The Arts

Philip, Ryan and Caleb, three-quarters of the filmmaking team behind “The Last Slice” (taken by Lynn Jacobson).

Seattle International Film Festival this morning hosted a well-attended public screening of the 11 winners of the 2013 3-Minute Masterpiece digital-film contest.  At the end of the show, four top prize-winners were announced.

Grand prize winner: “The Last Slice,” by Philip Baca, Caleb Melvin, Jason Thompson and Ryan Trudeau

Michael J. Rima youth-filmmaker winner: “Laser Rabbit,” by Matt Wells, with Chase Helgeson (and one evil bunny)

Seattle Times readers’ choice: “Freddie Hits the Pipe,” by Parker Briggs

Special mention for Seattle-centric film: “History Is Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes,” by Eric Pokorny

Thanks to all Seattle Times readers who entered this year’s edition of the contest, and to SIFF, which partners with the Times on this project each year. Watch and share all the winning movies here.

May 18 is Association of Art Museum Directors’ Art Museum Day, which means some special opportunities for museum visitors in Seattle. Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum will offer free general admission that day (Note: the SAM exhibit “Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London” is exempt). And at the Henry Art Gallery, new members will get $10 off a membership, current members will get a free coffee/hot drink card to be redeemed at Molly’s Café , and there will be pencils and lapel pins for all.

Artist Trust, which supports Washington artists through grants, professional development and other resources, announces the recipients of the 2013 Irving and Yvonne Twining Humber Award, as well as fellowships in a variety of disciplines.

Norie Sato is the winner of the $10,000 Humber Award. Sato, active in the Seattle art scene since

Norie Sato/Photo by Ellen M. Banner, The Seattle Times

moving here in 1972, is the creator of significant public artworks, locally and across the country. She was the lead artist for Sound Transit’s Seattle Central Link light rail, and has worked on projects for transit systems in Portland, Salt Lake City and Tempe. Recent projects include a 300-foot-long glass facade for the San Francisco International Airport and work for the new Port of Portland headquarters. Her work has been recognized five times by the Public Art Network’s Year in in Review. In a statement for Artist Trust, Sato writes,

…this has come at an especially important time for me. In 2011, my studio building where I had been for over 30 years was condemned. Since then, my “studio” has been in storage and I have worked in-between spaces that belong to other artists, fabricators or printmakers, my computer, and my dining room or basement, but without a real studio base. I am now building a new studio where I can finally bring my things out of storage and begin working again.

Recipients of $7,500 fellowships are: emerging fields & cross-disciplinary arts: Robb Kunz; SuttonBeresCuller; traditional & folk arts: David Boxley; Sharon Glenn; Delbert Miller; Oleksandra Pryveda; visual arts: Leo Berk; Chris Crites; Michelle Forsyth; Ronald Hall; Jeremy Mangan; Richard Martinez; Amie McNeel; Saya Moriyasu; Preston Singletary; performing arts: Etienne Cakpo; Amy O’Neal.

Cellist Olivia Marckx, 13, of Bellevue, and violinist Sarah Hall, 18, of Arlington, are the winners of the 2013 Young Artist Awards, presented by KING FM and Seattle Chamber Music Society. The two were chosen from 11 finalists by a panel of nine judges as well as by votes from the public on KING’s website. They’ll perform in a live broadcast at 8 p.m. May 24 on KING (98.1). Learn more about them, and the awards, here. More than 70 musicians between ages 6-20 entered this year’s competition, according to KING.

From Seattle Times theater critic Misha Berson:

Viewer ratings for “American Idol” may have hit the skids this year.  And the bicker-a-thon between divas Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj was a total turn-off.  But the final episodes this week  give us two fine singers who really deserve their time in the sun, and have the right stuff for a bright musical future.  Whatever its faults (and there are more than a few), this long- running TV singing contest still can muster up some worthy talent we’d never know existed otherwise.

Who do you think will get the confetti bath and “Idol” crown?

Kree Harrison possesses one of those classic country voices that can stomp and torch and twang.   Though some of her song choices (and the choices made for her) failed to show it off to best advantage,  there were times when her rich, deep tones and  innate warmth triumphed.  My favorite performance of hers is a sultry but vulnerable  rendering of “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

And then there is Candice Glover, my pick for “Idol” winner and the one who can do amazing things with her effortlessly elastic pipes, without losing the essence of a song’s meaning.  As for the side chatter about whether  Candy is  “current” enough for today’s tough pop market:  What’s not ever current about a singer with an awe-inspiring vocal range, who can be jazzy and soulful, sassy and subtle in one breath? And isn’t it about time an American gave those thriving British soul sisters a run for it?   Hard to pick a top number from Candice’s great “Idol” run,  but I do love her gutsy-sweet rejuvenation of an old Dionne Warwick tune.

After 15 months of negotiations, the Seattle Symphony players organization and the SSO board of directors have approved a new contract, through August 2015.

Details, from the SSO:

The financial terms include concessions in musicians’ salaries for the remainder of the 2012–2013 season, a move to a more economical healthcare plan, and a temporary reduction in the size of the orchestra. This will be followed by salary and pension increases in subsequent years and the gradual restoration of vacant positions. The new contract includes a significant new electronic media agreement that will allow the launch of a new series of live recordings online and on CD, and provide unprecedented audio and audio visual access, via the Internet, to rehearsals and concerts for public engagement, promotional, educational and community purposes.

The length of the symphony season will stay at 45 weeks, and regarding that “temporary reduction” part: The minimum size of the orchestra will be reduced from 85 musicians, stated in the previous contract, to the current level of 81 musicians, with auditions planned next season to fill the openings.

“With this new agreement, we are pleased to demonstrate our good faith to lovers of classical orchestral music and to the donor community. The musicians have spoken; we want excellence, music education for our children, a vital connection to our community, and stability for the Seattle Symphony,” said Tim Hale, chair of the Seattle Symphony and Opera Players’ Organization, in a statement. Leslie Jackson Chihuly, chair of the SSO board, said, “We express our deep gratitude to the entire orchestra for its willingness to work creatively with us on this agreement, and for again agreeing to make concessions. Settling the contract is a great step forward and allows the entire organization to move toward our shared goals, both artistically and financially.”

Photo via http://macklemore.com/tagged/photopage/

Thought you’d seen the last of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis? Well, think again. After the chart-topping success of the single, “Thrift Shop”, the duo are back on top of the Digital Songs chart with “Can’t Hold Us.”

Billboard reports the band’s latest single, “Can’t Hold Us,” received a 25 percent boost in Top 40 airplay, which led to a surge on the Pop Songs chart; sales-wise, it’s at Number One on the Digital Songs chart for a second straight week after leapfrogging Pink, selling 262,000 copies.

The song is currently #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and the act is the first duo to take its first two singles to No. 1 in the Hot 100′s almost-55-year history.

The video for “Can’t Hold Us” is a globe-trotting adventure that eventually leads to some beautiful shots of Seattle.

Major Scales and Jinkx Monsoon

Jinkx Monsoon, the Seattle drag performer who just won the TV competition “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” will bring the cabaret show “The Vaudevillians” to Seattle before launching it in an Off Broadway run in July. “The Vaudevillians,” a musical comedy piece about the zany adventures of an intrepid show-biz trouper and her accompanist (played by Major Scales), will be performed at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. June 2  in the Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center.  Both Jerick Hoffer (Jinkx Monsoon) and Richard Andriessen (Major Scales) are graduates of Cornish College, which now manages the Playhouse; the show is in part a benefit for the college’s scholarship fund. Tickets: $10-$25; (www.brownpapertickets.com).

Hoffer has another Seattle performance before his Big Apple run:  He’ll appear in the 5^th Avenue Theatre concert version of  “Hairspray,” with the Seattle Men’s Chorus, June 20-23.  (www.5thavenue.org).

Seattle Times theater critic Misha Berson writes:    

Mike Daisey’s pop-up run of two new monologues at Seattle Repertory Theatre continues through Saturday with his piece, “F*cking, F*cking, F*cking Ayn Rand.” Last week I caught Daisey’s “American Utopias,” which turned out to be a nearly three-hour extravaganza that wound through his reluctant trip with family to Disney World and his mind-blowing adventures at Burning Man, then grazed by some ruminations on the Occupy Wall Street encampment (including his guilt about not being a more active part of it), and ended up on the Seattle Center lawn, with most of the audience clustered around Daisey and responding warmly to his heartfelt rallying cry for theater as community.

In his current, post-Apple-monologue-debacle phase, Daisey is less concerned with refining and polishing his pieces than ripping them hot off his brain, and sharing them in as direct a way as possible.  “American Utopias” was sloppy, self-indulgent at times, and the Occupy Wall Street segment felt rather like an afterthought.  But since Spalding Gray’s death, Daisey is the only guy I can think of who can sit at a table on a stage talking about himself and keep people listening, laughing and thinking (without any intermission) for such a long stretch.  And in the end, Daisey’s appreciation of his own family, and family in a larger sense, was truly touching.

As for Ayn Rand, what Daisey says about the eccentric author of “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” and the influential right-wing cult that’s glommed on to her weirdly idealistic (and at times barely readable) novels, might be enlightening. Surely, it will no less than entertaining — and it’s 90 minutes long. Info: www.seattlerep.org.

Michelle Dunn Marsh has been named executive director of Photo Center NW, the board of directors announced this week. Marsh, a graduate of Puyallup High School (as well as Pace University and Bard College), will start work this summer. Her resume includes 15 years with Aperture Foundation in New York, and stint as co-publisher of Aperture magazine; senior editor of art/design at Chronicle Books in San Francisco; and professor of graphic design at Seattle Central Community College. She joins the center in a time of growth — other new staff have been hired, from museums and galleries in London, Chicago, and New York, and the center has just finished some renovations.