(upbeat music) - [David] Production of Applause on WVIZ/PBS is made possible by grants from The John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, The Stroud Family Trust, The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(upbeat jazz music) - [David] Hello, I'm David C. Barnett.

Welcome to Northeast Ohio's arts and culture show, Applause.

(upbeat jazz music) For many, music can be a remedy for these pandemic days.

That's especially true for the students and faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Guitarist and head of the conservatory's jazz studies program, Bobby Ferrazza, teamed up with two students, Alejandra Williams-Maneri and Christopher McDole for this round of Applause performances.

(upbeat jazz music) - Bobby you've taught at the Oberlin Conservatory for more than 30 years, how have you seen the school grow and change over that time?

- It's been an incredible growth over that time.

In 1988, we started the jazz program as a degree program and that's when I started, I was hired by Wendall Logan.

At that time it was a very, very small program, you can imagine we didn't have any majors and now we have sometimes upward of 80 majors, jazz majors that is.

So the program has grown incredibly and it's also grown in terms of the support for the music here.

Now we have this new building for the last 10 or 11 years and it's really an incredible thing.

- So that's the wide span of these three decades but now let's narrow the focus down just to the past year, how challenging has it been?

- It really has been a big challenge and I don't think we have enough time to go over all the things we've had to change in order to actually keep our school running.

And I really appreciate the work that the school did, the vision that the school had to create a set of protocols that allowed us to bring students back and have in-person lessons and in-person ensembles that helps us all.

Now we're almost through this entire scholastic year, at least the first two semesters and I can finally feel okay about saying that we're gonna make it, I'm sure we're gonna make it.

The kids have been great about taking on the discipline to wear a mask everywhere and pay attention to all the things that we've all heard about now for a year, distancing and those sort of safety precautions.

So it has been a big challenge but it's been very gratifying to be able to do it.

(upbeat jazz music) - Alejandra, from a student's perspective, what's it been like?

And how has playing music helped you get through these times?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

I think for me, the main thing about playing music in general is community and connecting with others and so in this time where we're so much more isolated than we normally are, music fulfills that even more to an even deeper level, even when we're like six feet or more than six feet away from each other in an ensemble room there's still this feeling of connection and intimacy that I think is really hard to come by nowadays 'cause we're still collaborating with each other, we're taking risks in the music, we're supporting each other as we take those risks.

So it's really been the thing to keep me not just sane but motivated and inspired so it's been huge.

(upbeat jazz music) - What about for you, Christopher, as a singer it must be a challenge to find a place to perform or even to rehearse.

- Yeah, it's been difficult but Oberlin's made a lot of strides to make that happen.

For example, for the Sonny Rollins ensemble group that I'm in to rehearse, I have my own isolation booth, so it's a lot like if you're in a recording studio.

They have you all by yourself with the door locked and they have all the wires and everything in there so that people on the outside of the room can still hear me, we can still make music.

♪ Pretty girl ♪ ♪ You with the eyes ♪ ♪ Come spend a while ♪ ♪ With home happily ♪ ♪ Pretty girl ♪ ♪ You standing there ♪ ♪ Won't you come change ♪ ♪ You could make me ♪ - [Man] Bobby, I've got a question for you, Sonny Rollins, a major name in the jazz world, how did it come to be that he decided to lend his name to the Oberlin ensemble?

- It's a pretty long story but to get right to it James McBride we're proud to have him as an alum.

He was very instrumental in pointing out Oberlin to Sonny, first through a friend and then through some direct conversations and then we started to discuss how we might work together over the course of quite a few months, actually.

So it was quite a long process.

One of the things that Sonny was taken with, in terms of Oberlin, was the fact that Will Marion Cook was an African-American that studied here in the 1870s on violin but he became a composer as well was one of Duke Ellington's mentors and Sonny was aware of him and that he studied here.

So Oberlin's got a long legacy that I think a lot of folks are aware of.

(calm jazz music) - Alejandra, I hear you on the rest of the ensemble actually got to meet and speak with Sonny Rollins, what left an impression from that meeting for you?

- Yeah, that was really powerful.

Actually, when I was walking away afterwards to my apartment I was like tearing up because me personally I've never had the experience of talking to an elder of this music, not to mention someone who's so influential and so important to the genre so it was really impactful.

And yeah, I mean I think anyone at that meeting can say that one of the largest takeaways is his philosophy about just be a good person and if you wanna get good at music, be a good person, if you wanna change the world, be a good person.

It was kind of beautiful.

Like we all asked him these different questions and he gave specific and really wonderful answers and also to each question, the takeaway was like just be a good person, he was able to apply that to everything, it was really nice.

- That's like advice for life, isn't it?

- Absolutely, yeah.

- What about for you, Chris?

What was it like to meet and speak to the man himself?

- It was pretty amazing.

With our music in particular, it's kinda like having Bach call you on the cell phone, and you get to ask him questions like that.

I thought it was really phenomenal that one of the masters of the music, great American composer, his musical mind and master of the music.

- [Man] We thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you, Bobby, thank you Alejandra and Christopher for been part of our live webcast today.

Thank you guys so much for playing and being here, talking.

- Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to be here.

We're so happy to put a little spotlight on the Sonny group.

I love it.

(calm jazz music) - [David] You can find more Applause performances, as well as other episodes of Applause on the PBS Passport App.

Artist, Mira Lehr's work spans four decades, a career dedicated to expressing both the beauty and destruction of the environment.

Using abstract imagery and non-traditional media, such as gunpowder, fire, Japanese paper, dyes and welded steel she invites the viewer into her world.

- The beauty is very important to me but I have to take the bloom off the rose.

I'm Mira Lehr, an artist.

All of my work has burning of some kind in it and I think it does reflect both sides of creation, creation, and destruction and that's what nature is all about, it's always related to the environment.

I always drew when I was a little kid.

I never really knew I would be a professional artist.

As I grew older I decided I was gonna study art history in college.

I was so lucky because at the time I graduated the abstract expressionists were holding forth in New York and there was a major movement.

So I was right in the middle of this really wonderful scene.

So from then on, I did art and I was not really into the environment as much in the beginning, I just did nature, a lot of nature studies but eventually I heard of Buckminster Fuller, a man who was very much about the planet and I saw an opportunity to work with him.

In 1969, I went to New York and I worked with him on something called the world game and that was about how to make the world work in the most efficient way and doing more with less, so from then on, I was hooked.

(calm music) I've always felt abstraction in it's highest form, even though I like representation but to me abstraction gets the essence of everything and you can take it and go on with it and it's more spiritual to me.

I think like Cezanne at the end of his life, his paintings became kind of dissolved in light, like light entities, at the end of Rembrandt's life also, his work became less literal and more also dissolved in light.

So light is very important and that to me is the height of it.

If you have a light entity in your work I think it's profound and meaningful.

The light on the big sculpture, yeah, those are special lights that grow corals in the laboratory and the sculpture it's a shape of a wave and it's mesmerizing.

You know, if the world pulls apart and people are concerned just with their everyday existence, I don't see a great future but I'm hoping there's still time, the clock is definitely ticking and I'm not a politician and I'm not a scientist, the way I can express it is through my art and that's what I'm trying to do, along with having a wonderful experience, making it.

- [David] Next time on Applause we uncover Ohio outdoor sculpture that's hidden in plain sight and we stop at a museum that's been promoting fine arts in America since 1825.

- [Lady] This was a way of defining yourself to your peers.

- [David] Plus we connect with a fiber artist using sustainable materials to create eco-friendly accessories.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

Right now we meet abstract artist, Brenden Spivey.

Based in Columbus, Ohio, Spivey's canvases are rich with color, shape and texture.

Each painting he creates is full of life.

- I've never really given myself like a label.

A lot of people say that I paint with joy, energy so those who know me know that I can be very energetic and I think a lot of that personality comes out in some of the colors that I use, shapes that I use, there's never gonna be anything overly dull or dramatic.

I like action, so you'll see large swipes, bright colors, texture, so that's kind of how I view my work.

So I'm a big fan of abstract, which is kind of ironic 'cause that's what I do.

It was more about the, I didn't like the literal interpretation necessarily of like skylines or barns and trees, I liked being able to have my own vision of what the art piece meant because I think abstract painters paint with intention but we also paint with intuition, so I found it really fascinating just to see like what do I see going into the piece versus what they said that they saw.

(upbeat music) 2017 I was looking for something a little more productive to do as far as stress relief.

I used to run and lift and not that that's not productive, it just takes a lot of time dedication but I wanted something a little more.

So I think for me, looking at artwork was always kind of therapeutic, so I wanted to give that a shot and not being trained to do this was different.

This is the Hayley Gallery.

(upbeat music) For me this place is very homey and what I like about it is I can find everything that I want.

So if I'm looking for abstract art, if I'm looking for glass, I'm able to find that here.

So it's not just a gallery to me, it's like a home.

So I will have rotations of artwork and so I typically will have between three to five pieces at a time and this one is called rise up.

So this kind of all goes back to some of the movements that we're currently going through, social unrest and all that stuff so I wanted to give something and you look at the tones of browns and earth tones, so it's kind of pushing you a certain direction without necessarily taking you all the way there.

(calm music) We wanted to kind of get involved in the whole Black Lives Matter Movement, not necessarily through protest and those means but how can we use our artists' voices to make a very strongly stated message without saying words?

And the two murals that we did, the first one was at the Ohio Theater and it was a compilation of fields of flowers and young children that were black and she was picking flowers and the young boy had a paintbrush and then I came in as the artistic abstract sky of shapes and color and Will came in with the city scape and I think it was a really great fusion of all of our talents together because normally you would not have an abstract painter mixed with two more traditionally trained artists but I think that's what made the work so powerful.

Spencer, that's awfully close buddy.

So, Spencer is my double doodle, high five, yes.

He's another reason I do a lot of the things that I do.

You'll get all the treats.

I get joy out of seeing him enjoy things in life and it's the money that comes in from art sales helps put him in the daycare, pay for his vet bills are so expensive and just overall everyday things for him, like that's my buddy.

And you lay flat.

He brings me joy and I think having more joy in my life has also probably helped my artwork transcend.

I think another thing that drove me to wanting to become a painter was being told that painters are born this way, artists are born artists and they're artists their entire lives.

That for me was a personal challenge.

So not only was I wanting to get out there and paint and find a way to relax, I wanted to prove somebody wrong.

And then I hit so far so I was right.

You don't know what you're capable of until you do it and I live my life that way and I want to get out there and just try it.

- [David] Since 2007, Arizona photographer, Tom Kiefer has collected personal items taken from asylum seekers at the Mexican American border.

His photographs are of left behind Bibles, clothing and children's toys.

Take a look.

- My name is Tom Kiefer.

I am a artist photographer.

The project that I've been working on since 2007 is called El Sueno Americano, The American Dream.

Tahoe is about 40 miles from the Mexico border and a hundred miles from the California border so it's in the Southwest corner of State of Arizona.

It's the high desert, elevation of about 1800, it's very hot, it's blisteringly hot and deadly in the sense that if you're attempting to cross the desert you're risking your life.

So after living here for about a year and a half I had to get some type of job to have some money come in and in our local newspaper was this ad, part-time janitor at a US customs border patrol station.

I ended up working there for 11 years and it was about my fourth year working there that I started becoming kinda angry and upset seeing all the food that the migrants and asylum seekers brought with them that food that was in their backpack that was just being thrown away.

So one day I mustered up the courage and went to the supervisor on duty and I said, hey, can I bring this food to the food bank?

And as exact words to me were, bless you.

When I went in to retrieve the food I would see a Bible, a rosary, a group of photographs, family photographs, wallets, with identification still inside the wallets, deeply personal belongings and it wasn't right.

These items were being taken away from the people that were apprehended and just callously thrown in the trash.

It was not right to let them go to the landfill and it was probably within a year, I kind of accepted the fact that I was an artist, a photographer and that these items needed to be photographed.

I took a bunch of black combs and brushes and placed them on a black background, just set it up and took a shot and I was kind of amazed by, wow, this is the way forward.

And so I resigned on August 11, 2014 so I could work on this full-time.

So the way that I photographed these personal belongings is I come from a place of deep respect and care and I want the person looking at the photograph to think about what they're seeing and not how I've constructed the photograph.

The items that people selected to bring with them, there's very limited space in their backpack, so, great thought would go into what they would bring along with them, something that had a personal meaning to them, little toys that a child would carry with them or perhaps the parent is bringing with them an item that they could remember their child from.

I'd find cologne.

My first reaction was like, agh, this is kind of silly.

I thought that this person wasn't taking this journey crossing the desert seriously.

Like why would you bring a bottle of cologne?

So in talking with other people, it became apparent this bottle of cologne represented a future, whether they were going to be seeing a loved one that they hadn't seen in months or years getting ready for their first job interview, so putting their best foot forward.

I found this small notebook, it was a diary and this person was professing their love to Blanca and how they were mesmerized, hypnotized by the beauty of her eyes.

I would even find little notebooks and like a last will and testament, like, God, please give us hope on our journey and that myself and my three fellow travelers make it safely to the US.

(calm music) People have no idea, they're shocked.

They ask me why would a rosary be taken away or why would they take away a Bible?

Why would they take away a woman's birth control pills?

So it's been a very educational experience for people seeing this.

What this is about is to foster a dialogue and have a very frank and honest conversation about, is this how we want to treat the most vulnerable?

This is not limited just to the people entering, crossing the border, we're talking about the 10 million plus people living in fear of ICE knocking on their door and taking away mom or dad and leaving behind the children, what will become of them?

Is this how we want it to be as a nation?

Is this how we wanna treat people?

- [David] That's it for today's show.

For more arts and culture programming go to arts.ideastream.org, where you can check out our latest installment of equity and art, featuring stories about the diverse community of artists working and making a living in Northeast Ohio.

I'm David C. Barnett.

Thanks for watching and hope to see you again next week for another round of Applause.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat music) Production of applause on WVIZ/PBS is made possible by grants from The John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, The Stroud Family Trust, The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga arts and culture.