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The Next Big Thing / March 12, 2004

The Next Big Thing

Friday, March 12, 2004
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  • toast

    Ritual
    Show #428

    Flouting, reinventing, and exploring rituals and traditions. Sound artist Ellen Band weaves together prayers offered in fifteen different places of worship. In a short story by John Haskell, a man’s daily toast-eating acquires its own kind of significance. And in a midtown Manhattan loft, cacophony moves toward harmony as Tuvan and American cultures meet in a musical experiment. Also this week, news from the front - of the Martha Stewart trial, from a mother-daughter team of courtroom sketch artists.

If You’re Thinking of Speeding in Finland...

speed sign Member of Finnish Parliament Pertti Salovaara, Public Advocate for New York City Betsy Gotbaum, and President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Joseph Polisar weigh in on the Finnish system of graduated penalties for traffic speeding and other offenses. Produced by Jamie York.

Court Savvy

Courtroom sketch
Martha and
her attorney Robert Morvillo
For an up-close and personal view of the just-completed Martha Stewart trial, Dean Olsher turns to Andrea and Shirley Shepard. They are a mother-and-daughter team who have worked together for over a decade in the highly competitive world of courtroom sketching. Produced by Jill Krauss.

» Click for a larger image

Eleventh Commandment

commandmentsFeeling alienated from the younger members of their flock, England’s Methodist Church and Ship of Fools decided to hold a contest for a new commandment, in the hopes of raising awareness about the other ten. We decided to send independent producer Jane Farrow onto Chicago’s streets to find out how people there would meet the challenge.

» View the contest on the Ship of Fools website

Portals of Prayer

Ellen BandBlurring the boundary between state and religion, sound artist Ellen Band recorded sound in fifteen places of worship over the past year and arranged them into an extended work that can now be heard in Boston’s Logan Airport and other public spaces. The piece, excerpted here, was commissioned by the Boston Instititute of Contemporary Art.

» Visit Ellen Band's website

Tuvan Blues

Hazmat Modine and Huun Huur Tu
Hazmat Modine and Huun Huur Tu making music (Anya Rozhdedestvenskaya)
What happens when two or more radically different musical traditions collide? New York City-based "pan-ethnic-roots-blues" band Hazmat Modine and the world-renowned Tuvan group Huun-Huur-Tu decided to find out. On a recent evening in Manhattan, they gathered together, as they have before, with instruments ranging from tuba to igil, a Tuvan string instrument, and jammed. Dean Olsher chronicles this evening-long experiment in musical collaboration. Produced by Julie Subrin.

» Click here for a larger image
» Visit the Hazmat Modine website
» Visit the Huun Huur Tu website

Toast

In this short story, written and read here by Next Big Thing contributor John Haskell, a morning ritual carries a man in and out of love. Produced by Curtis Fox.

To Make an End Is To Make a Beginning

Recently we lost a few very special voices. Here we remember them. Produced by Emily Botein.