Hayao Miyazaki Designing the Hayao Miyazaki exhibit at The Academy Museum. WORDS BY ALYSSA WEJEBE | LOS ANGELES | FILM SPACES NOV 15, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Background, Spirited Away (2001), © 2001 Studio Ghibli ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Hayao Miyazaki exhibit by Joshua White, Courtesy of JWPictures Layout, Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), © 1989 Eiko Kadono - Studio Ghibli Creating the first major exhibit of Hayao Miyazaki’s work outside of Japan for a newly launched museum, while dealing with an ongoing pandemic, is an intense combination of firsts. But Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel, and Assistant Curator J. Raúl Guzmán, accomplished that feat for the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. As the co-founder of animation juggernaut Studio Ghibli and the director behind critically acclaimed animated films like Princess Mononoke , Spirited Away, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind , Miyazaki has become a visionary storyteller and artist. Exhibitions of his work have largely remained exclusive to his home country of Japan in places like the Ghibli Museum, which he also designed himself. But Niebel and Guzmán convinced Studio Ghibli to trust them with an exhibition of Miyazaki’s work, and the two have closely worked with the studio ever since. The Academy Museum’s inaugural exhibit provides a new opportunity to see rare production art from Miyazaki’s films outside Japan. Located in Los Angeles, California, the show opened September 30 and will run until June 5, 2022. Niebel and Guzmán spoke with smART Magazine about designing the exhibit and using animated characters to inspire a journey-like experience for visitors. Similar to making a Miyazaki film, Guzmán says they needed a clear vision for the exhibit and teamwork. While they determined exhibition content based on research and interviews with key Studio Ghibli staff, Guzmán and Niebel collaborated with the museum’s in-house designers to define the show’s appearance. They sent collage-like concepts of the exhibit to Shraddha Aryal, Vice President of Exhibition Design and Production at the museum. Aryal and her design team used the collages to create a floor plan that provided a journey for visitors. “Curation and design have to come together and really work hand in hand towards the same goal to make a truly successful exhibition together,” Niebel says. Creating a journey for visitors included deciding how they would enter the exhibit. In a fitting homage to an iconic scene from My Neighbor Totoro , visitors enter the exhibit through a tree tunnel like one of the film’s young protagonists, Mei. They can even find the titular creature, Totoro, semi-hidden on the walls, waiting to be discovered. The tree tunnel was used to inspire visitors to think like Mei and feel the same playful curiosity as her while they entered. “Mei would be the one to lead us into Miyazaki’s world,” Guzmán says. That use of character perspective applied to other areas of the exhibit, such as the last one inspired by Spirited Away . “We wanted visitors to end their journey following Chihiro, who during the course of that film really discovers a lot about herself—so we replicate it in that moment,” Guzmán explains. They also shared the perspective of the title character in Kiki’s Delivery Service by creating a space for visitors to recline and watch animated clouds on a ceiling. “We really wanted to invite visitors to lay down and change their perspective,” Niebel says. “Usually in museums you look straight at a wall. But in Miyazaki’s films, there’s a lot of perspective change, looking up or looking down.” Film Still, Spirited Away (2001), Hayao Miyazaki, © 2001 Studio Ghibli But curating a perspective took time to figure out. Niebel explains they originally thought they could use footage from Miyazaki’s films, but that didn’t work out. “There’s never really that perspective when someone’s looking straight up at the sky—there’s always an angle,” Niebel says. After further collaboration with Ghibli and the museum’s production team, they decided to have Ghibli Art Director, Yōichi Nishikawa, paint the clouds, and then Los Angeles-based animation studio, Titmouse, animated them. Besides a clear goal and collaboration, research into Miyazaki’s work found another area of common ground between his filmmaking and their exhibition development. “Miyazaki believes that his films already exist somewhere, and he’s not really creating them—they’re already there, and he’s just kind of channeling them into real films,” Niebel says. “Similarly to that, I’ve always thought that the exhibition tells you what it wants to be. Your job as a curator is to listen to it and understand what it wants to be, with some sort of intuition and some sensitivity—and that is your job, much more than creating the whole thing.” ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Hella Feminist The Oakland Museum of California Delivers a Defiant Feminist Narrative WORDS BY CAMILLA MIKOLAJEWSKA | SAN FRANCISCO | VISUAL ARTS SPACES MAR 31, 2023 | ISSUE 4 Female Riveters Working ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Votes for Women "Patty's Crew" The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) launched Hella Feminist in late July, an exhibit exploring the fight for gender equity with focus on the San Francisco Bay Area. By incorporating perspectives often excluded from knowledge production and preservation, the exhibit challenges dominant historical and cultural conceptions of feminism. From the show’s curation to its creative partnerships, Hella Feminist imparts a holistic, fresh, and community-focused approach to understanding feminism and gender. “There’s some really incredible artwork in this exhibition,” said Hella Feminist co-curator and OMCA Curator of Art, Carin Adams. This includes portraits by Los Angeles-based, Bay Area-raised Shizu Saldamando , who paints her friends, creative peers, and subjects from Latin-Punk and queer communities. The Western canon’s influence on our education limits what most Americans consider “appropriate” for fine art galleries. By painting identities that aren’t typically seen in fine art museums, Saldamando hopes to broaden our conception of who belongs in the creation of art and culture. In addition to thought-provoking art, the Hella Feminist exhibit forces us to question the dominant historical narrative of women’s rights. For example, a white protester in a 1976 Women’s Suffrage protest holds a poster reading: “American ladies will not be slaves.” A reinterpretation of this graphic, and of historical materials like this, is necessary to interrogate the narrative of feminism—rights were won, but not for everyone equally. “There’s always been schisms, there’s always been tensions within feminism,” explained Consulting Curator, Erendina Delgadillo. “This reminds visitors that there’s always more perspectives in your moment than your own.” The contemporary, social justice-focused re-interpretation of historical artifacts is just one way that the Hella Feminist curators emphasize that true femnism is intersectional. Intersectionality describes how different forms of inequity and discrimination – such as racism, sexism, and ableism – overlap in a person’s lived experience. People may not see the world through an intersectional lens, explained Co-Curator Lisa Silberstein, but it’s part of the whole exhibition—and viewers will see that in what we and our collaborators chose to present. Hella Feminist ’s intersectional paradigm goes beyond identity. To demonstrate the different ways gender affects us, the curators organized the exhibit into three realms: mind, body, and spirit. In the “Mind” section, viewers are introduced to an intersectional re-interpretation of feminist history. In the “Body” portion, they’ll explore how gender equity affects one’s health and bodily autonomy. Lastly, they’ll reach the “Spirit” section and what Adams refers to as “ Hella Feminist ’s emotional arc”: a space for viewers to process and reflect. It features a massive, collaborative art installation called Museuexclusion Excorcism , a crowd-sourced tapestry curated and assembled by Tanya Aguiniga . By including non-traditional media, like a breakup text screenshot, the amalgamation challenges our ideas of what “belongs” in museums. It also prompts a reconsideration of our relationship to emotion: feelings are often invalidated and relegated to the realm of irrationality. The “Spirit” section of Hella Feminist challenges that. In addition to fostering reflection, Hella Feminist encourages community-building and solidarity. Collaboration is integral to the gender equity fight. With multiple interactive components, visitors can learn from and contribute to others’ understanding of feminism. “There’s an opportunity for people to release what they’ve been carrying over the past couple of years,” explains Silberstein, “and find camaraderie or community in the exhibition.” Perhaps the most direct way that visitors can connect was added to Hella Feminist after the overturning of Roe v. Wade . Accompanying a video of interviews with people who offer pregnancy termination services, the exhibit features a phone number that visitors can call for such services. “People can share their support, or share their own stories about reproductive health and abortions,” explained Delgadillo. In addition to reading about the threat to bodily autonomy, hearing another human voice on the line connects people to the emotional weight and implications behind the Supreme Court decision. This is crucial especially for visitors who have never grappled with the risk or trauma of pregnancy. It’s just one of the many ways that Hella Feminist connects people: not just to the knowledge of the past, but to the emotions of the present and the potential of the future. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Eric Ndelo - Macfly Fresh Print CHARLOTTE — AiR TOUR — Issue 8 Art by Macfly Fresh Print Eric Ndelo SM | How do you think this program fits into the artist community in Charlotte? EN ── I believe it was a perfect fit. Charlotte Artists need to be seen. Not only seen, but seen by people who appreciate art and have the $$ to spend on it. This program fulfilled all the above. A lot of times big events like Immersive Van Gogh get filled by talented national/international artists and just a few local artists get a piece of the pie. But that wasn’t the case. I saw a lot of work from a lot of people I knew and didn’t know, from the Charlotte artist community. We need more collaborative events like this that get international attention. It truly helps build our creative economy. Continue the AiR tour in print: ISSUE 9 | ISSUE 10 Sign Up to K eep Up! Our newsletter brings you the best in the visual and performing arts. Exclusive interviews. Global coverage. Local perspectves. sM | What is your takeaway from the experience of working in-studio at IVG Charlotte? EN ── My take away would be that it is so refreshing to see Charlotte artists create side-by-side with each other. To collaborate with each other. To lean on and celebrate each other. We were able to interact with the gumbo of individuals that came to see the show from all over the world. In our residency, we collaborated with 3 other artists that don’t traditionally use screen printed apparel or posters as their main medium of expression. So in the process of teaching them the art of screen printing and translating their digital art files into production screens; they were teaching me to be a better artist myself. We all have our own processes of accomplishing our work. It’s great to have gained new friends for life that I will continue to learn from and be inspired by. sM | What inspiration do you get from artists around you? EN ── Each and every artist that we have worked with—either at the residency or in the greater Charlotte arts community—each and every one has their own style that speaks to the people. So I’m truly inspired by their confidence, boldness, and ability to attract newer and newer audiences to their work. Like with Naji for example. We created a variety of test prints, some came out perfect and some not so perfect. We even had a printer issue that was spitting out transparencies that were less than perfect themselves. But Naji was able to take those beautiful mistakes and turn them into a collage piece that happened to be one of the dopest mixed media pieces in his residency. PREVIOUS NEXT

Fehinti Balogun Presents Can I Live? In conversation with the actor, playwright, poet, and the creator of Can I Live? WORDS BY TASH COWLEY | LONDON | THEATRE FOURTH WALL NOV 15, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Filmed production, Complicité’s "Can I Live" with Fehinti Balogun. Photography by David Hewitt ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Filmed production, Complicité’s Can I Live? with Fehinti Balogun. Photography by Ali Wright ​ Climate conversation is everywhere, and its pressing present-tension can be overwhelming. The United Nation’s recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we are facing “code red” levels of environmental destruction, and everywhere we turn, doom-laden statistics pursue us in a relentless, deafening stampede. The seriousness of what we are facing can leave us feeling isolated and helpless. However, actor, activist and playwright Fehinti Balogun (he/him) is working to switch up the narrative, with an uplifting, educational digital performance that “toured” UK venues. Can I Live? addresses the physical manifestations of global warming through Balogun’s lens as a British-Nigerian activist, and deftly highlights the intersectionality between climate crisis and social justice. With poetry, graphics, music, scientific fact, and narration, Balogun intertwines anecdotal snapshots of his own life with wider atrocities, mining the issues with a personal specificity rarely seen before in this conversation. Shortly after professing his love for plantains, Balogun reveals that Cameroon has experienced a 43% decrease in plantain yield due to heat and dryness. Amongst giant, translucent projected photographs of family members, our protagonist dances and raps in a joyful tribute to his Nigerian heritage—but in an instant, the light wanes, and we learn that Nigeria is losing 350,000 hectares of land a year to drought and desertification. With his head resting in his mother’s lap, Balogun faces hard truths as to why he hasn’t seen many members of his community in climate space. She argues that in a corrupt and racist system, basic survival takes precedence: “Some people are jobless. Some people are homeless. Some people are hopeless.” In this moment, Balogun’s excess of emotion and exhaustion breaks like a wave. His song “Kiss me, Hold me, Watch me Weep” explores a sentiment shared by many who lack the support they need to stay in this fight, that we may “just need to be held” to move through the storm. In conversation with smART Magazine , Balogun discusses his influences, the role of music in truth-telling, and how Can I Live? aims to encourage safe, communal spaces for people of color who refuse to sit back and watch the world burn. sM | Can I Live? incorporates a cacophony of performance genres. What inspires you about this format, over a traditional theatrical framework with fictionalized characters, settings, and “plot”? FB — Honestly, I didn’t want to try to be “clever” about it. Can I Live? is a theatrical adaptation of a climate lecture that I’ve been delivering for a while and, in those moments, it’s just me speaking to an audience. I wanted to retain the quality of that interaction, because I don’t want people to distance themselves. Sometimes, people leave the theatre thinking, “I was worried initially, but those characters received their resolution, so now I can remove myself.” It’s somehow cathartic, and I didn’t want that. Some audiences may struggle to understand what it is; it’s not just a first-person narrative monologue, or a lecture, or a gig. It’s all of it, and that’s by design. I don’t want people to be comfortable, peering into a moment in time that’s separate from them. The idea is to continually re-engage with the people watching and let them see themselves in the piece. sM | The piece is built around a strong, insistent musical score of original songs, written and performed by you. What’s the inspiration behind the soundscape? FB — When it came to writing the climate lecture, that has always been infused with my mom’s voice. And as for the music, I listened to a dangerous quantity of Kendrick Lamar while I was writing! Lyrically, I’m very inspired by my contemporaries from drama school; Jamael Westman, Abraham Popoola, Tom Edward Kane. Their on-beat lyricism is wild. In terms of making beats: Kanye. Then there’s afro beats. WizKid, Burna Boy. I listened to a lot of saxophonists, choral pieces, Jacob Collier. I was trying to more deeply understand the vocal instrument, and what it can do. I truly do love music. Like, I love, love music. And I wanted to create something that felt as powerful and moving as I feel when certain music hits me. That raw exposure and truth can feel like it passes through the artist and directly into you. It’s beyond words; I don't know if it’s acceptance, but it feels like vindication or validation, because you hear someone feeling the depths that you hope to feel, want to feel, or have felt, but haven’t been able to express. By absorbing all these influences, I was working to develop and create the best version of my own voice to tell this story. At the beginning of the process, I felt as though I was stepping into a realm that I hadn’t yet earned the keys to. When I rap or sing, it speaks more loudly than performing as an actor, because in that territory, I get to choose my persona. There are identity issues to unpack when trying to establish your voice in music, but what I was trying to do above anything else was make my voice accessible to everyone, and not have it be just a temporary, throwaway commentary on climate change. It’s often the case that people remember how you made them feel more than they remember what you say. sM | How did the Climate Emergency lectures in London/South England lead to your involvement and collaboration with Complicité Theatre Company? FB — Blind luck, and seized opportunity! I was delivering climate talks around London and South England and was invited to speak at The Young Vic. They hold weekly meetings every Wednesday morning to discuss the political landscape of theatre, to congregate with members of the public and talk about our industry. Polly Gifford, who was working at Complicité at the time, had heard my pre-lecture piece and we got talking; I just blurted out “I’d like to turn it into a play!” and I’m glad I did, because she invited me to go in for a meeting. I had to learn on my feet, quickly, how to pitch what I had envisioned, how to structure a play. I went into the meeting (with what I would call -5 experience!) and described this part-mixtape, part-climate-lecture that I had in my mind. They came to see one of my talks at The Actor’s Centre and I think it was then that they understood where I was coming from. Then, after a phone call with Simon McBurney of Complicité, we started preparing for the first round of workshops. They began just two weeks later. Can I Live? was initially meant to be a live play back when we started in 2019, but (like so many things) its form changed over the course of the pandemic. When we finally came face-to-face again, we rehearsed the piece for a week and shot the film in three days. It moved very quickly. sM | What do you hope that your audiences, particularly BIPOC participants, took away from the scheduled online workshops, and from Can I Live? as a whole? FB — I think we exist in a culture of immediacy, and it encourages intense, narrow examination of the issues that end too quickly. They stop us being able to examine the root of our problems. For instance, when we talk about race, ableism, feminism, the safety of women, all these things that we should be addressing, the problem gets placed under a microscope for a short amount of time, and then we just move on. These issues deserve better than two minutes in the spotlight, before being forgotten. The post-show discussions were always going to be part of the piece, even before it changed format. It was essential to me that this wasn’t another instance of performative activism. Theatre and entertainment are well practiced at going, “Look at this issue, isn’t that bad? Ok, peace out.” And that’s it. I just had no interest in doing that. From its inception, Can I live? needed to be a body of work that connected people, like a directory. It’s about giving people the tools and the permission they need to begin, and that’s specifically why we did a digital tour of these UK venues. Each venue’s online event was facilitated by someone local to that area who is part of a grassroots group. We encouraged people to find confidence in their capability, and importantly, helped them to find kinfolk in those spaces. I encouraged people to swap details, to talk to each other, and to arm themselves, together. We also fail to highlight the intersectionality between issues, which is a problem; they all seem like separate things, and as a result people feel overloaded by multiple issues, thinking they aren’t linked, when a lot of the time they are. We’re too quick to reward, and too quick to forget, and it leads nowhere. What we’re in desperate need of is a sense of community and guidance, spaces to keep the conversation flowing, and practical things to do. Slow, supported growth, with roots. Can I Live? is a digital performance, produced by Complicité Theatre Company in association with The Barbican, supported by Oxford Playhouse. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Noor Adwan MINNEAPOLIS — AiR TOUR — Issue 8 Art by Noor Adwan Noor Adwan sM | What is your takeaway from the experience of working in-studio at Immersive Van Gogh Minneapolis? NA ── A major takeaway is that I really enjoy working on bigger pieces! I tend to create small pieces, out of both convenience and time constraints, and most of the canvases I keep around are only a few inches across. This residency gave me the opportunity to work, non-stop, for hours on larger pieces and it felt incredibly rewarding! Finishing small pieces is great, but I’m glad I took the opportunity to really immerse myself in the process of creating a couple large pieces. Continue the AiR tour in print: ISSUE 9 | ISSUE 10 Sign Up to K eep Up! Our newsletter brings you the best in the visual and performing arts. Exclusive interviews. Global coverage. Local perspectves. sM | What have you accomplished in your residency? NA ── I spent my time creating a combination of original works and interpretations of van Gogh’s works. I spent time on a few portraits in an expressive style inspired by van Gogh’s, and had quite a bit of fun with those. One of my favorite pieces that I created in my time at IVG is a big winter scene inspired by a sunrise I photographed in Alexandria, Minnesota a couple years ago. Another is an interpretation of Starry Night : the scene is similar but I used a lighter color palette to reimagine it at dawn. sM | What advice would you give to future artists in residence? NA ── It may sound cliché, but in my opinion the most important thing to know before going into this experience is that you’ll get the most out of it by just relaxing and having fun with your art. Don’t stress yourself out by trying to rush through pieces, work robotically, or hold yourself to unrealistic standards. This is a great opportunity—be sure to take full advantage of it. Also: bring more easels than you think you’re going to need to display your work! I ran out of them rather quickly. IG: @artsypeach PREVIOUS NEXT

Zaria Forman Painting the Climate Crisis into Each Precious Detail WORDS BY NAVYA POTHAMSETTY | OAKLAND | VISUAL ARTS STUDIO SESSIONS MAR 02, 2023 | ISSUE 10 Zaria Forman by Jenny Nichols ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Disco Bay, Greenland Zaria Forman by Francois Lebeau In Antarctica, the air is alive with sound. Penguins whir, ice crackles, and waves lap against barren landscapes while painter Zaria Forman absorbs the endless detail of a glacier’s icy wall. On-site research is crucial for Forman, and she has dedicated her practice to observing - and capturing - the Arctic, a region of our planet crucial for regulating our climate and under the fatal threat of collapse. Whether it has been aboard the National Geographic Explorer or traveling with NASA’s scientific expeditions, Forman has collected imagery of one of the most rapidly changing continents on earth for her creative practice and climate change advocacy. The environmental issues plaguing our poles feel disconnected from our daily lives, and Forman brings them to the front and center of our minds. The scale of her drawings mirrors the magnitude of our rapidly changing ecosystem and the disaster it presents, filling our vision and making it impossible to look away in ignorance. The still, dark oceans keeping the glaciers and icebergs afloat are a threat to all life as they continually rise, and the icy planes she depicts glow with a vibrancy that feels alluring and dangerous. The delicacy of pastels – her medium of choice – reflects the fragile nature of her chosen landscapes, as Forman highlights moments of tranquility in the precarious natural world. Each of Forman’s massive pastel drawings stay true to the landscape of the glaciers she depicts, while understanding that by the time the drawing is complete, the subject may be completely different in reality. A jagged block of ice could flip, revealing the slippery surface below. Icebergs, melting on the open ocean or in iceberg graveyards, such as the one in Whale Bay, Antarctica, slowly return to the water, disappearing into the waves. Forman captures each of her subjects with an astounding amount of attention to detail and labours over the accuracy of each colour and line to ensure a perfect effigy. Just as a portrait of a person preserves their likeness for the next generations, these depictions of glaciers capture their ephemeral beauty before they are lost forever. Lindblad Cove While most of us may never be able to visit the Arctic to absorb its grandeur and elegance, Forman has made it her life’s mission to help her viewers feel connected to these remote locations. Her drawings urge us to take action now, making a distant crisis seem suddenly up close and personal as we are drawn into these vulnerable regions with curiosity and awe. Each work arises from an accumulation of marks in the same way glaciers accumulate over millions of years, transforming a blank page into a window that looks into the environments we are on the edge of losing. Unfortunately, we are out of time to rebuild these precious ecosystems, and the work of Zaria Forman is an important reminder of the urgency of the climate crisis we are facing. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Jason Mraz The Pop Icon is Here for a Good Time on Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride WORDS BY REBECCA DAVISON-MORA | SAN DIEGO | ALT.ITUDE ALT.ITUDE JUN 20, 2023 | ISSUE 12 Still from "Pancakes And Butter" “Sometimes pop needs to still feel like it's on the fringe” Jason Mraz Jason Mraz would tell you he likes to treat everything as a beginner, and for 20 years, he has been traversing genres across a discography that has had peaks and troughs, never quite reaching the popularity of his 2008 album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things . Yet, he has remained consistently committed to reinventing and repurposing genres and sounds. Now, in his eighth studio album Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride, Mraz reunites with producer Martin Terefe. The result is an album with its arms wide open, picking from an established cupboard of funk, pop, and soul. One could call this re-invention, or simply a return to the pop that catapulted him to fame. Regardless, the result is the glossy, highly produced album you would expect of a musician with over 20 years in the game. Proficient at developing hooks, Mraz hits all the marks, embedding rhymes into the recesses of the subconscious, so you catch yourself singing them in the shower. But despite his glossy slick production, 40-year-old Mraz projects an image of a wiser, more aware artist of himself and the world around him. A divorce under his belt, he speaks of the influence of his mom on the album, legalization of marijuana, and the importance of his band Raining Jane. He reflects on coming into his sexuality and interrogating his masculinity, giving the impression of someone searching for authenticity, in the way that is expected of someone in his position at this stage of his career. One would think that this self-realization would produce a different album than the one we have been given. But ever young, Mraz doesn’t give the appearance of taking himself too seriously. And it’s fun. The music video for I Feel Like Dancing is a 70s inspired ride through the rose-tinted glasses that only the present can afford the past. With rich costumes, playful sets, and a haze of nostalgia, Mraz succeeds in world building here. There are hints of our geek in the pink with his signature wordplay, at times feeling recycled from days gone by but with the same playfulness ever present. Mraz’s wishes to play at the ‘fringes of pop’, and his array of influence is a testament to that desire. However, this is not always executed to its full potential. Tracks like You Might Like It make fluffy statements, repurposing sitars and pop formulas that echo the Beatles or Bruno Mars to good, not brilliant, effect. Yet behind it all lies an underlying openness, a joy of making music with people he loves, a desire to have fun and a cyclical journey back to pop like an old friend. Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride is an album just as at home on a Spotify playlist in 2023 as his original hits were blaring out of my mom’s minivan during the school drop off in 2008. A testament to the longevity of an artist who, even now, is still reaching for reinvention. Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride Cover Art ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ MYSTICAL MAGICAL RHYTHMICAL RADICAL RIDE sM | The “Beginner” tattoo on the album cover for Mystical was first seen 15 years ago in the video for “I’m Yours” from We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things How has the meaning of that tattoo changed for you? JM ── Well, it's definitely a state of mind and I may have evolved but the tattoo has not, which is great because I got the tattoo many years ago when I first started surfing. I felt like such a beginner and all the higher level surfers out there were telling me to get out of the way, go to a different wave, so I wished that I'd had a T-shirt that said “beginner” on it. Anytime I did spot the beginners, they were having more fun. And so rather than a t-shirt, I decided I'll just get it tattooed on my arm and do my best in this life to maintain a beginner's mind, which is always a great place to come from in any project. It reminds me to have fun. It reminds me that even though I may have done this before, I've not done it this way before. I've not done it at this age before. Maybe I've not done it in this studio before. By keeping a beginner's mind, there's always ways to view something you've done in a new light. JUNE sM | Your mom, June, had a hand in the way this album sounds. You played her some acoustic demos and she responded with “Yeah, these are great, but y’all need to make a pop album, because you're not getting any younger, and you better do it before it's too late.” Why do you think that resonated with you? JM ── I don't think there's anyone in the world that you wanna please more than your mother. So when she just laid it out, it was a keen awareness that even though I've been in the pop lane and I've done up tempo numbers in the past, it didn't resonate with my mom that I had truly achieved it yet. And so I took that to heart and I set a new goal for myself to see if I could make something that even she would like, but that still lives in sort of a contemporary dance genre. And she was a great resource in the studio and of course my band knows my mom and loves her. So whenever we'd be stumped or be at a fork in the road, should we go this way or should we go this way? We would basically say, well, what would June do? Or what would June want us to do? And we would always lean in the direction of June's pop request and I think the result was great and I'm really glad we had that. WISDOM OF THE CROWD sM | How challenging was it for you to be completely open, putting an album together that anyone, at almost any age, can connect with? JM ── I definitely like to ask friends, listeners, fans and parents: what do you wanna hear? What do you like about the things I have made or the things I'm currently making? What do you like? With the aid of Martin and a few of our add-on studio musicians: Sterling Campbell, who sat in on drums for a few songs, Nikolai Torp, who loaned us some beautiful keyboard parts, Glen Scott, who played some great keyboard parts and even Oliver Lou, who was our engineer, was just so fresh and scrappy and edgy it added to the fun and flavor of pop. Sometimes pop needs to still feel like it's on the fringe. It needs to be familiar, but it also still needs to feel fresh. And I feel like we had all those right ingredients on this but I don't know that I would've looked for them, had June not really made that request. Thanks, Mom. Jason Mraz by Shervin Lainez MASCULINITY sM | One of the undertones of this album is a certain freedom of expression, particularly unconfining yourself from traditional masculinity. What’s been the journey for you over the last five years in terms of defining and redefining what masculinity looks for you? JM ── I don't know that I'm defined yet, and I don't ever wanna be final, but I love being in the flow. I grew up with a lot of Queer friends and I had an amazing manager for 18 years who was a gay man, and many Queer managers inside that office, and through all of those years from high school and into my adult life I wanted to make sure that I'm making art that creates a space to counteract all the opposition we're still experiencing in the world so that queer presence, queer love can still bloom, blossom and flourish in this world. My own experiences are evolving and expanding. I've always been somewhat of an independent, and I did for many years chase an institutional idea of marriage and it didn't work. And I got a divorce and found myself single again and realized that I was not chasing things that my heart wanted. It took me a very long time to explore that side of myself and to accept that side of myself. And today I find myself as a bi man, sometimes I call myself a cis, pan man because my heart is open and I love making connections with all kinds of people. Sometimes those connections are intimate, and sometimes those connections are just long-lasting, beautiful, pen pals. I'm an artist and I need a muse and I love finding them all over the place. So yeah, I did wanna be a little more conscious about inclusivity going forward in my work, and it's also exciting for me to finally be exploring that in my work, whereas I might have been afraid to do it 20 years ago. ​ RETRO MAGIC sM | The aesthetic for this album looks like you’ve time traveled to the 70’s, especially with the “Pancakes & Butter” music video, set in a surreal 70s variety show. There’s an element of nostalgia here, but it seems it’s more for the unplugged connectedness of that era. What inspired this call back to the 70’s for you and how does that indicate the kinds of connection you want this album to make with listeners? JM ── First of all, I love the seventies as a recorded genre of music because whether it was their microphones, their recording technology, their instruments, the rise of electric pianos, the rise of synthesizers, there's just a warmth and a beauty to how music was recorded in that decade. Specifically we were listening to Bee Gees, Abba, Nile Rodgers Productions from Chic all the way up to more current bands like DAFT Punk. So I just feel like maybe the origin of great dance music comes from that era, you know, the seventies. In the videos, it's almost idyllic to see a family sitting around playing cards instead of seeing a family sitting around staring at their phones, which is pretty common. The music helps to connect with community, and playing cards to connect with family. We play Cards Against Humanity when we hang out with my mom, it's a way that we can connect as a family on a level that's just way deeper than us sending links of Tiktoks that we like, you know? The videos are a way to try to create a world that's more magical than just the three dimensional world we live in. The music can maybe become a fourth dimension to add to that. Videos give us that same opportunity to take reality and then sweeten it a little. Jason Mraz by Shervin Lainez LEGALIZATION sM | You shared on social media recently how you were arrested 20 years ago for being in possession of a small amount of weed, and how it could have easily ruined your life. What do you think people who are against nationwide legalization still tend to get wrong about weed? JM ── I think they get it wrong that it's this all consuming overtaking drug. That's what we were taught in our drug awareness prevention programs as kids. In the early 1970s they started rebranding cannabis to be this “marijuana”, this thing that's on the streets that's overtaking minds and destroying families. And so what we get wrong about it is we've made it a monster in the media, and because of that, we made laws that have completely changed lives. It’s destroyed lives when what we should have is reverence and respect for the plant because it is a naturally occurring, naturally growing plant that if you just let it grow, it would seed itself and probably cover this whole continent. But the one thing we do with plants, with other plants is we honor them, respect them. We know how to use them in certain quantities. We know how to use them in certain recipes, ingredients, and concoctions and, we learn our dosage with things. We've done it with chemicals like chlorine. We know the right amount of dosage to put in our water so that water is clean, thanks to that miracle recipe, humans started living longer. We all used to die in our thirties because water was poisoned. With alcohol, we know our limits, so unfortunately, marijuana got painted as this evil monster, as this villain, and that was by design. It was to continue to keep marginalized people in the margins. It was to continue to fill the prisons in the United States especially so that labor could remain free and people could remain enslaved. I mean, the list goes on and on, on why marijuana was possibly made a bad guy. Or a bad species. And so I think it's ridiculous that any species on God's green earth should be made illegal. If anything comes out of this earth, we should honor it, respect it, ask what it is and how it can be used to help us. ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

BOBBY BAZINI’S PEARL The Montréal singer-songwriter’s latest recording is a work-from-home gem with a DIY aesthetic smART MAGAZINE | MONTRÉAL | HOMEGROWN HOMEGROWN JUN 30, 2022 | ISSUE 12 Bobby Bazini Bobby Bazini is a music industry veteran, with over two decades as a signed artist and four albums to his credit. A francophone artist who prefers writing lyrics in English, his music has gained a fan base among both anglophone and francophone audiences, across Canada and internationally. This summer will see the release of his newest concept album, Pearl . Bazini found inspiration for the album after reading an article about pearl-formation, seeing the process as a metaphor for creating beauty out of life’s difficulties. Watery allusions are woven into the album’s music, including modified pitching to emulate underwater sound, the use of seashells as percussive instruments (an innovation courtesy of drummer Robbie Kuster), and the inclusion of natural ocean sounds recorded by Bazini. The production of the album was a homecoming for the Quebec-born artist. Pearl was not recorded in London or Los Angeles, as Bazini has previously experienced. Instead, recording took place at a forest-encircled studio in Sainte-Adèle, Quebec, mere minutes from his home. Freed from the tight schedule that a trip to a foreign recording studio would impose, Bazini and his collaborators had ample time for creative exploration. Much like a real pearl, the album was created through a process of accretion. Building on elements from his original demos, each musician’s contribution added a new layer to the songs, resulting in a rich depth of instrumentation. Coming off a solid decade of touring before the pandemic, Pearl has allowed Bazini to make connections in his home province, finding both a studio and a community of talented producers and musicians on his doorstep. It is a community Bazini hopes he can continue cultivating, his experience creating Pearl having stirred his interest in Quebec’s music scene. Bazini appreciated the close-to-home production of the album, feeling that the intimate and less hurried nature of the effort made for a freer creative process. This leads me to wonder how much of cultural production suffers when it is undertaken in rushed and stressful circumstances? Does the music industry as it stands too rarely give the space needed to nurture the kind of creative collaboration that has gone into Pearl ? When I listen to the title track of the album, with its richly layered sounds and mellow pacing, I am thankful that Bazini had the time and space to take it slow for his latest venture. PEARL IS SET FOR RELEASE 25 AUGUST, 2023. WWW.BOBBYBAZINI.COM | @bobbybazini Pearl Cover Art ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Bobby Bazini by Alexandre Couture ​ WFH sM | How did recording an album in a familiar and intimate setting liberate the creative process for you? BB ─ I've always gone far away to record but I realised that there was this great studio and this great producer ten minutes away from me. The studio is called The Tree House and I work with this amazingly talented producer named Connor Seidel. We had way more time this time around. Back then, I recorded in London, which was great, but I was always there for just a little bit. The creative process had to be within this certain time. When I was working here, I was always at home. Having that connection, that proximity, allowed for a more free and creative process. TIGHT SHIP sM | Who are some of your collaborators on this recording? BB ─ I kept hearing about Robbie Kuster, who's this great drummer. He was the first person we reached out to and he was super excited. We got in the studio and we were looking for a keyboard player. During the pandemic, Connor started working with Conner Molander from Half Moon Run. Connor, the producer, played some of our demos for him and he immediately said yes. So Robbie, Conner, Connor, and I, that's really the foundation of the project. We also got Charles-Émile Beaudin who loves the same stuff that we do, and reached out to Antoine Gratton. He's an amazing string arranger. “I DON’T TALK TO MY MOTHER” sM | What emotional spaces precipitated this album and how do songs like “I Don’t Talk to My Mother” help you find it? BB ─ I had released an album that came out right in the pandemic and it took a bit of time for me to process that. A part of me needed the break because I've been touring constantly for ten years. I'm so grateful for being able to live my dream but I guess another part of me needed a pause to take some time at home. When you're always gone, you're never there for birthdays, parties, family gatherings, and that kind of stuff. You lose that kind of connection. The song “I Don’t Talk to My Mother” is about how I wish there was that connection again. FRANGLAIS sM | How do your concerts respond to the diverse demographic of your audience, which consists of both anglophone and francophone listeners? BB ─ I grew up in a small town in Quebec where everything is of course very French. My parents don't really speak English that much, so I learned it later on. I guess we think that everywhere else is just English but when I started touring I realised that there are francophones everywhere. I always wanted to learn English as well because it was my dream to travel. I think when I started writing it just came naturally in English, but I love being able to speak French. When I go to France, for example, I sing in English, but then I can talk to the audience in French. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Ragamala Dance Company How a mother-daughter duo is bringing classical South Indian Dance to the global stage WORDS BY NAVYA POTHAMSETTY | MINNEAPOLIS | PERFORMING ARTS IN MOTION FEB 27, 2023 | ISSUE 11 Ragamala Dance Company ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ Continue reading in Issue 11 Born and raised in Tamil Naidu, India, Ranee Ramaswamy is a first-generation Indian-American now living in Minneapolis, where she founded Ragamala Dance Company in 1992. Co-leading the company with her daughters Aparna and Ashwini, the trio see family as an “artistic incubator through which we craft multidisciplinary, intercultural dance landscapes.” The Ramaswamys were trained in Bharatanatyam – one of eight standard South Indian classical dance forms – by Alarmél Valli in Chennai, India. Since its founding over 20 years ago, Ragamala’s dancers have performed at venues ranging from college campuses to international festivals, disseminating South Indian classical dance to diasporic populations and curious dancers worldwide. Ramaswamy’s production style thematically and aesthetically stratifies traditional Bharatanatyam elements. Her two most recent projects – Fires of Varanasi and Sacred Earth – chart new trajectories of interdisciplinarity; intersecting traditional choreographic vernacular with input from a... ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Fridamania Open Your Eyes to the Humanity, Audacity, and Mexicanity WORDS BY EBONI FREEMAN | ILLUSTRATION BY KALYA RAMU | LIGHTHOUSE IMMERSIVE FEB, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Frida: Immersive Dream ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Vicente Fusco by Kalya Ramu Frida: Immersive Dream Do you remember that moment between your dream ending and your eyes opening? The liminal feeling of being between realities lingers as you decide to wake up, get up, and start your day. Immersive experiences have the power to transport us to that moment where dreams rendezvous with reality. From Toronto to Los Angeles, Kahlo’s work has the power to reach into the cultural consciousness of fans and take them on a multimedia adventure from Coyoacán to San Francisco . Frida: Immersive Dream is the format for reunification that many people have been looking for since the pandemic; what better than the exhibit of an artist whose work, lifestyle, and public image combined to create a worldwide Fridamania. Frida Kahlo’s ethereal energy could be just what we need to open up, stand out, and drift into our wildest dreams. Lighthouse Immersive’s Frida: Immersive Dream transports you to the center of Fridando—known by Frida Kahlo’s fans as the state of living like Frida. With more than five biopics, 30 books, 48 albums, 102 podcast episodes, and 1.2 million Instagram followers dedicated to her enchanting achievements, Vicente Fusco, Director of Business Development at Lighthouse Immersive, has identified a wonder star of the past who still lights up our sky. Fusco joins smART Magazine to chronicle the evolution of this immersive event. What is Frida: Immersive Dream ? “ Immersive Van Gogh was such a massive event, such a breath of fresh air, right?” explains Fusco. “Van Gogh set the bar so high. In our minds, there are very few artists that have such a…powerful and vast reach. There's just a few icons in the world of art that are pop by consent.” With her face adorning Etsy napkins and her likeness featured in Disney movies, Kahlo’s aesthetic shines as a beacon of remix culture—a starting point for burgeoning creatives seeking to produce broadly appealing content. “We had to really try and do what we've been doing in our other immersive shows with an icon like Frida Kahlo. Everyone will be very surprised with the amazing work that Massimiliano did with this.” Frida: Immersive Dream will be the third Lighthouse Immersive installation crafted by famed Italian film producer and exhibition designer Massimiliano Siccardi . Utilizing a genre-bending formula to craft the show’s layout, Massimiliano’s production personifies the compelling subtextual reveal perfected by Kahlo. “For us, Frida Kahlo...is an artist that was so ahead of her time, somebody that is so relevant today, 75 years since her death. I feel personally involved being Mexican but, more so, if we dwell into the immersive experience, I think the immersive show is a new art form.” According to the 2020 Immersive Industry Annual report by Pseudonym Productions, the experiential arts began as recently as the year 2000. By capitalizing on the geographic concepts prominent in Kahlo’s 29-year oeuvre, Fusco crafts a layered experience across space and time. “In the show, there's a great representation of Mexico in its history, in its colour, in its strength, and in its folklore. This show will bring a lot of the elements of what Mexican culture is.” What are the similarities and differences between Immersive Van Gogh and Frida: Immersive Dream ? “What Massimiliano does is he interprets the artist's work; it was Massimiliano’s interpretation of what he wanted to showcase on Van Gogh. And now he's doing the same with Frida. It's such a different mindset and such a different creation that it's a fantastic showcase, not only of what Massimiliano is capable of doing. It's also a showcase of what these immersive experiences can be.” Here, Fusco intimates new modes of narrative dissection between creator and spectator when presented with the nearly century-old masterpieces. Exhibit attendees will use the immersive landscape to identify clues, discuss theories, and uncover the woman behind the art and the art behind the woman. “I believe that the Frida show will have its own life because Frida’s life is one thing, and van Gogh’s life is something so different. It amazingly captures what Frida was as an artist and as a human being.” Frida: Immersive Dream Is the immersive realm ready for Frida Kahlo? “When you're listening to music, and you feel emotional, it has a certain feel. If you're watching a movie and you get goosebumps, it's a different feel. The visual experience gives you a unique feeling. The aural experience also gives you a certain feeling. So too, do these immersive experiences give you a completely different feeling. It's a new form of art where it’s not only visual and audio, but the architecture also plays a very important role.” By describing the immersive realm’s role as a sensory playground, Fusco connects the show’s well-constructed visceral stimulations with the artistic sensations embodied in Kahlo’s work. “I think Frida had a very tough life. Frida had an amazing life. It's amazing what one could accomplish so many years ago. You see her travel, her experiences, all the people she met. She lived in the U.S. for a little while. She did exhibits in art galleries in Paris. She accomplished so much in such a short amount of time.” Whether it’s a stroll through the lives of people she loved—such as Portrait of My Father —or vignettes glimpsing into the vitality of passersby—such as in The Bus —Kahlo’s work captured the essence of her 47 years on Earth. “And she also suffered a lot on a personal level. She had a terrible accident when she was very young. Her life changed after that because she never really recovered. I think she went under 35 operations to try and fix her spinal column and her pelvis. She's suffered a lot, and she obviously represented her suffering in her art.” By revealing the imperceptible impediments of living with chronic pain, Kahlo invites her viewers to stop seeking reprieve from anguish and start embracing brokenness. “I think that the immersive emotion that you get when we're talking about Frida, and what Massimiliano is going to project about Frida, has an amazing effect. The audience will be super happy about it. It's the perfect artist for this type of art.” Vittorio Guidotti What is the importance of having a female artist fill the same space previously occupied by a white male artist? “There's good art, and there's bad art in every art form. A lot of people ask me, what's your favourite type of music? I like good music; I like jazz. I like hip hop. There's good and bad music in every single genre. So that's how I see art. Frida is up there with everybody on a single artistic element. It's amazing that, additionally to that, you have a person that is such a strong woman. There aren't like hundreds of thousands of women back then that were so well known. She was respected everywhere, without saying a lot too; she projects so much power, and she projects so much strength. I feel honoured that we're able to represent that.” The display of Kahlo’s power and strength comes on the heels of her record-breaking Sotheby’s showcase. According to NPR , on November 16th, 2021, Kahlo’s “Diego Y Yo'' self-portrait sold for $34.9 million, thus becoming the most expensive piece of Latin American art ever purchased at auction. Concurring with Fusco’s thesis on the breadth and depth of Kahlo’s standing in the art world, Julian Dawes, Senior Vice President and Co-Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby’s, stated, “tonight’s outstanding result further secures [Kahlo’s] place in the auction echelon. She belongs, as one of the true titans of 20th-century art.” Fusco’s titan of Mexicanidad—also known as Mexicanity—offers a sandbox of mesmerizing possibilities and coquettish colour palettes. By capitalizing on a range of storytellers whose work transcends the known bounds of entertainment, design, and technology, Fusco’s team raises the ceiling on immersive creativity to new heights. “At the end of the day, it's important that for us as a company of immersive shows, we bring something different. We want to bring different elements, different people, different nationalities, different genres. We want to do something that appeals to as many people as possible. By doing that, we want to bring in as much diversity as we can. Ultimately, we evaluate the artistic element. I simply like the art and what it brings to the artistic foundation and how it works with what we're doing in the immersive world.” ​ VITTORIO GUIDOTTI Award-winning writer and director, Vittorio Guidotti, is the Creative Director of Visioni Eccentriche—the Italian design team behind many of Lighthouse Immersive’s exhibits. Working alongside Artistic Director, Massimiliano Siccardi, Guidotti is a key cog to one of the world’s leading creators of immersive art experiences. He joins smART Magazine to discuss his approach to Frida: Immersive Dream . sM | What do you find exciting and unique about working with Frida Kahlo's repertoire? VG — When Massimiliano said we were making an Immersive Frida, I was thrilled. Frida is more than a painter. She represents women’s power and freedom. She is an icon of pop culture and that’s how we wanted to depict her in the exhibit. Her strong and direct personality emerges from her work—quite the opposite of the introverted and hermetic van Gogh paintings. We immediately understood that Frida’s show had to be different, which is why we decided to make it a pop exhibit. Immersive Frida has vibrant colors, a quick rhythm, and sharp animations. It’s a celebration of life, in all its stages. Suffering and death included. sM | One of the challenges of designing an exhibit experience is creating something that is accessible to the general public, but also stimulating for art enthusiasts. How is Vissioni Eccentriche able to cater to these different perspectives, while also staying true to the artist? VG — Keeping intact the image of the artist in our shows is always a huge responsibility. We take that very seriously and apprehend each styling decision extremely carefully. We spend a lot of time doing research, making sure we truly understand the artist and fully comprehend their work. But we also keep in mind that our exhibits are, themselves, pieces of art. We can’t imitate these artists—it would be a lost battle—but we also try to not be limited when it comes to showcasing their work. Eventually, each part of each exhibit is filtered through our interpretation, but what in the world is not? Any form of art has no single meaning. Each visitor will give it their own personal, intimate purpose. Our job is to turn the material of a specific artist into something else. Sometimes, in order to get our message across, we have to manipulate and rework the originals completely, so it’s hard not to get lost in the process. Personally, I think the only way to respect the essence of the artist, even in these circumstances, is to keep a connection with the emotions that are embedded in their art, because emotions are the only language that everybody on the planet, despite their differences, can fully understand and relate to. ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Constantine Orbelian Takes on New York City Opera WORDS BY MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK AND CAMILLA MIKOLAJEWSKA | NEW YORK | MUSIC THE smART Ensemble APR 11, 2023 | ISSUE 6 Constantine Orbelian by Ella Mazur ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Constantine Orbelian ​ With a career spanning several decades since his graduation from The Juilliard School, Constantine Orbelian has made a name for himself on the international stage. The famed piano prodigy and conductor now returns to New York—just after the release of his latest album, I Puritani —as the newly appointed Music Director of the New York City Opera (NYCO). Though Orbelian takes pride in the NYCO’s penchant for presenting lesser known operas, his first go at the podium will be conducting Rigoletto on August 29th. For the conductor, it won’t be just another Rigoletto —the last time he presented it was alongside the late superstar, Dmitri Hvorostovsky—so this production carries an extra special significance for Orbelian and the NYCO. Taking on this new role, Orbelian has made it his mission to expand access to opera to younger audiences and emerging artists alike. He speaks with smART Magazine about what that means to him, and how he envisions the NYCO’s role in the future of North American opera. sM | What would you say the NYCO offers to audiences that can’t be found elsewhere in the city? CO — The reason the NYCO was started in 1943 by Mayor Fiorello Laguardia—whose father was an opera singer—was to fulfill the mission of an opera house that was affordable and accessible to the general public. They also gave the opportunity at the time, and for years to come, for young artists to make their debut. Artists such as Jose Carreras, Renée Fleming, all the great singers that we know today had to start somewhere, and that was at NYCO. The second part of the mission was to allow a platform for American composers and young composers from around the world to have a venue where they can produce their operas. I want to continue that in a big way, giving people an opportunity to hear new works, and that's what we have planned for the next season, a bunch of premieres. As we slowly come out of these pandemic times, we'll have to take it slow in the beginning. We want to be really careful to make sure we can fill the hall to as many as possible. So we’ll take it slow in the fall, and then start the winter off with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis with the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The NYCO was stationed out of the Lincoln Centre for many years, then the state theatre closed for renovations, and then it just didn’t work out financially. So then they moved to the Rose Theatre where Wynton Marsalis has his series of concerts. It’s just the right size and has the best acoustics in town. It has a transforming stage where we can truly utilize the space for any production. We did Tosca there right before the pandemic, and I think that’s where we are going to start in regards to big productions. Small productions, like The Garden of the Finzi-Continis , which is more for a chamber group, is ideal for a space such as the Museum of Jewish Heritage. At the same time, I want to start doing something that I believe is incredibly important, and that is doing outreach to children. I want to do operas such as Cinderella or Barber of Seville , giving them a little intro, a taste of the music, and having them grow up with opera. I want to make sure kids aren’t afraid of opera, on the contrary I want them to be turned on to it. When I was in Moscow recently, I went to visit the Moscow Children's Musical Theatre. It’s a whole theatre that only works on producing operas for children. These are professionals performing for children. It’s on a very high level, with a wide variety of children’s stories, such as Goldilocks , that are being made into operas. They interact with the children, take photographs while they’re in costume. The educational aspect is very important for me because if we don’t educate the kids now, we won’t have an audience in the future. sM | What special significance does Rigoletto have for you since the passing of Dmitri Hvorostovsky? CO — This is the first time I’m returning to this opera since his passing. He was an extraordinary artist, he was an incredible friend, a phenomenal colleague, it was an honour to stand next to him on the stage for 18 years. We actually did a bunch of concerts together in Canada and the U.S.. He’s one of those people who are irreplaceable. The whole persona, the whole package, the incredible voice and musicianship, the extraordinary gift that he had and was able to give to people was incredible. I’ll have a little bit of a lump in my throat when I start rehearsing. sM | What do you have planned for the near future at the NYCO? CO — In the summer, we were able to have these concerts in the park, which were only allowed with piano accompaniment. In the meantime, we will see how things are opening up and make sure that the money we spend will be spent well and that we’re working at venues that won’t break the bank and truly do some interesting stuff. I’ve commissioned some operas, one of which is The Love Letters of Nicholas and Alexandra , the last Russian Czar. Their common language was English, so the opera will be in English, which I thought was a great idea. As visas become available, in the future we’re hoping to partner with opera houses across Europe in places such as Moscow, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. They have a lot of wonderful music that no one has ever heard here. I want to bring excellent, high-quality music to New York that you won’t hear at the Metropolitan Opera House. For example, when we did Tosca , it was a copy of the original production from Rome, a really authentic production that Puccini himself saw. sM | How do you compare your role as Director of the Yerevan Opera Theatre and the opera community in Armenia, to New York and North America? CO — The four years in Armenia taught me a lot. I started out really running, and I invited all of my friends from around the world. I invited John Fisher, deputy director of the Metropolitan Opera, and an incredible musician and coach, Howard Watkins, the chief coach of the Met and Renée Fleming who also came for concerts. I invited all kinds of different people to come. I organized my first international vocal competition in Armenia, so I had a bunch of incredible people come and be a part of the jury, individuals who are on the top of the shelf as far as musical organizations are concerned. Everything was really moving along and then the pandemic came and shut everything down. My time in Armenia is virtually over, which is why I took this job once it came up, because coming back to New York, at my age, is a good time to come back. This is a unique situation, and having the experience of running a huge organization already—I had 700 employees in Armenia—I figured I could handle that. I really do feel that the arts will thrive as this pandemic subsides. As people calm down and are vaccinated and back to normal, there will be a huge flourishing of the arts. No one wants to watch another concert on Zoom, it was nice when you had absolutely no other option, but once you do have options you’re going to take the other option. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

On Burnout Culture Dismantling the “Grindset”, One Nap at a Time WORDS BY REBECCA LASHMAR NOV 07, 2022 | ISSUE 10 ​ ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ Continue reading in Issue 10 “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” This idiom has weaselled its way into my mind and work since I was young. “It’s not even work because I love it so much!” It’s fascinating how quickly a creative practice can become all-consuming of a person’s time and resources—my theatre career was off and running, providing me with confidence, communication skills, and empathy for my fellow human beings. My heart felt incredibly full. But the little sleep I had was consumed by dreams of due dates and performances. I forgot to eat because I thought art could sustain me. Valid critiques of my work were spears to my heart, and the tears began flowing the second I got home. “But I’m not working,” I would remind myself, “I could be working at a desk job that I didn’t want. I am so fortunate.” Perhaps I was being ungrateful. I ate, slept, bathed, and breathed art, which is what I loved. So why was I so upset all the time? That’s because I was burnt out. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Fran Gogh Lighthouse Immersive Arrives in SF WORDS BY ISABELLA ELIAS | TORONTO | VISUAL ARTS MAR 03, 2023 | ISSUE 10 Illustration by Jeremy Lewis ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Illustration by Jeremy Lewis ​ Amid power outages, fires, a heatwave, and with a cross-national Stop Asian Hate protest right outside the venue, the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit weathered its first weekend on the West Coast as well as any native San Franciscan. After months of tantalizing posters featuring the artist’s self-portrait against a backdrop of city landmarks, the ribbon was cut and doors opened to the public last Thursday. With the Chicago installation currently sold out until mid-June, more than 120,000 tickets have already been purchased for the new ‘Fran Gogh’ experience—now extended into September to accommodate the highest presales yet for the travelling show. Since even the largest HD TVs tend to underwhelm after a year in lockdown, thousands of Bay Area art-lovers are clearly jonesing for a more impactful way to experience media. As it has in Paris, Toronto, and Chicago so far, the Van Gogh exhibit adapts itself to each venue it’s transplanted into by taking on characteristics of these historic spaces. Custom-designed to SVN West—formerly home to the Fillmore West and Carousel Ballroom where legends like Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, B.B. King and the Grateful Dead have played—120 visitors per showing will have 100,000 square feet to socially distance in. Along with 500,000 cubic feet of projection space to experience the immersive exhibit as if from a seafloor fifty feet underwater. Similar to previous installations, the SF installation also features a mirrored, one-story platform where visitors can vary their perspective on the projections. Conceived and designed by Massimiliano Siccardi, the exhibit boasts high-definition brushstrokes and vibrant colours rendered by art director Vittorio Guidotti. Simultaneously, audiences will be drenched in a saturated surround-soundscape curated and composed by Luca Longobardi. Visitors can expect their cavernous collaboration to play the hits: Starry Night , Sunflowers , and The Potato Eaters , while featuring many of Van Gogh’s more obscure drawings and daubings in collages that traverse the space in layered landscapes. Musical selections ranging from Edith Piaf to Mussorgsky colour the vivid paintings even more brightly, but many of his original compositions are as detailed, tense, and exacting as the famously self-critical painter himself. The thick, plush sound design is as palpable a dimension as each of the four walls, evoking the turmoil of Van Gogh’s struggle with mental illness. The team behind the exhibit has a thorough understanding of why this experience has expanded from city to city, coast to coast, at a time when so many other cultural spaces have had to reduce or cancel their programming entirely. Produced by Show One Productions and Starvox Exhibit, the collaboration of three Italian creatives under Lighthouse Immersive allows strangers who have been sheltering in place to experience a majestic, humbling artistic experience safely together. Even from their generously spaced individual rings of light on the floor, one of the most underrated parts of the experience is to see other people—real human beings from beyond their household—silhouetted against the deep blues and sunlit ambers from across a space the size of a football field. With the city cautiously loosening COVID-19 restrictions and people of all ages now eligible for vaccination, San Francisco Travel President & CEO, Joe D’Alessandro says this is the perfect time for the exhibit to come to the city. “Creativity and innovation are part of San Francisco‘s DNA,” he declares. “It is very appropriate that we are the first city on the West Coast to welcome the all-new visually-striking Immersive Van Gogh exhibition.” And despite a massive fire in the Bay Area prompting a number of PG&E power outages that affected the newly minted exhibit’s first weekend, many visitors left glowing compliments for the Box Office team’s polite efficiency in rescheduling hundreds of tickets in light of the blackout. Publicist Kevin Kopjack remembers when Lighthouse Immersive co-founder Corey Ross approached him with the ‘crazy idea’ to bring the Van Gogh exhibit to San Francisco following their work on the Banksy exhibition. According to him, the company is “reinventing what art is. It’s not just standing in a museum looking at the Mona Lisa; it’s getting people involved and expanding what art can be.” He also points out that a multimedia installation using cutting-edge projection mapping tech and a range of modern and classical music to guide the show’s emotional arc is “a perfect stepping stone for people who may not be too familiar with fine art”, accessing demographics that might never find themselves in a museum—but who may become more interested following the 38 minute experience. Located at the prime intersection of SF’s two main thoroughfares (South Van Ness and Market), Immersive Van Gogh is now open. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Yuja Wang & the TSO Wang returns to Toronto for a lights out performance of Rachmaninoff’s No.3 WORDS BY MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK | TORONTO JUN 19, 2023 | COMMUNITY ​ PERFORMANCE DATE JUNE 16, 2023 ROY THOMSON HALL PROGRAM: Matthew-John Knights - Lines, Layers, Ligaments Fjóla Evans - Hraunflæði Luis Ramirez - Picante Shostakovich - Symphony No. 1 Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 3 www.tso.ca ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE June 16 2023 - Yuja Wang’s Rachmaninoff - Photos by Allan Cabral June 16 2023 - Yuja Wang’s Rachmaninoff - Photos by Allan Cabral There’s a writerly trope that Blaise Pascal used to sign off his longer letters with something along the lines of “excuse the length of this letter, I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.” What does this have to do with Sergei Rachmaninoff? Admittedly very little. But this often misattributed quip might help explain the difference between the length of the score Rachmaninoff intended for his Piano Concerto No.3, and the much shorter length of his initial performances of this incredibly verbose and laborious work. And why so verbose? Put yourself in the composers shoes for a moment: your Piano Concerto No.2 was a near-instantaneous hit, the slow movement of which is a miraculously tender elegy so rarely captured within the concerto literature, and you even managed to pull off the gimmick of a church-bell motif right from the outset. How do you follow up on that and get lightning to strike twice? You can’t — a truly infectious melody like that of No.2’s Preghiera is a once-in-a-lifetime hook-up. You’d have to go in a completely different direction altogether and, as Rachmaninoff did, land on an impossibly virtuosic and technically precipitous script for the soloist’s part. Perhaps the composer realised he went too far in this direction and, shuffling from his writing desk into the pianist’s bench, had to scale things back a little. Add to this impulse the demanding appetites of the American audiences that he would be performing for on his first tour of the country in 1909. On his journey over, Rachmaninoff brought along with a dummy keyboard to keep his fingers loose and build the prerequisite muscle memory for the concerto’s endless rivulets and eelish coils. Ultimately, the American audience’s enthusiasm for the composer’s performance was underwhelming in comparison to that for No.2 — even under the auspices of Gustav Mahler during Rachmaninoff’s stop at New York Philharmonic. The flair and flourish demanded of the soloist wouldn’t meet its match until Vladmir Horowitz picked up the score nearly a decade later. Thus began the steady procession of first-rate pianists that would take a swing at this monumental piece: Volodos, Shelley, Bronfman, Argerich (in particular), Berman, and so on. By the end of the previous century, so many pianists had solidified (and in some cases, liquified) their legacy via No.3 that Hollywood responded with a rather exaggerated biopic ( Shine , 1996), inspired by the life of pianist David Helfgott whose mental breakdown was purportedly exaggerated by his preparation to perform this concerto. So when Yuja Wang was subbed in for Martha Argerich in 2007 for a Boston Symphony concert, a fiery torch was being passed to the next generation of pianists who could carry No.3. Nearly 15 years later and Wang holds the almost exclusive reigns on this work, perhaps alongside Khatia Buniatishvili’s hold on No.2. That is the background behind the highlight of this uniquely Toronto Symphony program. The Russo-Canadian program opens with an emphatic endorsement of the next generation of Canadian composers, featuring world-premieres of three expansive but abbreviated works by Fjóla Evans, Matthew-John Knights, and Luis Ramirez. Evans’s Hraunflæði (“laval flow” in her native Icelandic) was inspired by the six-month long eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, but it is the shimmering aftermath of cooling lava that we glimpse in her incredibly busy and bubbling score. Though the three works are not thematically connected, it was in Lines, Layers, Ligaments by Vancouver’s Knights that we hear the explosions that engendered the natural scenery being investigated by Evans. Lines , is altogether more muscular, particularly in the elaborate and athletic percussive section which conductor Gustavo Gimeno - a trained percussionist himself - squeezed for all its worth. Seemingly mediating between the prickly pizzicato and subterranean rumblings of Hraunflæði , and small bombs that repeatedly rupture the connective ligaments of Lines , Ramirez’s Picante lands along more melodic lines. As with the other two pieces, much of the showboating is handled by a colourful array of percussive instruments. Here Ramirez aims high in Scoville Units with a slowly-gathering momentum that reaches a climax reminiscent of the way the body’s senses respond to especially spicy food. Between erupting volcanoes, rupturing ligaments (the sensation of which is first heat then pain), and capsaicin-induced hot-flashes, one can indeed superimpose a subtle theme of how these three works explore the different ways nature can work itself up to a fever-pitch. June 16 2023 - Yuja Wang’s Rachmaninoff - Photos by Allan Cabral Before intermission - of a concert that was long in duration but not in experience - came Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.1. Gimeno expertly and humorously advocated for the naive age of 19 which the composer was when he wrote this piece as a student at the Leningrad Conservatory. It turned out to be a subtly clever pairing with the three preceding pieces by the TSO’s NextGen composers, as the Symphony No.1 seemed to flow from the same ebullient inventiveness. Be it in 1924 or 2023, new music always has the same scent to it: an indistinct combination of recognizable fragrances coalescing into a chimaera that hints both of the studious air of a conservatory and wild and free atmosphere of a cosmopolitan frontier. Despite the visible training-wheels that squeak and screech throughout this work that sounds a lifetime away from Shostakovich’s No.10, the Symphony No.1 nevertheless spread like wildfire. Upon getting its first listen in St. Petersburg, it arrived in Berlin within 12 months, and crossed the transatlantic to Philadelphia within two years. In it, there are definitely exhalations of the air he breathed at the conservatory: Stravinsky, Krenek, Hindemith, Milhaud. But also the first inhalations of something distinctly Shostakovich . The second movement is particularly striking — and here the TSO indeed strikes back — with its frenetic pace launching hot on the heels of cellos, basses, clarinet, and piano. The last of which would induce giggles in the audience later in the movement when an interaction between Gimeno and some rather pointed notes on the piano seemed to call back to his earlier commentary about the novice composer, as if to say: I did warn you that he was naive . ​ At the top of the ramp that this program has been building up to thus far, Rachmaninoff - and Wang - have been waiting patiently. When a performer reaches a certain stratosphere in their artistry, which Wang has been in for a while now, a successful performance of a particularly difficult piece isn’t really the main reason their concerts sell out. Really good stand-up comedians have a knack for getting laughs from the audience even before saying a word — be it in the way they walk on stage, hold the microphone, or drink from the bar glass. There’s an element to funny that has nothing to do with jokes, and even less with punchlines. The same is true for a soloist that has nothing else to prove about their chops — there’s a star power that has little to do with the score. Wang has a certain swagger about her on stage that is seldom understood as swagger. If she wasn’t so sincere in her devotion to the music, it would come off as arrogant. If she wasn’t so attentive to every detail of her stage persona, it would come off as a front. But her originality is so completely married to her technical training as a musician that nothing - not a gesture, or a pedal sustained too long - seems out of place. The flourishes are floral in a weirdly exact way, and precision of execution verges on the theatric. Where a performance of No.3 might “fail” would be in those instances where too much attention is paid either to the technical prowess demanded of the work or the fireworks and showmanship that inspired it. Yuja’s take is equidistant between these two psyches, to stand astride what Sylvia Plath wrote in her “Two Sisters of Persephone” as “a mathematical machine” on one hand and “grass-couched in her labour’s pride” on the other. Don’t take my word for it, Yuja Wang will be the best show in town the next time she’s back with the TSO. ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture