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Michael Franti
Michael Franti knows all about the power of music. He knows how it can inspire to action, uplift and make people want to dance or cry. Franti’s singularly open spirit reflects his own eclectic and intriguing background. Michael was born to an Irish-German-French mother and an African American and American Indian father in Oakland, then adopted by a Finnish American couple who raised him along with their three biological children and another African American son. While studying at the University of San Francisco, Franti formed the punk band The Beatnigs, and later the far more hip hop-inflected The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. In the mid-Nineties, Franti first formed Spearhead, and increasingly in recent years, he’s found his own voice musically and his own organic brand of popular success.
For a decade, Franti hosted the Power to the Peaceful free concerts in San Francisco, at first to support incarcerated political activist Mumia Abu Jamal, then as a platform to speak out against escalating violence around the globe. He also headlined the President Obama's 2013 Peace Inauguration Ball, fostering cooperation and partnerships among the nations.
Through it all, Franti has crossed all sorts of musical and physical boundaries in order to make music for everybody. “We’re the music they put on when they drive their little kids to school, or hang out with the person they love at night. There’s no higher honor. So they have an investment in the music. And that means so much because this music is very personal to me too.” |
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Body Psalms
Tim Holmes, presenter, immersion leader
Be|Art|Now participants will experience and have the option to participate in Tim Holmes’ acclaimed Body Psalms project. Body Psalms is a celebration of the sanctity of the body through performance rituals and video sculptures involving ordinary people unfolding passages of mystical texts painted on their skin to create moving sculptural poetry. In Tim Holmes’ words, “In a capitalist culture increasingly governed by the ethics of pornography, where nothing is too sacred to be exploited by amoral commercial forces, the body becomes the preferred currency. Is this what we are meant for? “This art is meant to invite dialogue between separate value systems – personal, corporate and religious – that each one of us engages in our own way, but that are rarely addressed together. The current devaluation of the body can be seen as akin to climate change – a world problem that, regardless of whether we ignore it or face it, increasingly affects our lives.” Tim Holmes, American sculptor, filmmaker, and musician, is brother and son to PSR alumni. His work has gained notice also among some of the world’s peacemakers. Among Holmes’ best-known collectors are Nobel prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, along with many other international figures such as Václav Havel, Coretta Scott King and Mrs. Anwar Sadat. Holmes has created sculpture for many humanitarian projects such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility, PeaceLinks, and Cape Town’s bid for the 2004 Olympics. In 2000 he created the bronze sculpture Anima Mundi for the United Nations Millennium Peace Prize for Women, awarded to heroines working to bridge conflicts the world over. Holmes is a member of the political satire and comedy group the Montana Logging and Ballet Co., billed as National Public Radio’s “resident political satirists” during the Clinton years and which performed around the U.S. from 1976 to 2013 for audiences as diverse as the U.S. Congress, the National Press Club, and the Whitehall, Montana Public Library. Though Holmes is most well known for sculpture, he has worked in a variety of media from museum installation to film making and experiments in new media, including his acclaimed Body Psalms Project. |
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Adriene Thorne
Adriene Thorne, speaker, immersion leader Be|Art|Now participants will discover that the arts have the ability to drop us into the center of ourselves and our healing more quickly than anything else we can access. From that center, we touch the holy and reconnect with our authentic and creative selves. Adriene Thorne, dancer, teacher, healer, activist, and pastor, is executive minister of Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village of New York City. Middle Church is known for its strong expression of arts in worship and justice work. Thorne graduated with an MDiv from PSR in 2008 and is ordained in the Reformed Church in America. Prior to ministry, Adriene pursued a nearly 20-year career in the performing arts. She danced professionally with the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Workshop Ensemble and toured the US and Canada in a Broadway musical. Adriene has performed at The Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and Radio City Music Hall where she was a World Famous Rockette. While no longer performing professionally, Adriene enjoys connecting various artists with religious institutions interested in transformational partnerships. |
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Jinho Ferreira
Jinho “The Piper” Ferreira, performer, [Jinho] discussion leader Be|Art|Now participants will experience and discuss The Piper’s revolutionary play, Cops and Robbers, a sharp look at the dysfunctional relationship between law enforcement, the media, and the Black community. Centered on an officer involved shooting, writer/performer The Piper takes the viewer on an emotionally charged ride with unexpected twists and turns. He seamlessly travels through 17 characters, each with their own convictions, logic, and prejudices. Cops and Robbers takes no prisoners as it challenges the viewer to question all preconceived notions of “right” and “wrong.” Cops and Robbers is also a project and a book that Ferreira brings to schools and correctional facilities in the Bay Area. Performing the play at a recent mental health workshop offered a powerful opportunity to witness how it brought sectors of the community together. Jinho “The Piper” Ferreira is a rapper, actor, and screenwriter from Oakland, California. He is one-third of Flipsyde, an alternative hip-hop band that has toured internationally with artists such as Snoop Dogg, The Black Eyed Peas, Akon, The Game, Busta Rhymes, and more. Flipsyde has written anthems for the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics. The band continues to enjoy several song placements in television, film, and sporting events. In 2009, Piper won the Creative Promise Award for screenwriter at the Tribeca Film Festival for his CIA thriller: Walter’s Boys. In the spring of 2010, Piper paid his way through a Bay Area law enforcement academy, eventually graduating in the top percentile and delivering the commencement speech. The paradox of being a member of the Black community and a hip-hop artist, while simultaneously working in Law Enforcement, served as the inspiration to write Cops and Robbers. Though Piper is not a stranger to the stage, Cops and Robbers is his first venture into theater. The ingenuity of this play led to him being a scholarship recipient for a performance workshop with Anna Deavere Smith at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.The Cops and Robbers Project consists of a one-man-play, an audio play, a 6-song musical soundtrack, and a book written by Piper and his wife Dawn Williams Ferreira, Ph.D.
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