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| Carissa Stolting and Celine Thackston Launch Unmanageable Arts, a Nonprofit Dedicated to Supporting Large Scale, Boundary-Defying Creative Works
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Current projects include a multi-disciplinary theatre work with Haitian-American Artist Leyla McCalla; a song cycle about the beauty and fragility of a single human life written by five women composers; and a music and archival exploration honoring untold stories of the patients in a 1920s segregated asylum with artists Tift Merritt and Allison Russell
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NASHVILLE - June 22, 2021 - Carissa Stolting and Celine Thackston, music industry veterans from the artist management and nonprofit arenas, have launched Unmanageable Arts, an independent nonprofit dedicated to supporting artists and projects that connect across discipline, history, culture and community through project management and fundraising support. Stolting serves as the organization’s Co-Founder and Artistic Director, with Thackston serving as Co-Founder and Development Director.
The idea for Unmanageable Arts began two years ago when Stolting and Thackston recognized the critical need for resources for independent artists looking to share their creative vision on a larger scale, particularly artists in the South, operating outside of the commercial record industry. They shared their clients and colleagues’ frustration with struggling to launch major initiatives and sustain momentum after a project’s debut due to lack of resources.
“Certain artists have wild, creative visions of different ways their music and message can be presented,” said Stolting. “These ideas are bigger, broader and unbound by genre or medium and they’re critical contributions to our artistic community - beautiful and epic in scale, depth and mission. We created Unmanageable Arts to be able to help support and sustain these large scale projects that forge their own path forward and are ‘unmanageable’ in their rebellion against any prefabricated mold.”
Thackson continues: “Unmanageable Arts has already begun providing artists with creative management, fundraising, team-building and design services, allowing them to share their work on a global scale, acting as a bridge to arts and culture partners worldwide. In doing this, we’re elevating the dialogue between the artist and the community around values and issues in ways that only the arts can do.”
Unmanageable Arts has several projects underway including:
The Blue Hour: Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw and Sarah Kirkland Snider The Blue Hour is an evening-length song cycle commissioned by Boston-based string orchestra A Far Cry and born of a unique collaboration between five women composers. Set to excerpts from 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize winner Carolyn Forché’s epic abecedarian poem, “On Earth,” the music follows one woman’s journey through the liminal space between life and death via thousands of hallucinatory and non-linear images.
Hungry River: Tift Merritt & Allison Russell Hungry River is a performance collaboration between songwriter and community historian Tift Merritt, and Allison Russell (Our Native Daughters, Birds of Chicago), illuminating the prophetic importance of the patients from a 1920s-era segregated North Carolina asylum, and ultimately a portrait of how the vulnerable carry the soul of a society. A collection of songs and monologues, a ceremony, a meditation, a community history - this creative intervention examines the lives of these patients, and the valuable lessons they exemplify.
Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever: Leyla McCalla Breaking the Thermometer is a multi-disciplinary performance created by Haitian-American artist Leyla McCalla in collaboration with Director Kiyoko McCrae. Breaking The Thermometer explores the legacy of Radio Haiti-Inter, Haiti’s first independent radio station to broadcast news in Haitian Creole - the voice of the people - until the assassination of the station’s founder, Jean Dominque. Through music, dance, audio-recordings from the Radio Haiti Archive, and Leyla’s own personal storytelling, Breaking The Thermometer To Hide the Fever explores the themes of exile and return, the complexities of what it means to be Haitian, and the role of independent press in the movement for Haitian cultural identity, freedom and democracy.
About Unmanageable Arts
Based in Nashville, Unmanageable Arts is a female-owned, 501(c3) formed out of a shared vision to support multi-dimensional projects that disrupt and challenge boundaries of genre, form and message. Co-founders Carissa Stolting and Celine Thackston combine their vast experience in both the commercial music industry and the nonprofit art world to launch and sustain these projects that aim to reach beyond traditional limits. Learn more at www.unmgmt.org, and contact us at info@unmgmt.org.
About the Co-Founders:
Carissa Stolting is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Unmanageable Arts, supporting project management, team-building and release strategy. Unmanageable Arts supports several individual projects of Left Bank Artists, an artist management company Stolting designed in 2013 with Grammy award-winning artist and cultural ambassador, Abigail Washburn. Left Bank has since become the management home to Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla, Rachel Grimes, Washburn and others. Previously, Stolting served as Managing Director of the internationally renowned Big Ears Festival (2018 & 2019), producer and curator of Nashville International Women’s Day (2017), and producer of Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn’s “Circle Round Home” residency (2017), a fundraiser for local Nashville non-profit organizations. She began her career in music at AC Entertainment working on events including Bonnaroo, Moogfest and Forecastle. Stolting can be reached at carissa@unmgmt.org.
Celine Thackston is Co-Founder and Development Director for Unmanageable Arts, supporting fundraising, organizational planning and design. A skilled writer, she has helped to raise millions of dollars each year for a range of nonprofit organizations and individual artists. Clients have included major cultural institutions, and human services organizations providing aid at both regional and national levels, along with internationally recognized music festivals, and more. She currently assists in managing grants for the Highlander Research and Education Center, while independently helping a number of individual artists, including musicians, composers, and visual artists receive support. She holds a DMA in Music Performance from the University of Oregon, with supporting studies in Arts Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management. Thackston can be reached at celine@unmgmt.org.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
Lisa Chader, The Change Agent·cy
lisa.chader@thechangeagentcy.com
615-428-7223
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