Partners in life, love and art, dancer/choreographer Lauren Edson and musician/composer Andrew Stensaas founded the remarkable performance company LED in Boise, ID in 2015 and remain its co-leaders Lauren, the company’s artistic director, trained at UNCSA and Juilliard before dancing with the renowned dance company Trey McIntyre Projects for many years. Andrew, LED’s creative director, is a self-taught musician and composer who played with two critically acclaimed bands — one in Portland, OR; the other in Boise, ID — before establishing himself as a teacher and composer/songwriter at Boise Rock School. Just five years after LED’s founding, Dance Magazine included the company in its influential “25 to Watch” list, but it wouldn’t be accurate to call LED a dance company. Instead, what Lauren and Andrew have created is a creative laboratory that accommodates each their artistic backgrounds and interests and challenges them to keep exploring, whether through live performance, film or community happenings and always with movement and music at the core. LED has performed in venues all over the Western US, and their most recent short film, “Waters into Wilderness,” screened at festivals all over the world including the prestigious San Francisco Dance Film Festival. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Lauren and Edson discuss how their distinct artistic personalities combined with their dedicated partnership to create the special sauce that keeps their young company nimble, inventive and exciting to the creative team and their audiences alike. https://www.ledboise.com/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Composer Brittany J. Green is already making waves in the world of new classical music. However, given the variety of inspirations that pervades her work – from computer-coding languages to Black feminist theory – and her growing passion for electronica and for DJing her own sets, she is very much beating an artistic path that disregards the boundaries of genre. Her work has been performed at concerts and festivals throughout the United States, including the Boulanger Initiative’s WoCo Fest and New York City Electronic Music Festival, and last year she recorded a new piece with the Atlanta Symphony that was released online in January 2022 as part of the Symphony’s “Concerts for Young People” series. A recent recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Charles Ives Scholarship and the ASCAP Foundation’s Morton Gould Award, Brittany is currently in residence at Duke University in Durham, NC, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in music composition as a Deans Graduate Fellow. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Brittany discusses the two qualities that guide the evolution of her compositional practice: her ability to learn through deep listening and her commitment to cross-disciplinary collaborations.  https://www.brittanyjgreen.com/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Artist, activist and visionary ChristinaMaria Xochitlzihuatl Patiño Houle is the co-founder and lead visionary of Las Imaginistas, a socially engaged art collective working to liberate the public imagination. Several of Las Imaginistas’ projects have centered on Brownsville, TX, including “Taller de Permiso,” an arts and economic-justice campaign. Through hands-on art-making workshops and events, “Taller de Permiso” harnessed the community’s collective imagination to parse and reimagine the municipal permitting process, particularly as it affects small businesses operating in communities of color. Another Las Imaginistas project is “Borders Like Water,” an ongoing international cross-cultural collaboration between healers, visionaries and thought leaders. “Borders Like Water” centers ancestral wisdoms and environmental understanding to answer the question, “If borders have been like ice, how can they move like water?” ChristinaMaria is also the Weaver for Voces Unidas, a network focused on immigration and community development issues serving the multi-state Rio Grande Valley.  In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, ChristinaMaria, who is passionate about decolonizing longstanding historical and cultural practices, shares her deep unease with the traditional interview process and its fraught history and power dynamics. She then describes how she herself has honed her own listening practice when she visits and learns from Indigenous communities throughout the Americas. https://www.christinapatinohoule.com/ https://www.lasimaginistas.com/ https://www.giarts.org/blog/christinamaria-patino-xochitlzihuatl-houle/art-money-and-apocalypse-lots-questions-few Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In February of 2022, Long Wharf Theatre, one of the country’s most respected regional theaters, released a bold statement. Starting with its 2022/23 season, the theater will not renew the lease on the space it has occupied for 57 years on the outskirts of New Haven, CT. Rather, under the leadership of artistic director Jacob Padrón, who joined Long Wharf in late 2018, the theater will commit at least for a few years to an itinerant production model that “will prioritize equity, accessibility and transparency, guided by three core pillars: revolutionary partnerships, artistic innovation, and radical inclusion.” Coming at a time when, especially in the wake of the pandemic, theaters all over the country are grappling with ways to reinvigorate and diversify their production models as well as their audience base, Long Wharf’s announcement made waves. Did this mark the beginning of the end of the traditional regional-theater model? In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Jacob — who is also the founder and artistic director of The Sol Project and whose career includes innovative producing stints at such august institutions as Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and New York’s Public Theater — explains the impetus for this sea change in the theater’s production model. He also imagines a new path forward not only for his own theater but for the field as a whole. https://longwharf.org/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In the twelve years since Austin-based landscape architect Daniel Woodroffe founded his firm, dwg, it has become a leader in sustainable design and low-impact development. The firm has worked on projects all over the world but has made a particularly deep impression on the landscape of its home city. One of dwg’s most remarkable years-long project finally came to fruition when in August of 2021 Waterloo Park, at 11 acres downtown Austin’s biggest greenspace, opened to the public. Daniel’s company served as the local landscape architect team for world-renowned landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. Waterloo Park is a gorgeous urban oasis that features a 1.5-mile hike-and-bike trail, sinuous bridges, expansive lawns and a 5,000-seat amphitheater that has quickly become a premier music venue. The park is also universally accessible with barrier-free design. What a casual visitor might not necessarily know or notice is that the park was created to reclaim an urban overflow creek that over the years had not only often flooded but become a dumping ground. Now, thanks to dwg’s work, the creek’s water has been harnessed with engineering finesse to allow a wide array of plants native to Austin’s ecology to flourish as well as benefit local birds and pollinators. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Daniel explains how making urban spaces more sustainable and equitable is a recipe not only for economic dynamism but perhaps more importantly for good old-fashioned joy, an emotion he likes to cultivate in his offices as well. Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology with 15 years of experience working for some of the country’s top designers, Nyla Hasan in 2019 decided to create her own fashion line. A few complications — not the least of which was a pandemic — delayed the planned debut of the line, but in the fall of 2021 her dream became a reality when fashion brand the øther launched its first collection. The øther quickly made waves for its graceful blending of South Asian and Western influences and its use of both inventive as well as traditional South Asian techniques and handiwork. The line was profiled in The New York Times and Vogue, and — given that the clothes are all made to order — Nyla is currently preparing a third production cycle since the launch to meet demand. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Nyla describes how her own experience coming of age in two cultures informed the style and ethos of her line, making it truly distinctive, a candid reflection of its creator’s values.   https://theother-collection.com/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Earl Maneein is a violinist and composer who loves nothing more than to lend his considerable chops as a classically trained musician to the sounds and venues of heavy metal and hardcore punk. None other than Robert Trujillo, bassist for Metallica, has called him “a kick-ass artist who pushes the creative boundaries.”   Earl received a Bachelor of Music from Queens College and a Master of Music from the Mannes College of Music, where he studied with Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet. He is the founder of and main composer for the string quartet SEVEN)SUNS, which plays both extant and new metal and hardcore work, and he is also a member of the Vitamin String Quartet, whose recent music was featured in the Netflix show “Bridgerton.”   As a composer Earl has received commissions from a broad array of individuals and institutions, from internationally renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine and pioneering hardcore band The Dillinger Escape to Plan to Dance Theater of Harlem and The Phoenix Symphony, helmed by past “Art Restart” guest Tito Muñoz.    In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Earl describes how, knowing that he was never going to want to play in a traditional orchestra, he nevertheless challenged himself to get a classical-violin education so that he could craft his singular artistic identity with absolute confidence. http://www.earlmaneeinmusic.com/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin in an artist, technologist and researcher who specializes in working in and with artificial intelligence. She lives in Jacksonville, FL, where she is a Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida. Her work, though incredibly varied, always focuses on finding ways to use AI to benefit communities and the environment.  In 2017 she founded a nonprofit, IDEA New Rochelle, that created a VR/AR Citizen toolkit to engage the community as co-designers of their future city. The project, in partnership with the New Rochelle mayor’s office, won a highly competitive $1 million Bloomberg Mayors Challenge grant.    Amelia is Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederation, and through much of her work she interrogates the supposed neutrality of technology and AI and strives to imbue new technology with the values of her Native culture. In 2019 she created Wampum.Codes, which is both an ethical framework for software development based on Indigenous values of co-creation and an award-winning podcast of the same name. In the podcast, Amelia interviews Indigenous artists and technologists about how they manifest their Native cultures’ values in their work. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Amelia draws a line between her youthful activities — providing music for her mother’s storytelling sessions and experimenting with her engineer father’s discarded prototypes — and her current mission to transform us all from mere consumers of technology to engaged participants creating a better world with new tools. https://www.studioamelia.com/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Troy Summerell has become well-known in his hometown of Virginia Beach, VA for his vibrant and joyful murals of flowers and ocean creatures that can be seen throughout the region, from the sides of large buildings to basketball backboards. He loves bringing joy to those who need it and has therefore often worked in hospitals that serve children. He recently completed his largest commission to date, a 100-foot-long mural enlivening an entire hallway in Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, VA. Even the hospital’s ambulances are now wrapped in Troy’s unmistakable designs. His work also brightens the pediatric emergency room and the pediatric ICU at University of Florida Health Jacksonville, and in 2019 he traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to paint a mural for the international nonprofit, Smile Train. Troy is also a small-business owner, having launched OnieTonie Designs™ in 2014 to support his at-the-time nascent career as an artist. OnieTonie has now become a recognizable brand that sells an ever-expanding list of merchandise, from socks and beach towels to coffee mugs and T-shirts, all sporting Troy’s signature aquatic creatures. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Troy describes how at a challenging crossroads in his life he, a self-taught artist, heeded his design and marketing instincts and risked a life-changing leap.   https://onietonie.com/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In June of 2021, Enrique Márquez arrived on the campus of the renowned Interlochen Center of the Arts in Interlochen, MI as its new Director of Music. Founded in 1928, Interlochen offers students from grades 3 through 12 a wealth of arts-education opportunities through several programs, including its boarding school, the Arts Academy, and its Summer Arts Camp. Before becoming an admired arts administrator and educator, Enrique was a professional violist who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2005. He served as principal viola of The Orchestra of the Americas and the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, performing in over 25 countries in the Americas, Asia and Europe with such conducting giants Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Gustavo Dudamel and Valery Gergiev.    In his native Mexico, Enrique went on to become the youngest Director General of the Veracruz Cultural Institute. He also founded the Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, which quickly became treasured not only for its performances but also for its impact in the community as a cultural and educational hub. He also earned a Master’s in Cultural Policy and Management from City University London and a master’s in education at Harvard University Graduate School of Education.   In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Enrique describes how a fundamental belief in music’s power to draw out every young person’s most vibrant qualities has determined his career path.   https://www.interlochen.org/news/interlochen-center-for-arts-names-enrique-marquez-director-music?fbclid=IwAR2CKijIQEjWsce8Y_uo0432wBfIZpKYhDeVmB23vdB5nlygLL-xKY1j8X4 https://www.filarmonicadeboca.org.mx/ Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.