With support from Orthopedic & Spine Center of the Rockies
Doors: 7:00 PM
Showtime: 8:00 PM
Ira Glass is the host and creator of This American Life, heard by more than 5 million listeners each week on more than 500 public radio stations and via podcast. After starting his career as an intern at NPR’s headquarters in Washington, DC at age 19, Glass launched This American Life in 1995. The program was the first ever awarded a Pulitzer Prize for audio journalism, has won 7 Peabody Awards and many other honors. In 2021, This American Life’s episode The Giant Pool of Money was the first podcast inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. It remains one of public radio’s most popular programs.
As editor of the groundbreaking podcasts Serial, S-Town and Nice White Parents, Glass is credited with popularizing the format.
In Seven Things I’ve Learned, Glass gives a glimpse of his creative process. Using audio clips, music and video, Glass shares stories and reflections from his long career as an interviewer, producer and broadcaster.
———————————————
Join KUNC and add a pre-show cocktail reception with Ira Glass at Chautauqua’s Community House before his performance on July 29th.
The Wood Brothers have learned to trust their hearts. For the better part of two decades, they’ve cemented their reputation as freethinking songwriters, road warriors, and community builders, creating a catalog of diverse music and a loyal audience who’ve grown alongside them through the years. That evolution continues with Heart is the Hero, the band’s eighth studio album. Recorded analog to 16-track tape, this latest effort finds its three creators embracing the chemistry of their acclaimed live shows by capturing their performances in real-time direct from the studio floor with nary a computer in sight. An acoustic-driven album that electrifies, Heart is the Hero is stocked with songs that target not only the heart, but the head and hips, too.
“We love records that come from the era of less tracks and more care,” explains co-founder Oliver Wood. “When you use a computer during the tracking process, you have an infinite number of tracks at your disposal, which implies that nothing is permanent, and everything can be fixed. Tape gives you limitations that force you to be creative and intentional. You don’t look at the music on a screen; you listen to it, and you learn to focus on the feeling of the performance.”
Throughout Heart Is The Hero, those performances are matched by the visceral storytelling and songwriting chops that have turned The Wood Brothers into Grammy-nominated leaders of American roots music, even as their music reaches far beyond the genre’s borders. The stripped down swagger of “Pilgrim” underscores Oliver’s reminder to slow down and experience each moment as an interactive observer, rather than a passive tourist. A similar theme anchors “Between the Beats,” where Oliver draws upon a meditation technique — maintaining one’s focus on the space between heartbeats — to reach a new level of presence. The gentle sway of country soul gem “Rollin’ On,” featuring horns by Matt Glass meyer and Roy Agee, expounds on the time honored tradition of love as the guiding light through darkness, while “Mean Man World” finds Chris Wood singing about his responsibilities as a father whose young daughter is poised to inherit an uncertain future. “Line Those Pockets” is a universal call for mercy and understanding over materialism. “Everybody’s just trying to be happy, so put your money away; line those pockets with grace,” the band sings in three-part harmony during the song’s chorus, which emphasizes compassion over cash as the world’s true currency. Together, these songs offer a snapshot of a spirited, independent-minded group at the peak of its powers, always pushing forward and seeking to evolve beyond what’s come before.
“There’s still acoustic guitar, upright bass, and percussion on this album — things people use all the time — but we’re always thinking, ‘How can we make this sound like us, but not like something we’ve already done?'” Oliver says. “Sometimes, the only way to do that is to get weird.”
That sense of exploration pumps its way through Heart is the Hero like lifeblood. Arriving on the heels of 2019’s Live at The Fillmore, 2020’s Kingdom In My Mind, and Oliver Wood’s solo album Always Smilin‘ — all of which were released on Honey Jar Records, the band’s independent label — Heart is the Hero is bold, bright, and singularly creative, a fully realized collective effort ultimately greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a group whose willingness to experiment has earned acclaim from Rolling Stone and NPR, as well as an annual touring schedule of sold-out music halls and theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. Ask The Wood Brothers, though, and they’ll tell you to expect the unexpected.
“We are never satisfied if we are not searching for new musical recipes,” says Jano Rix, nodding to the uncharted territory that Heart is the Hero covers. Chris Wood agrees, adding, “We are one of those bands that isn’t easily categorized. We know what our strengths are, but we can’t help but push the envelope, as well. It’s too much fun.”
Ida Mae
For nearly two straight years following the release of their critically acclaimed debut, Chasing Lights, Ida Mae lived on the road, crisscrossing the US from coast to coast as they performed hundreds of dates with everyone from Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss to Marcus King and Greta Van Fleet. And while those shows were certainly formative for the electrifying British duo, it was what happened in between—the countless hours spent driving through small towns and big cities, past sprawling suburbs and forgotten ghost towns, across rolling plains and snow-capped mountains—that truly laid the groundwork for the band’s transportive new album, Click Click Domino. Written primarily in the backseat of a moving car, the record embodies all the momentum and possibility of the great American unknown, offering up a series of cinematic vignettes full of hope and disappointment, promise and regret, connection and loneliness. The songs on Click Click Domino are raw and direct, fueled by an innovative mix of vintage instruments and modern electronics, and the performances are loose and exhilarating to match, drawing on early rock and roll, classic country, British folk, and 50’s soul to forge a sound that’s equal parts Alan Lomax field recording and 21st century garage band. Turpin and Jean produced the album themselves, recording primarily on their own in their adopted hometown of Nashville during the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the collection is certainly bolstered by appearances from high profile guests like Marcus King, Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka, and Ethan Johns, the heart and soul of the record remains Ida Mae’s intoxicating chemistry, which has never felt more vibrant, ambitious, or self-assured.
Now married, Turpin and Jean first met a little over a decade ago while attending university in Bath. The pair bonded immediately over their love for the sounds of bygone eras, and they quickly earned rave reviews everywhere from the BBC to the NME with their raucous first group, Kill It Kid. Starting over fresh as a duo named for Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s “Ida Mae,” the first song they ever harmonized on, Turpin and Jean relocated to Nashville in 2019 and released Chasing Lights to similarly widespread critical acclaim. Rolling Stone hailed the album’s “stomping swirl of blues and guitar- heavy Americana,” while The Independent lauded its “retro lustre” and “impressive experimentation,” and NPR’s Heavy Rotation called it “tightly drawn, harmonic and hypnotic.” The music helped the earn the duo a slew of support dates with the likes of Greta Van Fleet, The Marcus King Band, Blackberry Smoke, Josh Ritter, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and The Lone Bellow, as well as performances at Bonnaroo, the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, Germany’s Reeperbahn Festival, and Switzerland’s Zermatt Unplugged.
A 100 year tradition, the beloved Chautauqua Silent Film Series continues with Clash of the Wolves, a perennial favorite for Chautauqua audiences. This exciting adventure film stars the original “wonder dog” Rin-Tin-Tin. It’s a love story, an action adventure and a funny good-time rolled into one.
In honor of Chautauqua’s 125th year, 125 year-old selected shorts will play before the features!
Now in the sixth decade of his professional life, Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: at the forefront of world culture, technology, business and music. In addition to being recognized as a legendary pianist and composer, Herbie Hancock has been an integral part of every popular music movement since the 1960’s. As a member of the Miles Davis Quintet that pioneered a groundbreaking sound in jazz, he also developed new approaches on his own recordings, followed by his work in the 70s — with record-breaking albums such as “Headhunters” — that combined electric jazz with funk and rock in an innovative style that continues to influence contemporary music. “Rockit” and “Future Shock” marked Hancock’s foray into electronic dance sounds; during the same period he also continued to work in an acoustic setting with V.S.O.P., which included ex-Miles Davis bandmates Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams.
Hancock received an Academy Award for his Round Midnight film score and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year for “River: The Joni Letters,” and two 2011 Grammy Awards for the recently released globally collaborative CD, “The Imagine Project.” Many of his compositions, including “Canteloupe Island,” “Maiden Voyage,” “Watermelon Man” and “Chameleon,” are modern standards..
Hancock serves as Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and as Institute Chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. He is a founder of The International Committee of Artists for Peace (ICAP), and was recently given the “Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres” by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon. In 2011 Hancock was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, and in December of 2013, received a Kennedy Center Honor. In 2014 he was was named the 2014 Norton Professor Of Poetry at Harvard University, completing his lectures series, “The Ethics Of Jazz,” as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series for a period of six weeks. His memoirs, Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, were published by Viking in 2014, and in February 2016 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. A member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hancock is currently in the studio at work on a new album.
A 100 year tradition, the beloved Chautauqua Silent Film Series continues with It, the film that made the lovable Clara Bow the “It Girl” of the 1920s. Clara plays a young girl working her way up in business and romance. Her exciting adventures and misadventures will delight all ages.
In honor of Chautauqua’s 125th year, 125 year-old selected shorts will play before the features!
