In this second of two episodes, we learn about the life and career of Aaron Levinson and his evolution to becoming a Grammy award-winning producer. Aaron discusses his start at the very bottom of the music business to working with some of the most well-known musicians in the world, most notably, producing the seminal album the Philadelphia Experiment with Questlove of the ROOTS and ROPEADOPE RECORDS.

 

Aaron Levinson

Aaron Levinson is a Grammy Award-winning producer, musician, composer, and record label owner. He has produced and released dozens of albums since beginning his career with Inner City Records in 1981. In 2003, Levinson co-composed and produced the score for the Cinemax documentary How Do You Spell Murder?, directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond. His recent productions include Jeff Thomas’ All Volunteer Army, El Malito, and Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson. Levinson is an ASCAP-affiliated songwriter and publisher and holds an international co-publishing agreement with Evergreen Music for his musical compositions in 43 countries.

Levinson owns Range Recording Studios in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and previously served as president of Bell Tower Music. He was an adjunct faculty member at Temple University from 2010 to 2016 and an appointed master lecturer at The University of the Arts from 2014 to 2019. He is also a former governor of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

In this episode, we learn about what drew Yina Moore to purchase the historic Adams Theater in Adams, Massachusetts and her journey to bring it back to life. Yina speaks with a clear-eyed resilience about how complex it is to renovate a massive theater and what it takes to then make it work. Yina also discusses her past career in high finance, how she evolved into a world-class architect and her new life with one foot in NYC and the other in the Berkshires while raising children and keeping it real.

 

Yina Moore

Yina Moore is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Adams Theater, reviving a 1930s movie theater into a sustainable arts and performance venue in downtown Adams, MA. Yina’s professional experiences include over two decades of leadership positions in investment banking and architectural design, as well as Board positions at non-profit arts and educational organizations. She is passionate about the interdisciplinary work between arts and cultural development, architectural design, and economic development.

In this episode, we explore Steph’s uniquely diverse career and how she evolved into producing large-scale experiential events for a wide-ranging roster of clients, including NASCAR, Red Bull, Vans, and various celebrities. Steph’s idiosyncratic approach to life and work provides a hilarious backdrop for our conversation.

 

Steph Irwin

Steph Irwin is an experiential event producer from Philadelphia with a long history of tackling massive events, ensuring they are as memorable as the performances and promotions they support. She has produced events across Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, and the West Coast for clients like Vans, Red Bull, Steven Starr, and many others. Steph has expressed a strong interest in creating new programs for the hotel and hospitality industry and has a growing list of celebrity clients. She excels at producing uniquely diverse events, from pro wrestling to NASCAR to the most high-end experiences—a true renaissance woman.

Steph is deeply committed to building the infrastructure of large-scale events, from the first point of contact to the final goodbye, and she shares her insights and best practices.

In the first installment of a two-episode conversation, we learn about the life and career of Kelli Rae Adams and her journey to becoming the important artist that she is today. Kelli digs deeply into her background, the influence of her years in Japan, her work in ceramics, and how she evolved into creating large-scale installations that delve into complicated yet important issues like student loan debt, gun violence, the climate crisis and over-consumption.

 

Kelli Rae Adams

Kelli Rae Adams utilizes clay in various states of permanency—often alongside additional materials—to create installation-based works that examine prevailing economic systems and explore our existing relationships to labor, currency, and value. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (Washington, DC), the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University (Providence, RI), and the Museum of International Ceramic Art (Denmark). She has been a fellow at the Halcyon Arts Lab (Washington, DC) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst, VA), and an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM), the Studios at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), and Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center (Denmark), among others. In 2019, she served as Arts Envoy to Honduras for the U.S. Department of State, lecturing and teaching in Tegucigalpa and jurying the XVIII Central American Sculpture and Ceramics Biennial. Most recently, she was a Fields of the Future Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan. Her study of ceramics began in Japan, where she apprenticed for five years with Tetsuro Hatabe, a master potter in the Karatsu tradition. Kelli holds an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Visual Arts and Spanish from Duke University.

About the art installation FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT:
“With this work, Adams connects the cost of her own education and the skills it afforded her while drawing attention to how labor is valued and highlighting the often wide gap between educational costs and earning potential. Through its participatory dimension, she asserts that the student debt burden and its social and economic ramifications affect all Americans. This sentiment is echoed by many lawmakers and activists calling for some degree of forgiveness and noting the entrenched forms of economic inequality perpetuated by the loan system, with first-generation college students and African American borrowers among those most adversely affected.”

In this episode with Larry Weinstein, we learn about Larry’s latest film, Beethoven’s Nine: Ode To Humanity and how it got made despite the pressures and limitations of the pandemic. Larry also talks about his incredibly prolific career producing more than 30 award-winning films and documentaries.

 

Larry Weinstein

Larry Weinstein is a Canadian film director of theatrical and television documentaries, performance films, and dramas. He is one of Canada’s most prolific and accomplished documentary filmmakers and has been honored with retrospectives around the world, with broadcasts in more than 40 countries. The majority of his 30 award-winning films focus on music and the creative process, while his other subjects range from the horrors of war to the pleasures of football. His films consistently push the boundaries of conventional documentary storytelling by employing tools from fiction films, dramatic reconstructions, historical cinematic styles, and impressionistic visuals. In 2007, Larry received the Cannes MipDoc International Trailblazer Award with the citation: “Weinstein is a deserving awardee for his creativity, originality, risk-taking, and for pushing the genre of documentary filmmaking forward.”