TheatreSquared Hosts Live Concert Performance 8/8 at 7pm
T2 welcomes Grammy Award-winner Larry Mitchell, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, and blues & folk musician Katie Martin
Tickets to the live stream are available for a suggested donation at theatre2.org
NORTHWEST ARKANSAS—July 27, 2020—TheatreSquared announced today that the company will be hosting a live concert on Saturday, August 8 at 7pm. This special offering for the Northwest Arkansas community features “the sounds of healing,” as interpreted by jack-of-all-trades guitarist and Grammy Award-winner Larry Mitchell, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, and blues and folk musician Katie Martin.
This remarkable trio comes together live on stage for the first live-streamed concert from the state-of-the-art West Theatre at TheatreSquared, and the first event planned at the company’s new home since the company suspended performances in early March.
A small audience of invited guests will attend the performance in person, with careful social distancing and sanitation protocols in place. The majority of attendees will join via live stream in an inaugural test of T2's new multi-camera, high definition broadcast system designed to echo the intimacy of a TheatreSquared performance experience at home. Access to the stream will be available anywhere in the world, either free or with a suggested donation to help support NWA’s theatre.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Larry Mitchell is a Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer and performer who has toured the world playing guitar with well-known artists including Tracy Chapman, Billy Squier, Ric Ocasek and Miguel Bosé. In his original compositions, Larry skillfully weaves guitar textures that showcase his virtuosity as a solo artist and ensemble player. As an artist, he has released 9 solo records and won a San Diego Music Award for best pop jazz artist. As a producer-engineer, Larry has won 26 New Mexico Music Awards in various categories from pop, adult contemporary, rap, rock, country and Native American. He won a Grammy Award for producing, engineering and performing on “Totemic Flute Chants” by artist Johnny Whitehorse, who is better known as Robert Mirabal of Taos Pueblo.
Larry is currently touring with his own trio as well as with Native artists Shelley Morningsong, Dawn Avery, Joy Harjo and Robert Mirabal. He has many long-standing endorsements and relationships with companies such as D’Adarrio Strings, D’Marzio Pickups, Tech 21 NYC, Dava Picks, Majik Box, Fractal Audio, Composite Acoustics, Hotone, Samson, Keeley Electronics and now with Knaggs Guitars and Godin Acoustic Guitars.
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019.
The author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children's books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave, her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Writers’ Award, a Rasmuson US Artist Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.
Katie Martin has been performing across the Southeast since 2006. Martin’s music is a unique blend of blues, folk, and soul that mesmerizes audiences in a way that has to be seen to understand. Her agelessly soulful vocals soar effortlessly above a rich propulsion of acoustic blues guitar reminiscent of Muddy Waters combined with the beautiful folk guitar of James Taylor, all performed with the honest intensity of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Seeing Katie Martin perform is an experience like no other, and her refreshing individuality is one that leaves a lasting impression long after the stage has grown silent. She released her acoustic EP " Away From Here" with Haney Records in 2011. In 2015 she released "Katie Martin: Live From the Chocolate Room" ft. Tony Brook on slide guitar, and her debut album, "Purpose" both recorded, produced, and engineered by Larry Mitchell at The Chocolate Room. In 2017 she released her 3rd acoustic ep "Live From The Chocolate Room: Vol. II" and in Feb. of 2018, she released her 2nd album, "Hope" both recorded, produced, and engineered by Larry Mitchell at The Chocolate Room.
For access to the stream, please contact the TheatreSquared Box Office at 479.777.7477 or visit theatre2.org.
For further information about the concert, or TheatreSquared, contact Joanna Sheehan Bell at (479) 777-7081 or at joanna@theatre2.org.
About TheatreSquared
TheatreSquared’s signature offering of bold new plays in an intimate setting has driven its growth to become the state’s largest theatre, offering more than 300 performances annually in two intimate spaces. The playwright-led company is one of mid-America’s leading laboratories for new work, having launched more than 60 new plays. Notable collaborators have included Bryna Turner, Anne García-Romero, Pulitzer Prize finalist Lisa D’Amour, Qui Nguyen, Mona Mansour, Tony Award nominee Lee Blessing, Amy Evans, and many others. TheatreSquared’s remarkable expansion—with a twentyfold increase in audience in just the past decade—parallels the emergence of its home region in the northwest corner of Arkansas as a booming population center and destination for American art. Offering far-reaching access and education programs and an open-all-day gathering space, the Commons Bar/Café, TheatreSquared remains rooted in its founding vision, that “theatre—done well and with passion—can transform lives and communities.”
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Major funding for the TheatreSquared Season 15 is provided by The Walton Family Foundation, Inc.; the Walmart Foundation; and by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Marketing support for TheatreSquared Season 15 is provided by Experience Fayetteville, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Fayetteville Flyer, CitiScapes, KUAF, MailCo USA and Univision.