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Round 1:
Which title do you like better?
The Well-Tampered Accordion
The House With No Doorbell
The Well-Tampered Accordion
Artist: Guy Klucevsek
Release: 2004
The House With No Doorbell
Artist: McCafferty
Release: 2019
V/A
"Bad Alchemy #7"
(cassette. Bad Alchemy. 1987)
From: GUY KLUCEVSEK: HOPE DIES LAST
"Perhaps they are right, those who pretend there are harps in heaven. Maybe flutes and violins too. But I'm sure there are no accordions, just as I'm sure there's no green cowshit that smells of wild garlic. The accordion was made for life on this earth, the left hand marking the bass and the heartbeats, the arms and shoulders labouring to make breath, and the right hand fingering for hopes!" --John Berger, Once in Europa, 1987
AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS– In a shadowed attic, crammed with curio cabinets, work tables, chests and drawers (containers for mementos and unmentionables), a daughter searches for what it is that ties together her mother, herself, and a radical, elusive poet. The Ko Festival of Performance continues a season of “Radical Acts” with this solo hand-crafted-story-spinning-shadow-puppet-memory-play-with-music evoking the secret creative lives of women, mother/daughter bloodlines, and the ghost of Emily Dickinson. INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS by Laurie McCants will be performed August 3-5 in the Holden Theater at Amherst College.
INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS is hand-made by Laurie McCants, in collaboration with director/lighting designer Sabrina Hamilton, and composer Guy Klucevsek, who has created a haunting score with piano, violin, accordion, and toy piano, and F. Elaine Williams, who designed the set and the special effects that permeate the piece.
A story about the crafting of stories, INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS was conceived by actor/creator Laurie McCants on a visit to Emily Dickinson’s home, where the poet wrote the almost 1800 poems that were found after her death. The story unfolds through puppetry, paper-cutting, music, movement, light and dark, and the weaving together of words. It is a dance of the hands honoring women’s handiwork: mending, preserving, ordering, adorning, writing, hiding. This piece was developed at the Ko Festival of Performance and the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. It first premiered at the Ko Festival in 2011 and is being reworked and revived this year at Ko in conjunction with Annual Meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society which is being hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum. An elite group of musicians, from as far afield as Vienna, gathered to record Klucevsek’s score for INDUSTRIOUS ANGELS. They include Todd Reynolds on violin, pianist and toy piano prodigy Isabel Ettenauer, and the composer on accordion.
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Performances will be held Friday and Saturday, August 3 and 4 at 8:00 PM and Sunday, August 5 at 4:00 PM. KoFest performances take place in Amherst College’s air-conditioned Holden Theater, located behind the Admissions Office off South Pleasant Street in Amherst, MA. Tickets are priced at: $22 Adults / $18 Students & Seniors and $10 for SNAP/EBT cardholders. Call about a limited number of $8 tickets. Tickets are available at kofest.com, by email at [email protected], and by phone at (413) 542-3750. The box office phone line is staffed daily from 1-5 and 1 to curtain on performance days.
About Laurie McCants
LAURIE McCANTS (Playwright/Performer) co-founded the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE) in 1978. Her original work includes THE ALEXANDRIA CARRY-ON (in collaboration with composer/performer Theo Bleckmann, designers Sabrina Hamilton, Rand Whipple, and Elaine Williams), which was performed at the Ko Festival in 2004, prior to its Egyptian tour.
She has been a rehearsal residency artist at Ko, and she has taught two of our 6-day intensive workshops; one on “Breath, Voice and Presence” and another, co-taught with fellow BTE member, Gerard Stropnicky, on “Creating Theatre from Historical and Documentary Sources.”
Other work includes OUR SHADOWS, a bilingual puppet play created with the Egyptian theatre WAMDA, and SUSQUEHANNA: MIGHTY, MUDDY, CROOKED RIVER OF THE LONG REACH (created with her BTE colleagues). Among the hundreds of roles she has played at BTE, she counts as favorites Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s HAPPY DAYS, and the Gravedigger in HAMLET. She directed BATTLES OF FIRE AND WATER at Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, where she was honored to be adopted as a kiks.adi Tlingit. She has served on the Board of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and in 2011, she was awarded a “Distinguished Achievement” Fellowship through the Theatre Communications Group/Fox Foundation Fellowship.
More information about Laurie McCants available at kofest.com
About Guy Klucevsek
Guy Klucevsek is one of the world’s most versatile and highly-respected accordionists. This outstanding composer, accordion virtuoso, and improvisor has been a major contributor to the accordion renaissance of the last 25 years. His music reverberates with sounds of the ballroom, the beer garden and the concert hall, fusing elements of regional accordion styles with jazz and avant-garde music.He has performed and/or recorded with Laurie Anderson, Bang On a Can, Brave Combo, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Coleman, Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, Rahim al Haj, Robin Holcomb, Kepa Junkera, the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, Present Music, Relâche, Zeitgeist, and John Zorn. He is the recipient of a 2010 United States Artists Collins Fellowship, an unrestricted $50,000 award given annually to “America’s finest artists.”
“Forget everything you thought you knew about the accordion.” – The Seattle Weekly
About The Ko Festival
The Ko Festival of Performance, in its 27th summer season on the Amherst College campus, is a perennially popular summer experience in Western Massachusetts, featuring five weeks of theatrical performances, the KoFest Story Slam, and three 6-day intensive theater workshops. Unlike standard summer stock theater, Ko Festival performances are all original, devised pieces, created by distinguished professional solo and ensemble theatre artists from across the U.S. Each year, the performances at Ko are curated around a theme designed speak to area audiences. This year it’s “RADICAL ACTS” and audiences are having an opportunity to meet a group of 60’s radicals, hear true tales of going AWOL in the jungle, examining one’s relationship with the planet and the courage to create. Lively post-performance discussions, often with guest experts, follow each of the performances.
Funded, in part, by The Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, the Amherst Cultural Council, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts/Valley Gives, and Art Angels.
Ko Festival Continues with “Industrious Angels” AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS– In a shadowed attic, crammed with curio cabinets, work tables, chests and drawers (containers for mementos and unmentionables), a daughter searches for what it is that ties together her mother, herself, and a radical, elusive poet.
