Ballroom Marfa Newsletter

Ballroom Marfa: Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band

2008-11-17T17:47:06Z

Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band
with The Felice Brothers and RIG 1
Sunday 23 November 2008 Doors 6.30pm, Show 7pm
Goode Crowley Theater
Tickets $20 available on frontgatetickets.com

Ballroom Marfa wraps up our 2008 music season with a performance by Rolling Stone's 2008 songwriter of the year, Conor Oberst, performing with The Mystic Valley band. Along with The Felice Brothers and RIG 1, they end their world tour with a rare, intimate concert at the Goode Crowley Theater.

Conor Oberst became known in the late nineties as the heart and soul of Bright Eyes, an acclaimed indie/folk band known for its creative and moving collaborations. While experimenting with other musical projects, Bright Eyes has been, for all intents and purposes, Oberst's main musical vehicle for the last decade. With the release of his latest album and tour, Omaha’s preeminent singer songwriter has ducked out from under his weighted alias and with the aid of The Mystic Valley Band has reinvented himself.

Oberst will perform a new collection of songs - introspective folk and rock steeped in Americana. Known for the diversity of his work, and often compared to Bob Dylan, Oberst’s musicianship favors immediacy over perfection: he continually constructs verses rather than repeat hooks or write them down, feeling that his songs are never completed.

Always the chameleonic musician, Oberst has switched between punk rock, orchestral pop and squawking electronica on various projects, but Conor Oberst is a treatise on what he does best: folk/rock at its most earnest, introspective, and musically accomplished.

Conor Oberst's new LP was made in Tepoztlán, Morelos, México during the months of January and February, 2008. In Tepoztlán – a place known for Aztec Magic and Extra-Terrestrial Sightings – a temporary studio was created in a mountain villa called Valle Místico at the outskirts of the town. It was there that Oberst and the band lived and worked in near perfect harmony, often unaware of the hour or the day. The result is his first solo album in thirteen years, following Water (1993), Here’s To Special Treatment (1994) and Soundtrack To My Movie (1995).

The Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band performance has been made possible by the generous support of C3, Blackmott Productions and Ballroom Marfa Front Row Members.

As we complete another extraordinary season of music in Marfa, we would like to acknowledge all of the donors that have been so generous through their support of our 2008 Music Program. Front Row Members: Pablo Alvarado, Jeff and Toni Beauchamp, Tim Crowley, Janie & Dick DeGuerin, Marion Barthelme & Jeff Fort, Harry & Shelly Hudson, Charles Mallory, Jacqueline Northcut and Charles Mary Kubricht & Ron Sommers. Individual donors: John & Alice Jennings, Nick Terry & Maryam Amiryani and James Thompson. In-Kind Supporters: L & F Distributors, Permian Basin Distributing, Alpine, TX and Titos Vodka, Austin, TX. Special thanks to the Goode Crowley Theater and KRTS Marfa Public Radio.

Looking forward to 2009, please save the dates for the upcoming music events:

YACHT WITH WHITE RAINBOW
31 JANUARY 2009

BILLY JOE SHAVER WITH ADAM CAROLL & SCRAPPY JUD NEWCOMB
15 FEBRUARY 2009

Become a member and support Ballroom Marfa!
You can now become a member, purchase a Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band poster or Ballroom Marfa T-shirt online! Our mission of presenting multi-disciplinary programs to a diverse and growing audience is realized with the support we receive from you. Thank you!

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa: Art in the Auditorium

2008-10-30T19:21:36Z

Ballroom Marfa

ART IN THE AUDITORIUM
Screenings every Saturday through November
Goode Crowley Theater, 1-6pm
Free Admission

This Saturday, 1 November, will mark the first installment of Ballroom Marfa’s month-long film and video series, Art in the Auditorium. Organized by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, Art in the Auditorium showcases the work of emerging film and video artists through a global collaboration between Ballroom Marfa and museums in China, Europe, Latin America and the United Kingdom.

Each of the nine participating institutions has selected an artist from their country to be included in the program; Ryan Trecartin has been chosen by Ballroom Marfa as the North American artist.

Born in Webster, TX and now based in Philadelphia, PA, Trecartin is among an emerging wave of artists who have grown up with the internet, and who are consequently making work informed by the evolution of net aesthetics, the hyperactivity of the world wide web and the proliferation of democratic broadcasting platforms like YouTube. In Trecartin’s videos, characters dress up, play up and pose up for the camera – sometimes as fictional personas, other times as themselves – as they share the minutiae of their mashed-up romantic and domestic lives. Their relationships and attitudes are deeply affected by a hyper-awareness of media; the steady slew of pop culture references and the smorgasbord of artistic forms from which his characters draw is reflective of Trecartin’s own post-media generation.

Art in the Auditorium brings Trecartin’s work together with a diverse group of artists and institutions including Lene Berg (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo); Nathalie Djurberg (Moderna Museet, Stockholm); Leandro Erlich (Fundacion Proa, Buenos Aires); Wang Jianwei (Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing); Ali Kazma (The Institute for the Readjustment of Clocks, Istanbul); Shahryar Nashat (Kunsthaus, Zurich); Cornelia Parker (Whitechapel Gallery, London); and Diego Perrone (Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo).

Across this disparate group, many themes emerge and occasionally recur in different guises as artists explore the tensions between image and reality, the state of the environment, power relationships, media culture, human mortality, hyper-consumerism, nationalist history and idiosyncratic video and cinematic lineages.

Ballroom Marfa will screen works by two different artists every Saturday through November - with a single artist on November 8 - at the Goode Crowley Theater. Screenings begin at 1pm with the scheduled works running continuously through until 6pm.

Art in the Auditorium is free and open to the public, however some videos are suitable only for mature audiences. For further program details, please visit the film section of our website at: www.ballroommarfa.org or call us at 432.729.3600

Art in the Auditorium at Ballroom Marfa has been organized by Associate Curator, Alicia Ritson

This program has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa Members

Ryan Trecartin, What's the Love Making Babies For, 2003, 20 minutes, color, sound. Courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa: JAPANTHER and KILLER DREAMER

2008-10-27T07:07:17Z

Ballroom Marfa

JAPANTHER and
KILLER DREAMER
Friday 31st October 2008
Doors 8.30pm / Show 9pm
Goode Crowley Theater
Tickets $10 at the door

Ballroom Marfa is thrilled to bring Brooklyn based noise-rock pop-punk duo, Japanther, back to Marfa for a special Halloween show “The Dancing Mummies Curse”. Supporting them is San Pedro band Killer Dreamer, and Gorgamoth with a small puppet performance of “The Tell Tale Heart”.

Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly formed Japanther in 2001 while at school at Pratt Institute, NY. Since then they have had over sixteen releases with the indie-labels Tapes Records and Menlo Park Recordings, including the full length albums: Leather Wings (2003); Dump the Body In Rikki Lake (2003); Master of Pigeons (2005); Wolfenswan (2005); Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty (2006); and Skuffed Up My Huffy (2007). Japanther are currently on tour promoting their newest album release by Wantage USA: Tut Tut Now Shake Ya Butt, which Village Voice featured as one of 10 albums to get excited about this fall: “Vanek and Reilly are the right kind of art-school damaged: impatient, ambitious, visual, interested in spectacle and circumstance.”

Vice magazine described Japanther’s sound as “like Iron Maiden, Throbbing Gristle, and Lightening Bolt gave birth to a squealing little baby with flaming guitars for arms. Their shows are chaotic and danger-charged love-fests and they are frighteningly dedicated to keeping it underground”.

Neither punk-act nor art-band adequately describe Vanek and Reilly, who play to audiences as diverse as the Art Miami Basel crowd and electronic/indie music festival goers in Juarez. They are known for very original collaborations, among them: Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty, a musical rock puppet show with Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Rodney Graham and Laurent P. Berger; Dump the Body in Rikki Lake, a collaboration with Being John Malkovich puppeteer, Philip Huber; and most recently, Dangerous When Wet, where the duo teamed up with New York University synchronized swimming troupe, Aquadoom. Japanther first performed in Marfa in 2007, debuting “Laugh Dance” with the movement artists Sonya Robbins and Layla Childs.

On their current tour, Japanther are joined by Killer Dreamer who are celebrating the release of their latest action zombie punk album, 1,000 Years of Servitude.

Join Ballroom Marfa at the Goode Crowley Theater for a night of super-hard, incredibly fast and eminently danceable punk from two of the independent scene’s most exciting bands. Come dressed for Halloween – door prizes for best costume.

Save the Date
Sunday 23 November 2008
CONOR OBERST
and The Mystic Valley Band with
The Felice Brothers + RIG 1
$20. Tickets available now on frontgatetickets.com

The 2008 music series has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa's Front Row Members. In-kind support for this performance provided by L & F Distributors, Alpine, TX.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa: The Marfa Sessions

2008-09-09T12:45:01Z

Ballroom Marfa

THE MARFA SESSIONS
Curated by Regine Basha, Lucy Raven & Rebecca Gates
27 September 2008 – 1 February 2009

Emily Jacir, Nina Katchadourian, Christina Kubisch, Louise Lawler, Iñigo-Manglano Ovalle, Kaffe Matthews, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, Dario Robleto, Steve Roden & Stephen Vitiello, Steve Rowell & Simparch, Deborah Stratman & Steven Badgett, Julianne Swartz

Opening Reception:
Sat. 27 Sept., Ballroom Marfa, Noon

Performance by Steve Roden & Stephen Vitiello:
Fri. 26 Sept., Chinati Foundation, Sundown

David Toop & Joshua Kun in conversation:
Sat. 27 Sept., Liberty Hall, 4pm

Live Music with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop & DJ Damon Locks:
Sat. 27 Sept., Liberty Hall, 9pm

Opening in the fall of 2008 is The Marfa Sessions, Ballroom Marfa’s first exhibition devoted to artists working with sound.

Independent curators Regine Basha, Rebecca Gates and Lucy Raven will bring together fifteen artists with specific interests in sound work and its potential as a transgressive medium across place and geography. Individual sound projects will be installed at Ballroom Marfa and embedded within the public spaces and private corners of Marfa, creating a sonic portrait of this unusual West Texas town.

Ballroom Marfa, the exhibition’s headquarters, will feature a visitors center sound hub, hosting artworks and providing information and maps that point to the sound projects throughout the town. The eleven works in the exhibition include already extant pieces adapted for installation in public spaces throughout Marfa, and six new site-specific works specially commissioned by Ballroom Marfa and created by: Kaffe Matthews; Nina Katchadourian; Christina Kubisch; Deborah Stratman & Steven Badgett; Steve Roden & Stephen Vitiello; and Steve Rowell & Simparch. In some cases artworks will occupy frequented public venues such as Marfa Book Company, local eateries and Marfa Public Radio airwaves; others will be discovered in natural settings near the outskirts of town.

The Marfa Sessions will include built sound environments and acoustic spaces; sculptural works with an integral aural element; and sound by visual artists who usually work in other media. With a broad, interdisciplinary approach to sound works, The Marfa Sessions positions artists who are not usually thought of as “sound artists” alongside those who are established in the field, expanding the interpretative possibilities of sound in relation to place.

Marfa, as a desert town, is a remote location by any standard. It is also a uniquely central destination and an historical confluence of various phenomena that include one of the world’s largest astronomical observatories–The McDonald Observatory, Big Bend National Park, The Marfa Lights, a U.S. border patrol station, The Chinati Foundation (also formerly a WWII military base), the Judd Foundation, as well as the filming locations for Giant, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men.

With site-specific works activating various locations across the town, and with the collaboration of the community, The Marfa Sessions aims to amplify the varied set of physical and metaphoric characteristics that define “Marfa” – its geopolitical position, local identity, myths, as well as its significant relationship to 20th Century Minimalism and Land Art. The Marfa Sessions seeks to call the ear to Marfa and its environs, noting the aural and conceptual depth and breadth of this complex setting.

The opening weekend of The Marfa Sessions begins on Friday 26 September with an original site-specific sound performance on the grounds of the Chinati Foundation by Steve Roden & Stephen Vitiello. Titled from perfect cubes to broken trains..., Roden and Vitiello’s performance will use voice, movement, percussive tools and other incidental materials to compose a piece that invokes the mathematical logic of Donald Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminum and its relationship to the surrounding desert environment.

Following the opening reception on Saturday 27 September, there will be a conversation at Ballroom Marfa between authors Josh Kun and David Toop on the various ways of listening to place, and the overlaps of history and personal memory.

On Saturday evening at 9pm, Kurt Wagner will perform live at Liberty Hall. Called "one of the most singular, and best, songwriters of our time” by Salon Magazine, Wagner is leader of Lambchop, from Nashville, TN. Whether rooting around America's soul, country, or jazz legacies, with Lambchop or solo, Wagner offers a singular vision with music fluid in nature and grand in scope. Following his performance is DJ Damon Locks who, as lead singer & keyboardist of the Chicago-based band The Eternals, is well known for luring listeners into a brand new world of music. In addition to bringing outrageous tunes to the people, Damon is a fantastic illustrator, designing countless album covers as well as providing art for features in URB, XLR8R, Flaunt and Resonance. He is also currently performing with the Exploding Star Orchestra.

For more details on The Marfa Sessions Opening Weekend, Music, and Public Programs, visit: ballroommarfa.org and themarfasessions.wordpress.com

Generous support for The Marfa Sessions has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, Cowles Charitable Trust, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Marfa Chamber of Commerce.

Ballroom Marfa would also like to recognize the following members for their generous matching grant donations: Suzanne Deal Booth, Fluent~Collaborative, Texas Gallery, Anonymous, Meredith Dreiss, Deborah Green, Chris Mattson, Cynthia Toles, Molly Cumming, Molly Davies and ttweak.

In-kind support provided by the Chinati Foundation, Glen & LeAna Clifton, the Crowley Foundation, Marfa Book Company, Janet & Dave Scott, Michael M. Stevenson, Permian Basin Distributing, Alpine, TX and Titos Vodka, Austin, TX.

Special thanks to KRTS Marfa Public Radio

Ballroom Marfa is proud to have Art Lies magazine as a partner for The Marfa Sessions Opening Weekend. Ballroom Marfa Members are invited to subscribe to Art Lies at a discounted yearly rate. For more information visit: artlies.org

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa: BALMORHEA with BEXAR BEXAR

2008-08-04T16:30:24Z

Ballroom Marfa

BALMORHEA with
BEXAR BEXAR

Thursday 7 August 2008
Show 9pm
Goode Crowley Theater
Tickets $10

BALLROOM MARFA is proud to bring Balmorhea and Bexar Bexar to the Goode Crowley Theater on August 7th for an evening of idyllic instrumentals.

Austin-based duo Balmorhea induces scenic memories and sensations of vast Texas skies with their bucolic instrumentals and emotional reverberations. Minimal compositions of piano and classical guitar are carefully interwoven with field recordings, violin and cello. Balmorhea assembles meditative harmonies that allow the audience to drift freely from their surroundings into the ambient comfort of a nascent summer daydream. They represent a mix of genres, and the deemed moniker ‘New Gemütlichkeit’ aptly describes the characteristics not only of their music, but also Balmorhea’s stylistic philosophy. Gemütlichkeit - a warm emotional style with broadly sung moderately paced melodies, expresses a feeling of belonging, contentment with ones surroundings, and mutual appreciation and understanding.

Balmorhea is made up of Rob Lowe, a Texas native, and Michael Muller who hails from San Diego, CA. They began playing music together in the summer of 2006, and released their first self-titled album in April 2007. Balmorhea has toured throughout Texas and the West Coast, and have a substantial following in Europe. In February 2008 they released River Arms, with their new label Western Vinyl, the same label that friend and tour mate Bexar Bexar moved to in 2007.

Bexar Bexar, also from Austin, has a mysterious sound, heavy with heat-haze deeply anchored in his instrumental reveries. This solo performer stirs up oceanic melodies with his guitar and a collection of ambient beats that swell and recede like that of Brian Eno, and Mum. Bexar Bexar’s unassuming vignettes can seem like reflections in time, complimented by the use of analog equipment. His subtle qualities come together in tranquil sound washes that cleverly tread the line between the evocative and the universal.

The music of Bexar Bexar is supported and integrated in many different arenas. Along with two full albums, Haralambos and Tropism, Bexar Bexar is also featured on a plethora of compilations, soundtracks for several movies, including Red Without Blue and Fashion Island, and can be heard on popular NPR shows. Bexar Bexar has a widespread fan-base, having toured both regionally and internationally.

Come and enjoy Balmorhea and Bexar Bexar, for the second show on their ‘Summer in the West’ tour. This stirring performance is presented by BALLROOM MARFA at the Goode Crowley Theater, Thursday, August 7th at 9pm, tickets $10.

The 2008 music series has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa's Front Row Members and Permian Distributing, Alpine, TX.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa: THE HAVELS

2008-05-15T14:35:07Z

Ballroom Marfa

THE HAVELS

Sunday 18 May 2008
Doors 7.00pm / Show 7.30pm
Goode Crowley Theater
Tickets $10 at the door

Irena Havlov� and Vojtěch Havel, the duo who are The Havels, have been collaborating for more than fifteen years, making music that has been described as “a duet between violoncello and piano taking place in a cathedral of sound.” In truth their music encompasses even more, with the artists often incorporating Tibetan bowls, bells, harmoniums, gongs, silver cups and stones to create a distinct and experimental sound. In Marfa, The Havels will perform in part on the extraordinary Renaissance instrument, the viola da gamba.

Havlová and Havel started working together in the mid-80s, in the experimental Capella Antiqua e Moderna ensemble, which won them both public and critical acclaim. The repertoire of that unique association of musicians of their generation – well versed in music history – spanned various styles of European classical music, ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary music. Within this context, Havlová and Havel developed a very unorthodox approach to both historical and modern compositional techniques and interpretive procedures.

Since then, The Havels have collaborated intensively with many other leading Czech and foreign artists with noted partners including Jiří Stivín, Czech jazz multi-instrumentalist of world renown; avant-garde drummer Alan Vitouš; and impulsive guitarist Tony Ackerman as well as dancers Karel Vaněk and Eva Černá, painter Radek Pilař, and others. They have traveled extensively, making return trips to the desert villages of Rajasthan, India where they recorded hours of folk and spiritual music that was released on four CDs (Agni, Maha Rudra Yagya, Sri Mahaprahuji Bhajans, Sri Madhavananda Bhajans), a distinct selection within their impressive eighteen-album discography.

The Havels are sometimes classified as belonging to a specific musical current, however, labeling their music as alternative, global, new acoustic, improvised, experimental, minimalist or meditative music, means classifying it in categories that very often actually tell nothing about its form and content. The means they use for their expression are so varied and permanently changing that any attempt to verbally describe their musical dialogue falls short. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the music is always highly poetic, enchanting, and delivered with absolute sincerity and unusual humbleness with the idea of carrying a genuinely peacemaking message.

The Havels are making only a few rare performances on this tour of the United States, and Ballroom Marfa is honored to host the duo at the Goode Crowley Theater on Sunday 18 May, 7.30pm. Ballroom welcomes everyone to join us for this special evening with two very unique performers. Tickets are $10 each at the door, with all proceeds benefiting the musicians directly.

The 2008 music program has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa's Front Row Members.

About Ballroom Marfa

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Sarah Rothenberg

2008-05-06T19:07:25Z

SARAH ROTHENBERG
PERFORMS
BEETHOVEN: THE LAST PIANO SONATAS

-----------------------------------------------------

Jeff Fort & Marion Barthelme in conjunction with Chinati Foundation, the Goode Crowley Theater and Ballroom Marfa, warmly invite you to a very special evening with renowned classical pianist, Sarah Rothenberg, performing Beethoven's late piano sonatas. The recital will take place at the Goode Crowley Theater on Saturday 10th May 2008 at 7pm; it is a free concert, and all are welcome.

Noted for her "power and introspection" (The New York Times) and "heart, intellect and fabulous technical resources" (Fanfare), pianist Sarah Rothenberg has one of the most distinguished and creative careers of her generation. She has received international acclaim as soloist, chamber musician, and for her exceptionally innovative programs. She has performed frequently on Lincoln Center's Great Performers series in New York and at Washington's Kennedy Center, as well as at London's Barbican Centre, The Aldeburgh Festival, The Concertgebouw, Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) and leading concert series across the United States.

Her commitment to unjustly neglected composers of the past resulted in her U.S. premieres and recordings of works by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel (Das Jahr/ INDIE Award Best Solo Classical CD in 1996), Alexander Mosolov, Nikolai Roslavetz, Arthur Lourié (Rediscovering the Russian-Avant Garde 1912-1925/GM Recordings), and early piano works of Arnold Schoenberg (Shadows and Fragments: Brahms and Schoenberg/Arabesque). In addition, she has premiered over 75 works by composers of today, and recorded the music of Carter, Perle, Tower, Tsontakis, Ran and Wuorinen.

In 2006, Sarah Rothenberg made her debut as soloist with the Houston Symphony and maestro Hans Graf; presented her latest original concert production, Epigraph for a Condemned Book, at La Jolla Music Society, the Hancher Auditorium at University of Iowa and Kravis Center in West Palm Beach; and appeared at the prestigious Gilmore Piano Festival and New Haven International Festival. Her writings have been published in The Musical Quarterly, Chamber Music, World Policy Journal, Nexus (The Netherlands), and the literary journal Conjunctions. Artistic Director of Da Camera of Houston since 1994, Ms. Rothenberg was previously a founding co-director of the Bard Music Festival in New York. She received the Medal of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government in 2000.

We are honored to bring Sarah Rothenberg to Marfa for this very special performance and we do hope that you will join us. Seating on the night will be limited, so please arrive promptly. Doors will open at 6.00pm.

Hope to see you there!

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Ballroom Marfa: film.text.performance.film Part II:text

2008-04-07T14:01:01Z

Ballroom Marfa

film.text.performance.film
organized by Ralph McKay

"…to understand something you have to have both language and image."
- David Gatten

"An artist paints so that he will have something to look at; at times he must write so that he will also have something to read."
- Barnett Newman, late 1947

Part II:text
Friday 11 & Saturday 12 April 2008
Goode Crowley Theater
David Gatten
Michael Tracy and Christopher Rincon
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne

Image: film still: David Gatten, How to Conduct A Love Affair, 2007.

Image: film still: Michael Tracy, Ultramarine (work in progress), 2008.

Image: Still: Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, We Will Live to See These Things, 2007.

In December 2007 Ballroom Marfa launched film.text.performance.film, a two-part program pairing seeminly disparate areas of contemporary cinematic practice and bringing together a diverse roster of artists with established international reputations rooted in either filmic performance or visual text. Live cinema as experienced in December gives way to the projected word in April with Part II: text. Normally consumed as a solitary, interior experience, words will be amplified and magnified for contemplation by a theater audience.

In 1921 Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand collaborated on the short film Manhatta, which intercuts images of Manhattan with lines lifted from a Walt Whitman poem. The goal was not to tell a story, but to create a new cine-poetry of text and image. From this early instance, poetic cinema has evolved over epochal rifts and mergers, from Surrealism and the advent of sound in movies, through Structuralism and Postmodernism. Contemporary artists interested in the intersection of text and image, whether they take the digital road or detour around it, are defining what this tradition looks and sounds like in a time when information saturation, not to mention distortion, challenges the very meaning of word and image.

Assembling in Marfa will be a faction of contemporary artists who are peeling the page one frame-at-a-time in an inquiry into the visual dimension of language, ranging from David Gatten's reflection on the role of documents and Michael Tracy's secret, worldly recitations to Julia Meltzer and David Thorne's digital archives where images become a fault-line between world views and hidden narratives.

Friday 11 April, Goode Crowley Theater

7:00pm
Michael Tracy (Director) and Christopher Rincon (Cinematographer & Editor)

Ultramarine (work in progress, 59 min. An allegory about aesthetic crisis finds two characters, Sculpture and Music, separated by emotional and geographic distance, the alienation of urban space. Architectural settings from Mumbai and St. Petersburg are woven into a bleak pinnacle of gripping remembrance from times of final empire, creating a universe of anxiety in which neither society's decadence, nor its burden of consumption, is sustainable.

Saturday 12 April, Goode Crowley Theater

5:00pm
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne: (www.speculativearchive.org)
It's Not My Memory of It (2003, 25 min) is a documentary about secrecy, memory, and documents. Mobilizing specific historical records as memories, which flash up in moments of danger, the tape addresses the logic of the bureaucracy of secrecy.

We Will Live to See These Things, or, Five Pictures of What May Come to Pass (2007, 47 min. Competing visions of an uncertain future shot in Damascus, Syria —the chronicle of a building in downtown Damascus, a recitation anticipating the arrival of a perfect leader, an interview with a dissident intellectual, a portrait of a Qur'an school for young girls, and an imagining of the world made anew.

6:45pm
David Gatten
Download PDF: Scott MacDonald interviews David Gatten for Film Quarterly

Secret History of the Dividing Line (2002, 20 min). Paired texts as dueling histories. A journey imagined and remembered. 57 mileage markers produce an equal number of prospects.

The Great Art of Knowing (2004, 37 min). Find yourself resting uneasily half way up the stairs: Something has left the body, yet the body remains: what has left is on its way Elsewhere but cannot help but look back: this look animates the world

How To conduct a Love Affair (2007, 8 min). An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter. Have a cup of tea dear. I'll trade you a stitch from the past in return for a leaf from the future.

8:00pm
Panel discussion with moderator Christian Gerstheimer, El Paso Museum of Art

Biographies

Michael Tracy (b. Ohio, 1943) is included in major museums and art collections, among them The Menil Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He sustains an ongoing dialog with Latin America and the cultural influences of Europe and Asia. Tracy has produced work in bronze, painting, sculpture, and architectural environments. His first work in video Xochitl Tlayecouani (Flower Warrior) premiered in 1993 at Pacific Film Archive.

Christopher Rincon (b. Texas, 1970,) has worked in video since 1995. He has edited for television broadcast and cinematic exhibition with Tracy, including Culture, Water, and Money: The Passion of the Frontier an award winning documentary on the contamintion of the Rio Grande, The Butchershop of Divine Providence a collaborative homage to the Mexican Revolution, and the upcomin work in progress Antique Gamboge. They are also developing a series of video brooches.

Julia Meltzer (b. Los Angeles, 1968) and David Thorne (b. Boston, 1960) are Los Angeles-based artists producing videos, photographs, installations, and published texts. From 1999 to 2003, their projects centered on state secrecy and the production of the past. Current work focuses on the ways in which visions of the future are imagined, claimed and realized, specifically in relation to faith and global politics. Recent projects have been exhibited in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the 2006 California Biennial (Orange County Museum of Art), Gallery Akbank Sanat (Istanbul), Kunstmuseum Goteborg (Sweden), Palazzo de la Papesse, (Siena, Italy), Apex Art (New York), Momenta (New York), the Hayward Gallery's (London) traveling exhibition program, Whitechapel Gallery (London), the Oberhausen Short Film Festival (Germany), the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Video Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among others.

David Gatten (b. Ann Arbor, 1971), filmmaker, Henry James fan, recent Guggenheim fellow and aspiring audio book artist, makes bookish films about letters and libraries, lovers and ghosts that are filled with words, some of which you can even read. His work has shown around the world in museums, festivals, biennials, galleries, archives, access centers, elementary schools, storefronts, on sides of buildings and once on a barge that was floating down river. Six times his films have played International Film Festival Rotterdam, five times in the New York Film Festival, four times at the Pacific Film Archive, three times at the London Film Festival, twice in the Whitney Biennial and once upon a time for reasons still unclear to everyone involved at the Kiel International Festival of Archaeological Film. You can find his films in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago but he can rarely find his glasses. He lives and works by the water in Red Hook, Brooklyn and on Seabrook Island, South Carolina and teaches 16mm filmmaking/Wallace Stevens appreciation as a visiting artist at the Cooper Union in NYC.

Christian Gerstheimer (b. Flint, MI, 1965) is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Michigan State University. His graduate thesis was The Use of Text in Art: 1988-1999. As curator of the El Paso Museum of Art in El Paso, Texas he has curated one-person exhibitions, authored artist essays for the Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography, as well as numerous other publications for the El Paso Museum of Art. His latest group exhibition at The El Paso Museum of Art titled Text as Art: From the 1960's Onward brought together prints, photographs and sculpture that combine writing and images.

Ralph McKay (b. Monroe, LA, 1954) established and programmed the Film Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 1976 to 1989. He has since programmed for Anthology Film Archives in NYC, the Jewish Museum in NYC and Cinematexas in Austin. He is currently Program Advisor to International Film Festival Rotterdam, manager of distribution in the Americas for two European non-profit distributors, Sixpack Film (Austria) and Filmbank (The Netherlands), and North American tour manager for Swiss Films.

This program has been made possible by a National Endowment for the Arts grant under the Challenge America: Reaching Every Community Invitational Initiative. Additional support provided by the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Ballroom Marfa would also like to recognize the following members for their generous film.text.performance.film matching grant donations: Dr. William Jordan & Robert Brownlee, Alice Negley Dorn, Jeanette Ingberman & Papo Colo, Candace Worth & Christopher Hamick, Victor & Anstis Lundy and Jimmy & Karen Welder. In kind support provided by Titos Vodka, Austin TX.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local arts communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media. Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization.

www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa Newsletter Message

2008-03-20T13:39:32Z

Ballroom Marfa

THE DODOS
with
SILJE NES

Saturday 22 March 2008
Doors 7.30pm / Show 8pm
Liberty Hall
Tickets $20 from frontgatetickets.com

On Saturday, March 22, Ballroom Marfa welcomes San Francisco's beloved psychedelic folk duo The Dodos and whimsical lo-fi Norwegian singer/songwriter Silje Nes to the Goode Crowley Theater.

Formerly a one-man acoustic act -- the Houston Press called Dodos founder Meric Long "easily one of his generation's finest" singer/songwriters. The Dodos expanded in the summer of 2006 to include prog metal percussionist Logan Kroeber. The combination of Long's candid vocals and his unique style of fingerpicking -- merging his love of intricate country-folk guitar picking with his study of West African Ewe drumming and Kroeber's syncopated percussion have made the duo a critical favorite, garnering comparisons to a wide spectrum of other artists ranging from early T. Rex to Animal Collective.

Their experimental freak-folk debuted with 2006's Beware of the Maniacs. In late 2007 the band signed with Frenchkiss Records, home of indie staples the Hold Steady and Les Savvy Fav, and will release their new album, Visiter, this month. With Visiter, the mesmerizing energy of the duo's live shows -- Kroeber even wears tambourine shoes onstage -- is in full effect.

Opening for the duo is Silje Nes, dubbed a "sonic tinkerer" for her multi-instrumental, layered sound. Trained as a classical pianist, Nes released her sprawling, home-recorded debut album Ames Room late last year on Fat Cat Records. On Ames Room, assembled by Nes, her spare, breathy vocals weave around a host of instruments, all of which she played herself: xylophones, glockenspiel, recorder, synths, keyboards, cellos, bass, and a variety of found objects.

Please join Ballroom Marfa in welcoming The Dodo's and Silje Nes to Marfa on Saturday, March 22, for the third installment of Ballroom Marfa's 2008 live music program. The show begins at 8 P.M. at Ballroom Marfa's Liberty Hall; tickets are $20 and are on sale at frontgatetickets.com.

Click here to watch the Dodos video: Fools

SAVE THE DATE:
SATURDAY 5 APRIL 2008
PSYCHIC ILLS

The 2008 music series has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa's Front Row Members and the Marfa Chamber of Commerce. Additional in-kind support has been provided by Permian Basin Distributing,Midland, TX and Desert Eagle Distributing, Alpine, TX.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local arts communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa: HELLO METH LAB IN THE SUN

2008-03-18T14:44:07Z

Ballroom Marfa

Jonah Freeman, Justin Lowe and Alexandre Singh
Hello Meth Lab in the Sun #1, 2008
custom pigment print

HELLO METH LAB IN THE SUN
JONAH FREEMAN & JUSTIN LOWE & ALEXANDRE SINGH
5 April – 3 August 2008

Opening Reception
Friday 4 April
6-8pm

Artists Talks
Saturday 5 April
2pm Goode Crowley Theater

Music
Psychic Ills
Saturday 5 April
9pm Liberty Hall

Ballroom Marfa's Spring 2008 exhibition is a collaboration between three early career artists, Jonah Freeman, Justin Lowe and Alexandre Singh. In an installation that literally transforms Ballroom's gallery spaces into a labyrinthine assemblage of rooms, hallways, closets and observation platforms, Hello Meth Lab in the Sun is a rumination on the theme of alchemy, uncovering of some of the sites of alchemical transformation in the modern world.

Like the dioramas of the Museum of Natural History or the period rooms of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hello Meth Lab in the Sun creates theatrical depictions of three specific social/historical contexts: the utopian hippie commune, the clandestine meth lab, and the varied sites of modern industrial production. Each room and object is suggestive of a state of transformation or hybridization: vegetables into broth; match heads into meth; sugar cane into Mountain Dew.

Hello Meth Lab in the Sun takes up alchemy's method of homespun experimentalism, bonding unlikely ingredients and ushering in a secular mysticism. One room reads as an Upper East Side apartment converted to a lifestyle museum, with a collection of black and white society photographs documenting hermetic rituals with cacti and crystals. This is a world reminiscent of Norman Mailer's 50th birthday party and the final scene in Polanski's 1968 horror film, Rosemary's Baby.

Another room reveals itself as a laboratory cluttered with crates of cold medicine, boxes of matches, containers of cat litter and glassware for the mass production of narcotics. Here not only are materials transformed, their intended uses are subverted along with consumerism's tenets of freedom, happiness and choice. The lightly veiled intimacy between the lawful and the deviant is put on display.

The zeitgeist of 1960s counterculture is channeled by Hello Meth Lab in the Sun, although at times it's more "living dead" than a romantic flashback. The shag carpet is well worn, the furniture stained, rooms have been incinerated. Ceilings are low and the hallways are tight � these spaces are under surveillance.

The southern most room of the gallery is a tweaked out hippie kitchen, with paraphernalia that cross the cosmic forces of natural living with tech-based media. Overhead is a geodesic-dome structure, Buckminster Fuller's ideal design for making more from less. A broken refrigerator is the portal to a terrarium of hybrid objects.

The opening reception for Hello Meth Lab in the Sun will be held on Friday 4th April, 6-8pm at Ballroom Marfa, 108 E. San Antonio Street, Marfa, TX. A conversation with the artists will take place the following day, Saturday 5th April at 2pm in the Goode Crowley Theater, 98 South Austin Street.

To inaugurate the exhibition, Brooklyn psychedelic/space-rock band, Psychic Ills, will perform at Ballroom's Marfa's Liberty Hall, Dean Street, on Saturday 5th April, at 9pm.

All the weekend's events are free and open to the public.

Artist Bios

Jonah Freeman was born in 1975 in Santa Fe, NM and lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited widely since the late 1990s throughout the United States and internationally with photographs, video projections and installations that explore the psychology of architectural spaces. Recent solo exhibitions include The Long Goodbye (with Michael Phelan), John Connelly Presents, New York (2007); The Franklin Abraham, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland, M Projects, Paris, France Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Play Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2005, 2004); and In the Public Realm: Sixteen Scenarios, Public Art Fund, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY (2002). His work has also been represented in the recent group shows: Le Centre pour l'image contemporaine, Saint gervais, Geneva, Switzerland; Grow Your Own, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); Busan Biennale 2006, Buan, South Korea; Intouchable (l' Idéal transparence), Désanges, Centre National d'Art Contemporain – Villa Arson, Nice, France (2006); Day Labor, PS1/MOMA, New York; and Vanishing Point, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Wexner, OH (2005).

Justin Lowe was born in 1976 in Dayton, OH and lives and works in New York City. He has been exhibiting since 2000, creating installation “environments” like gallery-lounges, cluttered house interiors and – for his 2006 solo show at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York – an intricately stocked bodega and Mister Softee truck. Lowe is also known for his collages produced in collaboration with Jonah Freeman. Select solo exhibitions include: Helter Swelter, Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York, NY (2006); Collecting Pictures in the Brain Hotel, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY (2005); Dwellings, Brooklyn Public library, Brooklyn, NY; Waterfall, The Wrong Gallery, New York; and Passage, PS1 Special Project Room, Long Island City, NY (2004). Selected group exhibitions include: Slow Burn, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland; Bricks in the Hood, Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York; Studio Visit, Exit Art, New York (2006); The Pantagruel Syndrome, Museum of Contemporary Art in the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Greater New York 2005, PS1, Long Island City, NY (2005); Household Psychedelics, Fia Backstrom Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2004); and The Melvins, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY (2003).

Alexandre Singh is a British artist, born in Bordeaux, France in 1980 and currently based in London and New York City. His installations are recognizable by their combined structures of building materials and consumer items, accompanied by circuitous narratives and elements of performance. Singh's first solo show was held in 2007 at White Columns, New York, NY, entitled The Marque of the Third Stripe; in 2008 he will have additional solo exhibitions at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Monitor Gallery, Rome, Italy; and at the Museu da Electrcidade, Lisbon, Portugal in collaboration with Rita Sobral Campos for UNCLEHEAD. Singh will be represented in the upcoming group exhibitions: Living to tell the Tale at the Royal College of Art, London; Art Cannot be Untaught, La Rada, Locarno, Switzerland; and A New High in Getting Low II, John Connelly Presents, New York, NY. Selected past exhibitions include The First Antechamber, Projects Arts Center, Dublin, Ireland; The Singer Sucks, but the Band… Finding Good in an Otherwise Dismal World, Sunday, New York, NY; East International 17, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, UK (2007); Alexandre Singh & Goody B Wiseman, Second Gallery, Boston, MA; Slow Burn, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland (2006); Open Walls, White Columns, New York, NY; If You're Felling Sinister, Alona Kagan, NY (2005); Romantic Detachment, PS1 MoMA, Quens, NY and New American Talent 19, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX.

Generous support for Hello Meth Lab in the Sun has been provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Cowles Charitable Trust, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Ballroom Marfa Members.

Special thanks to Alexander Mills, Project Manager for the onsite installation of Hello Meth Lab in the Sun.

The Psychic Ills performance has been made possible through the continued support of Ballroom Marfa's Front Row Members. Additional In-Kind support has been provided by Titos Vodka Austin, TX and Permian Basin Distributing, Midland, TX.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local arts communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below:

Ballroom Marfa Music: KEREN ANN with DEAN & BRITTA

2008-02-12T12:21:04Z

Ballroom Marfa

KEREN ANN with DEAN & BRITTA
Friday 22 February 2008
Goode Crowley Theater
Tickets $20

Ballroom Marfa welcomes worldly chanteuse Keren Ann and gauzy pop duo Dean & Britta (formerly of Luna) to the Goode Crowley theater on February 22 for the second installment of its 2008 music program.

It's fitting that Israeli-born singer Keren Ann Zeidel, who lives and works in both New York and Paris, is bringing her collection of haunting, intimate songs to Marfa. Last summer, in the midst of a flurry of press for her self-titled third album, Keren Ann said that her music � with its spare melodies and haunting, forlorn lyrics about love and despair, sung in a wispy, smoky voice � are perfect for the desert. "My music has all the characteristics of dry, open spaces," she told Black Book magazine. "It puts you in an ethereal mood."

During her childhood in Paris, Keren Ann devoured Joni Mitchell and Serge Gainsbourg, the ghosts of whom are apparent on 2003's understated Not Going Anywhere. That album introduced Keren Ann's dreamy melancholy sound to the United States and was followed up in 2004 with her love letter to New York, Nolita, titled after the Manhattan neighborhood where she lived at the time.

Keren Ann will share the Goode Crowley stage with two longtime members of the indie rock pantheon: Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips. After fronting the seminal minimalist post-punk band Galaxie 500 in the late 1980s, Wareham went on to found Luna with former Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski and The Chills' bassist, Justin Harwood. Wareham's almost-monotone delivery garnered comparisons to Lou Reed, and Rolling Stone dubbed Luna's 1995 album Penthouse one of the essential albums of the '90s. In 2000, Britta Phillips � the former bass player for Babyfat and Ben Lee, and the singing voice of beloved '80s cartoon character "Jem" � replaced Harwood on bass, bringing her sultry voice to Luna's atmospheric rock.

Wareham and Phillips, who had recorded 2003's L'Avventura as a duo, continued playing under the name Dean & Britta after Luna disbanded in 2005, and went on to score Noah Baumbachs' The Squid and the Whale. Their latest offering, Back Numbers, continues the couple's foray into sleepy and sweet psych-pop. In March, Penguin Press will release Wareham's memoir about his time with Galaxie 500 and Luna, Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance.

Please join Ballroom Marfa on Friday 22 February, for a night of pure dream pop at the Goode Crowley Theater. Doors are at 7:30 P.M.; the show begins at 8 P.M. Tickets are $20 and are on sale NOW exclusively at frontgatetickets.com.

THE DODOS with Silje Nes
Saturday 22 March 2008
Liberty Hall
Tickets $20

Too raucous to be neatly included with the current psychedelic-folk scene, and too resolutely underground to be commercial, San Francisco duo the Dodos, are anchored by furiously propulsive energy and indie-folk songwriting talent. Tickets $20, on sale Wednesday January 23 at frontgatetickets.com

Click here to watch the Dodos video: Fools

The 2008 music series has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa's Front Row Members and Permian Distributing, Alpine.

Ballroom Marfa is a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space that provides a lively intellectual environment where varied perspectives and issues are explored through visual arts, film, music and performance. As an advocate for the freedom of artistic expression, Ballroom Marfa's mission is to serve international, national, regional and local arts communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working in all media.

Ballroom Marfa is particularly interested in helping artists and curators achieve projects that have significant cultural impact but would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.

Ballroom Marfa is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Visit www.ballroommarfa.org

Ballroom Marfa : www.ballroommarfa.org
Open Thursday through Sunday 12 PM - 6 PM
PO Box 1661 108 East San Antonio St.
Marfa, Texas 79843
Tel: 432.729.3600 Fax: 432.729.3606

Subscribe to Ballroom Marfa Newsletter via email by entering your email address below: