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Bumbershoot
It’s time to start making your Labor Day plans because the Bumbershoot lineup has officially been announced. The three-day fest at Seattle Center is coming at you with comedy troops, film screenings and, of course, local and national music acts. The 1 Reel Film Festival is featuring screenings of the Best of SIFF Award Winners, Films4Families shorts and Women in Film shorts, to name a few. Exciting local acts include Visqueen, Fresh Espresso, Hey Marseilles, McTuff Trio, David Bazan, Matt Jorgenson Quintet, People Eating People, THEESatisfaction and The Moondoggies. Be sure to check out the full lineup after the link.
Filed under: Music | Tags: chamber music america, CMA/FACE french american jazz exchange
Chamber Music America
Jointly administered by Chamber Music America, the cultural services department of the French Embassy and the French American Cultural Exchange, the CMA/FACE French American Jazz Exchange supports small jazz ensembles and/or individual musicians from France and the United States, or their territories, who wish to engage in a collaborative project in one or both countries. The project must feature at least one public performance and may include such activities as touring, recording and audience development. Eligible projects will be directed by a lead jazz partner from one country working with a collaborating jazz partner(s) from another country and performing with an ensemble of two to ten musicians from one or both countries. Projects are eligible if they advance an adventurous musical idea using traditional, straight-ahead and/or experimental concepts; create new music composed by one or both partners; explore new music by one or both partners that may not necessarily result in a finished composition; and/or bring partners together for the first time to play one partner’s existing music or music by both partners. Complete guidelines and application are available at the CMA Web site.
Sundance
The Sundance Institute and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provide an annual cash grant and creative support to a selected filmmaker who is in the early stages (full treatment or early screenplay draft) of developing a science or technology-themed (fiction) narrative screenplay. Projects must have science or technology as a major theme or scientists as major characters. Science fiction or projects that stray too far from basic scientific reality will not be considered. Projects must be narrative (fiction) features and not documentary in nature. Projects must be live action. Complete guidelines and application are available at the Sundance Institute Web site.
Reverb
There are still some of us who really prefer physical, material art objects. Books, CDs, DVDs—placing these on your shelves provides a sense of hominess and accomplishment and connection. But our numbers are dwindling, and most favor cheaper, digital copies of their artistic world. So where does that leave people like Jeff Kleinsmith, Sub Pop’s longtime art director, and co-owner of Patent Pending Industries? Exactly where he wants to be. In an interview with Reverb, Kleinsmith explains that now is the time to get creative with music packaging. Download codes can be included, but those of us desiring the tangible will start seeing all kinds of packaging devices beyond the simple CD sleeve. It “could be a magazine, it could be a shirt, it could be a sticker on a banana, it could be anything, really, that has that has that download. It could be a poster, a thing associated with this music,” Kleinsmith says. The full interview is after the link.
The Stranger
Grant Cogswell, the former Stranger writer who ran for City Council, is the subject of Stephen Gyllenhaal’s Grassroots, which is still shooting here in Seattle. The writer has gone back to his Stranger roots and published an article about what it’s like to have a period of your life deconstructed and reenacted for the big screen. He writes, “People now have asked me a dozen times a day since I came back to Seattle last month what it feels like to have a movie being made about my life. They can’t imagine. I tell them neither can I, but it is nevertheless happening.” To read the full article, follow the link.
Artist Trust
The Olympia Film Society is now taking submissions for the 27th Olympia Film Festival! If you want the chance to get your work up on the big screen in front of hundreds… potentially thousands of rabid film fans submit your feature, short or whatever it may be to one of the coolest alternative film festivals on the west coast. Early submission deadline is August 15th, 2010. Final deadline is September 1st, 2010. For more information on how to apply follow the link.
ASCAP
The ASCAP Foundation is a publicly supported charitable organization dedicated to sponsoring American music creators and encouraging their growth through music education and talent development programs. The ASCA Foundation invites proposals from nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations engaging in music education and talent development programs that are consistent with the mission and objectives of the foundation and which support music education for aspiring songwriters and composers. Deadline to apply is August 1. For more info, follow the link.
KEXP
This week’s installment of the KEXP 10-part series “Hip-Hop: The New Seattle Sound” features Seattle hip-hop trio Dyme Def. All three MCs — Brainstorm, S.E.V. and Fierce Villain — have been working together since they were in middle school in the early ‘90s and consider each other family, and the mutual respect they have for each other comes across onstage. This team’s 2006 debut, Space Music, produced by Bean One, became a cult favorite and sold over 50,000 copies without the backing of a major label. Their 2009 EP, Panic, was a change of style for the band, with songs that were political, talking about the downturn of the economy and the effects on everyday life. In 2010 they went yet another direction, with a commercial release called Sex Tape. In this exclusive KEXP interview, all 3 MCs talk about songs they feel express them the most. These stories show the personal nature of these men as poets and the depth of their work as a whole. Check it out after the link.
Fleet Foxes
Local favorites Fleet Foxes went on tour with Joanna Newsom and made a beautiful black and white documentary to share with the world, featuring three nights of live performances, goofing around backstage and the grind of the road. Click on the link and enjoy!
Seattle Weekly
These days there are tons of ways to expose oneself to new music, listen to tunes for free and participate in musical conversations. Lesser-known groups promote their music and events on Myspace. Indie-lovers head over to Pitchfork for its latest and greatest hipster hits. But one of the most well-rounded and thoughtful must-read sites is NPR, whose music sections allow listeners to stream albums for free, readers to garner more biographic information about artists and enthusiasts to purchase new music. Among all the recent hand-wringing over how to battle disastrous record sales, the death of radio and the demise of good music journalism, NPR seems to have something artists crave… they have customers who are curious and actually buy music. Several Seattle artists have recently been prominently featured on the site’s “Song of the Day” section, including Perfume Genius, Ivan & Alyosha and Melvins. To read the full article about the evolution of NPR’s music journalism, follow the link.
Seattle Office of Film + Music 