“The Heritage of Sound” by Nate Speare

“The Heritage of Sound” by Nate Speare

--in memory of Jed Speare--

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CONTEMPORARY ARTS INTERNATIONAL (CAI)                                                       

Acton, MA – Contemporary Arts International (CAI), a nonprofit art center, announces the performance on CAI’s Container Man Stage. The performance is entitled “The Heritage of Sound” by Nate Speare, in collaboration with Ana Cantoran, to recognize Jed’s Speare’s achievement and contributions as a sound artist and acoustic ecologist in the field of Sound Art.  CAI’s Container Man Stage is a 14-kinetic-sculptural-orchestral instrument created by Viktor Lois. There will be two shows respectively on August 19, Friday, 8:00-9:00PM and August 20, Saturday, 8:00-9:00PM.  

“The Heritage of Sound” is a tribute to Nate’s father, sound artist and multimedia artist Jed Speare, who passed away in March 2016. Jed Speare, nick-named “Mr. Mobius”, served for over twenty years as the director of Mobius, Boston’s artist-run center for experimental work in all media.

As a storyteller, vocal performer and astrologer, Nate Speare’s performance references include myriad sources of folklore-based oral tradition as well as extended range vocal techniques of the Roy Hart Theatre, PanTheatre and other experimental companies. The subject matter of his works ranges from pedestrian struggles to sacred experiences. “The Heritage of Sound” explores memory as an urgent yet non-linear inquiry that is both personal and transpersonal, and that unfolds in time and space. Speare draws inspiration from his father, Jed Speare’s environmental approach to composing sound works: the soundscapes played during the performance are ‘found sound’ from a specific acoustic environment. The dynamic therein is an invitation for Speare to sing, which can also mean cry, lament, laugh, crescendo or suspend a moment of silence. At the same time, Speare invites the audience to participate in an act of remembering stories of parent-child bonds as he urgently conjures memories and associations in the moment based on prompts that the audience delivers. The inquiry posed involves the sometimes-awkward encounter between subjective, sentimental memory and the rawness of the surrounding world in all that it evokes, from alienation to astonishment to tenderness. “The Heritage of Sound” is co-created with the guidance, direction and performative sensibility of partner Ana Cantoran Viramontes, an accomplished interdisciplinary artist and ritualist.

Nate Speare is a mythopoetic vocal artist, storyteller, educator and astrological consultant. He holds an MFA from Naropa University. He has performed and collaborated with PanTheatre (France), for which he was an artist-in-residence at the Roy Hart International Artistic Center in Cevennes, France. He has performed original solo work with Nettles Artists Collective, The One, United Solo Theatre Festival, and IRT Theater's 3b Development Series, and with Mobius and CyberArts Gallery in Boston. He is a Teaching Artist at Marquis Studios and an astrological reader at Catland Books. He is also a storyteller and researcher for Storyeon, a folkloric archive associated with the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism at the Carl Jung Center of NY. 

Jed Speare was an artist and arts manager working in a variety of media and settings. Initially trained in music composition, he has presented sound, performance, video, installation, conceptual, multimedia and community-based works locally, nationally, and internationally in festivals and locales such as San Francisco, Amsterdam, Canada, Taiwan, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Bulgaria, France, and Italy. A more extensive bio of Jed can be found at http://www.mobius.org/jed-speare/

Ana Cantoran Viramontes is an interdisciplinary performer, movement artist, director and researcher of the relationship between ritual and the performative body. In working with Nate Speare, she seeks to find the artistic structures that provide the vocal and aural container for human memory, as well as elevating sounds of iron and concrete in our search for connection with what is bigger than us.

CAI’s admission fee is $5 for students and $10 for adults, which will include a tour of the studio and the sculpture park.

For more information, visit our website at www.contemporaryartsinternational.org.