Ringling International Arts Festival 2009

Officialdom 

Ringling International Arts Festival

Official website for the Ringling International Arts Festival held October 7-11, 2009 in Sarasota, Florida. The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the Baryshnikov Arts Center partnered to develop the event.

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Established in 2005, the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) serves as a creative laboratory, meeting place, and performance space for a vibrant community of artists from around the world.

The Official Site of the Bradenton Area Convention & Visitors Bureau

Visit Florida's Gulf Islands of Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key and the mainland areas of Bradenton and Lakewood Ranch to explore an area of Florida's gulf coast like you've never seen before.

The Official Website for Sarasota and Her Islands + Your Beach Destination

Discover your Sarasota beach destination with Siesta Key, Casey Key, Lido Key, Siesta Beach, Longboat Key, Venice Beach and Manasota Key articles and videos.

Dance 

Representing the Art of Dance at the Festival

Compania María Pagés

María Pagés, one of Spain's leading flamenco virtuosos and the recipient of her country's highest honor, the National Dance Award, performed her latest work titled Flamenco y Poesía. In dance, she translated the cadences of poetry, revealing a shared language between the words of José Saramago and Federico Garcia de Lorca and the rhythms of the human body. Performed by her company of nine extraordinary dancers and musicians, Flamenco y Poesía continued Pagés innovative journey into the depths of flamenco and beyond.

Aszure and Artists

Aszure Barton & Artists is an organization dedicated to the growth of artists and production of contemporary dance performance. Since its founding in 2002, Aszure & Artists has developed its activities as an international contemporary dance project with its current home base in New York City. Aszure Barton has earned the distinguished reputation of producing striking choreography for stage and film, and together with her intimate ensemble, she continues to develop critically acclaimed productions around the globe. These works have toured to Europe, Brazil, Argentina, Asia, Africa, Canada, and the United States

OtherShore

OtherShore is a dancer-led company in New York that has brought together directors, dancers, composers and visual artists in order to develop and broaden our artistry. Central to OtherShore, is that a core group of dancers, with uncountable amounts of professional experience in the major national dance companies, both contemporary and ballet, can initiate projects stemming from their own artistic interests. This tenet in dance is almost unknown, as artistic ideas and the producing of them, tends to be initiated by choreographers. Dancer initiated projects are unique in their viewpoints, and we hope to continue to mine the special perspective that we bring to dance/theater work.

Music 

Representing the Music Arts at the Festival

Meow Meow

Named top ten "Best of Cabaret " by Time Out New York, "cabaret diva of the highest order" by the New York Post and "A phenomenon" by the Australian press, the "Post -post- modern cabaret diva" Meow Meow has wowed audiences globally with her unique brand of kamikaze cabaret and performance art exotica.

Mason Bates / Masonic : offical site

The music of Mason Bates fuses innovative orchestral writing, the rhythms of electronica and techno, and imaginative narrative forms brought to life by cutting edge sound design. A composer of symphonic music who often includes live electronica in his orchestral music, he has become known as an artist who moves fluidly between those two worlds - performing on electronic drumpad and laptop, for example, under Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas at Carnegie Hall in The B-Sides at Carnegie Hall, or integrating members of the San Francisco Symphony into an evening of DJing and live electronica at the SF club Mezzanine. Awarded both a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and an American Academy in Berlin Prize, he is a member of the acclaimed New York-based Young Concert Artists.

Anne-Marie McDermott

Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott balances a versatile career of solo recitals, concerto appearances, and chamber music. Last season she played recitals throughout the US and appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Oregon Mozart Players, New Century Chamber Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of York, North Carolina, Charlotte, Huntsville, Alabama, and San Diego. She performed the world premiere of Charles Wourinen's Fourth Piano Sonata at Town Hall in May. Recently named artistic director of the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival and the Avila Chamber Music Festival in Curacao, she was the curator and featured performer in CMS' 2005 three-concert Shostakovich Centennial Celebration and has presented Bach's Goldberg Variations on the Great Performers at Lincoln Center Series. In 2003 at the Lincoln Center Festival, she performed the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas and chamber music; she subsequently recorded the series for the Arabesque label. Other recordings include the three Brahms violin sonatas with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Gershwin: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony. The latter recording was named Editor's Choice by Gramophone magazine. Ms. McDermott, who debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1997, has won the Young Concert Artists Auditions and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has been an Artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1995.

Jennifer Frautschi

Avery Fisher career grant recipient violinist Jennifer Frautschi has gained acclaim as an adventurous performer with a wide-ranging repertoire. As the Chicago Tribune wrote, "the young violinist Jennifer Frautschi is molding a career with smart interpretations of both warhorses and rarities." Equally at home in the classic repertoire as well as twentieth and twenty-first century works, in the past few seasons alone she has performed the Britten Concerto, Poul Ruders' Concerto No. 1, Steven Mackey's Violin Sonata, and Mendelssohn's rarely played d minor Concerto, along with standards such as the Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Berg Concerti.

Edward Aaron

Cellist Edward Arron is rapidly gaining recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Earlier that year, he performed Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Cellos with Yo-Yo Ma and the Orchestra of St. Luke's at the Opening Night Gala of the Caramoor International Festival. Since that time, Mr. Arron has appeared in recital, as a soloist with orchestra, and as a chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

Eric Ruske

Born in Chicago in 1963. Graduated from Northwestern University. Previously a member of Cleveland Orchestra and the Empire Brass Quintet. Currently a horn soloist and faculty of Boston University . Soloed with Cleveland Orchestra, Baltimore , Indianapolis , and Milwaukee Symphonies. Discography includes a recording of the Strauss and Glière Horn Concerti, two discs of virtuoso transcriptions for horn and piano, a disc of solo horn repertoire entitledJust me and my horn, all on the Albany Records label, and a recording of the complete Mozart Horn Concerti for Telarc.

Theater 

Representing the Theater Arts at the Festival

Ella Hickson's Play titled "Eight"

EIGHT swept the board at the biggest arts festival in the world, the Edinburgh Festival, in 2008. An underground hit propagated by sensational word-of-mouth, it went on to win a coveted Scotsman Fringe First Award, the NSDF Emerging Artists Award and the Carol Tambor 'Best of Edinburgh' Award, awarded to only one show across the thousands of productions at the festival.

Peter Brook - official website

Peruse the official website for Peter Brook who many consider the most influential living stage director.

Elevator Repair Service: Home

A New York-based theater ensemble founded by director John Collins and a group of actors in 1991, Elevator Repair Service performed The Sun Also Rises at the Ringling International Arts Festival. The company experiments in 20th century literary adaptation.

Deganit Shemy & Company

Deganit Shemy, a New York- and Israeli-based choreographer, holds the distinguished status of Artist-in-Residence at Dance Theatre Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, Tribeca Performing Arts Center and Movement Research.

Visual Arts 

Representing the Visual Arts at the Festival

Collision of old and new yields meaning: Louise Fishman Among the Old Masters

The roots of Louise Fishman's abstract expressionist paintings lie in her traditional art-school and art-history background, which makes the juxtaposition of her work with the baroque art of the Ringling Museum of Art collection particularly appropriate.

Paths to Paradise: The World of Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion to about 300 million people around the world. The word comes from the term budhi, which means 'to awaken'. It has its origins about 2,500 years ago when Siddhartha Gautama was himself awakened (enlightened) at the age of 35 and became Buddha.

This exhibition consists of works primarily from the Museum's permanent collection, along with some pieces from various private collections in Sarasota. Paths to Paradise represents the general history of the Buddha and the distinctive features of Buddhist deities. It also looks at dharma implements (Buddhist ritual items) from multiple cultures of Asia, including India, China, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Tibet, and Vietnam. The show will educate people about the different iconographic characteristics and religious functions of Buddhist deities, as well as the different artistic styles of Buddhist images from multiple Asian cultures.

Venice in the Age of Canaletto

Venice in the Age of Canaletto is a collaborative project between The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art that will consider Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto in a Venetian context. In particular, it will focus upon the contrast between the artist's paintings and the works of his contemporaries also active in the city. Canaletto's vedute, or view paintings, were arguably the most familiar artistic products of eighteenth-century Venice; yet, for all their ability to reproduce immediately recognizable views of the city, they are curiously devoid of the exuberance, sensuality, and rich coloring of most Venetian art of the period. When Canaletto's paintings are compared with the works of Giambattista Tiepolo, Francesco Guardi, and Sebastiano Ricci, they are revealed as beautiful but rather anomalous creations. The exhibition will explore the strange tension that exists between Canaletto's austere, seemingly realistic cityscapes and the exuberant, pastelline fantasies, religious pictures, and historical dramas of the Venetian Rococo.

Venice in the Age of Canaletto will consider a span of approximately 100 years, beginning in 1697, the year of the artist's birth, and ending in 1797, the year that Napoleon invaded the city and brought the Venetian Republic to an end. This period captures the fascinating social, religious, political, and artistic evolution that precipitated the end of the Republic. The exhibition focuses upon a time when Venice, perhaps more than any other European city, cultivated an elusive civic image of pleasure, fantasy, and escapism.

The Museums 

Ringling Museum of Art/Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

Located on a 66-acre estate on Sarasota Bay, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art was established in 1927 as the legacy of John Ringling (1866-1936) and his wife, Mable (1875 to 1929). In 2000, Ringling's original $1.2 million endowment had hardly grown to $2 million. Governance was transferred from the State of Florida's Department of State to Florida State University establishing the Ringling estate as one of the largest museum/university complexes in the nation. As part of the University, the Museum has experienced a rebirth. In 2002, when $42.9 million was provided through the State for new buildings, it came with a condition that the Ringling board raise $50 million in endowment within five years. Impossible as the task then seemed, more than $55 million was donated or pledged by 2007. The transformation that culminated in 2007 restored all the existing buildings and expanded the Estate with four new buildings on the Museum's Master Plan: the Tibbals Learning Center, the John M. McKay Visitors Pavilion - housing the Historic Asolo Theater, the Education/Conservation Building and The Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing. The Museum's financial footing was also secured with the beginnings of a healthy endowment.

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

The Museum of Art, built by John Ringling to house his personal collection of masterpieces, today features paintings and sculptures by the great Old Masters including Rubens, van Dyck, Velázquez, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, El Greco, Gainsborough and more. The European, American and Asian masterworks available here make the Museum of Art an awe-inspiring retreat. It is a palace for treasures emulating the footprint of Florence's Uffizi Gallery, echoing its grace and grandeur.

Cà d'Zan

The Ringlings' dazzling palatial mansion is a tribute to the American Dream and reflects the splendor and romance of Italy. Described as "the last of the Gilded Age mansions" to be built in America, Cà d'Zan has 56 incredible rooms filled with art and original furnishings. With its Venetian Gothic architecture, the mansion is a combination of the grandeur of Venice's Doge's Palace, combined with the gothic grace of Cà d'Oro, with Sarasota Bay serving as its Grand Canal.

Museum of the American Circus

The Circus Museum celebrates the American circus, its history and unique relationship to Sarasota. Established in 1948, the museum was the first in the county to document the rich history of the circus. View colossal parade and baggage wagons, sequined costumes, and a sideshow banner line that document the circus of the past and of today. See memorabilia and artifacts documenting the history of The Ringling family circus, John Ringling as the Circus King, and the greatest circus movie, The Greatest Show on Earth, which was filmed in Sarasota.

Historic Asolo Theater

An 18th-century treasure in a 21st-century venue, the Historic Asolo Theater is a work of art in its own right. The palace playhouse was created in Asolo, Italy in 1798 to honor the 15th-century exiled Queen Catherine Cornaro of Cyprus. In the late 1940s, the theater was dismantled and brought to the Ringling Estate in Sarasota. From this important stage sprang much of the theater, the opera, and the music that distinguishes this Gulf Coast city as one of the nation's leading cultural centers. Today the theater features a diverse performance schedule including theatre, dance, film, music, and lectures.

Gardens 

Grounds and Gardens at the Festival

Mable Ringling's Rose Garden

Mable Ringling's Rose Garden is one of the loveliest spots on the Ringling estate and, when in bloom, the most fragrant. The 27,225 sq. ft. garden was completed in 1913 and is patterned after a traditional Italian circular garden design. While none of the original rose bushes planted by Mable survived many of today's 1,200 rose plants are of the same types planted by Mrs. Ringling. Today the garden consists of roses introduced between 1867 and 2002. There are Tree Roses, Hybrid Teas, Floribundas, Grandifloras, miniature roses, shrubs, and Old Garden Roses. A rose dedicated to Mable Ringling is also featured in the garden. The garden is accredited by All-American Rose Selections and was named the 2006 most outstanding All-American Rose Selections Public Rose Garden in the nation.

Search For Your Dream Home 

My Local Knowledge & Global Connections Work to Your Advantage!

Your Personal Tool to Search for Real Estate

Use this tool to search privately for your dream home. Please call me at 941.232.3001 for a private tour of your selections.

Properties Available in Sarasota & Her islands

For more about Sarasota & Her islands, please visit my website where you can search for properties that interest you or call me at 941.232.3001 for more information.

October 2009 eNewsletter for Sarasota & Her Islands

Today Show Says Sarasota #1 for Buying a House

Louis Wery's Free Gift to You | iPhone App Helps You Check Property Listings & Values

Whether you're a first time homebuyer or someone looking for the ideal spot to retire, Louis Wery helps you access more information and insights on real estate, through more channels, than ever before using the new Coldwell Banker iPhone application.