Don’t miss these performances and exhibits this fall

7:30 p.m.

Cress Gallery

The Studio Faculty of the UTC Department of Art opens their Biennial Exhbition with a Public Reception on Wednesday, August 23, from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Expect a broad range of media and materials from installation, video, and sound, to painting, sculpture, fiber, photography, graphic design, and more, as the Studio Faculty of the UTC Department of Art present the visual forms of their professional research in this exhibition! Participating artists are Mark Bradley Shoup, Ron Buffington, Matt Greenwell, Katie Hargrave, Phillip Andrew Lewis, Andrew O’Brien, Ray Padron, Astri Snodgrass, Aggie Toppins, Gavin Townsend, and Christina Vogel, joined by Molly Barnes, Mike Calway-Fagan, Pat Kelley, Ted Ross, Heath Schultz and Steven Sewell.

For more information, visit the Cress Gallery’s website here.

Public Lecture September 24, 2017, 5:30 p.m. Exhibition September 22 – November 3, 2017.

Cress Gallery

Chicago-based publishers, printers, artists, and musicians, Sonnenzimmer (Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi) have worked across several mediums in their decade long collaboration. While they continue to grow their practice their foothold remains in the graphic arts. Initially recognized for their idiosyncratic screen-printed posters, their practice has since morphed into an interdisciplinary toolshed spanning multiple platforms including exhibitions, performance, publishing, and design. Equal parts balancing act between art and design and radical reclamation of all aspects of visual expression, the studio is grounded in the lasting potential of the graphic arts, while exploring the friction between abstraction and communication, and how our humanity is being defined by the substrate of media.

For more information, visit the Cress Gallery’s website here.

7:30 p.m.
Ticket info at the Fine Arts Center’s website here.

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet returns to Chattanooga with its bold vision, its trademark innovative choreography from top global choreographers and its virtuoso dancers.

With a deep commitment to curating new ballets while cultivating choreographic talent, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet has developed a European sensibility glossed with American ebullience that forges its aesthetic, which has come to epitomize the contemporary-classical genre.

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s repertoire, ranging from accessible to sophisticated, resonates with energy and eclecticism. A house-style emerges across this diverse dance menu, layering American athleticism on a base of European refinement. The company’s identity is tethered to its repertoire, which speaks a complex language, challenges audiences, and advances the art form.
ASFB, since its inception, has been deeply committed to commissioning new works. Among the choreographer-collaborators creating multiple works for ASFB are Alejandro Cerrudo, Jorma Elo, Nicolo Fonte, Trey McIntyre, Moses Pendleton and Cayetano Soto.

This repertoire is regularly performed at dance landmarks like Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Kennedy Center, American Dance Festival, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts and New York’s Joyce Theater, as well in cities across the United States. Internationally, the company has performed in Biarritz, Curitiba (Brazil), Tel Aviv, Moscow, Milan and Ottawa. And once again, at the UTC Fine Arts Center. Don’t miss it!

7:30 p.m.
Ticket info at the Fine Arts Center’s website here.

The members of Chapel Hill’s indie Americana quartet Mipso – Jacob Sharp (mandolin, vocals), Wood Robinson (bass, vocals), Joseph Terrell (guitar, vocals) and Libby Rodenbough (fiddle, vocals) – are influenced by the contradiction of their progressive home and the surrounding rural southern landscapes. Following on the success of Old Time Reverie (2015) – which shot up to No. 1 on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart and in the Top 25 of the Billboard Heatseekers Chart – Mipso is celebrating the release of their new album Coming Down The Mountain (April 7, 2017). With this new music, Mipso ventures further than ever from their string-band pedigree to discover a broader Americana where classic folk-rock and modern alt-country sounds mingle easily with Appalachian tradition. Adding drums and electric instruments to their intimate four-part harmonies and powerful acoustic meld, Mipso’s music is lush and forward moving, with words that sear and salve in turn. Hailed as “hewing surprisingly close to gospel and folk while still sounding modern and secular” (Acoustic Guitar), and recently recognized by Rolling Stone as a favorite 2016 festival performance, Mipso brings their distinctly unique sound to UTC’s Fine Arts Center – a sound full of wistful beauty, hopeful undercurrents and panoramic soundscapes – to open this year’s insight performances.

Clinics:10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Concert: 5:00 p.m.

UTC’s 2nd annual Fiddle Festival brings award-winning folk musicians Jim Wood, John Bouleware, and Inge Wood to lead this day long clinic. UTC’s Sandy Morris will lead the orchestra. The festival is for intermediate to advanced players of stringed orchestral instruments, guitar, and mandolin, ages from high school to adult. There is no cost to participate – or to attend the concert – but lunch is on your own. The public concert is at 5:00 p.m. in the Roland Hayes Concert Hall.

7:00 p.m.
Dorothy Hackett Ward Theatre

The evening’s theme of nature will be presented with musical selections and narrations based on birds, flowers, trees and animals. Two musical works are loosely based on fairy tales. Alan Ridout’s piece “The Emperor and the Bird of Paradise” tells the story of an Emperor and his sad bird of paradise. Composer Wendy Hiscocks wrote “Keshovati,” which is based on a fairy tale from India about a young boy who decides to morph himself into a champa flower high up in the tree. From that vantage point he imagines himself gleefully watching his mother go about her all-too familiar daily routine all the while being hidden from view.

The piece “Trees” by Daniel Dorff is based on the familiar poem by Joyce Kilmer and “Half Moon at Checkerboard Mesa” by composer Phillip Bimstein is a fantasy for flute, frogs, crickets and coyotes with computer generated accompaniment.

Dr. Ronda Ford will perform the flute and Mr. Steve Ray will provide the narrations. Admission is free and all are cordially invited to attend.

3:00 p.m.

The UTC Cadek Orchestra, conducted by UTC Music Professor Sandy Morris, presents “Tchaikovsky and More”, a fall concert which includes Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, the overture to Verdi’s Nabucco and Longing for Your Return by Steven Amundson, Director of Orchestras at St. Olaf College.

This 55-member college/community orchestra includes university music majors and non-majors from UTC and Chattanooga State, UTC music faculty members, area music educators and other talented amateur and professional musicians from the region.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 deftly incorporates several Ukrainian folk tunes and was successful from its first performance because of Tchaikovsky’s exciting development of the themes, winning him critical acclaim among Russia’s nationalistic composers known as “The Five”. Also on the concert is the overture to Verdi’s Nabucco, his first widely acclaimed opera and one that chronicles the exile of the Jews from their homeland by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. The hauntingly beautiful Longing for Your Return provides a respite between these two powerful works. The concert is free to the public

7:30 p.m.

UTC’s renowned Percussion Ensemble, led by UTC Music Professor Monte Coulter, opens the holiday gift-giving season with its fall concert and food drive featuring a varied program of all-percussion music. This annual standing-room only Chattanooga favorite not only showcases the talents of UTC Percussion students but stocks the pantry of the Chattanooga Food Bank each year. Admission, as always, is two non-perishable food items. Always highly entertaining, Beat Hunger! features a number of colorful instruments, various styles of music, and an all-out closing number with all hands on stage.

7:30 p.m.
Dorothy Hackett Ward Theatre
Ticket info at the Fine Arts Center’s website here.

The Arsonists is an adaptation by Alistair Beaton of Max Frisch’s The Firebugs. This absurd and dark comedy about menacing arsonists that charm their way into their victims’ homes reveals that people often choose to embrace bad ideas today that lead to disasters in the future.

7:30 p.m.
Ticket info at the Fine Arts Center’s website here.

Hailing from such prestigious UK companies as Shakespeare’s Globe, the National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the five actors of Sir Patrick Stewart’s celebrated theatre company Actors From The London Stage bring Shakespeare to life for three evenings at the UTC Fine Arts Center as one of this season’s Patten Performances. Our three nights of Measure For Measure are one half of a week-long residency at UTC. Which is designed to promote a campus-wide dialogue inspired by the works of William Shakespeare.

Believed to be written around 1603 and first performed in 1604, Measure for Measure’s themes of justice, “mortality and mercy in Vienna,” and the dichotomy between corruption and purity resonate for us today: “some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” While mercy and virtue predominate (the play does not end tragically), the play focuses on justice overall, focusing on an out-of-control attempt by the Duke of Vienna to clean up long term, rampant corruption and vice in Vienna by mysteriously vacating his position and leaving oversight of the city to an overly-zealous judge.

“…actors have a personal connection with dramatic texts, which is distinctive and different from the scholars. Our program gives the actor a unique platform from which to explore with professors and students what he or she does and why it is done. That exciting exchange is what Actors From The London Stage would like to bring to your campus.” – Sir Patrick Stewart, Founding Director

7:30 p.m.
Ticket info at the Fine Arts Center’s website here.

Silent Sky, by Lauren Gunderson, named the most produced living playwright in America by American Theatre Magazine in 2016. The true story of 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them.
“…SILENT SKY could act as a simple reminder of what a pleasant, thought-provoking evening at the theater ought to look like. It’s a lively, funny, accessible play that’s alive with interesting ideas.” —ArtsAtl.com