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REVIEW: ‘The Broken Chord’ resonates with honesty, simplicity, beauty

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Mother (Saffron Henke, from left), son (Tim Budd) and daughter (Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers) embrace and dance during a March 27 rehearsal for "The Broken Chord," at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City. The play focuses on Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and uses emotion and body movement to illustrate ideas. The show opened April 12 and continues through April 14 at the Englert. (Kaitlyn Bernauer/The Gazette-KCRG9)

IOWA CITY — At intermission, the woman next to me said what I was about to say to her: “This is my life.”

Afterwards, she was in tears and I was fighting back mine. A mutual friend introduced us Friday night, and who knows when or if we’ll see each other again. But for two hours, we were united in the shared experiences of “The Broken Chord,” onstage through Sunday (4/14) at the Englert Theatre.

This is another brilliant Hancher commission by Working Group Theatre, a small professional troupe of the highest achievement. Time and again, founders Sean Christopher Lewis, Jennifer Fawcett and Martin Andrews have gathered their colleagues to cast light on the shadows swirling around us all.

Theater originated to educate audiences through artistic expression — to present complex issues in a way the masses could understand. That is exactly what the Working Group cast and crew have done with the world of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

To call them “actors” seems inadequate. Their specialty is illumination through immersion in some of the most difficult situations facing society today, from Michigan’s crumbling auto industry in “Rust” to race relations in last year’s Hancher commission, “Mayberry.”

They spent a year researching Alzheimer’s disease through the eyes of patients, their families, medical professionals and caregivers. Several of the actors trained as hospice workers, to provide bedside comfort through patients’ final days.

They met with panels of health care professionals, shared their project with students across a wide variety of disciplines at the University of Iowa, conducted storytelling workshops with patients and presented mountains of material to playwright Fawcett.

Their deep, deep delving now sings with the utmost beauty onstage — a poetic ballet of heartbreaking humanity that brought the opening night audience to laughter, tears, gasps, silence and a most deserved standing ovation.

Every aspect of this show is elegant, with director Lewis seamlessly weaving theatrical devices into a rich tapestry that flutters and envelops the audience into the action.

Objects and poles and sails fly in and out, creating scenery real and unreal, sometimes stopping overhead, other times engulfing the characters. Gorgeous music captures the very essence of every mood, from harrowing to humorous, anxious to exhilarating. And the lighting. So stark one moment, so perfect in another, as delicate tubes and twinkle lights take us into the fragile realm of sweet memories.

The main story involves two adult children tearing themselves apart trying to join forces in caring for their stricken mother. This new mission reopens old wounds and their frustration is palpable.

On the periphery is a Greek chorus of actors who present other common scenarios — the husband of a wife with early-onset Alzheimer’s, a chaplain reaching out to physically and spiritually touch the afflicted, an older wife clinging to a lifetime of memories, and adult children on very different, yet similar paths.

All of the performances are stellar, but Saffron Henke is utterly magnificent as the mother, Helen, a Ph.D. archivist — a preserver of memories who cannot stop her own from slipping away. We see and feel her transformation, her anguish and her frailty every step of the way. Tim Budd and Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers sweep us into their journey through sibling anger, resentment, frustration, unity,  resignation and acceptance.

Dancer Elizabeth June Bergman brings fluidity to the churning emotions, like a delicate music box dancer embracing an invisible partner, cradling a child or cradling memories, savoring their touch. The other actors follow her lead, in moments charming and sweet.

This is an experience not to be missed. It will stay with you long after the lights dim and the memories fade.

ARTS EXTRA

What: Hancher presents “The Broken Chord,” by Working Group Theatre

Where: Englert Theatre, 221 E. Washington St., Iowa City

When: 7:30 p.m. April 13; 2 p.m. April 14, 2o13

Tickets: $10 to $35 at the door or Hancher.uiowa.edu

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Memory Play

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In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the mystic chords of memory” strong enough to stretch and bind a nation divided until its people would again sing in harmony.

But what happens when the chords of memory break into dissonance? When memories strong enough to light the corners of our minds fade into darkness?

Iowa City’s Working Group Theatre has devoted the past year to exploring the worlds of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, interviewing patients, their family members, caregivers, social services workers and medical professionals in the Corridor. Some members of the professional theater troupe even trained to became hospice workers, to deepen their research, understanding and experience.

The final product  — “The Broken Chord” — will premiere April 12 to 14 at the Englert Theatre. The event is a Hancher commission, following on the heels of last year’s “Mayberry” commission, in which Working Group explored race relations in Iowa City.

With a similar theatrical structure, nine actors will embody various roles in this memory play, using a full gamut of raw emotions, dance, flying wisps of scenery and dramatic lighting and sound to cast light on a world that touches everyone in some way.

“Anyone who has ever cared for someone with dementia or had any relationship with someone who had a chronic illness will see themselves in the play and will learn something about both themselves and others who have gone through the same thing,” says Dr. Christopher Okiishi, 44, of Iowa City, a psychiatrist who walks in those worlds professionally, personally and as an actor in “The Broken Chord.”

The details

“People who come to this play will realize they’re not alone, which for me is particularly touching, because my grandmother (a psychologist) ran an Alzheimer’s caregivers’ support group for a number of years. It was one of the last professional activities she continued to maintain as she began struggling, herself, with forms of dementia,” Okiishi says.

“I don’t think anybody has escaped it. It’s out there in everyday life,” Chuck Swanson, Hancher’s executive director, says of Alzheimer’s disease. “It’s one of those issues that’s just tied so closely to the world.”

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 5 million Americans are living with the disease, which is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and in 2012, 15.4 million family and friends provided 17.5 billion hours of unpaid care to people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

“People are touched by it, but not everybody is involved personally, so to be able to see and really observe what happens in a given situation will be eye-opening” for audience members, Swanson says. “The great power of theater is that we can really feel the difficulties and feel the strains and the day-to-day pressures that people have to deal with in a situation like this.”

The play, based on fact, follows a fictional storyline of a mother afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease and her two children “trying to figure out what to do with her,” says Working Group co-founder and actor Martin Andrews, 37, of Iowa City.

The mother figure is a composite drawn from all the stories presented to Working Group playwright Jennifer Fawcett to distill into a cohesive play structure. Director is her husband and collaborator, Sean Christopher Lewis. Their careers are rooted in creating socially responsible theater.

During the research phase, Working Group participants heard “stories over and over again about families falling apart because of this,” Andrews says. “I haven’t perfected this image (but) if it is a rope stretched out into a line, solving the problem should be going from Point A to Point B. You have all of these family members who can’t solve these problems because there are all these knots in the way — all the baggage that comes with being a human being in a family. When you have this crisis in the center of it, it all falls apart.”

But what Fawcett saw shining through the difficulties, obstacles, heartache and depression was a surprising spirit of resilience, laced with humor.

“I interviewed a woman in Cedar Rapids who nursed her husband through it,” says Fawcett, 38, of Iowa City. “He passed away a few years ago, and she’s amazingly positive and strong and wants to talk about it.”

Through such revelations, Fawcett saw time and again “what we as people are able to do when faced with the situation.”

She was amazed by “people who have had to deal with caring for a spouse or parent as if they were an infant, and doing that on a day to day to day to day to day basis, (can) still be able to laugh and be able to love them after all that.”

Those moments bring charm to the show.

“The play, in addition to being truthful about dementia in all its harrowing ways, is also surprisingly romantic,” Okiishi says, “in that many of the people that are in care-giving situations are caring for the loves of their life, and what that means to be with someone throughout the entirety of the experience.”

Particularly satisfying for Swanson is the way Hancher has been involved with the creative process in this project, taking the University of Iowa arts organization well beyond its usual, primary role of securing grants to cover about $60,000 in artists’ fees and presentation expenses for this show.

“Hancher’s been involved in close to 100 commissions,” Swanson says. “Part of our mission is commissioning new work, is giving artists the opportunity to create art. We want to keep art alive. The joy of being able to work with Working Group Theatre is that they’re right here.”

Hancher helped facilitate workshops that provided the actors with feedback from Alzheimer’s experts and audience members. The project also has taken Hancher and Working Group into UI classrooms, spanning the academic realms of rhetoric, social work, nursing, public health and the anthropology of aging.

“It’s so wonderful to be able to use the arts as a way enrich that classroom experience,” Swanson says, “then we get the students to come to the performances. That’s very important to what we do. … We want to make a difference in the lives of the students,” as well as the community.

Director Lewis is proud of the project and is looking toward its life beyond the Englert premiere.

“I’m hoping that it’s gonna be our coming-out party,” says Lewis, 35, of Iowa City. “The issues and themes of the play are so universal — I think it’s some of the best work that we’ve done, all the way around. It’s the most full realization of the documentary married to the stage poetry married to a visual life.”

 

Related: The Postcard Project — What is a memory you would not want to forget? Write it on a vintage postcard at The Java House, Home Ec. Workshop, The Haunted Bookshop, Oasis Falafel, Iowa City Senior Center, Prairie Lights and T-Spoons in Iowa City. Postcards will be displayed at the Englert and on social media.

(from left) Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers, playing the part of Amy, and Tim Budd, playing the part of Jacob, argue over what to tell their mother, Helen, played by Saffron Henke at rehearsal for the Broken Chord at Englert Theater in Iowa City on March 27, 2013. (Kaitlyn Bernauer/The Gazette-KCRG9)

Summer of the Arts ready to crank up the heat with downtown Iowa City festivals

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Old 97's will rock the Iowa City Arts Festival on June 8, 2013. (Old 97's photo)

Iowa City is gearing up for a Summer of the Arts 30th anniversary free smorgasbord of artistic flavors filling the downtown with everything from movies to music, fine arts and food, as well as Hancher collaborations.

New to the lineup is the Iowa Soul Festival, bringing gospel groups, drums and dance and funky vibes from Sept. 13 to 15.

“Our goal is that everyone has soul, and we in Iowa City uniquely have the ability to bring people together to celebrate the greatness that diversity brings to our community, brings to the region and brings to Iowa,” says Chad Simmons, executive director of Diversity Focus in the Corridor, which is presenting the Soul Festival.

One thing that won’t be filling downtown streets this year is sand. Debuting in 2009, Sand in the City became “logistically challenging for us,” according to Lisa Barnes, Lisa Barnes, executive director of Iowa City’s Summer of the Arts. That event is moving up to Cedar Rapids as a new Freedom Festival attraction.

Also new is a partnership between the University of Iowa and Summer of the Arts to bring under the umbrella the MusicIC chamber music and literature festival June 13 to 16. Among the highlights are the musical setting of a new poem by Marvin Bell and the return of Iowa City natives Conor Hanick on piano and soprano Meagan Brus.

Fireworks will explode over downtown Iowa City during the Jazz Festival on July 5, 2013. (Summer of the Arts photo)

The mainstay events are bringing out the heavy-hitters, with the Old 97′s cowboy rockin’ the Iowa Arts Festival on June 8 and for the sizzling hot Iowa City Jazz Festival, fireworks on July 5, Dr. Lonnie Smith on July 6 and Pharoah Sanders on July 7.

The Friday and Saturday Night concert series bring out the best in local and regional bands across all genres. The Friday series is expanding into September, launching May 17 with a Hancher concert by Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience.

The ever-popular Free Movie Series opens with “Victoria/Victoria” on June 15, coinciding with Iowa City’s Pride Fest, and closes Aug. 22 with “The Hunger Games.” In between, are movies targeting various ages and interests, from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to the animated “Ice Age” and “Monsters Inc.” Films are shown on a big screen outside Macbride Hall on the UI’s Pentacrest.

It’s still early in the season, so some festivals will be adding shows to their lineups in the coming weeks. Want to get in on the action behind the scenes? It takes more than 450 volunteers to make the events run smoothly. Check Summerofthearts.org for updates and volunteer opportunities.

 

2013 Friday Night Concert Series

May 17: Hancher presents Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience

May 24: David Zollo

May 31: Johnny Kilowatt with Gloria Hardiman

June 14: Tallgrass

June 21: The Fez

June 28: Orquesta Alto Maiz

July 12: Bambu

July 19: Feralings; Awful Purdies

July 26: Ben Soltau and the Funk Guarantee

Aug. 2: Jesse White Band; Chasing Shade

Aug. 9: The Ramblers

Aug. 16: Kevin “B.F.” Burt & Big Medicine

Aug. 23: Jake McVey

Aug. 30: Uniphonics; Chazman Band

Sept. 6: 6 p.m. Hawkeye Hometown Huddle, then Zeta June; Fire Sale

Sept. 20:  Dead Larry

Sept. 27:  6 p.m. Hawkeye Hometown Huddle, then OSG

 

2013 Saturday Night Concert Series

May 18: City High & West High Jazz Ensembles

May 25: Tony Brown & the Earth Riddim Band

June 1: Adam Ezra (tentative)

June 15: TBA

June 22: Dan Dimonte and the Bad Assettes

June 29: TBA

July 13: The Beaker Brothers

July 20: Aaron Kamm & the One Drops

July 27: Bonnie Finken

Aug. 3: Sean Costanza Band

Aug. 10: House of Escher

Aug. 17: TBA

Aug. 24: Parranderos Latin Combo

 

2013 Iowa Arts Festival

June 7

4 to 11 p.m.: Culinary Row

5 to 8 p.m.: Art Fair & Downtown Gallery Walk

5 to 11:30 p.m.: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 7 p.m. Redbird; 9 p.m. Richard Thompson Electric Trio

June 8

10 a.m. to 7 p.m.: Art Fair & FUN Stops

10 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Children’s Day

10 a.m. to 3 p.m.: family Stage Entertainment

11 a.m. to 11 p.m.: Culinary Row

Noon to 11:30 p.m.: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: noon Mutiny in the Parlor; 1:30 p.m. Slewgrass; 3 p.m. The Beggarmen; 5 p.m. Kelly Pardekooper; 7 p.m. Eilen Jewell; 9 p.m. Old 97’s

June 9

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: Art Fair & FUN Stops

10 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Family Stage Entertainment

10 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Global Village

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Culinary Row

Noon to 5 p.m.: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 9:45 a.m. UI Steel Drum Band; 11 a.m. Rachael Marie;  11:45 a.m. MovMnt Dance Group; 12:45 p.m. Iowa City Community Band; 2 p.m. Christy Brown-Kwaiser; 2:40 p.m. William Danger Ford; 3:20 p.m. Milk & Eggs; 4 p.m. Sam Knutson

 

BIOS:

Richard Thompson Electric Trio: Richard Thompson was born in West London, surrounded by a family with wide musical tastes. Counted among his early influences are Django Reinhardt, Fats Waller, Les Paul, and Jimmy Shand. Flip the coin from his father’s jazz record collection to the early rock and roll music made available to him through his elder sister, including Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire, and the eclectic diversity of his multi-generational career becomes clear. Many musicians peak by age 30, but not Richard Thompson. The recipient of BBC’s Lifetime Achievement Award and named by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the Top 20 Guitarists of All Time, Richard Thompson is also one of the world’s most critically acclaimed songwriters. Robert Plant, REM, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, David Byrne, Del McCoury, Bonnie Raitt and many others have recorded his work. Yet this may be the most prolific period of Richard Thompson’s astonishing career; his live-tour CD Dream Attic was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 2010 Thompson was curator at London’s prestigious 2010 Meltdown Festival at South Bank Centre, and for his service to music – was named on the Queen’s 2011 New Year Honours List as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 2011 Thompson received an Honorary Degree of Doctor Honoris Causa (DHC) from the University at Aberdeen for his exceptional and distinctive contribution to contemporary music . Artist Music and Video

Old 97’s: Although they became one of the most enduring bands in the alternative country-rock catalog, Old 97′s drew inspiration from a broad range of genres, including the twangy stomp of cowpunk and the melodies of power pop. Formed in 1993 by frontman Rhett Miller and bassist Murry Hammond, the group spent the bulk of the decade posed on the brink of mainstream success, issuing albums that often drew warm reviews but never yielded a substantial hit. Old 97′s tightened their sound as the decade drew to a close, retaining their bar-band vigor while introducing a stronger pop/rock sound on albums like Too Far to Care and Satellite Rides. Miller also mounted a solo career in the early 2000s, but the band remained together nonetheless, continuing to release material with their original lineup intact into the following decade. Artist Media

 

2013 MusicIC Schedule:

June 13:  Trinity Episcopal Church, 7:30 p.m. Music for Soprano and String Quartet with a world premiere by composer David Gompper, setting a new poem by Marvin Bell (MusicIC commission)

June 14:  Trinity Episcopal Church, 7:30 p.m. Music for Soprano and Piano with pianist Conor Hanick and soprano Meagan Brus

June 15: Englert Theatre, 7:30 p.m., Igor Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat,” with text by Kurt Vonnegut, choreography by George de la Pena, direction by Saffron Henke

June 16: Iowa City Public Library, 2 p.m. A Family Concert: Ferdinand the Bull and Other Favorites – with Music!

 

2013 Free Movie Series:

June 15: “Victor/Victoria,” PG; 132 minutes; 1982

June 22: “Ice Age,” PG; 81 minutes; 2002

June 29: “The Help,” PG-13; 146 minutes; 2011; Pre-movie performance by the Iowa City Community Band

July 13: “Real Genius,” PG; 108 minutes; 1985

July 20: “Vertigo,” PG; 128 minutes; 1958

July 27: “Hairspray,” Rated PG; 117 minutes; 2007

Aug. 3: “Lincoln,” PG-13; 150 minutes; 2012

Aug. 10: Double Feature Night: “The Princess Bride,” PG; 98 minutes; 1987 and “16 to Life,” not rated; 100 minutes; 2009

Aug. 17: “Monsters Inc.,”  G; 92 minutes; 2001; pre-movie performance by UI Spirit Squad and area cheerleaders

Aug. 22: “The Hunger Games,” PG-13; 142 minutes; 2012

 

2013 Iowa City Jazz Festival:

July 5

4 to 8:30 p.m.: FUN Zone

4 to 10:30 p.m.: Culinary Row

4 to 11 p.m.: Beverage Garden

9:45 p.m. Fireworks

Main Stage: 4:30 p.m. United Jazz Ensemble; 6 p.m. Laranja; 8 p.m. Sachal Vasandani & the Iowa Jazz Orchestra

July 6

11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.: Culinary Row

Noon to 8:30 p.m.: FUN Zone

1 to 11 p.m.: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 2 p.m. North Corridor Jazz All Stars; 4 p.m. Charlie Hunter & Scott Amendola Duo; 6 p.m. Christian Scott Quintet; 8 p.m.  Dr. Lonnie Smith

 July 7

11 a.m.. to 10 p.m.: Culinary Row

Noon to 8:30 p.m.: FUN Zone

1 to 11 p.m.: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 2 p.m. Philip Dizack Quartet; 4 p.m. JD Allen Trio; 6 p.m. Fred Hersch Trio; 8 p.m. Pharoah Sanders

 

BIOS:

Dr. Lonnie Smith and fans at the 2010 Iowa City Jazz Festival were very disappointed when a severe thunderstorm kept Smith from taking the stage. We’re pleased to have the opportunity to bring back someone as imperial and pertinent to jazz as Dr. Lonnie Smith. The organist is an unparalleled musician, composer, performer and recording artist. An authentic master and guru of the Hammond B-3 organ for more than five decades, he has been featured on over seventy albums, and has recorded and performed with a virtual “Who’s Who” of the greatest jazz, blues and R&B giants in the industry. Consequently, he has often been hailed as a “Legend,” a “Living Musical Icon,” and as the most creative jazz organist by a slew of music publications. Jazz Times magazine describes him as “a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a turban!”

Always ahead of the curve, it is no surprise Smith’s fan-base is truly worldwide. Smith has been amused to find himself sampled in rap, dance and house grooves while being credited as a forefather of acid jazz. When questioned about his consistent interest in music some consider outside the jazz “mainstream,” LSmith shrugs. “Jazz is American Classical,” he proclaims. “And this music is a reflection of what’s happening at the time. … The organ is like the sunlight, rain and thunder … it’s all the worldly sounds to me.”

Pharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award-winning American jazz saxophonist. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as “probably the best tenor player in the world.” Emerging from John Coltrane’s groups of the mid-1960s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of “sheets of sound.” Sanders is an important figure in the development of free jazz. Born Ferrell Sanders, the name ‘Pharoah’ was claimed to have been iven to him by fellow band member and legendary pianist and composer Sun Ra. Sanders played with John Coltrane’s band for about a year beginning in late 1964, the same year he recorded his first album as a leader. Most of his late-1960’s albums were released on the Impulse, his first major label.

In the 1970s, the tenor saxophonist continued to develop his abilities as bandleader, working with the likes of Alice Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and Don Cherry and producing highly acclaimed albums for Impulse such as Black Unity (1971) and Thembi (1971). In 1994, he travelled to Morocco to record with master Gnawa musician Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, resulting in the Bill Laswell-produced The Trance of Seven Colours. Sanders continued to work with Laswell, Jah Wobble, and others on the albums Message from Home (1996) and Save Our Children (1999). In 2000, Sanders released Spirits — a multi-ethnic live suite with Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph. In the decades after his first recordings with Coltrane, Sanders developed into a more well-rounded artist, capable of playing convincingly in a variety of contexts, from free to mainstream. Some of his best work is his most accessible. As a mature artist, Sanders discovered a hard-edged lyricism that has served him well.

 

2013 Iowa Soul Festival

Sept. 13

5 to 10 p.m.: Culinary Row

5 to 11 p.m. Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 5:30 p.m. Kevin “B.F.” Burt and Big Medicine; 8 p.m. TBA Special Performance presented by Hancher

Sept. 14

11 a.m. to 7 p.m.: Arts & Crafts Booths, FUN Zone

11 a.m. to 11 p.m.: Culinary Row

1 p.m. to midnight: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 10 a.m. Tony Brown; noon Funk Stop; 2 p.m. Ayodele Drum and Dance (tentative); 3:15 p.m.  TBA; 5:30 p.m. Carlos Johnson featuring Demetria Taylor; 8 p.m. Mint Condition; 10 p.m. TBA

Sept. 15

11 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Arts & Crafts Booths, FUN Zone. Culinary Row

1 p.m. to 5 p.m.: Beverage Garden

Main Stage: 10 a.m. Johnny Kilowatt featuring Gloria Hardiman; 11:30 a.m. Groove Theory; 1 p.m. Local Gospel Choirs; 2:30 p.m. Hargrove Family Choir, James Teague Gospel; 4:15 p.m. Jason Watson

 

BIOS:

Mint Condition: Once upon a time there were great funk/R&B bands like Earth Wind & Fire, The Meters, War, Kool & The Gang, Slave, and numerous others who constantly broke down musical barriers. The musicality of these units was superior – they could rock or funk out as easily as they could move the crowd with a tenor soulful ballad. The rise of electronic music gradually undermined self-contained bands but in the 90s a dynamic young new band emerged—Mint Condition, now the greatest self-contained R&B band of our time.

Mint Condition does it all — delivering hard-bitten funk with a hip hop edge, rocking out with screaming lead guitar, and crooning lush, “baby-making” soul ballads. The members of Mint Condition met as teenagers growing up in the Twin Cities—Minneapolis-St. Paul amidst a thriving music scene energized by Prince, The Time, Jam & Lewis, The Replacements, Soul Asylum and many other artists. Keyboardists Lawrence El and Keri Lewis, guitarist O’Dell, keyboardist/saxophonist Jef, drummer/vocalist Stokley, and bass player Ricky came together in the performing arts program at Central High School. Playing together in different combinations led to them forming Mint Condition; a gig at the famed First Avenue club in 1989 caught the attention of super-producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, formerly of The Time, and they were signed to Jam & Lewis’ Perspective Records.

Two decades on, Mint Condition stands along with The Roots as the only high-profile examples of a self-contained, hit-making Black music band, and with Mint’s emphasis on songs and great singing, the sole band carrying on the great tradition of R&B funk bands such as Earth, Wind & Fire, The Meters, War, The Commodores, Lakeside, Slave and many more that were an important, progressive element of the black music scene in the Seventies and Eighties. “We’re fortunate that people have come to expect us to march to our own drum, musically speaking,” says bassist Ricky. And even though we have carved out our own unique creative path, we’ve always been well embraced.”

REVIEW: eighth blackbird flies in the face of convention with new music program

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eighth blackbird

IOWA CITY — Chicago new-music ensemble eighth blackbird has built a fine reputation, and lived up to that billing at the Englert Theatre on Wednesday night (2/6/13).

This is a lively, talented group of six musicians who are very well matched in their abilities. New-music can be quite demanding, and this gang plays very well together. They obviously enjoy each other’s company. And we enjoy being in the theater with them.

The Hancher program was wildly varied, featuring seven composers, six of whom are American. The best-known composer of the evening was Phillip Glass (“Knee Play 2″ from “Einstein on the Beach”), with an 8-minute segment of one of his major works. Ironically, it was the weakest piece of the evening. Of interest to aficionados, perhaps, but not particularly successful.

Another well-known composer in new music circles is Gyorgy Ligeti, with “Etudes for Solo Piano,” arranged for the sextet. It is a very difficult work to perform, with swiftly changing dynamics. It is also a difficult work to listen to. However, eighth blackbird artists have remarkable charisma to go along with their musicianship, and their energy and commitment is most persuasive, even if the music is tough sledding.

The ensemble engages the audience right away, and holds onto us for a couple of hours. What the artists play is often impossible to comprehend at first hearing, but it urges us to keep listening and to identify promising composers.

They are the scouts out ahead for new sounds, for explorations that may produce a different way of hearing and apprehending our sonic environment. I applaud their quest and value what they are up to.

Last night’s concert offered much to enjoy. “Pieces of Winter Sky,”  a piece commissioned by Hancher in league with the Music Accord consortium, is evocative of an environment Iowans know all too well: a cold, harsh winter. At times it reminded me of sleet hitting my face in sub-zero weather. At the same time, it has a kind of calm inside: lonely and still, with the quiet beauty of the end of a winter storm.

In the midst of the blizzard created by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis, birds are trying to sing, trying to find their voices. And, thankfully, they do. Their music will survive.

Commissioned works are almost always a roll of the dice, as you never quite know what you’ll get, even if you support the very best artists. But it’s a suitable activity for an enlightened presenter like Hancher Auditorium, if ambitious music is to have a future.

I also liked the new work by Andy Akiho that concluded the program. A steel band percussionist, Akiho has created a terrific composition called “erase,” that ends with very strong drumming by Matthew Duvall. It is a perfect “closer” for an eighth blackbird concert.

Please be on the lookout for this remarkable band of committed music-makers. They are up to something good.

 

REVIEW: Pilobolus dancers bring high-style high jinks to Hancher presentations

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Dancers from Pilobolus rehearse "Hapless Hooligan in 'Still Moving,'" a collaboration with cartoonist Art Spiegelman. (Matthew Cavanaugh)

IOWA CITY – Pilobolus returned to Iowa City in a new space and place — the Space Place Theater in North Hall on the University of Iowa campus.

This “talent gang” of dancers and choreographers looks mighty good in this intimate space. Two sold out performances on Nov. 13 and 14 were joyously received by a hungry audience.

Pilobolus, defined as a “phototropic fungus that thrives in farmyards,” has been a frequent visitor to Hancher Auditorium over the years. Since its founding at Dartmouth College in 1971 by four choreographers, this ensemble has successfully toured the planet, and has been well received on the college and university touring circuit.

Indeed, the wildly imaginative spark that drives this ensemble has a “high jinks,” collegiate feel to it: often wry, always sexy, always challenging the human form into new shapes, new possibilities. A favorite moment in this performance was a kind of a “thing,” dancing across the stage on one hand and one foot. The audience responded with both laughter and admiration.

You have to be a gymnast, as well as a dancer, to work for this company. You have to be very strong, very supple and very good looking. Pilobolus has been consistent in its ability to attract, develop and sustain the talent that it requies.

Two works stand out in this visit. The oldest work on the bill, “Pseudopodia” is from 1973, and is classic Pilobolus. It features a female solo in a fluid series of somersaults that resembles the movement of cells in a microscope. Talk about limber! This work is at the heart of the vision of the founders. It is astonishing to observe what the human frame is capable of, fulfilling that capability with remarkable beauty.

A vivid theatricality beats at the heart of this work, an esthetic that stems from the work of Alwin Nikolais, witnessed further in the work of Momix, Mummenschantz and Cirque du Soleil.

“Gnomen,” created in 1997 by Robby Barnett and Jonathan Wolken, features four young men. They work together with grace and strength in a well-conceived pattern of relationships, with breathtaking strength and inventiveness. Their level of accomplishment is remarkably high, and feats of strength and endurance are performed with an apparent lack of effort: a characteristic of superb art.

Even though Pilobolus is now more than more than 40 years old, nothing is stale or predictable about the troupe’s work. Yes, some dances are better than others, but there is much to admire in their ongoing quest for expression. As Walt Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric.” One can only hope that Pilobolus will keep on singing.

Duncan Sheik returning to Cedar Rapids

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Duncan Sheik

No matter how hard he’s tried to dodge it, the spotlight just seems to find Duncan Sheik.

After bursting onto the rock charts in the mid ’90s with “Barely Breathing,” he retreated into the shadows of indie music and theater.

That didn’t last long.

He wrote the music for the 2006 Broadway smash hit “Spring Awakening.” The rock ‘n’ roll tale of teen angst grabbed eight Tony Awards in 2007, including Best Musical, and nods to Sheik for best original score and best orchestrations.

Sheik came to CSPS in Cedar Rapids in March 2009 for a concert we deemed “brilliant” in our review, showcasing his show tune. He’s returning on Thursday, on a national tour with his stripped-down homage to the music of his youth via his new acoustic CD, “Covers Eighties Remixed.”

The details

  • Duncan Sheik trio
  • 7 p.m. Thursday
  • CSPS, 1103 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids
  • $25 at the door, (319) 364-1580 or Legionarts.org
  • Free discussion, noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, University of Iowa Theatre Building, 200 N. Riverside Dr., Iowa City

He just keeps charting new courses.

“‘Barely Breathing’ was a bit of an anomaly in terms of my first record and in terms of the way I saw myself as an artist,” Sheik, 42, says by phone from his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where he lives with his girlfriend.

“Really quickly in ’96, I was thrust into this Top 40 context. Frankly, I wasn’t that comfortable there, because I didn’t feel that much kinship with other artists who are in that world. They certainly weren’t the artists that were my influences. As much as I might respect them, it’s not what I was doing,” he says.

“Here I was, listening to Radiohead or Chalk Talk – whatever fairly left-field records I was listening to, and then I was in this very kind of mainstream music context. That caused a lot of dissonance for me in that situation. At that point, you continue to put your head down and do the best work you can do, and people are gonna perceive it however they’re gonna perceive it,” he says.

“I think that I subconsciously and consciously did a lot of work to subvert that kind of Top 40 thing from happening again, for better or worse. The irony is that when I did something in theater – which was a fairly avant-garde, kind of expressionist play, ‘Spring Awakening’ that we adapted our show from – that became, in a way, the most commercial thing that I’ve ever done,” he says.

“You don’t really have control over these things in the end. You just do your work and the culture responds to it however it does and you hope for the best.”

Two Corridor theaters are staging the rock musical this season. The University of Iowa’s production opened Nov. 9 and continues through Saturday (11/17). Theatre Cedar Rapids is bringing it to the main stage June 28 to July 20, 2013. Sheik will be speaking about the show from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday in the UI Theatre Building. The discussion is free and open to the public.

He’s thrilled the show is making the leap from Broadway to community theaters, colleges and other grassroots stages.

“I love the fact that people are doing ‘Spring Awakening’ all over the place,” he says. “I just got back from Mexico City, and there was a production down there in Spanish, which was really wonderful. For me, it’s just great to see it done differently, and with different actors, because then the experience is new and fresh and exciting.”

Thursday’s CSPS audience will hear Sheik in a trio, doing a mix of his vintage tunes and new material from the covers CD released Nov. 6, as well as a set of  “brand-spanking new” songs from an album coming out next year.

“I haven’t made a ‘normal’ Duncan Sheik album since 2006,” he says. “Everything I’ve done since then has been either theater-related or covers, so it’s been too long.”

As for the spotlight – he doesn’t mind it so much anymore.

“To be honest, when I first started performing live, which was not that long after my first record, it actually was not my favorite part of the process,” he says. “I’m not the kind of person who wants to get a lot of people to pay attention to me in the room. I love making records and I love writing songs and that’s why I got into this. Performing was part of the gig. Certainly initially, it was just something had to go through.

“Now 16 years later, I do really enjoy those shows when it all kind of coalesces and comes together. When the artist is with you and the music sounds right, it’s totally brilliant. It just took me a little while to get to that place.”

Word Becomes Flesh: Letters to unborn son capture human experience through hip-hop lens

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Word Becomes Flesh by Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Hancher is launching its 2012-13 season with a modern twist on an ancient art form.

It’s a spoken-word performance that embraces body and soul, born in the theatrical verse of Sophocles and Shakespeare and reborn in the hip-hop streets of New York about the time creator Marc Bamuthi Joseph was born.

His much heralded piece, “Word Becomes Flesh,” hits the University of Iowa’s Space Place Theater for two performances Sept. 20 and 21, 2012.

Described as “critical and political, haunting and poetic,” Joseph says his hourlong work is “a meditation on pregnancy from a father’s perspective,” incorporating music, contemporary dance and verse.

“It’s a rare pop cultural moment where five diverse, really smart and attractive black men use a very personal and ritualistic space to examine manhood in the 21st century through the lens of the pregnant moment,” Joseph, 36, says by phone from his home in Oakland, Calif.

“It’s dramatic theater that references modern dance and hip-hop culture and is primarily spoken in verse, but that doesn’t mean everything rhymes. It’s not ‘Seussical,’ ” he says with a laugh. “My literary sensibility references poetic and prosaic forms, but I’m a child of hip-hop, so there’s definitely a sense of percussion, energetic reciprocity, emotional politics that play into the work, as well.”

“The piece is structured as letters from fathers to unborn sons, so it’s really serious, it’s really funny. All the men are super fine, so there’s a lot of eye candy, but the material is very substantive,” he says.

The details

“It’s racialized because it’s five black men, but it’s so human,” he says, “because everybody has a birth story. It’s an extremely accessible way of looking at both fatherhood and motherhood, as well as the politics of race, class and intergenerational politics.”

It’s also semi-autobiographical, with five men telling one man’s story.

“I wrote ‘Word Becomes Flesh’ in the months before my son was born,” Joseph says, “in part, because I was going through all these changes and didn’t really have peers I felt like I could talk to, who would get it, so I started these letters to my son,” who will be 11 in December.

A single dad at the time, Joseph has forged a strong bond his son, a budding writer and filmmaker with his own YouTube channel.

He’s been part of his life all of his life.

“I just got married a month ago, and my wife has a daughter from a previous relationship, I have a son from a previous relationship. In my nervousness, I didn’t want to talk to my dad or any of my friends before the wedding. I wanted to talk to my son. He’s still my sounding board,” Joseph says.

He describes his blended family as “the best example of a modern family there is.”

“I love our family. I love how we operate,” he says. “His mom is engaged, I’m recently married; all six of us will have dinner together. It’s pretty great.”

He’s hoping to use his theatrical piece as a teaching tool for audiences.

“There’s an alternative narrative — maybe even a counter narrative to impressions of hip-hop generation men and our relationship to fatherhood,” he says. “Hip-hop is youth culture, and so many of us who have grown up in this generation have chosen not to grow up. There’s social pathology that contributes to that. This, I think, presents a very reflective moment in time that also happens to traverse these traditions from Greek mythology to Jay-Z. That’s important to absorb to reflect upon and see.

“I hope audiences get a sense of that continuum and also find themselves somewhere in the work.”

He’s received lots of viewer comments over the years from women, as well as men.

“The feedback I’ve valued the most was from mothers — particularly single mothers who have often said to me, ‘I always wanted to know,’ but also from kids that grew up in homes without fathers,” he says, as well as “from accountable and respectable fathers who just said,  ‘Thank you for telling our story too,’ because if feels like there’s  this other part of the narrative, particularly about black men, that is over-reported.

“But the under-documented story is this story about the fragility of impending fatherhood and the decision to ultimately be there for your kid. That’s what this particular piece unearths, and does it in a really stylized and acceptable way,” Joseph says.

A dancer, performer, creator and educator of international acclaim, Joseph got his start in “The Tap Dance Kid” at age 9, understudying Savion Glover on Broadway before taking over the lead role for the national tour.

He comes from several generations of teachers and spent many years teaching high school English before his students dared him to participate in a San Francisco Bay Area poetry slam in the late ’90s. He stepped on stage, won the competition, then won a national poetry slam in 1999. And a new life path was born.

With many other shows to his credit, he created “Word Becomes Flesh” as a solo work in 2003, performed it around the world until 2005, then remounted it as a group piece in 2010.

Even though he directed and choreographed the production coming to Iowa City, he won’t be in town for the shows.

“As much as I love Iowa City — I’ve been to Iowa a number of times — one of the things that’s great about this work is that I don’t have to be present. The performers are so strong,” he says. “So much of the strength of this piece is the diversity of lenses the story is told through.”

 

REVIEW: Sara Evans, Lee Bice make winning team for FRY Fest party

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Sara Evans performed Friday at the FRY fest concert in Coralville

CORALVILLE — Sara Evans wasn’t going to let cool temperatures, a soggy and muddy field or a Presidential visit a few miles away keep her from what she came to do Friday night (9/7/12).

Evans was in Iowa to give fans a party, and she more than delivered.

Country music star Evans, along with opener Lee Brice, put the finishing touches on FRY Fest 2012, the annual celebration kicking off the Iowa Hawkeyes’ football home opener.

Although the crowd was smaller than expected – organizers said earlier in the week they suspected an early evening address by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden would keep some people away – there were still a few hundred fans scattered in the staging area. Fans jumped through soggy grass and muddy areas left by the previous night’s storms to get closer to the stage.

Walking onstage and immediately breaking in to her 2003 hit, “Perfect,” Evans  kept on with hit after hit, subtly reminding fans just how big her cache of top 10 songs really is: “When You Were Cheating,” “Born to Fly,” “Anywhere,” “Coalmine,” “Suds in the Bucket” and the title song of her 2011 album, “Stronger,” all played well to the audience before she broke from her own titles and showed off her vocal strength with songs from the past, such as Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man.”

Between songs she let her fans know she loved their state and was aware of the football rivalry ready to play out at Kinnick Stadium the next day.

“Iowa is the most beautiful state in America, I really mean that,” she said. Growing up on a farm near Boonville, Mo., Evans said she had a first-hand knowledge of how beautiful the Midwest really is. She said she also knows how much Iowans love their football.

“I live in Alabama now and they really love football there,” she said, “probably about as much as you do here.”

Relative newcomer Lee Brice, who topped the country charts in 2010 with “Love Like Crazy,” a song off his debut album, opened for Evans, playfully changing up chords and getting the fans to sing along.

Related:

- Sara Evans to headline 2012 FRYfest outdoor concert

- FRY Fest shines spotlight on annual intrastate rivalry

 

Hancher announces 2012-2013 season

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IOWA CITY — The University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium has announced its 2012-2013 schedule of events, which includes dance, music, theater, and family-friendly fare. Tickets for the entire season — including $10 tickets for youth and college students for all events — are now on sale via an order form available on the Hancher website.

The season brochure, bearing the slogan “Great Artists, Great Audiences, Hancher Performances,” and the website include a listing of events by date, full details about each event and more information about Hancher’s outreach programs and diverse partnerships.

Celebrating 40 years

The season marks the organization’s 40th anniversary, and four events have been designated to celebrate the occasion:

 • On Friday, Nov. 2, 2012, Brian Stokes Mitchell, star of stage and screen, will appear in concert.

 • Pilobolus Dance Theatre, a longtime Hancher favorite, will perform on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 13 and 14, 2012, in the intimate Space Place Theatre on the UI campus.

 • On Tuesday, April 2, 2013, the legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins will present his first Iowa concert since appearing at Hancher in 1993.

• The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which was the first touring ensemble to appear on the Hancher stage when the original facility opened in 1972, will perform a free outdoor concert on the UI Pentacrest on Saturday, June 15, 2013.

 The Preservation Hall Jazz Band performance is part of a larger collaborative project entitled Living With Floods that will take the band to seven Iowa communities — Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Muscatine, and Iowa City — for free outdoor events. Hancher has several UI partners for the project, including the College of Engineering, the Iowa Flood Center, the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research and the College of Education.

 Multimedia production and groundbreaking ceremony

The new season will not only reflect on Hancher’s history; it also will include an important step toward the organization’s future. On Friday, Oct. 19, 2012, Hancher will present the multimedia production It Gets Better, a show that has grown out of the wellspring of YouTube videos decrying the bullying of LGBT youth. The performance features six members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles who will be joined by a large number of local choristers.

Earlier that day, the singers will convene at 4:30 p.m. at the site of the new Hancher facility to perform as part of a groundbreaking ceremony that will highlight Hancher’s ongoing work connecting artists from around the world with the local community.

A tradition of commissions

In keeping with Hancher’s reputation as a major commissioner of new work, the organization will present four commissions during the season.

The first is the culmination of a project with Tony-winners Stew and Heidi Rodewald. The two songwriters visited Iowa City in the fall of 2011 to collect material for the Iowa City Omnibus, a collection of songs inspired by the community. Adverse weather forced the cancellation of the concert by Stew & The Negro Problem, so the band will now unveil the songs on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012, at The Mill as part of the Club Hancher series.

Hancher is also a co-commissioner of UI alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s lovefail, which features stories by acclaimed author Lydia Davis and will be performed by vocal ensemble Anonymous 4 on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012.

The Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013, performance by innovative classical ensemble eighth blackbird also will feature a Hancher commissioned work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis.

Building upon the successful collaboration that yielded the play Mayberry, Hancher is again partnering with Iowa City’s Working Group Theatre. The new collaboration, The Memory Project, will culminate in the presentation of a new Hancher-commissioned play titled The Broken Chord, Friday through Sunday, April 12 to 14, 2013.

Additionally, former Hancher Artistic Director Judy Hurtig and her husband, Richard, are part of a group of commissioners for a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, which will be performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. The performance is supported by the Richard and Judith Hurtig Chamber Music Endowment.

Club Hancher events

In addition to Stew & The Negro Problem, Club Hancher events include the Friday, Oct. 5, 2012, performances by the Haitian band Ti-Coca & Wanga-Nègès and the Thursday and Friday, Feb. 14 and 15, 2013, performances by saxophonist Miguel Zenón, winner of both the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellow “genius grant” in the same year.

Dance

In addition to Pilobolus, dance fans will be treated to India Jazz Suites, which features master Indian dancer Pandit Chitresh Das and tap dance superstar Jason Samuels Smith in a cross-cultural collaboration (Thursday, March 7, 2013), and to AXIS Dance Company, which is an innovative ensemble of dancers with and without disabilities (Thursday and Friday, April 25 and 26, 2013).

Theater

Theatre offerings include the season opening Word Becomes Flesh by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, which explores black fatherhood (Thursday and Friday, Sept. 20 and 21, 2012), new work by monologuist Mike Daisey, who has found himself at the center of a controversy surrounding the details of his acclaimed The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 21 to 23, 2013), and Kindur, an interactive family performance by Compagnia T.P.O. (Tuesday and Wednesday, April 9 and 10, 2013).

Additionally, in collaboration with the Iowa City Community School District, Hancher will present school matinees of The Man Who Planted Trees, performed by the Puppet State Theatre Company of Scotland (Monday through Wednesday, Nov. 5 to 7, 2012).

The performances of Kindur and The Man Who Planted Trees are supported by the Herbert A. and Janice A. Wilson Arts Education Fund.

Music

A wide array of music will be on offer as well, including Mexican songstress Lila Downs (Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012), the chamber orchestra Sphinx Virtuosi (Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012), the return of jazz singer Dianne Reeves’s popular holiday performance, Christmas Time Is Here (Friday, Dec. 7, 2012), the stellar bluegrass stylings of Dailey & Vincent (Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013), theinnovative Shuffle. Play. Listen program from pianist Christopher O’Riley and cellist Matt Haimovitz (Thursday, March 28), and Terrance Simien & The Zydeco Experience, which is part of both Spot — The Hancher Family Arts Adventure and the Summer of the Arts Friday Night Concert Series (Friday, May 17, 2013). Hancher will be taking Simien on a tour across the state in addition to his Iowa City performance.

Tickets for the 2012-2013 Hancher season may be ordered using the season order form. Through July 16, Hancher contributors at the $500 level and above will get priority seating. For more information or for assistance with the order form, call the Hancher Box Office at (319) 335-1160 or 1-(800) HANCHER. Ticket order forms may be mailed, faxed or delivered in person to the Hancher Box Office, located in the University Capitol Centre (formerly Old Capitol Town Center).

Sara Evans to headline 2012 FRYfest outdoor concert

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CORALVILLE — Sara Evans will headline the 2012 FRY fest — A Celebration of All that is Hawkeye, presented by The Eastern Iowa Airport on Sept. 7.

Sara Evans will perform for FRY fest .

Lee Brice will open the outdoor concert at 7 p.m., followed by Evans at 8:30 p.m., on the Two Rivers Bank and Trust stage at Coralville’s Iowa River Landing. Tickets are $15. All proceeds benefit the annual Coralville 4th Fest celebrations.

Multiplatinum RCA recording artist Sara Evans has been honored with numerous accolades, among them the 2006 Academy of Country Music’s Female Vocalist of the Year and the Country Music Association’s Video of the Year for “Born to Fly.” She has been named one of People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” and won the hearts of television viewers as the first country star to compete in ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. She enjoys a prolific recording career with mroe than 5 million records sold and five chart-topping country singles, including the self penned “Born To Fly.”

(Find more information on FryFest or the Sara Evans concert.)

2011 marked the release of Evans’ sixth studio album “Stronger” which debuted at No. 1 for two weeks and features the platinum  multiweek top single, “A Little Bit Stronger.” Evans received award nominations for Single of the year and Female vocalist of the year at the 2011 CMA, AMA and ACA awards.

Country singer/songwriter Lee Brice walks a path between traditional honky tonk sounds and contemporary rock ‘n’ roll. Brice has charted a string of singles beginning in 2007 with “She Ain’t Right,” followed by “Happy Endings” and “Upper Middle Class White Trash.” As an artist, his breakthrough came when “Love Like Crazy” was released in September 2009. With a slow but consistent build at country radio, the single eventually peaked at No. 3 on Billboard‘s country songs chart. Spending 56 weeks on the country songs chart, the track made history by breaking Eddy Arnold’s 54-week stay on the chart with “Bouquet of Roses,” which debuted in May 1948. Brice’s his highest-charting single, “A Woman Like You,” reached Np. 1 in April 2012.

FRY fest will recognize and celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Cy-Hawk Series, the day before the Hawkeyes take on the Cyclones in Kinnick Stadium. FRY fest attendees will be able to take in a day of panel discussions reliving stories from broadcasters, players and coaches’ perspectives from this intrastate rivalry game played annually between Big 12 Conference member Iowa State Cyclones and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big Ten Conference.

FRY fest will once again hold the World’s Largest Hawkeye Tradeshow & Tailgate Party where fans can interact with Hawkeye retailers, licensees, and other related groups.  New to the mix will be some Cyclone-licensed vendors offering fans their merchandise, as well. Also returning are the FRY fest car show presented by Carousel Nissan, FRY fest small FRY zone, and the FRY fest pep rally, all free and open to the public.