Programs

Name: The Marfa Triptych: Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance
Start: 2016-11-11T00:00:00-06:00
End: 2016-11-12T23:59:59-06:00
Location: The Crowley Theater

Music

The Marfa Triptych: Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance

11 Nov 2016 – 12 Nov 2016

Venue

The Crowley Theater

Marfa, TX

Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance premiere at the Crowley Theater, 2016.

Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance.

Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance premiere at the Crowley Theater, 2016.

Experimental Chamber Opera

Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance is a bilingual cross-border opera about the life and death of Pancho Villa. Commissioned by Ballroom, the project is the third installment of The Marfa Triptych, a genre-hopping trilogy of musical performances by visionary composer Graham Reynolds. The opera is an insightful examination of the Mexican and Mexican-American impact on the culture and politics of West Texas, contributing to the current and timely conversation about borders and the limitations of the concept of delineated states.

Exploring facts from Villa’s biography while also examining the mythology surrounding him, the opera asks what Pancho Villa means to Mexican and American culture and where these meanings intersect and conflict. The opera brings together artistic collaborators from both sides of the river to engage in a borderless conversation about the shared history between Mexico and the United States, Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance is the epic closing chapter in The Marfa Triptych. Reynolds experiments with an exciting hybrid of composition and production techniques while leading an eight piece ensemble to bring Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol’s fascinating libretto to an intensely visceral and intimate life.

The team includes composer Graham Reynolds; Mexico City-based theater collective Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol as librettists; Shawn Sides of the Rude Mechs as director; Austin Lyric Opera tenor Paul Sanchez as Pancho Villa; and Grammy Award-winning producer Adrian Quesada on guitar.

To stay up to date on future performances please visit panchovillaopera.com.

Video

About The Marfa Triptych

The Marfa Triptych is three portraits of West Texas as envisioned by Austin-based composer Graham Reynolds, inspired by Reynolds’ interest in the intermingled populations of the Texas-Mexico border regions, from ejido to ranch to the visual arts community.

The first installment in The Marfa Triptych, The Country & Western Big Band Suite, was performed in November 2013 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas. An instrumental suite for 13 players, Reynolds described the piece as “classic instrumental country meets Western soundtrack meets power jazz rhythm section.” Vogue called it “beautiful and raucous.”

Reynolds performed the second composition, a live score to the desert sunset, on October 4, 2014, at the Overlook at Mimms Ranch in Marfa, Texas. Among an intimate audience of 60, Reynolds played acoustic piano and various percussion instruments as the sun set and the moon rose.

The final piece in the Triptych, Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance, is an experimental chamber opera for two singers and six instrumentalists using a hybrid of compositional techniques, including looping and sampling, overdubbed layers of vocals, improvisation mixed with notation, remixes by Mexican electronic artists, and devised theater staging and conception practices. A culmination of the themes developed in the first two sections, Pancho Villa reflects the Mexican and Mexican-American impact on the region, the permeability of borders, and the limitations of our concept of delineated states.

Images

Acknowledgments

The Marfa Triptych: Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance has been made possible by the generous support of Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston; Creative Capital; Fusebox Festival; Golden Hornet Composer Laboratory; National Endowment for the Arts; National Performance Network; Texas Commission on the Arts; the Ballroom Marfa Board of Trustees; and Ballroom Marfa members.

The independent jury of the Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative has endorsed this project.

In-kind support provided by Big Bend Brewing Company, Gem & Bolt, and SAVED Wines.

Special thanks to Art Basel, The Big Bend Sentinel, Ron Berry, Jennifer Boomer Trammell, Camp Bosworth, The Capri, Vicente Celis, Tim Crowley, the Crowley Theater, Suzanne Deal Booth, Justin Elliott, David Fenster, Danielle Firoozi, Fusebox, Jenner Gorn, Jessica Hodin, Nicki Ittner, Buck Johnston, Kickstarter, Matt and Mikelle Kruger, David Lobel, Marfa Meat Company, Marfa Public Radio, Marfa Recording Company, Alex Marks, Willa McDonald, Victoria Rogers, the Townsend Austin, Noel Waggener, and Molly Walker.

Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance is also made possible by these generous backers of our Kickstarter campaign:

Sandra Adair, Anne Adams, Peggy and Jim Adams, Sarah Adler, Pablo Alvarado, Chris Amatruda, Valerie and Robert Arber, ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann, Art Production Fund, Susan Moore Ashcroft, Robin Aufses, Carol Austin, Austin Art Services, Jessica Ayers, Andrew Bacon, Sven Terje Bang, Melanie Barr, Diane Barnes, Elizabeth Baskin, Daphne Beal, R. Michael Berrier, Bruce Benson, Leah Bentley, Karen Bernstein, Jacqueline Berry, Heather Bhandari, Michael Bisbee, Stuart Bishop, Joe B. Bland, Erika Blumenfeld, Ted Bonin, Kristin Bonkemeyer, Alexia Bonomi and Bill Willis, Suzanne Deal Booth, Luke Borders, Ryan Botkin, Bill Bragin, BRNNR, David Brody, Steve Bunch, Annie Bush, Charles Butt, Anna Button, James Cone, Carole Carden, Liz Cass, Cassie, John Caulkins, Grace Cha, Erika Clarke, S. Clements, Brooke Collins, Cynthia Collins, Teresa Corbin, Cristina, Stephen Curran, Michael Dahlke, Ann Daughety, Eric Davis, Janie DeGuerin, Brenda Delao, Paul Dery, Deborah Devins, L.B. Deyo, Fern Diaz, JD DiFabbio, Fairfax Dorn, John and Lisa Dorn, Hans Dorsinville, Pam Duerr, Glory Edim, David Egeland, Tahn Eismann, Emily, Elaine Emmi, Matt Emmi, Anne-Cecilie Engell Speyer, Steven Esparza, Patrick Evans, Nina Fanti, Mary Farley, Judd Farris, Jim Findlay, Jay Fitzgerald, Kerthy Fix, James Flyn, Dawn Forrest, Heather Forrester, Helen Winkler Fosdick, Katie Price Fowlkes, Julene Franki, Frazier-Brown, Douglas B. Friedman, Mary Gaitan, Christine Garcia, Becky Gardner, Rebecca Gardner, Cathy Gaubert, Trey Gerfers, Genevieve Gill, Lezlie Glade, Isabell Glimcher, Lilly Glimcher, Rebbecca Louise Goddammit, Golden Hornet Project, Matthew Goudeau, Ihor Gowda, Natalie Grand, Christine Green, Cheryl Guerrero, Mark Guiducci, Harvey Guion, Lisa Hagemann, Tom Haines, Laura Hajovsky, Luc Hale, Donna M Hall, Jim and Marty Hamilton, Robert Hammond, Brian Harnetty, Lisa Hart, Maximilien Hein, Dawn Hennessey, Brie Hensold, Tommy and Dee Hilfiger, Howard Hilliard, Remi Hisataka, Jessica Hodin, Tom Hollenback, Virginia Honig, Cedric Howe, Nicki Ittner, Steph Itz, Mathew Day Jackson, Catalina Maria Johnson, Jenny Johnson, Buck Johnston, Kendra Jones, Brian Jose, Dean Kameros, Randy Kaplan, Shelley Kaplan, Emily Keeton, Irene Keil, Danielle and Brooks Kieschnick, Shane Kimzey, Tammy and Jamie King, Beth Klehr, Megan Koch, Willa Koerner, Koikuri, Sheryl L. Kolasinski, Rex Koontz, Claire Kugler, Leslie Kuhn, Allie Laird, Jenny Laird, Virginia Lebermann, Jon Leland, Richard Leonarz, Mike Levy, David Lobel, Tina and Michael Lobel, John Loner, Laura Lotti, Gary Luedecke, Robbie Luke, JB Lyde, Katherine Magy, Ethan Maki, Billy Marginot, Janet Maykus, Shannon McCormick, Willa McDonald, Kate McKenna, Mano Mercantile, Laura Merritt, The Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation, Kathryn Millan, Michael Mitchell, Polly Monear, Andrew and Brucie Moore, Carol Moore, Phillip and Vicki Moran, Phillipe Muller, Molly Murray, Keith Napoleon, Jason Neulander, Mike Nicholson, Fredrik Nilsen, Sharon Oberlander, Connor Oman, Kimberly Orr, Jon Otis, The Owl Wine Bar and Home Goods, Katherine Pan, Liz Pappademas, Tracy LaQuey Parker, Chase Pashkowich, Carolyn Pfeiffer, Stacy Pinelli, John Pitts, Bettina Prentice, Anita Prewett, Maria Giulia Prezioso, David Quin, Rajendra, Edia Ramey, Cassandra Ramirez, Rikhi Ramrakha, Joe Randel, Kendel Ratley, Renee Reed, Ginger Reeder, Raul Reymundi, George Reynolds, Graham Reynolds, Brooke Robinson, Isha Rogers, Lawrence Rogers, Victoria Rogers, Lees Romano, Michal Rosenn, Georgina Rovirosa, Jennifer Ash Rudick, Gryphon Rue, Charles Ruger, David Ruiz and Bank of America, Nancy Sanders, Katherine Sandoz, Valerie Santerli, Sara, Riccardo Sartori, Cindy Scroggins, Francisco Segura and Randy Rubio, Eugene Sepulveda, Rajendra Serber, Jorge Sermini, Barbara Shack, Katherine Shaughnessy, Eiji Shimizu, Jay Shull, Laura Sico, Max Alexander Singer, Siobhan, Kristin Sjoberg, Paul Smithyman, Joe Specht, Melanie Spiegel, Susan Spies, Caitlin Stedman, John Stokes, Dena Stoner, Joey Story, Sara Story, DJ Stout, Yancey Strickler, Brooke Stroud, Robert Summers, Rima Suqi, Molly Surno, Tom and Diana Sutton, Julie Swoope, Daryl Tanner, Katy Taylor, Lonn and Deedee Taylor, Rachel Blackney Tepper, Frances and Robin Thompson, Laura Thoms, Tizoctrevino, Jolene Torr, Dale Truitt, Max Tuncar, James Turnbull, Kristina Van Dyke and Jeff Fort, Signe Veje, Mike Vernusky, Yvonne Force and Leo Villareal, Beth Viner, T.A. Vogler, Molly Walker, Libby Walter, Eric Damon Walters, Tonya Walton, Julie Ann Ward, Katie Watkins, Dale Weaver, Andrew Webster, Meghan Wells, Billy Werb, Marissa Wertheimer, Allison Wheeler, Jenni Wieland, Melody Wilcocks, Brandon Williams, Elizabeth Williams, Janet Williams and Bill McDonald, Annie Wilson, Sarah Woodhatch, David Wright, Will Yankus, Jim Yoder, Alison Young, Nick Yulman, and Tieg Zaharia

Artist Profiles

Graham Reynolds

Called “the quintessential modern composer” by the London Independent, Graham Reynolds composes and records music for film, theater and performance with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater and Jack Black to DJ Spooky and Ballet Austin. His film projects include scores for Before Midnight, Bernie, and A Scanner Darkly. With the Golden Arm Trio, Reynolds has toured the country and released four critically acclaimed albums; he is Artistic Director of Golden Hornet Composer Laboratory, which has produced over 70 concerts by more than 60 contemporary composers. He is a member of the Rude Mechs theater collective, resident composer with Salvage Vanguard Theater, and received the 2016 Creative Capital Award for the Pancho Villa chamber opera.

Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol

Founded in 2003 by Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodriguez, Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol is a community of Mexico City artists making projects that link work and life and erase borders. They seek to clarify and articulate, but also to disrupt and unravel notions of biography, document, and history. In exploring events of the past, their work highlights how arbitrarily history is constructed. But their aim is not to correct the record, rather to put the emphasis elsewhere, to change the narrator, to create perspective, and to make up stories.

Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol have presented their work across Mexico and abroad; Festival Automne in Paris, The Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Vienna Festwochen, the High Season of Girona, Contemporary Scene in Madrid, Montreal Transameriques, Theater Spektakell of Zurich, among many others. They have received several awards, among them the nomination of Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodriguez as candidates of The Rolex Mentor and Protege Initiative 2008, the Audience Award at the Festival Impatience in Paris 2011 (Odeon Theatre and Centquatre) and ZKB Foldpreiss in Zurich 2011.

Shawn Sides

Shawn Sides is a founder and a Co-Producing Artistic Director of Rude Mechs in Austin, TX where she has co-conceived, co-adapted, and directed a new work every year, give or take, since 1996, including Off-Broadway and touring productions of Lipstick Traces, Get Your War On, Stop Hitting Yourself, The Method Gun, and their “re-enactment” of The Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69. Current projects include Rudes’ adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, Field Guide, commissioned by Yale Rep and From the Pig Pile: Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach by Sibyl Kempson. Shawn is an Alpert Hedgebrook Prize recipient and was included with her fellow Rudes into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2010. She is also the 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award recipient.

Carrie Fountain

Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, and Poetry, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin in 2014. Flatiron Books (Macmillan) will publish her novel for young adults, I’m Not Missing, in early 2018.

Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently the writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University, she lives in Austin with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their children.

Carrie’s paternal grandmother, Celia Fountain, came to the United States from Durango, Mexico to escape the revolution. Her family settled in El Paso where she met her husband Auturo of Mesilla, New Mexico while she was working in a store. They were married and moved to Mesilla, where she lived until her death in 1984.

Paul Sanchez

Paul Sanchez has been singing and performing since the age of nine, starting out in the gospel circuit of the Fort Worth/Dallas area and then moving on to opera at the age of fourteen with the Fort Worth Opera. Later he was able to sing and travel with the Austin Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and as background vocalist for different R&B, neo-soul and rock bands including Elton John, Prince, Jay Z and Deltron 3030. Paul has performed in many stage and musical productions in Austin with Zilker Hillside Theater, Zach Scott Theater and TexArts and spends a lot of his time giving private voice lessons. He is currently the solo vocalist at Riverbend Church and is partnering with local singers and songwriters to help with his first EP.

Liz Cass

Liz Cass is an Austin-based mezzo soprano, Executive Producer of LOLA (Local Opera Local Artists), voice teacher, and public speaker. Ms. Cass holds the position of Community Liaison for the Armstrong Community Music School where she has been a member of the faculty and staff for over eleven years.

Liz is a regular soloist with Austin Opera, The Austin Symphony, Austin Chamber Music Center, Austin Classical Guitar Society, and Chorus Austin. Each year, Ms. Cass travels to Guatemala City and Antigua, Guatemala to perform Handel’s Messiah where dignitaries from all over the world come together with proceeds benefiting various educational efforts throughout Guatemala.

Adrian Quesada

Adrian Quesada is a Grammy Award Winning musician/composer/producer based in Austin, TX. As a musician he is best known as co-founder of the bands Grupo Fantasma (now ex-member), Brownout/Brown Sabbath, and Spanish Gold. Never on to sit still, he also releases music as The Echocentrics and is a revered and in demand collaborator. He’s toured all over the world and performed on the Late Show with David Letterman and twice on PBS’ historic Austin City Limits TV Show. He has worked with such diverse artists as Prince, GZA (Wu-Tang Clan), Bernie Worrell, Daniel Johnston, Larry Harlow, Quantic, and many more. As a producer Quesada has worked on albums by Daniel Johnston, The Sword, Natalia Clavier, Karl Denson, Toy Selectah, and Ian Moore.

Jeremy Bruch

Born in the Iowan heartland, stewed in good music and farm living, Jeremy has been drumming and cooking professionally for a combined total of over 30 years. Upon graduation from high school, he wandered south of SunnyBruch Farm and into the wilds of Texas, where he has spent over a decade playing drums with countless acts ranging from Latin (Grupo Fantasma) to indie rock (What Made Milwaukee Famous) and currently holds it down with Graham Reynolds, doing studio sessions for various soundtracks, scores, and Golden Arm Trio albums, as well as live performances with Ballet Austin, Forklift Danceworks, and many more.

Utah Hamrick

Utah Hamrick is a jazz educator who holds a bachelor’s degree in Music Education and master’s in Bass Performance from Central Michigan University, and a DMA in Jazz Performance from the University of Texas. Doctor Hamrick frequently performs with Austin-based composer Graham Reynolds, including motion picture soundtracks for Bernie and All is Bright. He has performed with jazz luminaries such as Houston Person, Bryon Stripling, Larry Ham, Bill Watrous, and Tommy Igoe, and performed with Willie Nelson for the opening of the ACL Live Moody Theatre. He currently teaches Jazz Bass/Jazz Ensembles at Texas State University School of Music.

Henna Chou

Henna Chou has traveled the world as an environmental scientist and musician for the past two decades. She is currently the Music Curator at Salvage Vanguard Theater and Managing Director of COTFG, a community organization dedicated to the proliferation of creative sound and counter culture expression. As a cellist, guitarist, keyboardist or sound designer, she has performed in many theatrical and touring band ensembles and occasionally created arrangements and recordings for film.

Alexis Buffum

Alexis has been performing and teaching violin in Austin, TX for twelve years. She earned a Masters in Music performance degree at the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Music degree at Florida State University. She performs with the Austin Symphony, Austin Lyric Opera, and Round Rock Symphony. In addition to Classical music, she enjoys performing alternative styles of music such as rock, folk, Irish, and improvisation. She has recorded on several films, including Bernie, Mud, Our Brand is Crisis, and Loving. Alexis has also performed with numerous artists such as Willie Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth, Josh Groban, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, Jr., and the Trans Siberian Orchestra. She has loved the opportunity to work with Graham on numerous projects over the past seven years.

Tomás Q. Morín

Tomás Q. Morín‘s poetry collection A Larger Country was the winner of the APR/Honickman Prize and runner-up for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is co-editor with Mari L’Esperance of the anthology, Coming Close: 40 Essays on Philip Levine, and translator of The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda. His poems have appeared in Slate, Threepenny Review, Boulevard, Poetry, New England Review, and Narrative.

Brian H Scott

Brian H Scott a Lighting and Scenic Designer based in New York City, as a designer for Austin TX based Rude Mechanicals, where he designed Stop Hitting Yourself at Lincoln Center, Now Now Oh Now, Method Gun, I’ve Never Been So Happy, How Late It Was How Late, Lipstick Traces, Requiem for Tesla, and Matchplay. He created lighting for Tears become…Streams become, Bound to Hurt and Neck of the Woods with Douglas Gordon. With Ann Hamilton Habitus, The Event Of A Thread and Theatre is a Blank Page. He designed lighting for Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet’s Landfall. As a SITI Company member he designed lighting for Steel Hammer with Bang on a Can All Stars, The Persians and Trojan Women with the Getty Villa, American Document with the Martha Graham Company, Cafe Variations, Under Construction, WhoDoYouThinkYouAre, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, bobrauschenbergamerica (Henry Hewes Design Award 2004), Radio MacBeth and War of the Worlds Radio Play.

Christine Crook

Christine Crook designs for theatre, dance, and opera all over the Bay Area and is a proud company member of the Shotgun Players and Just Theater. Recent credits include Caught and Hamlet with Shotgun Players, Powder Her Face and Cunning Little Vixen with West Edge Opera. Coming up next she is designing for San Francisco Symphony’s production of The Gospel According To The Other Mary, and participating as an artist in residence with Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin in 2017. Christine has an MFA in costume design from UC San Diego and is the recipient of two SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards. She currently teaches costume design with Academy of Art University, and mentors students designers with the Conservatory Theatre Ensemble at Tamalpais High School.

Luis Ordaz Gutiérrez

Luis Ordaz Gutiérrez is the Co- Founder and Artistic Director of ProyectoTEATRO, Austin’s premiere Spanish language performing arts company. His work focuses on highlighting the socio-cultural experience of the Latino Diaspora in the US, as well as creating socially charged arts programming that preserves and promotes the entire spectrum of Latin-American culture. Luis won the 2015 B. Iden Payne Award for ‘Best Director in Theatre For Youth’ and ‘Best Dance Choreography’ for his work in POR LOS MOJADOS and was nominated for ‘Best Original Script’. Over the past ten years he has had the opportunity to travel around the world to inspire communities to address social matters and political instabilities through the performing arts and to find strength and pride in their cultural backgrounds through community collectiveness.

Toy Selectah

The mix-master wizard for Monterrey Mexico’s Hip Hop en Español Pioneers Control Machete created a whole new hybrid by mixing mexican soundscapes with contemporary urban riddims. As a Music Producer and Remixer, Toy Hernández has been working with a long list of artists such as Major Lazer, Vampire Weekend, Mexican Institute of Sound, Calle 13, M.I.A., Thievery Corporation, Cypress Hill, Manu Chao, Diplo, Kinky, Up Bustle and Out, Plastilina Mosh, Café Tacvba, Sergent García, Don Omar, Gustavo Cerati, Celso Piña, Ely Guerra, Notch, Cabas, Juanes, Julieta Venegas, Alejandro Sanz, Zurdok, Molotov and many others. Lately he has been galloping rural rhythms of Colombian-Mexican cumbias, reggae, and other urban and Caribbean styles creating his own trademark sound. For the last ten years he’s been traveling and Dj’ing all around the world as TOY SELECTAH!!! Last decade Toy Hernández was a key element in the establishment and development of Universal Music Group Urban Latino Label MACHETE MUSIC and the global takeover of Reggaeton and other Latin Urban genres. He now lives in Monterrey Mexico and is Creative Director, A&R and CEO of Sones del Mexside, his own production company and boutique label, a kind of incubator that develops and breaks new and established top selling acts like Los Angeles Azules (Double Diamond and Triple Platinum) and Latin Grammy winners DJ collective 3BallMTY. Toy releases music through Mad Decent, Diplo’s label, and is an active collaborator and part of his production team.