07-14 Kusturica:Gp 3.qxt 6/30/10 10:50 AM Page 1 Sponsor Welcome to Lincoln Center Festival 2010. We have searched the world to bring you some of the best the performing arts have to offer. Over the 18 days of this month’s Festival, we present 45 performances by artists and ensembles from 12 countries, and expand our venues to include a new site on Governors Island. The Lincoln Center Festival opened with the wel come back the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane North American premiere of Musashi , a lavish Dance Company. Bill has never been one to shy Noh-inspired drama. Yukio Ninagawa directed away from difficult subjects, and his Fondly Do the late Hisashi Inoue’s reworking and revital - We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray is an inspiring ization of a traditional Japanese tale based on and emotionally wrenching work. Dancer and the life of a real samurai warrior. choreographer Saburo Teshigawara, who made his Lincoln Center Festival debut in 2006, brings If we had a musical survivors series, it would back his laser-like focus for the compelling one- undoubtedly include three groups making man tour-de-force Miroku , and Pichet Klunchun Festival debuts this month: The Blind Boys of brings his brilliant company from Bangkok for Alabama, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, Chui Chai . The title, meaning “transformation,” and Emir Kusturica and The No Smoking is as much a metaphor for Pichet’s own mod - Orchestra. The Blind Boys have inspired musi - ernization of Thai classical dance as it is a cians and music lovers of all tastes for decades, description of the Ramayana, an Indian epic on and over three nights we’ll celebrate their con - which it is based. tribution to the American music scene. Benin’s Orchestre Poly-Rythmo and Sarajevo’s No Georgian writer, director, and master puppeteer Smoking Orchestra are hugely successful in Rezo Gabriadze returns with an encore of his their homelands but have only recently burst elegant and elegiac The Battle of Stalingrad . onto the international scene. Both make their Puppet theater for adults, it mixes humor and U.S. debuts at the Festival. heartbreak to tell the story of one of the most devastating battles of World War II. Two dynamic directors give new life to classics from literature and film at our newest perfor - We take an unprecedented look at the complete mance venue. An industrial warehouse on work of 20th-century musical maverick Edgard Governors Island will be the dramatic backdrop Varèse with a two-night retrospective. A true for the North American premieres of Peter pioneer, Varèse longed to “liberate sound” to Stein’s marathon adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s reflect in music the immense technological novel The Demons and Toneelgroep Amster- changes of the last century, and the forces of dam’s Teorema , based on the film by Pier Paolo the New York Philharmonic, International Con- Pasolini and directed by Ivo van Hove. temporary Ensemble, S o¯ Percussion, Musica Sacra, and the Oratorio Society reveal his suc - It is always a pleasure to present innovative cess . With the Festival debut of Germany’s work from the world of dance, and wonderful to Wuppertal Opera and the North American pre - miere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s La porta della legge , we continue to celebrate composers who break with convention. A master of harmonics and structure, Sciarrino challenges all pre-con - ceived notions of what opera can be. I am pleased that you are joining us and hope that you will visit often throughout the month. Nigel Redden Director Lincoln Center Festival Emir Kusturica and The No Smoking Orchestra Photographer credit: Dragan Teodorvic Zeko 07-14 Kusturica:Gp 3.qxt 6/30/10 10:50 AM Page 2 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 Emir Kusturica and The No Smoking Orchestra UNITED STATES DEBUT Vocals July 14 Dr. Nelle AVERY FISHER HALL Guitar There will be no intermission Emir Kusturica Bass Guitar Goran Popovic Solo Guitar Ivan Maksimovic Drums Stribor Kusturica Percussion Zoran Majranovic Violin Dejan Sparavalo Saxophone Nenad Petrovic Accordion Zoran Milosevic Made possible in part by a generous grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Lincoln Center Festival 2010 is made possible in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Sponsor 07-14 Kusturica:Gp 3.qxt 6/30/10 10:50 AM Page 3 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 Program Performance order and selections are subject to change. Sa Sa Sas Jekh Len Unza Unza Time Life is a Miracle Upside Down Ja Volim Te Jos Maine Stat MTV Duj Droma Pit Bull Terrier Was Romeo Really a Jerk The Devil in Business Class Evergreen Wanted Man Bubamara Drag Nach Oesten I Am Crazy About Money 07-14 Kusturica:Gp 3.qxt 6/30/10 10:50 AM Page 4 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 About Emir Kusturica and favor. The group faced criticism in the media and a campaign that resulted in con - The No Smoking Orchestra cert cancellations and the removal of Top Lista Nadrealista from the airwaves. Soon The history of The No Smoking Orchestra after, the young filmmaker Emir Kusturica, (“Zabranjeno Pušenjc” in Serbo-Croation) who had recently won the Golden Palm at reaches back to 1981, when a group of the Cannes Film Festival and had garnered young punks decided to form a band in the an Academy Award nomination for When Sarajevo suburb of Koševo. Already work - Father Was Away on Business , joined ing together as comedians on the popular Zabrajenjeno Pušenjc as its newest bass surrealist and Monty Python-esque televi - guitarist. He played guitar on three tracks of sion and radio show Top Lista Nadrealista , the group’s third album, Greetings from the they initially called their group the Safari Land , and co-authored two songs. Pseudobluz Bend (“Pseudo-Blues Band”). In 1989, as war broke out and the Socialist While the rest of the country’s popular Federal Republic of Yugoslavia started to music scene seemed to follow the trends of fall apart, the band also began to break up. early 1980s Europe, The No Smoking Kusturica, following the call of Hollywood, Orchestra was involved in the unique “New left for the United States to make the film Primitivism” rock movement, playing a Arizona Dream , while Dr. Nelle, himself a youthful garage rock characterized by folk Serb, fled to Serbia and the others were influences and a decidedly urban feel. trapped in Sarajevo. It seemed that the Zabranjeno Pušenjc’s music, inspired by The band had reached the end of the road. Clash and the Sex Pistols, was often arranged to feature trumpets and saxo - But they weren’t done yet. In 1998, nearly phones. It captured the feel of Sarajevo—its ten years later, when Kusturica needed idols and local heroes, its tales of love and music for one of his films, Black Cat, White loss—in its own distinctive and often Cat , he immediately thought of the band, humorous way, and rapidly became one of reconnected with Dr. Nelle, and hired the country’s most popular musical acts, another group of musicians, including his with hundreds of thousands of records sold. son, the drummer Stribor Kusturica, to record the soundtrack. When a retrospec - The band occasionally sparked controversy tive of Kusturica’s films was planned in and got in trouble with the authorities Parma, Italy, the newly formed band was because of its criticism of the socialist sys - invited to give a series of concerts as part tem and its habit of making light of issues of the festivities and Kusturica rejoined the considered sensitive at the time. When a group. An immediate success, the group speaker blew out during a concert in 1984, planned a tour for later that summer. Just the band’s singer, Dr. Nelle (also known as after Kusturica left to shoot a movie in Nenad Jankovi cˇ), joked to the audience that Canada, war broke out once more in “the Marshal croaked.” Though it had been Yugoslavia. While the musicians worked a full ten years since the death of Marshal between bombings in Belgrade, Kusturica Tito—the communist leader who had kept practiced on his own in Canada, using Yugoslavia unified while resisting Soviet notes that were faxed to him nightly. In hegemony after World War II—the joke June 1999, the band reemerged for its was enough to make the band fall out of planned Italian tour under a new name: 07-14 Kusturica:Gp 3.qxt 6/30/10 10:50 AM Page 5 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 Emir Kusturica and The No Smoking Kusturica, such commercial success isn’t Orchestra. It also had a new sound, more necessary for survival. “We don’t need it,” punk folk than punk rock. Today, Kusturica he says. “We don’t work on it—we create frames the shift in style as something of a our music collectively and our audience natural evolution for the band’s members. simply likes it and the word spreads. One “We’re a little older now,” he says. “We concert is the inspiration for another ten.” live in different times and different places.” And after more than 500 concerts in more than 30 countries, the musicians have While the band may not sound exactly as it finally made it to their North American once did, it still plays electrifying, rebellious debut at tonight’s Lincoln Center Festival music that is clearly designed to get people performance.