer. The gallery is at 101 West Fifth Street in Los Angeles (213) 689-7799
He makes his home in Hollywood with his wife and son. For more about his work and his gallery, visit www.shaneguffogg.com or www.pharmaka-art.org or write to him at shane@[remove this text]guffogg.com
