Arleen Hurtado Artist Highlight

We are delighted to feature Arleen Hurtado in our upcoming In the Flow Studios Arts Showcase and Film Debut on Nov. 15th in La Mirada, CA. Arleen is one of our favorite artists. Her live performances are charged with passion and precision. When she dances she brings forth the strength and graces of her Iberian ancestors. She transports her audiences to another place and time.

Kennedy Center, in DC Sept 2014

Arleen’s flamenco is the embodiment of the powerful force of nature that is the feminine. She uses her body to tell the age-old stories of distant lands, of battles won and lost, of heartbreak, of triumph and of culture. Even in her subtle hand movements she brings intention and expression. Her passionate interpretation of traditional flamenco has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. While Arleen’s technical ability is superb, it’s her passion that distinguishes her art. “Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” Martha Graham

A multilayered and multitalented artist, Arleen is always looking for ways to push her artistic boundaries and grow out of her comfort zone. While she has performed and shared traditional flamenco in film, television and venues worldwide, one can also find her locally on stages like the Zulu Lounge, courageously sharing her unique dance fusion accompanied by the equally passionate and unique sounds of Flametal (flamenco metal heavy fusion Spanish guitar). 

About Arleen's dance journey:

Croatia

Arleen Hurtado grew up in southern California. Early in life she began playing the drums and trained in ballet, jazz and tap. As a child she discovered flamenco on a trip to Spain, which appealed to her passion for both dance and percussion. Arleen pursued her study of flamenco in Seville and Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, New Mexico, New York and California with world-renowned artists. For the last 18 years she has performed around the world, including several tours of the United States, as well as performances in United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Spain, Italy, China and India. In the US she has performed in theaters including Carnegie Hall in New York, Red Rocks in Denver and the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. Arleen has been featured in music videos, commercials, television, print ads and three PBS specials. Based in Los Angeles, Arleen teaches weekly flamenco classes and continues to perform and tour.

About Arleen the teacher:

Arleen is an amazing teacher. Not only do her students benefit from her 18 years of experience performing at venues worldwide but they also get a kind, encouraging and patient teacher. Her classes  are perfect for beginners as well as for advanced students. Arleen has the ability to breakdown technique in the most fundamental of ways all the while keeping students entertained and engaged. I had the honor of training with her and was blown away in every class. Her positive energy is infectious and I found it would spillover into my daily life. Through flamenco, Arleen helps her students tap into their sense of personal power and inner grace. If you live in Southern California and have ever wanted to experince flamenco sign up to one of her classes in Los Angeles or Orange County.

For more information about Arleen's upcoming performances or for her teaching schedule goto her websites:

www.arleenhurtado.com

www.flamencola.com

For more info about our upcoming event goto Arts Open House and Ke-ola Rehab Fundraiser 
Contact Info for In the Flow Studios Arts

Website: http://intheflowstudios.com

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"In the Flow Studios is a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering the arts, the artist and worthy causes."

POI

Barbara Ann Eknoian Artist Highlight

We love Barbara Ann Eknoian! Her poetry is diverse, sincere and poignant. Barbara shares her life experiences through her writing with courage and insight. She has the ability to understand that the little things that go unnoticed are some of the most important things. They are the things that define our lives. 

She has kindly accepted our invitation to share her poetry at our In the Flow Studios Arts Showcase and Film Debut on Nov. 15, 2014.

Barbara Eknoian‘s work has appeared in Pearl, Chiron Review, RE)VERB, and Silver Birch Press’s Silver, Green, and Summer anthologies, and Cadence Collective on line. She has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and is a member of Donna Hilbert’s poetry workshop in Long Beach, California. Her first young adult novel Chances Are: A Jersey Girl Comes of Age, and her poetry book Why I Miss New Jersey are available at Amazon. She is currently working on a generational novel.

About Barbara the poet:

Link to this title at Amazon

Award-winning poet and author Barbara Eknoian affirms with warmth and wit how you can go home again, and shows that you can take the girl out of New Jersey, place her in the fun and sun of California, but you can’t take New Jersey out of the girl. Sit a spell, play the Platters or Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom Fell,” and read how sweetly Barbara casts her spell of eternal, heartfelt longing—her unforgettable hiraeth—for her old New Jersey hearth. She builds vignettes of long-gone family and friends—sometimes ominous—and as fragile and fleeting as snowflakes. Barbara’s tender recollections break bread with her reader as she shares her intimate word album and gently invites us to “come look at another kind of beauty,” and asks in her poem, “Holding On”: “How can you toss out a memory?” Description by Joan Jobe Smith, author, poet, and founding editor of Pearl and Bukowski Review

Barbara was one of 59 poets from around the world who participated in the Silver Birch Press Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series during September 2014:

http://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/thank-you-to-the-poets-who-participated-in-our-celebrity-free-verse-poetry-series/

Poem reprinted from:
Silver Birch Press
New Voices in Fiction, Nonfiction, Plays & Poetry
August 19, 2014 

SELF-PORTRAIT
by Barbara Eknoian

See the little girl,
quiet and shy,
after a family blow-up,
warily observing
the grown-ups.
See the teenager
longing to be asked
to dance a slow number
with that handsome boy,
and then at sixteen
unaware
that she was looking her best
drifting in the rowboat
imagining
the world before her.
See the shy bride,
almost twenty-one,
marrying a little too soon,
praying
she’s made the right choice.
See the young mom
moving across country
homesick
away from family
and dear friends,
and the young woman
back at school,
serving as editor
of the college paper,
then leaving to care
for her family.
See the woman
thrilled to celebrate
her 50th anniversary,
and now the widow
still longing
for the dance.

Barbara Eknoian

About Barbara the author: 

Link to title on Amazon

“Chances Are”
It's the l950's. Teenager, Susie Di Pietro, lives near the projects in New Jersey. Bookies stand on the corner by the candy store and sound like characters from Guys and Dolls. Everyone plays the numbers, even young Susie.
Throughout her high school years, she's painfully aware that her pal, Ginger, and she are wallflowers. Susie shares her romantic tribulations, her trials with her teachers, and funny incidents that happen to her while she is growing up.
Chances Are is a charming coming-of-age novel that will take you on a nostalgic trip: dancing to Johnny Mathis, Elvis, and The Platters. It will trigger fond memories for some readers of their teen years, and give younger readers a picture of that special era, "The Fifties."

Link to title on Amazon

“Getting Real”
A short-story Romance 

Laura Bingham, a 40-year-old attractive widow with a 17-year-old daughter has put her life on hold to be the perfect single parent. Her hobby is writing and she submits a story on-line, and is miffed when the editor, unfavorably critiques her work. 
Co-incidentally they wind up on-line at the same time, and discuss her work. He suggests she retry his publication, but wants her to change it according to his perspective. In the meantime, both her best friend and mom, coax her to join SOULMATES, because she never dates and is missing out on life. Her usual reply is, “I’m holding out for George Clooney.” They assume that she’s kidding, and are not aware that she seriously fantasizes about him and lives vicariously in her daydreams. 
When she develops writer’s block and is at a loss for a subject to write about, her best friend suggests, “Why not write about Clooney.” 
Without hesitation, she writes the story and submits it to Steve Hudson, the editor, who had originally turned down her earlier story. Surprisingly, this editor invites her to a writing conference where he’s one of the main speakers. He is quite charming when they meet, but not at all George Clooney-like. Nonetheless he invites her to dinner at the Rainbow Room high above Manhattan... 

Contact Info for In the Flow Studios Arts

Website: http://intheflowstudios.com

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"In the Flow Studios is a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering the arts, the artists and worthy causes."

Film Début "The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows" by Paolo Pizzi

We are excited to announce that we will be sharing this film with our audiences on Nov. 15, 2014 at our In the Flow Studios Arts Showcase and Film Debut. For more information about our event please use link at the bottom of page.

"The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows" is a unique and powerful independent short film directed by filmmaker, composer cinematographer, Paolo Pizzi. Paolo takes the viewer on a moving visual and audio journey from the outer-reaches of the cosmos to the the beautiful blue sphere we call Earth. His images and music are perfectly balanced communicating humanity's story without need of verbal dialog. 

Paolo uses images of the epic beauty found on our planet and then challenges us with images of the needless suffering brought about by greed, apathy and oppression. He shows us in no uncertain terms what is possible and how poorly we are measuring up to humanity's potential. The film concludes with the most important message and most powerful force in the universe...LOVE. From start to finish "The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows" is a feast for the senses. It speaks to our most basic of human emotions and asks us to remember that this world is full of wonders. It asks us to acknowledge the pain, suffering and injustice known by far too many and to find our strength to change the it by remembering our capacity to love. The film ends with a poem written over 150 years ago yet still poignantly relative. 

Click here to view trailer on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVConE5Vn8k

I am!

I am! yet what I am noone cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

There to abide with my creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

The grass below--above the vaulted sky. 

by John Clare (1793 - 1864)

"The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows" was accepted into several film festivals and has already won important awards. Paolo has kindly agreed to show his film at In the Flow Studios Arts Showcase and will be available for a quick Q & A after the film. 

http://www.globalmusicawards.com

This is what Play4Music has this to say about Paolo's musical score in "The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows" Paolo Pizzi Wins at Global Music Awards. Italy triumphs at the Global Music Awards: composer and director Paolo Pizzi has won the Gold Medal at the 2014 edition of the event for his film The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows. Global Music Awards goal is to celebrate truly independent musicians, rather than being like other music talent competitions that honor only the best-selling recording artists. GMA is a showcase for original music, unique voices and emerging artists.


Keyboard player for recording sessions and live touring, Pizzi was born in Rome but has been based in Los Angeles for 25 years. He works as film composer, arranger and artistic producer. The Blue Marble of Joys and Sorrows is his first film as a director, a musical journey through the human experience. An example of 'poetic cinema' – film with no dialogue: just music and images. Unlike with conventional films, the music for each of the five chapters was written first, then the images were added to emphasize the message. Play4Music News

Paolo is offering his film to be viewed globally FREE of charge via the internet. This is a testament to his artistic integrity and his generosity of spirit. Humanity is the beneficiary. “There is no humanity in the state. What runs the world is economics and politics, and they have nothing to do with the spiritual life. So we are left with this void. It is the job of the artist to create those new myths. Myths come from the artist.” ~ Joseph Campbell 

About Paolo:
Originally from Italy, Paolo Pizzi is a pianist/composer and a multimedia artist. Studied piano at the S.Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and composition at the Boston Conservatory and Academia Chigiana in Siena (Italy.) He also studied jazz composition and arranging at Berklee College in Boston. Starting at age 6, he studied photography and cinematography with his grandfather, a known professional landscape photographer/cinematographer. He has composed music for theater, ballet, television and film and performed with several "new jazz" groups in Europe, Japan and the US.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
EDUCATION:
- Studied piano at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia (Rome, Italy)
- Studied composition at the Boston Conservatory (Boston, MA)
- Studied jazz composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA)
- Ph.D. in composition from Accademia Chigiana (Siena, Italy)
- Studied photography and cinematography with his grandfather Flavio Pizzi, an award-winning landscape photographer and cinematographer

PROFESSIONAL:
- Principal Conductor of Leominster Symphonietta (a chamber ensemble based in Leominster, MA-USA) 1981-1982
- Active in jazz groups and chamber music ensembles, as well as a studio musician in the 1980’s and early 1990’s
- Has recorded 5 CD’s under his own name, reviewed in magazines such as “Keyboard” (US), “Music Technology” (UK) and “Diapason” (France)
- Has written soundtracks for several feature films and documentaries
- Awarded First Prize in the 1988 Atari ST Europe Award for Computer Music (the very first edition)
- Awarded prizes in other composition contests in Europe and the US
- Awarded the prestigious Nino Rota Prize For Film Music in 1991, for his work in “L’Uomo Del Sogno”
- Has scored extensively for theater, working for prestigious institutions like Teatro di Roma, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Panatenee Pompeiane
- Has written music for ballet companies in Europe and Japan
- Has worked extensively in television, especially for cultural programs and documentaries in Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Japan and the US
- His photographs have won prizes and have been displayed in galleries in Europe and the US

Online links to the movie
resolution 720p:
http://paolopizzi.com/bluemarble720/bluemarble720.html
resolution 1080p:
http://paolopizzi.com/bluemarble1080/bluemarble1080.html

Contact Info for In the Flow Studios Arts

Website: http://intheflowstudios.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InTheFlowStudioArts

Instagram: http://instagram.com/speakyourart

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1490470264570957/
"In the Flow Studios is a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering the arts, the artists and worthy causes."