SALON is the idea & creation of Rachel Elizabeth Shirk, Voice Coach & Instructor at A5A. One of Rachel’s interest is interpreting, creating, & sharing vocal & interdisciplinary performance work. She believes new performance is essential for creating and growing healthy individuals & communities.

“I wanted to see performance art that I love & that is diverse. It moves, it improvises, it crosses genres & disciplines, it’s skillful & honed but also passionate & exploratory. It doesn’t ask permission, and it doesn’t concern itself with where it fits into the established order. It stays true to its own idea, its own feeling.

The artists I invited to perform with me are some of my favorite local performers. I wanted to make space for us to share our work–not only with an audience, but with each other. And I want our audiences to meet each other. I like collage. I like mixing it up. I like to be inspired, challenged, engaged. I like to perform what I want to perform. That’s what inspired this show.”

Featured Artists

Rachel Shirk/Vocals, Tammy Melody Gomez/Performance Poetry, Emil Rapstine/Local Musician with The Angelus, and More.

Rachel Shirk loves to sing! Starting with children’s choirs & musical theater, and later high school choirs & summer music camps, Rachel went on to earn her B.A. in Vocal Performance at Bennington College (VT). While in the Northeast, she had the opportunity to work & perform with internationally-renowned artists Meredith Monk & Ricky Ian Gordon. She has performed in both classical & avant-garde settings, from singing with the UT Austin choir & the Fort Worth Opera chorus to appearing in I/O, an interdisciplinary performance piece that took place in an airplane hanger. Pocket Lyric, her most recent performance piece premiered.

Photo by: Erin Burrough

Emil Rapstine:  The Angelus has long remained dedicated to a sound that builds like storm systems and bursts into bone rattling sonic downpours around principle songwriter Emil Rapstine’s melancholic vision. Rapstine’s solo shows are equally breathtaking as he is apt to enthrall a crowd armed with only his angelic voice and droning guitar.

Photo By D. Cropper

Tammy Gomez is profiled in LAS TEJANAS: 300 YEARS OF HISTORY (UT Press), and is featured in “Voices from Texas,” a PBS documentary about Tejano/a poets. She was a Bridge resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts, and is a Creative Capital award finalist. Tammy received an Austin Chronicle Critic’s Choice Award, dubbing her “Best In-Your-Face Poet (in Two Languages, No Less)” in 1994. She is an inaugural artist on the United States Artists’ USA Projects website, launched in December 2010.”

Sunday, January 16, 2011
4:00 to  6:00 pm
Admission By Donation – $10 Suggested
(those that need to pay less can, those that can pay more will be encouraged to do so)

ARTS FIFTH AVENUE

1628 5th Avenue

Fort Worth, TX 76104

artsfifthavenue.org

817-923-9500

Arts Fifth Avenue is a 501c3 non-profit organization. All donations are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Partial support provided by the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, The City of Fort Worth, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.