DREAMING NEW WORLDS: MAJOR COLLABORATIONS, PREMIERES, AND CELEBRATIONS HIGHLIGHT 15-DAY EVENT, JUNE 15-29
New Haven, CT—The International Festival of Arts & Ideas today announced complete details for Festival 2013, taking place from June 15 to 29 in New Haven, Connecticut. The theme for the 18th annual Festival is Dreaming New Worlds, reflecting a quality of imagination, inspiration, and innovation in the outstanding international events slated for June. Festival 2013 marquee sponsors include the State of Connecticut, Yale University, First Niagara Bank, the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“We’ve gathered all sorts of dreamers and innovators here this summer,” said the Festival’s Executive Director, Mary Lou Aleskie. “These are the people who are shaping our world and imagining our future. This can be seen in everything from the artistic innovations of Tom Morris and Handspring Puppet Company, whose Midsummer Night’s Dream opens the Festival, to the brilliant minds of scientists, business leaders, and thinkers gathered in our ideas program. We hope that our audience will join us and be inspired to dream new worlds for themselves as well.”
Festival 2013 once again features the Festival’s nationally-recognized mix of the highest quality performing arts and groundbreaking ideas. Spanning 15 days, Festival 2013 features 21 headline events, 14 ideas lectures and conversations, and dozens of free walking, bike, exhibition, and food tours, plus family programs, concerts from noon to night on the New Haven Green, and more.
To see the entire Festival at a glance, go to http://artidea.org/festival.
Headliners on the New Haven Green
The Festival’s signature free concerts on the New Haven Green begin in a big way: Opening Night on the Green is headlined by Aaron Neville, the iconic, multi-Grammy Award winning soul and R&B vocalist, whose new album was released this year. His appearance celebrates the recipients of the State of Connecticut’s Governor’s Arts Awards, who will open the evening’s performance. First Niagara is the proud sponsor of the Festival’s opening night on the Green.
On June 22, The Kronos Quartet launches its 40th Anniversary Season as an innovative new music ensemble, joined by special guest Wu Man. The ensemble, which includes violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, and violist Hank Dutt, will welcome a new member to the ensemble at its New Haven performance: cellist Sunny Jungin Yang. Rounding out the series of free New Haven Green headliners is Calexico and Susana Baca (June 16), Funkadesi (June 24), and Debo Band with Fendika (June 29).
A special draw on the Green throughout this year’s festival is David Dimitri’s L’homme Cirque, a one-man circus in which Dimitri will pitch his own tent and perform an entire show of acrobatic feats, including a human cannonball and wire-walk onto the Green, ten times each week. A portion of tickets for every performance of L’homme Cirque will be available on a walk-up, pay-what-you-wish basis, in keeping with the New Haven Green’s open-to-all philosophy.
Performance Programs
The Festival’s ticketed performance programs are highlighted by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a new production from the creators of the international sensation War Horse, in an exclusive Northeast U.S. engagement for summer 2013; a premiere of a new work from the acclaimed Indian Kuchipudi dancer Shantala Shivalingappa; a new hip-hop musical, Stuck Elevator, with music by Byron Au Yong and New Haven native Aaron Jafferis, presented in association with Long Wharf Theatre; and two presentations at the Shubert Theater: Sequence 8 from the thrilling Canadian circus arts company Les 7 doigts de la main (7 Fingers), who are represented on Broadway this year in the new production of Pippin; and French-Brazilian hip-hop dance ensemble Compagnie Käfig, whose raw energy and precision dances have thrilled audiences around the world.
During the first week, the Festival will present the world premiere of My Friend’s Story, a new operatic work based on Anton Chekhov’s short story Terror created by composer Martin Bresnick, librettist J.D. McClatchy, and director David Chambers, faculty members at Yale School of Music, the English department at Yale, and Yale School of Drama respectively. New works of music theater will also be seen and heard at open rehearsal readings the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, a workshop residency program at Yale School of Drama to develop new works.
The Festival prides itself on showcasing Connecticut’s community of artists throughout the Festival. This year, award-winning New Haven ensemble company A Broken Umbrella Theater presents a new creation, Freewheelers, as part of the Festival’s performance program. The piece, staged inside Broken Umbrella’s unique space in the old Horowitz Brothers department store, is about the uncanny collision of bicycle history and corset making in the city of New Haven. The Festival’s ticketed music programs include an evening of vibrant acoustic jazz from Christian McBride and Inside Straight on June 20; John Luther Adam’s evocative songbirdsongs, performed by music ensemble Le Train Bleu at New Haven’s Marsh Botanical Gardens; Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil performed by Jeffrey Douma’s professional ensemble Yale Choral Artists, who return to the Festival after last year’s Yale International Choral Festival; and Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, who are among a new wave of young performers re-inventing Southern Italy’s Pizzica musical and dance traditions for today’s global audience.
Ideas Programs
The Festival’s Ideas program brings together an eclectic mix of authors, researchers, artists, experimenters, and dreamers who are asking big questions: what is involved in dreaming new worlds, and what could that new world look like? Among the 14 lectures, panels, and conversations are Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein, discussing what traditional hunter-gatherer societies have to tell us about the way we live now; Marion Nestle on the politics of food and food production; Benjamin Barber asking whether mayors and city-states have more to offer their communities than today’s more commonly prevalent nation states; and a gathering of Global Innovators in Business, comprised of innovative businesses and business leaders from right here in Connecticut, exploring how global innovation is sparked right here at home. Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash returns to the Festival after her spectacular closing-night concert at Festival 2012, this time to close the Ideas series with an inspiring, revelatory talk about her life and artistic experiences. Festival artists appearing at panels and discussions throughout the Ideas program include David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, pipa player Wu Man, Shantala Shivalingappa, Stuck Elevator composer Byron Au Yong, and Debo Band’s Danny Mekonnen.
Community Programs
Festival 2013 will also include a series of 29 Walking Tours to sites and historic neighborhoods throughout New Haven, in concert with more than a dozen community partners. The Noon to Night series of weekday performances presents performances from around the region at noon and 6pm Tuesday to Friday on the New Haven Green, and the Weekend Showcase presents community groups on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Music Haven, which provides world-class performances and free after school education programs that build long-term relationships between professional musicians, children, and families in four high-poverty Empowerment Zone neighborhoods of New Haven, will run a String Quartet Truck during the first week of the Festival: From June 17-21, the Haven String Quartet, the resident ensemble at Music Haven, will perform live all over the city onboard a flatbed truck. Further, preceding the Kronos Quartet headline concert on the Green on June 22, Music Haven will stage a String Musician Play-In, inviting all string musicians from across the city to welcome the Kronos Quaret to New Haven with a Green-wide play-in of select string music. Details and sheet music for the play-in will be posted at a later date.
In the weeks leading up to the Festival, the Festival plans to produce a Pop-Up Village that will travel to one or two community sites before landing on the New Haven Green during the Festival itself. The physical structure of the village is being produced in partnership with students at Yale School of Architecture, who last year created a shining metallic Info Pavilion for the Festival. This year, the Pop-Up Village will showcase performances, activities, and programs created by the Festival’s partner organizations in the New Haven community. More details for the Pop-Up Village will be announced at a later date.
As always, the Festival will feature plenty of activity for all ages: Box City, a fun and interactive crafts activity in which children build a miniature city from found boxes and craft supplies, opens the Festival on June 15 and 16; and the Family Stage on the New Haven Green features free youth-oriented performances at 1:15pm Tuesday to Friday. Family-friendly ticketed performances include L’homme Cirque, Sequence 8, and Compagnie Käfig, with a $20 youth ticket price available in advance.
Accessible Ticket Pricing & Day Packages
The Festival is proud to offer low and accessible ticket prices for performing arts programs, in addition to discounts available for students, seniors, and youth age 17 and under. More than 80% of Festival programs are completely free to the public. For L’homme Cirque and Freewheelers, at least 20% of tickets for each performance will be available on a pay-what-you-wish basis one hour before the performance.
To encourage longer visits to the Festival and to New Haven, the Festival has crafted day and weekend-long schedules and packages in which Festival visitors can spend an entire day at the Festival attending performances, lectures, and tours. Visitors can choose schedules of completely free activities, or can choose to attend a day of world-class performances as well.
Ticketed events go on sale to the general public on April 16 on the Festival’s website (artidea.org), and through the Shubert Theater box office. Tickets are on sale to Festival members now.
ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS & IDEAS
The International Festival of Arts & Ideas is a 15-day festival of performing arts, lectures, and conversations that celebrates the greatest artists and thinkers from around the world. Each June, the Festival takes over the theaters, open spaces, and courtyards of New Haven, Connecticut with performances and dialogues that tickle the senses, engage the mind, and inspire the soul.
The Festival was established in 1996 by Anne Calabresi, Jean Handley and Roslyn Meyer, and has grown into one of the Northeast's largest and most significant cultural destinations. More than 80% of Festival programs are completely free to the public, including events that feature some of the most prestigious jazz, classical, dance, and theater artists in the world. The Festival’s programs have an impact throughout the year, including engagement and educational programming such as the Festival Fellowship Program for underserved youth, and the Visionary Leadership Award held in autumn of each year.
Festival 2013 is presented with the generous support of marquee sponsors the State of Connecticut, Yale University, the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, First Niagara, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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