UMS announces digital residencies, cohort of artist partners

ANN ARBOR — The University Musical Society announces its full cohort of Digital Artist Residency artists, each of whom will explore timely themes through an array of new creative projects being developed specifically for the digital frame. The six artist-led projects will connect artists to audiences in brand new ways, from rarely visible behind-the-scenes creative development all the way to presentations of finished works, some of which will be experienced digitally and some, eventually, to in-person audiences. The projects will be presented in various stages of creative development over the course of the next year. Participating artists will also connect to audiences, including students, faculty, and the broader community, through informal conversations, participatory experiences, discussions about the creative process, and other activities. Information about all of the projects will continue to be updated HERE

The UMS Digital Artist Residencies launch with two events that feature the artists in conversation, on Tuesday, September 29 at 5:30 pm and Wednesday, September 30 at 12 noon, both available at ums.org. These events will allow viewers to meet each artist and learn more about their residencies, how they are responding to current events, and how that translates into creating art that can be experienced in both the digital and live performance spaces. Conversations will be available on demand after the initial live events HERE . Full details about each event are listed at the end of this release.

The six participants in the Digital Artist Residency cohort include:

• Actor WENDELL PIERCE, whose residency will explore social justice, anti-racism, and the Black canon of performance work. Among the most ambitious of Pierce’s projects will be the production, filming, and release of a digital presentation of the recent American play, Some Old Black Man by James Anthony Tyler, which explores race in America through the lens of interpersonal and intergenerational relationships.
  
  
• Lebanese composer and pianist TAREK YAMANI  and the Chicago-based SPEKTRAL QUARTET, who will join forces to explore the junctures between Western Classical, jazz, and traditional Arab music, resulting in a new, evening-length commission. The residency brings these innovative artists together for the first time, allowing audiences to join on a journey of discovery, improvisation, and collaboration encompassing both traditional and contemporary performing arts from both Western traditions and the Arab diaspora.
  
  
• Flint-based musician and activist TUNDE OLANIRAN, who will activate a dynamic residency that features art-making across disciplines, community collaboration and co-creation, emergent technologies, and video animation. Through the introduction of four singles from Olaniran’s forthcoming full-length album, audiences will be invited to participate in the creative process using building blocks developed by Olaniran and a cohort of creatives, remixing them to create new artistic outputs.
  
  
• Choreographer CLEO PARKER ROBINSON, who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of her Denver-based company Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. Robinson will document, in collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Alan Domínguez, the creative process behind The Four Journeys, a new work that examines the confluence of culture in Mexico from its diverse indigenous heritage to more recent influences from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Audiences will get to know Robinson and her legacy as a Black artmaker, choreographer, and social activist, and as an active creator and collaborator whose current work leans into multiculturalism and intersectionality.
  
  
• Performance artist BRIAN LOBEL, who, along with artists GWENETH-ANN RAND, ALLYSON DEVENISH, and NAOMI FELIX, will playfully interrogate the idea of failure in art, in life, in public, and in private through an extension of his 2015 performance piece, 24 Italian Songs and Arias. Audiences will be invited to upload recordings of themselves singing from the collection of well-known songs after which Lobel’s work was named, ultimately curating a crowd-sourced digital performance archive. The residency will also examine bodily experience, illness, marginalization, and vulnerability.
  
  
• Mezzo-soprano JOYCE DIDONATO, who will use song as a lens through which to process and navigate the human experience in relation to current events and global concerns in real time. A series of videos featuring DiDonato singing and in dialogue with people from a variety of different backgrounds will be the primary focus of a residency that casts a spotlight on the healing power of calling on great art from the past centuries to pass through challenging events of the present day. Expected themes such as grief, community, unity, patriotism, and nature will surely factor in as topics unveiling themselves in our current headlines. DiDonato’s digital project is being developed in collaboration with Princeton University Concerts.
  

“As we face unprecedented challenges in presenting live, in-person work by artists, I’m absolutely thrilled that we will be investing in and working with this select group of artists over the course of the next year, to develop new work and to invite audiences into the process,” said UMS President Matthew VanBesien. “Since our venues closed in March, we have been fully committed to exploring ways that we can continue to connect with our audiences and continue to support artists in their creative development. With this program, which is funded in part by a group of generous UMS board and board emeritus supporters, we are able to continue that work on both fronts.”

Wendell Pierce noted, “I first got to know the staff at UMS about a year ago, and I’m so impressed by how they are thinking about their role in the community. It’s truly an honor to be able to participate in this first Digital Artist Residency pilot, and also to connect with students and community members in Southeast Michigan. For me, the role of Art is to ignite public discourse. Art is where we come together as a community to confront who we are as a society, to decide what our values are, and then to act on them. I look forward to exploring these issues through the play that we’ll be rehearsing in quarantine in Michigan this fall, and then presenting it to what I hope will be a much broader audience.”

“Ever since I started the journey of reimagining Arabic musical idioms within the framework of jazz harmony, it’s been a wish of mine to conceptualize these sounds into the world of chamber music,” said Tarek Yamani. “It’s such a thrill that this will now be possible through the UMS Digital Artist Residency, and with none other than the genre-bending Spektral Quartet.”

Tunde Olaniran added, “Artists are experiencing a continuum of challenges and opportunities to their process. Inside and through incredible social upheavals, reawakenings, and uncoverings, the emotional lives and needs of an audience (as well as the artist) still exist. During the digital residency, I’m trying to explore how artists can show up right now, without assuming we are the representative or surrogate for any movement, but still reflecting the emotions that have the potential to exist inside of any particular moment.”

Digital Artist Residency Kickoff Events
Part 1: Tuesday, September 29 at 5:30 pm (with Wendell Pierce, Cleo Parker Robinson, and Tunde Olaniran)

Part 2: Wednesday, September 30 at 12 noon (with Joyce DiDonato, Brian Lobel & Gweneth-Ann Rand, and Tarek Yamani & members of the Spektral Quartet)

Both events will be streamed live on YouTube and Facebook and will be available on demand at ums.org/digitalresidencies immediately after the live conversation.

UMS’s Digital Artist Residencies are made possible with support from: