15th Bravo Awards 1999

You You You The Albuquerque Arts Alliance and K&M Television present the 15th annual Bravo Award winners.

The Bravo Awards reflect the arts community and its extraordinary contributions to the quality of life in Albuquerque. The 15th annual Bravo Awards recognize the winners' achievements over many years or for specific events produced during 1998. Well, the vision of the Christmas Joy program really came from a vision of about three nights of myself. I was the founder at church and my mind kept wandering from the ministry to this vision. I was busy at the time, and Lynn Cox, the co-ographer of the show, had just come from the Atlanta Ballet Company and felt that she had done so many nutcrackers that she would like to do something else in her life. So with my vision, and I'm too busy, and Lynn unemployed, it was a perfect match. So I showed her the vision, asked her to help me with it, and then I would help, but she choreographed it, and it has grown in the last 12, 13 years to a more maturity level than it did 12 years ago.

Lynn is a gorgeous co-ographer and has matured and developed, and it's just a beautiful show. We welcome everybody to come see it over here. Well, Lynn Crawford is our co-ographer, as I have said, and she has a beautiful gift of choosing different music, and the show has really almost changed because the Christian ministry of song has grown also. When we first started, we only had like Amy Grant and maybe Sandy Patty, and now we have so many composers and writers to choose from. So of course the word and the song is a ministry, and Lynn just has a gift of choosing, and then she takes her the feeling of the music and sets forth to, she really interprets the word. She just don't dance to Christian music, it's interpreted, and so Lynn has that gift in, and that's how it develops.

Well, the performers vision for all the students, we have 60 members, and what we're trying to gain is just like the Bravo Award, it gives inspiration, and we get inspiration as teachers seeing students grow from age 8 to 18, and seeing their achievement. And so it's just a beautiful way of awarding ourselves without even the gift of the Bravo Award. The performers is a ballet and jazz company, as you have mentioned, and we always are in process of new development. Christmas Joy does grow every year, and it has a new piece every year, if not three or four. And so the growth of the ballet and jazz is always there, but we're also going to do a spring show in the year of 2000, and we do this every other year, and we do it of just jazz. So our new jazz show will be coming up in the year of 2000 in May.

The Vehicle Project was a collaborative arts project and series of events for the month of November in 1998. The Harvard Arts Center got together with Plan B, evolving arts in Santa Fe, and we created a collaborative intercity project that brought together Albuquerque and Santa Fe arts communities. And it included a bi-city exhibition that was juried, and the exhibition included work in both of our galleries, as well as billboards and city buses. The Vehicle Project began when I went up to Santa Fe to speak with the directors of Plan B, evolving arts, to talk about ways we might be able to collaborate since both of the organizations seemed to be similar in being very grassroots community-oriented alternative arts centers. We immediately started brainstorming on themes and what could bring us together, and the very first thought that came to mind was, well, the lack of transportation between the two cities or public transportation. The fact that we can't get back and forth easily actually prevents more collaboration from happening.

So we decided to go with that theme to both bring the artists together, but also raise awareness to that issue. Collaboration between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is very important, I think, because both cities are just full of incredible artists, and we suffer from this divide partly because of the transportation, but partly because of attitudes. And we set out to kind of chip away at both of those things with the Vehicle Project. The Vehicle Project reached out to the community in a couple different ways. First of all, it's a very universal theme, and it's something that everyone in New Mexico has an interest in. So it's something they wanted to be involved with. The other thing that it did was it reached so many different levels of artists. We had elementary school children, we had such accomplished artists as Patrick Nagatani, Lucy Lepard, and the whole spectrum in between. It was so incredibly well received by the community, the general population and the arts community, and by the press, which was wonderful.

There were incredible collaborations between civic organizations and nonprofit grassroots arts organizations, and one thing that was really exciting was the tumble words, which is the literary arts program of New Mexico Arts got heavily involved, and they did a wonderful program of poetry called Ride the Moon, that just took off and added this incredible layer of poetry to the whole project, which was just a wonderful aspect of it. So it was far surpassed what we had expected in the beginning. Our hope is that from here, vehicle goes in any number of directions. We would really love it if there were people who were so attached to the idea and so intrigued by it that they decided to take it in its own directions from here. The vehicle metaphor, it means metaphor, and there's endless interpretations.

It was neat in the show because some people were very metaphoric about it, and some were very literal about vehicles, so it was fun to see the range of art that came out of the theme as well. The symphony chorus was formed, actually we're in our 26th season, and we have seven charter members that still sing with us. Of those, we have two that have had continual membership, and that's Edith Sheets and Linda Rice. It's a wonderful accomplishment for them to stay with us that long. People are under the impression that a number of the people within the symphony perhaps are paid to be there. It is all volunteer, each one of the members are volunteer, and we, in fact, over last year gave 12,000 hours as a combined group toward the performances that we gave. But in addition to that, we also donated ourselves out of our own pockets, over $24,000 to the symphony. I mean, talk about support of the arts. These people are right there where it needs to be.

To be a part of this chorus requires a tremendous commitment. Every Monday night we rehearse from 715 to 10, and many times we come down to rehearse all tired by a long work day, and we always leave rejuvenated, uplifted from having made wonderful, beautiful. Beautiful music together. Many people drive from as far as Anafei, and it's a choral, Akamo Pueblo, to sing. That takes a tremendous commitment. For the few openings we have, we have auditions, every May, and the director Roger Malone, listens to these people on an individual basis. He listens for their tone quality, their pitch accuracy, sight reading ability, their general musicianship, and from that, he's able to pick the very best of singers. And what a privilege it is for me to be a part of a community of such talent and wonderful, caring people. We have an outstanding staff. Mary Beth Gunning is our accompanist, and she's an artist in her own right. She can take the most difficult score and make it seem easy.

Our administrator is Michelle Long, and the staggering number of details she has to deal with is incredible. She's really Roger's right hand woman. David Breger is the equipment manager, and his is a really thankful job, but he does it so well. After the staff, we have, I think, dedicated officers. We have section leaders, whose duty is to keep accurate records of attendance. It's a wonderful, smoothly run organization, and it couldn't be run that way without these kind of people at the helm. Since 1983, Roger Malone, the director of the symphony chorus, has put together this wonderful chorus and has a national reputation for being of musical excellence. They're fantastic. Roger is a tremendous rehearsal technician. He expects the very best from what we can give, and the chorus, I think, responds well to that.

The chorus is made up of more men than women, and in the arena of mixed choruses, this is unheard of. I mean, it's unusual. We have six members that are also married couples. In fact, we have two that are going to tie the night, not this next month, so you can see that we certainly do have harmony in the chorus. It was in 1975 when I started at Albuquerque Little Theater. That was my first place to work. Carl Betts was a wonderful man. He taught me what I didn't know anything about the theater at the time, and he taught me things, and I thanked him one day, and he says, listen, little lady. The better I make you look, the better I look, and it's my living. So I was very, very fortunate to work with Carl Betts. You know, people ask me a lot about how did I get started enacting, and it was a lady came and God had sent her, and I didn't realize that at the time.

She showed up in my door two months after my husband died, and she says, Angie, I've got to talk to you. I want to know what you're going to do with the rest of your life, because I was not a person who went out and published to do anything. So I said, nothing, I can't do anything. She says, that's not good enough. So figure something that made you happy that you did by yourself. I remember two little one act plays in high school, and I enjoyed them thoroughly. She said, that's it. That's it. I said, oh no, I can't do that. My husband would kill me. She said, your husband is gone, and we're not going to lose you. So let me call a little theater. She called a little theater, and they cast me on the third time I auditioned. Bernie Thomas says, come back, please. And I did. I kept going back, and the third time I tried out for a play, I got cast in gazebo, and I haven't stopped since. I'm like I'm wood that I love it. And this morning at six o'clock, my telephone rang, and this man in San Antonio called me, and he says, I have decided to use you in the play that I'm writing.

And it's called something about the medicine lady, the healer, and the one that my agent cast for me is called, and all the pretty horses, something like that. And so two casts in two days, and I don't know, but somebody is sitting on my shoulder, I think, and I like it. For me, it was an interesting story during high school and college, all those years, up to the age of 24, I had not written the poem. It never occurred to me that I could write poems, or that I would want to. I wanted to be a fiction writer, but I read a couple of anthologies. Before I took a workshop with Thomas McGrath, who's a well-known poet, and at the behest of my good friend, Mel Weisberg, in LA, this was.

So I started writing poems and about midway through the course, I got the idea, I actually mentioned surprise, that I, that's what I needed to do. That's where my interest in language really first came through. So that was the beginning of it, and they took me aside and went to Beverly Caverns and had a beer. I said, you should be writing poetry, and by that time I was unstoppable, anyway, I got so involved in the whole business of writing poetry, that fiction, you know, rather fled from my mind. I like Freud's writing very much and have read a good deal of it. Anyway, I must have about 20 poems having to do with Freud in one way or another, and these include dream poems, you know, that I make dream poems, I invent them. Sometimes I get a start from an actual dream, but sometimes I have to just invent the dream.

Well, the reason I like to become a dancer is because I think it's very important to preserve forever I come from, and also to show to another people the really original country these people come from. And also in this country, because this country we have a lot of nationalities, and they can preserve these beautiful dancers because it's heritage. I think the strongest skill to teach people is to give to the people my best, you know, to tell people we have to continue, and to see so many Miguel Cabo in another places. But the way I do, the way I feel from my heart, and to show to people the original dances, not change it, because this is important thing for the future.

I think, you know, in these kind of dances, any age is welcome to learn. Like when I'm teaching John Wands, you know, 5, 6 or 7, sometimes it's hard to tell who is the one who can go. Because sometimes, you know, I have a John Wands, 6, 7, 5, and after 3 or 4 years, these little ones didn't want to continue anymore. But I notice, you know, the difference in some people, like no cyclists, any citizens, like adults, you know, they start late, but it's very serious. Because these people think this quality, this is beautiful dances, and we have to preserve these dances with class. The success of the Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program is largely attributed to the close sponsorship from the Albuquerque Public Schools, the University of New Mexico School of Fine Arts, and the close relationship, which the Youth Symphony Program has with the School Music Program.

The age span of Youth Symphony is represented by students from age 8 through 18. Obviously, then starting in the elementary school, going through middle school and the high school. Each year, over 600 students auditioned for places in one of the five orchestras in the Youth Symphony Program. Once they are admitted, then they also must re-addition every year to maintain the standard of excellence. Each of the five orchestras in the Youth Symphony Program, that includes an elementary group called the Albuquerque Junior Strings, two middle school groups called the Albuquerque Junior Orchestra, and Albuquerque Junior Symphony, and the two high school groups, the Youth Orchestra and Youth Symphony, each perform at least three times in the community, either in the public school performing arts centers, or at the University of New Mexico, or Port Joy Hall. The Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program performs a lot outside of Albuquerque this year. One of the orchestras went to Rayman, New Mexico, all of the Junior Groups perform at mid-school.

The Youth Symphony, the highest performing group in the program, every year tours. This year, we are touring out of the country to an important experience in Germany, where we will first start with our Sister City Home Shot and go to Dresden and Prague and Stuttgart and many important cities in Germany. Alumni from the Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program are everywhere in the world. When the Alums leave this program, many of them find the experience to be an informal one and still maintain membership in an amateur group as a church, but many of them become professional musicians, and we are very proud when people are admitted into orchestras like we have today. Cleveland, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Metropolitan Opera, and places like that. The family patronage of the arts is really starting with my generation. My father, my adopted father, Frank Alange, really loved the operas, and he had all the LPs of all of the operas.

And particularly Caruso, but he was not wealthy enough to really be a financial patron, but he strongly enjoyed it. And he influenced my appreciation of classical music and the opera. I'm not a real symphony enthusiast from a technical point of view, but I really do enjoy listening to it. And the value that it brings to this community and why did we choose the symphony as one of the organizations to which we contribute our time and money is because of the wonderful aspect that music brings to people, particularly children. And all of us, all the adults, it is a peaceful type of activity in a sense that it makes you feel good to be there, it makes you feel good to hear it, and it's good to see it live, because it's a different element to be in front of an orchestra rather than listening to a CD.

And the symphony family, to which I've been grown to enjoy over the years, has been a very good family to be in. The financial aspects of it have been extremely elusive for the board, of which I've been a member for so many years. And I felt that the symphony was a very good place to concentrate my efforts. As a patron of the arts, I really don't expect anything in return other than the satisfaction of having succeeded to preserving the symphony in this particular case for my children and the children of my associates and staff and the rest of this community. This community has been very good to me, and I feel like it's an obligation in my part to help preserve the culture that our families and our children need and to preserve the entertainment that the New Mexico Symphony provides.

The role that a patron volunteer should play is not necessarily just making contributions. Patrons should support the arts, the symphony in this particular instance, by subscribing to the various series, the classical series, or the pop series, by encouraging their friends to support the symphony. And if it all possible, making monetary contributions to endowment funds to create a perpetual financial security for the symphony and other cultural events. Well, I try to think about how Aquila has managed to be successful for 32 seasons now. I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I think musical theater, first of all, which is what Aquila does, is a very popular art form in America. I think we have always, over the years, tried to work within our means. We don't spend so much money doing something that we have to charge so much money that people can't go.

I think we have always tried to strike a happy medium between providing high quality performance and yet still being able to make it affordable for a broad audience. So the fact that we have over 60,000 people a year coming to Aquila shows, I think hopefully reflects that we've managed to do both things well, produce good shows and price it where people can actually afford to come. There's to me that there's a spirit of Aquila of family when we go to produce, put a show together. And we try hard to make everybody feel like their role is really appreciated. In the same hand, we're not just goofing around either. Yes, it's a sense of family, but with a very particular purpose, which is to produce, again, really top-notch musical theater, and we want family to take pride in doing something that could stand up against many professional productions and hold up very well. So we take our work seriously and yet try to have some fun too while we're at it. It's as simple as that. That's what keeps people coming back and volunteering hundreds of hours to do a show.

What I like to say to people about Civic Light Opera is that we try to provide our volunteer performers with as close to a professional feeling production process as possible. Professional designers, professional technicians, professional directors, choreographers, all coming in to work with these volunteer amateur performers and amateurs are very loosely used term in my book. Professional means somebody who does it for a living. Many of our volunteer performers, if they so chose, I believe, could go off and make a living. Their quality of performance is at a professional level. It's just that they've chosen another career path, probably wisely. The job of an actor is a difficult one to make a living at, but we have people who are as skilled as people who are out in New York making a living at it. We've been together for 32 years now and have never had a performing space to call our own up until 1996.

We've been doing five shows a year for year after year after year, already having the Highland even not renovated yet. We've been able to add more shows to our season. We have now been able to do, for example, a world premiere of a musical, and now Miguel, which we co-produced with, what, come from here. Just a couple of months ago, we did the Little Moon Theatre, which is a musical written to be performed entirely by children. We did that here. It has opened up a lot of opportunities for us to provide more musical theater to Albuquerque. So I see us as eventually striking a good balance of performing at Pulpjoy, performing here, new works, traditional works, children's theater, the possibilities are endless now, I think. So even though it's sometimes been a hassle owning the Highland Theatre overall, it's been a big, positive, not only for us, I think, for Albuquerque in general. As you have seen, the Albuquerque Arts community is extraordinary, and promises to continue reflecting a unique, creative, and special place.

Thank you very much.