ArtsMarket

November 9 - 11, 2009, High Point, NC


IMPORTANT NOTE TO SHOWCASE APPLICANTS— PLEASE READ BEFORE PROCEEDING:

We regret that this online registration will NOT permit multiple showcase applications to be filed simultaneously. A new showcase application must be filed for each applicant.  You must enter the application in a separate name or email each time (although you can use the same credit card for making the multiple payments, and agents can continue to list themselves as the main contact to receive notification.) We suggest putting each new application in the individual artist’s email address/name. You should DISREGARD the “register another” option which appears — as it will NOT permit you do this, as that option simply returns you to your original application. We greatly apologize for this annoying inconvenience. Due to the individualized information required online for each applicant, a new form must be filed for each artist’s application.

• Fees, Dates & Deadlines

• Artists' Showcase Information and Application

• Preliminary ArtsMarket Schedule (.doc)
  

• Janis Ian to deliver keynote address

• About ArtsMarket

• ArtsMarket Sponsors (.pdf)
  

• ArtsMarket photos

Keynote Speaker: Janis Ian

JANIS IAN KEYNOTES ARTSMARKET09
Monday, Nov. 9, 2009   High Point, NC

The legendary songwriter, recording artist and reminder of things
good and right takes the podium to inaugurate ArtsMarket2009

“I've wanted to do what I'm doing tonight since I was two-and-a-half.  It's an amazing thing to be a songwriter.  You pray to write songs that touch people's hearts, and you hope to make some kind of change in people's lives. Artists -- when we're doing our jobs -- we get to take people's dreams and make something visible out of them.  When people forget they have dreams and everything looks really dark and horrible, we get to remind you that the dreams exist.  We get to say "Here, I've saved these for you."    That's a serious privilege...”    Janis Ian


Janis Ian says, “My parents never punished me for telling the truth, no matter how awful it was.  I was only punished for lying.”

Her parents taught her that America’s greatness was in allowing one to change the bad things.  When her father, a New Jersey chicken farmer, went to a meeting about the price of eggs, the FBI picked him up on his way home.  A year later, Janis Ian was born into a world of surveillance, observed through binoculars at summer camp as a six-year-old.

She was ten when she picked up her father’s battered guitar.  She was 13 when she published her first song.  At 14, she wrote the piece of music that charted her life’s course, a song that was described by the Associated Press as “a white teenager indicting America for its racism and hypocrisy.”

“Society’s Child” rocked the nation, banned across the country as “subversive.” This opinion was later reversed when composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein became Ian’s most vocal supporter.  The song shot to #1, and the teenager found herself hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, appearing on TV -- and getting hate mail.

A few years later, she composed what would become a classic anthem for disaffected teenagers.  “At Seventeen” landed her first two  Grammy Awards and the most nominations ever received by a solo female artist at the time, sold over a million copies, brought her the invitation to appear as the first musical guest on the inaugural broadcast of  “Saturday Night Live” -- and permitted her to use her newfound popularity to become the first female guest to dare wear pants on “The Tonight Show.”

Moving to Nashville in 1998 after serious misfortune and abuses of bad management, Janis Ian had little more than a guitar and the clothes on her back.  Still, her music continued to distinguish her to an ever-increasing audience.  Nominations and awards mounted.  “Some People’s Lives,” her title track for Bette Midler’s recording, sold over two million copies worldwide.

Her long-awaited autobiography SOCIETY’S CHILD: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY released in North America by Tarcher/Penguin in July 2008, along with a commemorative two-disk CD set, Best of Janis Ian: The Autobiography Collection, containing 31 tracks -- the first “best of” Janis has ever released in North America. From start to finish, it unearths such gems as Ian’s very first demo recording (“Hair of Spun Gold,” sung into her father’s tape recorder when she was thirteen years old), and features all the classics, completely re-mastered from the original sources, as well as never-before-heard bonus tracks.

Praise and media attention has been unending since the release date. 

Janis Ian is not an artist for the faint of heart or for audiences who have no interest in listening.  Both the book and the CD set offer an outspoken look behind the scenes, not just of her life, but of the music industry as well. Her story of an agonizing “showcase” for Clive Davis makes you appreciate your own day job. The harrowing years she spent watching her ex-husband decline, from loving partner to threatening her life, are as truthful and straightforward as they are painful to read. But she doesn’t omit the good. The end of Society’s Child is particularly poignant, as Ian finally meets the love of her life, Patricia. The two were married in Toronto in 2003, and celebrated nineteen years together this December. 

On Nov. 9, 2009, Janis Ian will be featured as the keynote speaker in the opening ceremony for ArtsMarket09, the biennial performing arts showcase conference co-produced by NC Presenters Consortium and the NC Arts Council.

Janis Ian; photo by Peter Cunningham.

In its review of SOCIETY’S CHILD: MY AUTOBIOGRAHY, O Magazine said this:

At 15 she was already breaking all the rules. In an era-the mid-1960s-when people of her parents' generation didn't speak about "ugly things" like interracial romance, prostitution, and war, Janis Ian was opening her big mouth and getting hounded offstage for singing her taboo-busting lyrics. Society's Child (Tarcher/Penguin) is the hugely readable autobiography of an artist who has lived through success and crushing hardship but knows that "you can't sing and cry at the same time." Sing on!

First, a little background.        

Since the year 2000, North Carolina Presenters Consortium has partnered with the North Carolina Arts Council to co-produce the biennial ARTSMARKET performing arts showcase conference.  This unique partnership has produced four memorable, successful ArtsMarkets and has weathered (literally) hardships and natural disasters with grace and good humor... 

When an unpredicted snowstorm shut down the coastal city of Wilmington, ArtsMarket delegates persevered, helping to staff the kitchen at the only restaurant remaining open in town, and keeping each other entertained with remarkably innovative and often improvised showcase experiences.

When another surprise blizzard caused water pipes to burst over the stage at the High Point Theatre, instantly flooding the stage and orchestra pit as hundred of arriving delegates were taking their seats for the opening showcase, ArtsMarket Grit again kicked into high gear.  Within an hour, a temporary stage was set up in the host hotel. The one piano shop with 50 miles that had a four-wheel drive was unloading a baby grand through the lobby and a conference exhibitor displaying sound and lighting equipment had dismantled its booth to get showcases up and going again.

At the next conference, we found ourselves sharing a hotel with a video gaming convention, with ingeniously creative characters and personalities walking around in dog collars and chainmaille.  (We shared a breakfast booth with a Rotweiler and St. Bernard.)

The High Point Theatre Auditorium

Over the years, ArtsMarket has earned a reputation for being welcoming, informative, scrappy, accessible, worthwhile, inspirational – and fun.  Even the word “ArtsMarket” has become synonymous with “pack snow boots and a coffeemaker – regardless of time of year.”

While ArtsMarket was initially designed and is still a resource primarily for mid-sized to small presenters in and near NC, especially those who do not have consistent opportunities to attend the national and regional conferences, the event has grown to merit active participation by presenting organizations of all sizes from a continually growing region.  Exhibitors include artists and artist representatives from around the country and beyond.  Yet the conference, through the help of the NC Arts Council, remains remarkably affordable and accessible to all.

Then a little philosophy.

NCPC and NCAC partner in a belief that presenting is an act of collaboration – between artists, managers, presenters, sponsors, and audiences.  We intentionally design the ArtsMarket to foster a spirit of collaboration and collegiality, rather than competition.

For example:

• Professional development opportunities are designed to inspire conversation between conference delegates.
• To discourage a “buyer vs. seller” attitude, we print our nametags in one color. We do not schedule concurrent activities, and we travel as a pack.

We believe that presenting as a field benefits greatly from diversity – among artists and among presenters.  We can learn an incredible amount from each other even if our venues are different sizes and our artistic mission is served by a different genre.  We want ArtsMarket to promote interaction between a wide scope of organizations and individuals.

• Registration fees are subsidized to allow individual artists, small venues, and schools to participate simultaneously with agencies and venues with larger budgets.
• Showcases are built with a sampling of genres in each block rather than clustering the art forms (ie: all dance in one showcase, all family programs in another).
• We value artistic quality as our prime determinant of content of the conference. We value sponsors greatly, and couldn’t produce the conference without their support. We don’t “trade” showcases as part of sponsorships.  

We believe that we should never miss an opportunity to be inspired by the great art work and the great people that surround us in this business.

Photos From ArtsMarket 2007

Paperhand Puppet Intervention	"Sir" Perry Mixter and Queen Louisa
David Holt	Block Booking Meeting
Miss Dixie and Jonah (Tupperware Not Included!)