This year’s Patten Performance series can be summed up in one word: authentic.
From traditional Japanese drums to real-deal Cajun music to the kind of country music your Pa rather than your Bro might like, the lineup is filled with diversity that has bona fide credentials.
Among the performances are Louisiana’s BeauSoleil, old-time country’s Malpass Brothers, a couple of dance companies and even a hip-hop version of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”
The series starts a little earlier than usual this year, and it will leave the friendly confines of the Roland Hayes Concert Hall in the UTC Fine Arts Center for two shows that are also part of Sewanee: The University of the South’s Summer Music Festival. The shows, however, will take place in Chattanooga.
The first is set for July 7 in the Chamberlain Pavilion behind Brock Hall on Vine Street and will feature a mixture of instrumentalists. The second, featuring a brass ensemble, will be July 15 in the Andrew Roth Grand Reading Room in the new UTC Library. Both shows start at 7:30 p.m.
The addition of the two shows came through a longtime working collaboration with Patten series programmer Bob Boyer and Katherine Lehman at Sewanee and director of its Summer Music Festival.
Beausoleil will return to Chattanooga as part of this year’s Patten Performance series. (Rick Olivier Photo)“We’ve worked together for years, and wanted to do something like this for awhile,” Boyer says. “Plus, it lets us doing something outside and it’s a chance to show patrons the new space in the library.”
Things move back to the Fine Arts Center on Sept. 15, with Nagata Shachu, a traditional Japanese drum ensemble based in Toronto. Under the direction of Kiyoshi Nagata, the group has performed its physically demanding music — known as taiko in Japanese — around the world. As part of their show, the members play everything from gongs to bells to wooden clappers to massive O-Daiko drums.
On Oct. 10, the first of two Patten Unplugged shows will take place with the Malpass Brothers.
“This is the real-deal, old country,” Boyer says. “They’ve been opening for Merle Haggard. It’s a dad and two brothers. I just love it.”
Christopher Malpass said the group plays music that talks to him.
“My brother Taylor and I do the type of music we do because this music speaks to us, and speaks to the souls of its listeners,” he said in a news release. “For us, traditional country music is the ‘real deal’ — every song portrays life’s joys, heartaches, problems and happiness. It comes from the heart and has depth and truth. Nothing is sugarcoated. Our goal, really, is to see this music be revived, to help ensure it doesn’t fade away.”
The Q Gents are set for Oct. 15; the two brothers will perform their own hip-hop “add-RAP-tation” of Shakespeare’s “Othello” in a piece called “Othello: The Remix” and “Funk It Up About Nothin’.” “The Remix” was commissioned by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London for the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival and has toured Germany, South Korea, London, Poland and Sydney. “Funk It Up” was commissioned by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Contemporary dance company Keigwin + Company of New York, led by choreographer Larry Keigwin, will perform Nov. 9. Its shows are full of physical choreography which was described as “alert, engaging performers with great technical skill; dances that show humor and drama in equal measure; and accessibility,” by the New Yorker magazine.
The final Patten Unplugged show is Jan. 30, 2016, with Cardon Smith, a singer/songwriter who was born in Georgia but now lives in Chattanooga. He’s earned fans around the country playing his blend of guitar-based Texas country/Americana.
Grammy-award winning Cajun stars BeauSoleil return to town on Feb. 24, 2016. The group, led by Michael Doucet, has played here several times at festivals and the Nightfall Concert series and is always a favorite with its mix of zydeco, New Orleans jazz, Tex-Mex, country, blues and anything else that works in a musical gumbo.
The season concludes on April 18, 2016, with Pilobolus, a Connecticut-based dance troupe that takes its name from a barnyard fungus whose spores are shot rapidfire yet surprisingly accurate. After a Pilobus performance in Omaha, the Omaha World Herald newspaper said it was “gorgeous physicality marked by heady intellectualism, delivering dance that is as much about the mind as about the body in the motion. There is not just a story behind every number. There is also frequently a philosophical question presented in a provocative way.”
“This is their third time back,” Boyer says. “It’s a big ensemble and always fun.”
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.