Flashpoint Festival
A multi-evening, multi-arts event that pairs artists of diverse disciplines – music, visual art, spoken word and dance – to perform together in a series of collaborative improvised performances, each evening featuring a different combination of artists and genres.
Anchoring the performances and providing the common thread will be the acclaimed chamber ensemble ‘Three Story Sandbox’ (Jack, Janice and New York multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson), augmented by guitarist Fareed Haque and bassist Larry Gray, performing freely-improvised music that reaches beyond jazz to incorporate an array of world music and contemporary elements.
Each evening they will collaborate with notable artists of other disciplines from around the world, innovators on the cutting edge of their respective disciplines. The resulting performances will incorporate unscripted, unrehearsed, spontaneously-improvised elements into each participating artist’s own artistic expression, while igniting the creative synergy when two distinctly different means of expression join forces and meet in live performance.
The evening performances will be augmented by educational workshops, demonstrations and ‘meet the artist’ sessions meant to give aspiring artists, students and general audiences meaningful opportunities to engage with the featured artists.
Say Borla and Mouse about their vision for the event:
“By combining freely-improvised music with cutting edge contemporary artists – who are themselves stretching the boundaries of their respective genres – we want to open minds to new possibilities that come from such artistic collaborations. We’d like to ‘expand the conversation’ beyond the artists’ own disciplines to create provocative ways of expressing the inter-connectedness of artistic expression.
In the life of every artist at all levels, from amateur to professional, there has been a moment of epiphany, or flashpoint, which triggered and/or solidified the commitment to his/her art form. We consider it a crucial part of our mission to establish and produce events and experiences that evoke such moments for young people and aspiring artists – letting them know that there is a place for them in the creative world.
Our contemporary culture is competition-driven, rewarding economic success and athletic achievement, but often stranding those not so endowed or inclined. Young people who exhibit an affinity for the creative arts, especially if not along traditional or conventional lines, are sometimes socially shunned, labeled as ‘geeks.’ As victims of such prejudice, they can fall prey to self-esteem issues, feelings of isolation/loneliness, psychological ailments, even substance abuse. We believe that by creating events and experiences that expose them to alternatives previously not aware of, they may see new possibilities for themselves within a wider creative context.
This event is an opportunity to ‘shake up’ the way art is traditionally presented. As the old adage goes, ‘people hear what they see.’ Adding a vivid visual component can make the entire experience more accessible for audience who might not otherwise be engaged. It also enables us to cultivate an audience for artists of whom the mainstream public may be unaware, or who may have limited opportunities for exposure because they fall outside many arts presenters’ programming guidelines.”