Open House Arts Festival
Meet the Artists
Programs, schedules, and artists subject to change without notice.
A
Jamie Adkins
California's Jamie Adkins began his career at the age of 13 in San Diego, where he delighted passers-by as a street performer. Later, in San Francisco, he joined the Pickle Family Circus. Then this eclectic clown, juggler, balancing artist and one-hundred percent poet joined Montréal's Cirque Éloize. With his numerous talents and years of experience, this multidisciplinary acrobat was soon an integral member of the Cirque Éloize family of artists. For Open House, he presents his newest creation, Circus INcognitus. More than ever before, Jamie shows his audiences, in his own unique way, the full range of his talents. He has taken his performance far beyond the bounds of a single role and created an artistic event that springs from his own inner world.
Algebra
No stranger to performing, Algebra has been lending her melodic voice to projects by Monica and Bilal and live shows for years. As the music scene in Atlanta became a hotbed of popular music, Algebra taught herself to play guitar and performed regularly at open mic nights. This afforded her the time to develop her writing and performance skills further without the harness of a prescribed format. "Soon you learn not to care what others think, you learn to perform for you. I would come back week after week and I learned to perform for balance and for freedom. I was becoming alive." This organic approach permeates her music. Algebra can easily be pop, rock, rap, funk, or crunk, yet she can breathe ballads effortlessly.
Aramis y su Orquesta Ashe
Ashe, signifying life force and energy in the Yoruba language and culture, is also a powerful concept in Cuban popular and folkloric culture. Timba, or modern Cuban Salsa at its most energetic and multifaceted, is an urban expression that fuses native African and Cuban rhythms, as well as Afro-American Funk, Jazz, Soul, and Go Go. Aramis Pazos Barrera, a native of the neighborhood el Cerro in Havana, Cuba, has formed his own group to continue to promote this tradition in the United States. He and his 12-piece band, complete with dancers, want to introduce Americans to another style of Salsa, different from Puerto Rican salsa and "Salsa Romantica."
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Founded in 1996, this nationally acclaimed company holds dual citizenship—not just in Colorado and New Mexico, as its name indicates, but also in the worlds of classical and contemporary dance. Aspen Santa Fe Ballet has made a lasting impression with a company of 11 versatile, energetic dancers performing a sophisticated repertoire featuring some of the world's foremost choreographers. International appearances and touring throughout the United States have earned the company glowing reviews and enthusiastic audience receptions. For more than a decade, the company's signature style has encompassed a far-reaching aesthetic vision in an honest expression of the art of dance.
B
Chuck Brown
Washington's own Chuck Brown is affectionately called "The Godfather of Go-Go." Go-Go is a subgenre of funk music developed by Brown in and around Washington, D.C. in the mid- and late 1970s. Brown's musical career began in the 1960s playing guitar with Jerry Butler and The Earls of Rhythm, joining Los Latinos in 1965. Brown's early hits include "I Need Some Money" and "Bustin' Loose," which has been adopted by the Washington Nationals baseball team as its home run celebration song. He caps a fun-filled Open House with a dance party on the South Plaza. Dance lessons led by goLo LLC.
D
Mary Louise Defender Wilson
The black dog often found at Mary Louise Defender Wilson's side is her Hokshina. That's the dog's name, and also the word for dog in Defender's Dakotah language. Hokshina chases cows in the gumbo hills of North Dakota and makes Defender laugh. Gumbo hills is a term for the rugged low hills of southwestern North Dakota. The geography of Defender's life and culture, and that of her tribe for as far back as anyone remembers, comes alive in the stories she tells. Standing on stage she is slender and tall wearing a floor length velvet red dress in a style traditional to her tribe. Her voice sounds, someone said, like "leaves falling in a stone canyon." Suddenly, you know you are listening to someone doing something she was born to do.
Lila Downs
Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Minnesota's Lila Downs possess a musical vision that is anthropological in nature, as varied as the ancient and earthy cultures that nurtured her and continue to inspire. With a powerful persona, positive aura, and a voice that ranges from dusky to penetrating, she caught Hollywood's attention, which resulted in a role in the Salma Hayek film about Mexican artist (and Downs doppelganger) Frida Kahlo. She sang the Oscar®-nominated soundtrack song "Burn It Blue" and became the first Latina to perform at the Academy Awards® telecast. She also captured a Latin Grammy® in the Best Folk Album category for 2004's One Blood/ Una Sangre. To bring her vision and songs to fruition, along with her seven-man band and producers Paul Cohen (her husband), Aneiro Tano, and Brian Lynch, Downs plays guitar and percussion. The band utilizes traditional instruments including accordion, harp and clarinet. The trumpet, trombone and tuba appear in several arrangements, bringing the sound somewhere between Mexico and New Orleans.
Dragon Art Studio
Over the course of its thousand-year history, Chinese puppetry has developed tremendously. It has combined artistic expression with detailed hand craft, traditional Chinese Opera movements and music, beautifully engineered mechanical puppet parts, and western technology to tell the story. The only professional Chinese Puppet Theater in the U.S., Oregon's Dragon Art Studio (puppeteers Yuqin Wang and Zhengli Xu) was honored in 2004 with the NEA's National Heritage Fellowship Award. For Open House, it presents a performance that blends puppetry and music with elegance, humor, and special effects to create a beautiful theatrical event.
F
The Suzanne Farrell Ballet
Led by Suzanne Farrell, the renowned ballerina and George Balanchine protégée, the Kennedy Center's own ballet company has been praised for "renewing the Balanchine legacy with maximum luster" by the Los Angeles Times. At Open House today, members of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet will dance Balanchine's Apollo, "Contrapuntal Blues" pas de deux from Clarinade, and Tzigane.
Flying Feet
Ellen Engle and Marc Shepanek, a.k.a. Flying Feet Enterprises, have been performing and teaching Swing, Ballroom, and Latin dance in the Washington, DC area since 1989. They are the official instructors for Swing, Ballroom, and Latin dance for the U.S. Naval Academy and have taught for the National Park Service at Glen Echo Park since 1997. Today, they will be leading the dance floor in the Theater Lab during Oklahoma Stomp.
Edwin Fontánez's Washington Chalk Festival
Now in its 12th year, the Washington Chalk Festival was founded by Edwin Fontánez in 1993 as an offshoot of the International Chalk Festival. It has remained a popular highlight of Open House every year since 1995. A local artist and children's author, Edwin Fontánez's books include On This Beautiful Island, The Vejigante and the Folk Festivals of Puerto Rico, and Hadas, Sirenas y Sapos, among others. He is also a frequent guest at the Kennedy Center's Multicultural Children's Book Festival each November. More information on Edwin Fontánez and past Chalk Festivals can be found at exitstudio.com. This year's participants include returning artists Rick Aleman, Scott Buga, Pat Goslee, Seemeen Hashem, Judit Ilie, and Gina Robles-Villalba.
H
Hungry March Band
Roaring out of Brooklyn comes the Hungry March Band, NYC's legendary street brass marching band, with an anarchic style that has become their trademark. Put on your dancing shoes and break out the fancy threads because they've got a party going on—a blazing parade of flesh, blood, steel, brass, and wood. They are the music of the people! Their musical repertoire consists of original compositions written by band members as well as scores selected from the world community. These songs range from New Orleans street bands, European brass traditions, Gypsy/ Roma classics, wedding brass bands from India, the jazz world, and the international flavor of NYC. The band is an ever-evolving musical experiment influenced and inspired by Latin flavor, punk rock noise, hip hop beats, and music of the streets.
K
Donald Knaack: "The Junkman™"
Vermont's The Junkman™ travels to the beat of a different drummer. As a conservatory-trained percussionist and composer and former student of John Cage, he has been a member of the Louisville Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic, as well as a studio percussionist and drummer in the studios of Hollywood. He now exclusively composes for and performs on junk and recycled materials. It's called Junk Music™ and it's a unique collection of infectious grooves and musical styles that's gaining audiences from every spectrum of the music business—from rock to jazz to world music. Impossible to categorize, worldwide audiences are recognizing Junk Music as eye-opening, provocative, and entirely new. Brat Magazine called it "hip, unique and totally cool!"
M
Raul Midón
The New Mexico-born, New York-based writer, vocalist, and guitarist Raul Midón, who has been blind from birth, combines the soulfulness of Stevie Wonder, the inventive appropriation of non-indigenous musical elements pioneered by Paul Simon, and the trend-defying individuality of Bill Withers. He had the sold-out Concert Hall audience on their feet when he performed as part of The Movie Music of Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard in December 2007. A World Within a World, the title of his new album (Manhattan Records, Sept. 25), might refer to the status of music within the culture as a whole; it could also describe the expansive interior realm that this single-minded artist, blind from birth, has created with his imagination.
N
National Symphony Orchestra
The National Symphony Orchestra is the nation's orchestra, making its home at the Kennedy Center. Led by Principal Conductor Iván Fischer, the NSO welcomes the world's greatest guest artists to performances in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall all throughout the year. Now in its 78th season, the NSO remains a unique ambassador of the American experience, performing favorites from the classical repertoire as well as the classics of tomorrow. Today, NSO Associate Conductor Emil de Cou leads the NSO in works by Meredith Willson, Erich Korngold, Leroy Anderson, Edward Elgar, John Williams, and more.
National Symphony Orchestra Instrument "Petting Zoo"
A project of the Women's Committee for the National Symphony Orchestra, this fun, popular activity offers children hands-on experience with the instruments of the orchestra. Throughout the day, they can bang, blow, and bow their way to a great musical time!
Joshua Nelson
In the 17 years since kosher gospel artist Joshua Nelson first sang along with a Mahalia Jackson album he discovered in his grandparents' home when he was eight years old, he has spread the sheer joy of spiritual music to audiences from New Jersey to Jerusalem and throughout the world. Joshua, whose voice bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the late Ms. Jackson, has performed both solo and with such musical luminaries as Wynton Marsalis and Aretha Franklin; gospel greats Albertina Walker, the Barret Sisters, and Hezekiah Walker; as well as the greatest Jewish Klezmer band in the world, The Klezmatics, and late jazz greats Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie, among others.
Nevada Ballet Theatre
Now in its thirty-sixth season, Nevada Ballet Theatre is a leading force in the establishment of the performing arts in Southern Nevada. Dancers for the 36-member company have been recruited from around the world and include artists with international performing experience. The classically trained company is at home in an eclectic repertory, moving easily from the romantic era classics to the high-energy contemporary ballets. For Open House, they will dance Canfield's Equinoxe and Balanchine's Who Cares?.
O
Glenn Ohrlin
Swedish-Norwegian in ancestry, Glenn Ohrlin was born in Minneapolis in 1925, and has been a cowboy virtually all of his life. Now living in Arkansas, he has spent a lifetime absorbing cowboy lore and traditions. Ohrlin is a superb teller of tall tales, and an illustrator who draws cowboys and their paraphernalia with loving attention and detail. He is best known, however, as a collector and performer of cowboy songs, range ballads, stories, and poems, and has authored a book called The Hell-Bound Train - A Cowboy's Songbook.
Oklahoma Stomp Youth Band
Oklahoma Stomp is an all-youth Western Swing band proudly representing the great state of Oklahoma. These nine talented boys range in age from 12 to 16 and have been individually recognized with several prestigious awards from music writing to top honors in instrumental and vocal music competitions. The boys enjoy the music and the opportunity to carry on the Western Swing tradition of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.
P
PROJECT featuring Greg Pattillo
PROJECT is a dynamic young group that is exciting audiences with their energy and innovative style. Their sound can only be described as a fusion of jazz, hip hop, and world music—balanced out by a sincere allegiance to their classical roots. By combining the classical repertoire with original compositions, PROJECT reaches out to new audiences. Recognized throughout the world for his redefinition of flute sound, flutist Greg Pattillo was lauded by the New York Times as "the best person in the world at what he does." His groundbreaking performance videos on YouTube, showcasing "beatbox flute," have been viewed more than 20 million times. An exceptionally versatile cellist, Eric Stephenson's style ranges from classical to jazz to rock and folk. He is currently a member of the IRIS Chamber Orchestra in Memphis, Tennessee and the Colorado Music Festival. As a member of the Cleveland Orchestra, bassist Peter Seymour performed under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst and in the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. He was the recipient of the DownBeat Magazine Award for Best Jazz Soloist in 1996 and has appeared with Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, and Bobby McFerrin.
R
Richmond Boys Choir
Proudly known as "Richmond's Ambassadors of Song," the Richmond Boys Choir is in its twelfth year of operation. Within this short time, the choir has established many musical collaborative traditions including a partnership with the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra. Together, the two organizations have created a wonderful evening of musical selections that typically kicks off the New Year at the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts. RBC has opened for such great artists as Wynton Marsalis and Lily Tomlin at the Richmond Forum, former Supremes member Mary Wilson at Maymont Park's Musicfest in Richmond, Virginia, the renowned James Earl Jones at Hampton-Sydney College, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
S
Jake Shimabukuro
Though many still have trouble pronouncing his last name and the instrument he plays, Hawaii's Jake Shimabukuro (she-ma-BOO-koo-row) is becoming recognized as one of the world's top ukulele (oo-koo-LAY-lay) musicians. Renowned for lightning-fast fingers and revolutionary playing techniques, Jake views the ukulele as an "untapped source of music with unlimited potential." His virtuosity defies label or category. Playing jazz, blues, funk, classical, bluegrass, folk, flamenco, and rock, Jake's mission is to show everyone that the ukulele is capable of so much more than only the traditional Hawaiian music with which many associate it. Touring with Jimmy Buffett in 2005, 2006, and 2007 gave Jake the experience of a lifetime, regularly exposing his virtuosity and amazing stage presence to crowds of more than 50,000. Jake's first national television performance came in December 2005 on NBC's The Late Show with Conan O'Brien.
Rosalie Sorrels
Idaho's Rosalie Sorrels, a folk singer-songwriter began her public career as a singer and collector of traditional folksongs in the late 1950s. During the early 1960s she left her husband and began traveling and performing at music festivals and clubs throughout the United States. She and her five children traveled across the country as she worked to support her family and establish herself as a performer. Along the way, she made many life-long friends among the folk and beat scene. Currently "retired," she still performs in select concerts and festivals. Her career of social activism, storytelling, teaching, learning, songwriting, collecting folk songs, performing, and recording has spanned six decades.
Step Afrika!
DC's Step Afrika!, founded by Brian Williams, is the first professional company in the world dedicated to the tradition of stepping. Founded in December 1994, the company is critically acclaimed for its efforts to promote an understanding of and appreciation for stepping and the dance tradition's use as an educational tool for young people worldwide. Step Afrika! reaches tens of thousands of Americans each year and has performed on many stages in North & South America, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. Stepping is a unique dance tradition created by African American college students. In stepping, the body is used as an instrument to create intricate rhythms and sounds through a combination of footsteps, claps, and spoken word. The tradition grew out of the song and dance rituals practiced by historically African American fraternities and sororities in the early 1900s.
T
Valerie Tutson
Valerie Tutson graduated from Brown University with a Masters Degree in Theatre Arts and a degree in a self-designed major—Storytelling as a Communications Art. Valerie has been telling stories in schools, churches, libraries, festivals and conferences since 1991. She draws her stories from around the world with an emphasis on African traditions. Her repertoire includes stories and songs she learned in her travels to South Africa, her experiences in West Africa, and stories from African American history.
W
Washington National Opera
Under General Director Plácido Domingo, the Washington National Opera presents high-quality productions, championing lesser-known works of significant musical worth rarely seen on today's opera stages. At Open House today, get a close-up look at the props and equipment that make the opera so spectacular.
Washington National Opera Young Artists
Overseen by Plácido Domingo and now in its seventh season, the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program is unique in guiding young singers, coach/ accompanists, conductors, and stage directors on the verge of international careers. The Program provides intensive study with renowned vocal and drama coaches, and offers voice lessons, language classes, and training in health and movement. The Young Artists also have the opportunity to perform and cover roles on the main stage of Washington National Opera.
Z
Dan Zanes and Friends
New York City's Dan Zanes and Friends make music for families and people of all ages in a way that is changing the face of America. Grammy Award® winners in 2007 for Catch That Train!, Best Musical Album for Children, they play "wry, rootsy, real American folk music—songs that twist a little plangency into the sweetness of a melody, songs that feel like life" (Rolling Stone). Their recently released ¡Nueva York! is a collection of songs from the Spanish-speaking Americas.
