Press Contacts: Brian Moriarty, DKC Communications, 212-685-4300; [email protected] Aliza Rabinoff, DKC Communications, 212-685-4300; [email protected] Press Materials: http://pbs.org/pressroom or http://thirteen.org/pressroom
Websites: http://americanepic.com , http://pbs.org/americanepic , http://facebook.com/americanepic , @AmericanEpic , http://instagram.com/americanepic/ , http://google.com/+americanepic , http://youtube.com/americanepic , #AmericanEpic
American Epic TCA Panelist Bios
Bernard MacMahon Director, Writer, Producer, Co-Creator
Bernard MacMahon is a film director whose major, multi-part series on American music, American Epic (executive-produced by Robert Redford, Jack White, and T Bone Burnett), will be shown on PBS in the U.S. and as part of the award-winning BBC Arena strand in the U.K. As founder of the Lo- Max group, MacMahon has directed many music videos and signed a succession of critically acclaimed rock and folk artists. A recognized authority on a wide range of music, he has also written in-depth articles for the British national newspaper The Sunday Times and the New Statesman .
Taj Mahal Musician
In September 2014, Taj Mahal was honored with what he called “one of the most powerful and wonderful things that could ever happen in my life.” The two-time GRAMMY ®-winning singer, songwriter, film composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist was presented with the Lifetime Achievement for Performance Award at the 13 th Annual Americana Honors and Awards, which celebrated decades of recording and touring that have nearly singlehandedly reshaped the definition and scope of the blues via the infusion of exotic sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and South Pacific. That night marked another extraordinary year for Mahal, which began with a performance at the Gregg Allman Tribute Concert in Atlanta; performing as part of the Bonnaroo Superjam on a bill featuring Derek Trucks with Chaka Khan, Eric Krasno from Soulive, renowned R&B/blues session drummer James Gadson, David Hidalgo from Los Lobos and Susan Tedeschi; and playing and recording with Van Morrison in Dublin. Since the release of 2008’s Maestro , which received a GRAMMY ® nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album, Mahal has been busier than ever touring and recording at a whirlwind pace. In 2010, after being nominated for Entertainer of the Year by the Blues Foundation, he joined Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night studio band, The Roots, as a special musical guest on the Rolling Stones classic “Shine a Light.” He also opened in Lake Tahoe for Bob Dylan. One of the highlights of the
following year was performing a special opening solo set for Eric Clapton and Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center. After starting 2012 producing and performing (vocals, guitar and banjo) on Vusi Mahlasela’s live album Say Africa , Mahal joined the critically acclaimed Experience Hendrix tour for a three- week run. Later that year, he released two collections celebrating the riches and rarities of his musical legacy — the two-disc set The Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal 1967-1973 and The Complete Columbia Albums Collection box set. He capped the year with “An Evening with Taj Mahal” at the GRAMMY ® Museum in Los Angeles. Mahal (given name Henry St. Claire Fredericks, Jr.) grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, of Caribbean descent, was a jazz pianist, composer and arranger, who frequently hosted musicians from the Caribbean, Africa and the U.S. His mother was a schoolteacher and gospel singer from South Carolina. Henry, Sr., had an extensive record collection and a shortwave radio that brought sounds from across the world into their home. “We spoke several dialects in my house — Southern, Caribbean, African — and we heard dialects from eastern and western Europe,” Mahal said. This diversity of Mahal’s musical experiences served as the bedrock for his first three recordings: Taj Mahal (1967), The Natch’l Blues (1968) and Giant Step (1969). Drawing on the eclectic sounds and styles he’d absorbed in his youth, these early albums showed signs of the musical exploration that would become Mahal’s hallmark in the years to come. In the 1970s, Mahal released a string of adventurous recordings, including Happy to Be Just Like I Am (1971), Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff (1972), the GRAMMY ®-nominated soundtrack to the movie Sounder (1973), Mo’ Roots (1974), Music Fuh Ya (Music Para Tu) (1977) and Evolution (The Most Recent) (1978). The type of blues he was playing in the early 70s showed an aptitude for spicing the mix with exotic flavors that kept him from being an out-and-out mainstream genre performer.
Stephen Segaller Executive in Charge, WNET
Stephen Segaller oversees all national programming from WNET’s producing subsidiaries – THIRTEEN, WLIW21 and Creative News Group. Among these productions are Nature , Great Performances , American Masters , Secrets of the Dead , PBS NewsHour Weekend, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly , Cyberchase , NYCArts and Reel 13 ; and documentary series featuring Henry Louis Gates Jr., Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama, among others. At WNET, he has executive-produced PBS documentary series such as Ascent of Money and The War of the World , both with Niall Ferguson; Extreme Oil ; Red Gold: The Epic Story of Blood ; individual documentaries such as Srebrenica – A Cry From the Grave ; David Grubin’s Kofi Annan: Center of the Storm ; Walter Cronkite’s last two documentaries, City at War: London Calling and Legacy of War ; the films of Frederick Wiseman; films by Roger Weisberg, including the Academy Award-nominated Sound and Fury ; Worse Than War with Daniel Goldhagen, directed by Mike DeWitt; Orchestra of Exiles by Josh Aronson; It’s a Hard Knock Life: Annie by Joshua Seftel; and
Shakespeare Uncovered, produced by Richard Denton. This unique series brings the personal passions of its celebrated hosts to tell the stories behind Shakespeare’s greatest plays. He created the international documentary series Wide Angle and the investigative journalism series Exposé for PBS. In 2011, he was executive in charge of the multiple award-winning documentary series Women, War & Peace — produced by Abigail Disney, Gini Reticker and Pamela Hogan — the first series ever to consider war, conflict and peacemaking from the point of view of women as combatants, casualties and peacemakers. In 2013, Segaller helped oversee the expansion of the PBS NewsHour broadcast tradition with a PBS NewsHour Weekend newscast on both Saturday and Sunday. The half-hour program is anchored by Hari Sreenivasan and produced at the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center.
Jack White Executive Producer, Musician
Born the youngest of 10 children, raised in Southwest Detroit and a resident of Nashville since 2005, Jack White is one of the most prolific and renowned artists of the past two decades. When the White Stripes started in 1997, no one, least of all Jack, ever expected that a red, white and black two-piece band would take hold in the mainstream world. The band's self-titled debut and sophomore effort De Stijl amassed critical acclaim and built a passionate underground following, but it was the release of 2001’s White Blood Cells that thrust the White Stripes onto magazine covers as they captivated larger audiences through worldwide touring. “Fell in Love With a Girl” served as the band’s breakthrough hit, and its accompanying Michel Gondry Lego clip was chosen by Pitchfork Media as the #1 music video of the 2000s. The release of Elephant in 2003 not only cemented the band’s reputation, but also offered the hit “Seven Nation Army,” which has since been appropriated as arguably the most popular chant in sports stadiums around the world. In 2004, White teamed up with Loretta Lynn to produce and perform on her Van Lear Rose album, an effort that won GRAMMY ® Awards for Best Country Album and Best Country Collaboration With Vocals for the single “Portland, Oregon.” To date, White has won 11 GRAMMYs ® in eight different categories, with 29 career nominations. White formed a “new band of old friends,” the Raconteurs, in 2006. Their debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers , featured the No. 1 hit single “Steady, As She Goes” and showed a markedly different side of White, one where songwriting, vocal and guitar duties were shared. In 2009, White returned to his original instrument, the drums, and started the Dead Weather with members of the Kills, Queens of the Stone Age and the Greenhornes. Releasing two albums in two years and unleashing a dark, captivating live show upon curious audiences, the Dead Weather further cemented Jack White’s musical versatility and range. Also in 2009, White opened the doors to his very own Nashville-based record label, Third Man Records, where he has since produced and released more than 300 records in just over six years. With a catalogue of releases from artists as varied as Jerry Lee Lewis, the Smoke Fairies, Wanda Jackson, Black Milk, and Stephen Colbert, and unimagined vinyl configurations, the label has rightfully earned its reputation as a leader in the vinyl record industry.
On April 24, 2012, White released his debut album Blunderbuss on Third Man Records/Columbia. Blunderbuss debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. albums chart — a career first for White — and was both the top-selling vinyl album and the highest-charting solo debut of 2012 in the U.S. Blunderbuss also hit No. 1 in the UK, Canada and Switzerland, and received five GRAMMY ® nominations, including Album of the Year, Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song for “Freedom at 21” and, the following year, Best Rock Performance and Best Music Video for “I’m Shakin’.” White released Lazaretto (Third Man Records/Columbia), the follow-up to the gold-certified Blunderbuss , on June 10, 2014. Once again debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. albums chart and at No. 1 in Canada and Denmark, Lazaretto not only broke the record for first-week vinyl album sales, selling over 40,000 copies in the U.S., it was also the biggest selling vinyl album of 2014 and any year of the SoundScan era with 86,707 copies sold in the U.S. To date, the Lazaretto vinyl ULTRA LP has sold over 185,000 copies worldwide. The album’s title track, “Lazaretto,” won a GRAMMY ® Award for Best Rock Performance. Lazaretto received two additional GRAMMY ® nominations for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song for the title track.
###