The 2013-14 Patten Performance Series will once again bring nationally and internationally recognized artists to the UTC community and Chattanooga Area. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. at the UTC Fine Arts Center on the corner of Vine and Palmetto Streets.
Katie Trotta will kick off the season Saturday, September 14, as the very first Patten Unplugged Performer. This Unplugged Performance and one other later in the season, will take on a more personal, acoustic atmosphere. Trotta is a solo piano singer and songwriter. Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, Trotta found a new home in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2012. Her fifth and latest independent release is “Twenty Something.”
The Blind Boys of Alabama will arrive Monday, September 23, to play their legendary gospel music that won them five Grammy Awards, The National Endowment for the Arts with Lifetime Achievement Awards, and a place in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. This show is sure to entertain, just as many past performances have on The Tonight Show, Late Night with David Letterman, the Grammy® Awards telecast, 60 Minutes, and on their holiday PBS Special. During The Blind Boys of Alabama’s 70 year career, they sang for two presidents in the White House.
Fahrenheit 451 will play Tuesday, October 8. This is Ray Bradbury’s stage adaptation of his best-selling novel of the same name. The dystopian tale follows Guy Montag, a fireman who routinely starts fires to destroy books. The New Yorker defines the production as “The classics made relevant with superb acting and clever staging.”
Ballet Hispanico
The world-class institution, Ballet Hispanico, will take the stage Monday, October 28. The Company performs a diverse repertory by leading choreographers and emerging artists, and is now led by Eduardo Vilaro. Ballet Hispanico has delivered more than 3,350 performances to audiences of more than two million in 11 countries.
Sybarite5 will engage Chattanooga on Monday, January 27, as the first string quintet to win the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in its 60 year history. The Sarasota Harold Tribune says, “Their rock star status … is well deserved. Their classically honed technique mixed with grit and all out passionate attack transfixes the audience… ”
Lon Eldridge, the second Patten Unplugged Performer, brings blues, ragtime, and jazz Saturday, January 11. Eldridge has previously toured Europe to deliver to all new audiences. Richard Winham said, “Lon Eldridge hardly looks the part of the itinerant Mississippi Delta bluesman roaming from plantation to plantation before the Second World War. And yet, if you were to close your eyes when he is playing, you might well find yourself thinking that one of those men had somehow snuck into the room.”
Koresh Dance returns Tuesday, February 25, already well known in Chattanooga for their engaging performances and superb dancers. Koresh has received much local, national, and international attention having toured Spain, Turkey, Israel, South Korea, Mexico, and Guatemala. Over the years, Israeli-born choreographer and artistic director Ronen Koresh has developed a vast repertoire of work that ranges from explosive and passionate to intimate and restrained.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will engage and delight everyone Tuesday, March 18. The Acting Company tours this landmark TONY award-winning play, as written by Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, The Real Thing, and Coast of Utopia). The story is the inverse of Hamlet in order to focus more on free will versus determinism with a love for cleverness and language clearly intertwined along the way. TONY winner John Rando (Broadway’s Urinetown, The Wedding Singer) will direct.
Concluding the season, Stefon Harris will be on campus Tuesday, April 1, to play his jazz with passionate artistry, energetic stage presence, and astonishing virtuosity. Harris is a recipient of the prestigious Martin E. Segal Award from the Lincoln Center and has won three consecutive Grammy nominations including Best Jazz Album for The Grand Unification Theory in 2003.
The Patten Performance Series was inaugurated by The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1980 as the Dorothy Patten Fine Arts Series, in honor of one of Chattanooga’s most famous performing artists. Dorothy Patten appeared in more than 30 Broadway plays, countless touring and summer stock productions, television shows and the movie, Botany Bay, with Alan Ladd and James Mason.
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