FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 31, 2020 Contact: Melissa Breor at [email protected] or 413-545-4482 UMass Fine Arts Center shifts programming online, first live-streamed performance this Saturday With live performances cancelled and the galleries and museum closed as part of the University’s response to the coronavirus, programming staff at the UMass Fine Arts Center have been hard at work shifting programming online, with the goal of streaming performances, providing interactive virtual gallery experiences, and sharing other engaging content and conversations with the public. “For 45 years, the Fine Arts Center has operated under the singular vision to be a gathering place, connecting our campus and local community to the world through the richly diverse, transformative power of the arts,” said director Jamilla Deria. “Now more than ever, we need the arts to remind us that the world, indeed, is not only big and wondrous but that we still have access to it.” A live-streamed performance by Leyla McCalla on Saturday, April 4 at 8 p.m. via Facebook Live launches the Fine Arts Center’s digital programming efforts. McCalla was originally scheduled to perform in Bowker Auditorium with her quartet on the same day. She will now perform solo from her home in a live stream accessible at the Fine Arts Center’s Facebook page www.facebook.com/umassfineartscenter. Eugene Uman, director of the Vermont Jazz Center, will lead a post-performance dialogue on the live stream at the conclusion of her performance. McCalla is a Haitian-American artist, founding member of Our Native Daughters and alumna of the GRAMMY award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. She sings in French, Haitian Creole, and English, and plays cello, tenor banjo, and guitar. Influenced by traditional Creole, Cajun, and Haitian music, as well as by American jazz and folk, her music is earthy, elegant, soulful, and witty. 2019 saw the release of McCalla’s third solo album, “The Capitalist Blues” as well as the widely-acclaimed collaborative project, “Songs of Our Native Daughters” (with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and Allison Russell). The album pulled influence from past sources to create a reinvented slave narrative, confronting sanitized views about America’s history of slavery, racism, and misogyny from a powerful, modern black female perspective. In addition to this performance, the Fine Arts Center’s Augusta Savage Gallery will present the final installment of its Beyond Planet Earth exhibition series featuring works by painter and landscape architect Ponnapa Prakkamakul as a virtual exhibition launching April 6. Hampden Gallery will release an interactive exhibition catalog on April 12 for “A Horse Walks into a Bar” curated by D. Dominick Lombardi which was reviewed by ArtScope Magazine before the gallery closed. Future virtual programming will be announced and added to fineartscenter.com as it is confirmed. .