Califone Reunites With Robyn Mineko Williams And Artists For Echo Mine V2 On Audiotree STAGED

Providing audiences with new perspectives on their acclaimed 2019 collaboration, Echo Mine, Califone and Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists premiere Echo Mine v2 as part of Audiotree's STAGED series on Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 8pm Central Time.

Tickets to access the multimedia performance, webcast from Chicago's Lincoln Hall, are available via audiotree.tv/staged. Purchase a Stream Pass for Echo Mine v2 plus a digital download of Califone's album Echo Mine for $18 including fees. Purchase a Stream Pass only for $11 including fees. Each Stream Pass provides access to the Echo Mine v2 webcast until midnight Central Time on Wednesday, October 28, 2020.

Echo Mine was inspired by and created alongside Chicago dance icon Claire Bataille, one of four founding members of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the longtime director of the Lou Conte Dance Studio. Danced by three Chicago-based artists mentored closely by Bataille, Echo Mine explores the nature of artistic legacy and lineage, as well as the inimitable qualities Bataille brought to her work as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. In October 2017, one month after her first rehearsal with Mineko Williams for the project, Bataille was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she passed away at age 66 in December 2018. Before her untimely death, Bataille encouraged the work's completion.

"The five-minute solo for Claire that we made together serves as the source material, the heartbeat, of Echo Mine," says Mineko Williams. "Only with the guidance and deeply thoughtful contributions of my collaborators was I able to finish," adds the choreographer. "Their brilliance and intuition bring Echo Mine to life in ways I could never have imagined." The resulting work is a dreamlike memoir and meditation on themes of lineage, legacy, loss, and hope.

Joining Califone's Tim Rutili (bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals) for Echo Mine v2 are longtime collaborators Brian Deck (bass, electronics, percussion, synthesizer) and Ben Massarella (percussion), responding live within the framework of Califone's Echo Mine score to the unique qualities and rhythms of this multi-camera presentation. Joining Mineko Williams onstage are Meredith Dincolo - like Mineko Williams a former company member at Hubbard Street - and current company member Jacqueline Burnett. Echo Mine v2 adapts original scenic and projection design by CandyStations (Deborah Johnson), lighting design by Eric Southern, and costume design by Hogan McLaughlin. Echo Mine, the first new Califone album since Stitches (Dead Oceans Records, 2013), is available now digitally, as a vinyl LP and a CD from Jealous Butcher Records.

Says Robyn Mineko Williams: "The movement and the music started together and grew together, like two clear entities, at times totally intertwined and at other times bouncing off one another, sort of like reflections, but somehow always connected and listening."

Says Tim Rutili: "I'm not sure how to explain what Robyn does; watching her and the dancers rehearse felt similar to being in front of a Rothko painting. There is a deliberate precision to the movement that pulls the specifics of a story into abstract forms that illuminate a kind of dream logic, deepening without words our sense of what it is to be human in a physical body."

Califone and Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists: Echo Mine v2

Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 8pm through Wednesday, October 28, 2020 at midnight Stream Pass plus Echo Mine digital album download $18. Stream Pass only $11.

Providing audiences with new perspectives on their acclaimed 2019 collaboration, Echo Mine, Califone and Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists premiere Echo Mine v2 exclusively via STAGED, Audiotree's new livestream concert series. Echo Mine v2 highlights musicians and dancers working together as one, blending Califone's original score with Mineko Williams' choreography, reconfigured for the screen using multiple cameras.

To post a comment, you must register and login.