Events
Downtown Billings Events
APRIL ARTWALK
Friday
Apr 5, 2024
5-9 PM
Billings Symphony Office
2820 2nd Ave N
FREE and open to the public
closer|together
An Art Exhibition featuring works of Indigenous youth from the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana. This collection reflects on the process of building relationships between strangers and community through collaborations that rely on trust and encourage student voice.
We are thrilled to have the talented students from Lame Deer showcasing their art forms. Special guests, including Grammy winner and Silkroad Artist Kojiro Umezaki, violin prodigy Luke Minton, and the Morning Star Singers, will also be making appearances. Enjoy live musical performances, exquisite artwork, dancing, and drumming by these amazing students.
FEATURED GUESTS
KOJIRO UMEZAKI | SHAKUHACHI
Kojiro Umezaki (梅崎康二郎) continues to seek new musical homes for the shakuhachi, an end-blown bamboo flute with centuries of history in Japan.
He has performed regularly with the Silkroad Ensemble since 2001, and appears as performer/co-composer/Associate Producer on Silkroad's Grammy Award winning album Sing Me Home (2016). Other recordings and appearances with Silkroad include A Playlist Without Borders (2013), the Grammy-nominated album Off the Map (2009), and the Grammy-nominated 2015 documentary film, The Music of Strangers, directed by Morgan Neville.
As a soloist and bandleader, In a Circle Records released 流芳 Flow with pipa virtuoso Wu Man in 2021 and (Cycles) with Joseph Gramley, Dong-Won Kim, Faraz Minooei, and Brooklyn Rider in 2014.
Other notable recordings as performer, composer, and/or producer include 2023 Grammy-nominee Brooklyn Rider's Dominant Curve (2010), DownBeat Magazine Critics Poll's perennial “Top Flutist of the Year” Nicole Mitchell's Mandorla Awakening II (2017), Miles Davis’s keyboardist Kei Akagi's Aqua Puzzle (2018), and the internationally renowned/world music trailblazers Huun Huur Tu's Ancestors Call (2010). His appearances in a number of films, TV, and games include Ghost of Tsushima from Sony Interactive Entertainment (2020); Paper Lanterns (2016) directed by Barry Frechette and Max Exposito on the story of atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori and American POWs who perished in the bombing of Hiroshima; Words Can’t Go There directed by David Neptune (2019) on the life of the great shakuhachi innovator John Kaizan Neptune; and The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (2017).
Born to a Japanese father and Danish mother, Umezaki grew up in Tokyo. Currently Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine, he is a core faculty member of the Integrated Composition Improvisation and Technology (ICIT) doctoral program where his practice-based research explores global and hybrid practices in music.
PETE TOLTON | FILMMAKER, WRITER, ARTIST
Pete Tolton is a Montana-based documentary filmmaker, writer, and artist. Montana PBS, Last Best News, Montana Trial Lawyer, and The Billings Gazette have published his work, which centers around nature, childhood, history, healing, and shared experience.
His work in documentary film began with a producing role on Makoshika, an award-winning feature about boom and bust in the badlands, from the homesteading era through the Bakken oil boom. His directorial debut, Return, is in post-production. This project took him to Vietnam for five weeks, following a 75-year-old U.S. Special Forces veteran as he reckoned with his past and addressed the roots of PTSD. Return addresses themes of mental health, war, and family separation, and is slated for a 2021 release.
Before the Covid-19, pandemic, Pete was slated to spend the fall of 2020 as artist-in-residence at Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He lives with his wife, Rúhíyyih, and their two cats, in Billings.
SUSAN WOLFE | ARTS EDUCATOR
Susan Wolfe earned a BFA in Graphic Design at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. As a Senior Art Director for Carmichael Lynch Advertising in Minneapolis she designed and produced ad campaigns for such clients as Jostens, McDonalds, WCCO TV and Harley-Davidson before moving to Montana.
In 2009 Susan entered the teaching certification program at Montana State University. Shortly thereafter she began teaching Visual Art at Lame Deer Jr/Sr High School on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, a failing school which had been designated as a “School of Promise” by the Montana Office of Public Instruction. At the end of her first year Lame Deer Jr High became one of eight schools in the nation selected to participate in a pilot program, the TurnAround Arts Initiative which was spearheaded by The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities under the Obama administration in collaboration with the US Department of Education, corporate sponsors and professional artists from a variety of disciplines. From this program grew an extraordinary twelve year partnership with Silkroad and Ko Umezaki.
Susan is also a Montana Teacher Leader in the Arts and serves as a local tour coordinator in her community for Montana Shakespeare In The Parks.
LUKE MINTON | VIOLIN
Luke Minton is a Freshman at Bozeman High School and has been playing violin for 11 years. He has enjoyed the opportunity to study with Carrie Krause, and also to attend music camps and workshops in Missoula and Bozeman. In addition to playing with school orchestras and chamber ensembles in Montana, Luke performed with several music groups when attending schools in Wales and Australia. Luke is also a regular performer for Montana InSite Theatre at various outdoor locations in the Gallatin Valley as well as at Tippet Rise. In addition to playing music, Luke is a member of the Bozeman High speech and debate team and an avid hiker and birder.
MORNING STAR SINGERS
Kasey Fisher
Joleo Fisher
Markell Little Coyote
Philip Spotted Elk
Dallie Archambeau
Thomas Shoulderblade