Art Works Podcast

The Lotus World Music and Arts Festival is turning 25 this year. So it seemed like a good time to talk with its executive director Sunni Fass and long-time staff member LuAnne Holladay about this one-of-a-kind festival. Lotus is an urban event—turning streets in downtown Bloomington Indiana into a center for music, dance and visual arts for one weekend each September. The musicians come from all o...

Although he’s only in his early 30s, singer, educator, conductor and music director of The Dessoff Choirs Malcolm J. Merriweather has already made his mark on the world of choral music. It is his passion; and, his mission is to open singers to all its possibilities, students to it wide and varied paths, and audiences to its wonders. His mission is as simple as it is ambitious: “impacting the world...

2018 NEA Jazz Master Todd Barkan is a man of many talents: impresario, club owner, producer, artistic programmer. But he would count chief among them his deep and abiding love for jazz and the musicians who create. Owner of the legendary Keystone Korner, Todd created a club where musicians ruled and audiences felt at home. In this music-filled podcast, he talks about that great San Francisco club...

The US Army Artist in Residence SFC Juan Munoz might be the Army's best-kept secret. His job is to document through art the experiences of soldiers as they fulfill their duties both home and abroad. SFC Munoz deploys with troops for a month as a soldier/artist--expected to carry his weight and to document what he sees. SFC Munoz has an extraordinary amount of freedom: he chooses what to document a...

2016 Bess Lomax Hawes NEA National Heritage Fellow Artemio Posadas has spent his life keeping the musical tradition of son huasteco vibrant. Son huasteco is a rich and complicated musical tradition. Beginning in Northeastern Mexico in the late 19 th century, it combines distinctive rhythms, musical solos—with the violin taking a major role, poetry and dance. Improvisation is key; but so is partici...

The Washington Jewish Film Festival’s director Ilya Tovbis wants to open doors to Jewish life around the world. And for ten days, the Washington DC area is home to some 70 international films both documentaries and narratives from emerging and established directors. Ilya defines a “Jewish film” as a work with “ something deliberately to do with the Jewish experience, culture, history, which is a m...

Folklorist, poet and president of the International Storytelling Center, Kiran Singh Sirah is passionate about the power of stories.  He heads the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee—the oldest festival of its kind in the world and a driving force behind the renaissance in storytelling.  Kiran talks about creating community through stories, the ability of story to transcend p...

Actor Dria Brown talks about playing Joan in Bedlam’s almost postmodern production of George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan in DC’s Folger Theatre. It’s stripped down in every way: minimal sets and costumes and a cast of four; Dria plays Joan and only Joan; the other three actors juggle 26 roles. The rehearsals were interesting. We hear about her growing up in South Carolina, how time in her father’s chu...

The first part of this week’s podcast looks at Creative Forces : NEA Military Healing Initiative. NEA Chairman Jane Chu and others reflect on the power of art to heal physical and psychological trauma as well as strengthen families and build community. In part 2, Sebastian Junger discusses his book, Tribe —which looks at the profound sense of loss some combat veterans feel when they return from de...

Curator Nora Atkinson has brought a sense of that annual hotbed of artistic ingenuity in Nevada’s Black Rock desert with the daring and successful “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.” It’s the hottest exhibit in DC appealing to all ages. The exhibit at Renwick Gallery often has lines around the block—and for good reason. It is dazzling; focusing on massive installations that fill rooms with si...

Cartoonist and multimedia artist Liz Reed is co-creator with her husband Jimmy of Cuddles and Rage—it’s a world inhabited by food with quirky personalities. Liz calls it “disturbingly cute,” which seems about right. In one-panel cartoons, dioramas, and animated short videos, Liz and Jimmy Reed create work that is cute—but it always has a twist. Take Dr. Taquito—a serial killer of food, who gives c...

A conversation with Michael Fields, director of California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA). For 32 years, CSSSA has been training the next generation of artists. Each summer, CSSSA gives approximately 500 motivated and talented California high school students in the visual, literary, performing and media arts an intensive learning experience. Conducted by distinguished arts professionals,...

In Jennifer Haigh’s fifth novel Heat and Light , she returns to the fictional town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania: its prosperity withered with the closing of the coalmines. So when it’s learned that the area is rich in natural gas, many people are eager to sign over their mineral rights to energy companies. And the debate about fracking and all that it entails upends the community. Jennifer Haigh know...

Poet and essayist Seema Reza investigates loss and love with ruthless honesty and lyrical power in her book, When the World Breaks Open . In this week’s podcast, Reza discusses writing her life and her determination to reveal herself on the page through poems, essays, fragments and observations, recipes—whatever it took to tell her story precisely and thoroughly. The result is at times heartbreaki...

Guitarist and 2018 NEA Jazz Master Pat Metheny creates music that challenges easy description: he can play free jazz (as he did with Ornette Coleman in Song X) as well as acoustic guitar and pretty much everything in-between. In this tune-filled podcast, we talk to Pat Metheny about the music he plays, the people he’s played with and making the music you want while making a career in music.

Her poetry collection Scriptorium illuminate her Appalachian Roots.

Uncovering new dimensions of music.

Contemporary opera for contemporary audiences.

A novel about what endures when civilization ends.

Making music without boundaries.

Finding the intersection of science and love.

An aural shape-shifter.

His novels take a satirical look at race and identity.

Taking on the role of a lifetime: Rosa Parks in Behind the Movement  

The making of the independent film Little Boxes. Please note: This interview took place before the unexpected death of Nelsan Ellis who stars in the film Little Boxes .