CalArts Podcasts

Director of the Jazz Program, David Roitstein, joins two of his former students: Scott Colley (Music BFA 88) and John Schwerbel (Music BFA 14) to talk about the extraordinary legacy of Charlie Haden at CalArts and beyond, including the annual Charlie Haden/CalArts Artist in Residence program.

Learn more about Charlie Haden at charliehadenmusic.com
Learn more about David Roitstein at davidroitstein.com
John Schwerbel currently serves as Director of Administration at Thomas Safran and Associates and is the Founding Chair of the CalArts Alumni Council
Learn more about Scott Colley at scottcolley.com
Watch Carla Bley and Steve Swallow as part of the 2021 Charlie Haden / CalArts Artists in Residence

Music Credit:  "Turnaround" (composed by Ornette Coleman) from 80/81 (ECM) with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, and Jack DeJohnette. 

Socks Whitmore (Music BFA 20) talks about the ins and outs of starting your career as a freelance artists.

Socks (they/them/theirs) is a Los Angeles-based singer, stage and voice actor, lyricist-composer, and writer. They have done voice over work on projects like the Narwhal & Jelly audiobook series (Penguin Random House) and the fiction podcast "Georgie Romero Is Done For." Socks has also written the book, lyrics, and music to original musicals like "We Are Here" (New Voices Project winner 2019) and "Back to One," as well as originated roles in new works like the ballet operetta "Children Cannot Sleep" and the new musical "The Bully Problem."

Learn more about Socks at sockwhitmore.com

Check out Building Your Freelancing Career, a new specialization from Coursera for CalArts, offered FREE to all students, alumnx, faculty, and staff at CalArts.

Henderson Blumer talks with K Rocka Knittel (Art MFA 10) about their experience at CalArts, Other Places Art Fair (OPaf), and what it takes to make an independent art fair happen (with some help from funding awarded by the Alumnx Council).

The next OPaf will take place on Saturday, May 14, 2022 in Santa Rosa, CA. OPaf 5 is happening in San Pedro on September 17 and 18, 2022. Learn more at Other Places Art Fair and visit them on Instagram. 

If you’ve been to a reading by poet, librettist, and former CalArts faculty Douglas Kearney (Critical Studies MFA 04), you know that Kearney doesn’t merely recite and read poetry. He performs it, lives it, breathes it, on stage or at the lectern, with an energy that’s more akin to hip hop and jazz with varied rhythms and turns of phrases.  

Kearney has published seven poetry collections, including this year’s National Book Award nominee, Sho (Wave 2021). A Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee and Cave Canem fellow, he currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.

In October 2021, Kearney returned to CalArts as a visiting guest artist and lecturer for the Creative Writing Program’s Writing Now Reading Series.

Before Kearney’s lecture, we chatted with him for the 24700 podcast about his book, Sho, the performance of poetry, his writing influences, and teaching.  (And because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, masks were required on campus, which Kearney wore during this interview.)

Music by: Erick Pepper Rivera (Music BFA 12)

We talk with Casey Baden and Minga Opazo, co-founders of Textile Resource LA and current residents at the CalArts REEF Residency. 

You can learn more about Casey Baden at caseybaden.com

You can learn more about Minga Opazo at mingaopazo.com

For more information about Baden and Opazo’s Textile Resource LA project, visit textileresourcela.com

For more information about Baden’s Full Service project, visit  fullservicearts.com

Watch Baden and Opazo’s Craft Contemporary conversation here.  

In this episode we bring together Arturo Márquez (Composition MFA 90) and Maestro Ryan Bancroft (Trumpet BFA 11, MFA 13) who emerged from CalArts’ hotbed of avant garde music to headline classical music programs on the most venerated world stages. 

They will discuss the value of CalArts culture of creative freedom, and how its cross-disciplinary pedagogy transformed their vision for their artistic practice, and continues to influence their craft and collaborations with artists and orchestras.  

In this premier episode of Beyond the Blue Wall, the podcast of the Office of Advancement at CalArts, we talk with Yara Elfouly, an MFA2 in Experimental Animation and the beneficiary of two scholarships from the Institute. 

Yara is Egyptian and grew up in Qatar, receiving her undergraduate degree in Painting and Printmaking from VCUArts Qatar. She talked to us about her experiences as an artist as well as her transition into animation and filmmaking at CalArts. She also discussed finding her own identity and her desire to see more women from her cultural background represented in the arts. 

 You can learn more about Yara Elfouly and her art at yaraelfouly.com or at Instagram. 

For this episode, we had the opportunity to talk to CalArts alum Claire Marie Vogel (Film/Video BFA 10)  about her online exhibition called, Artists in Isolation. 

Over the past year or so, Vogel interviewed 31 musicians, including Allen Stone, Suzi Analogue and Silversun Pickups, about their lives and work during the pandemic. 

She conducted photoshoots via Facetime and interviews over text, and the resulting work is a thoughtful time capsule of an unforgettable moment in our collective history. 

We also chatted about Reflective Refuge, her artist collective that focuses on the relationship between music and technology, her thoughts on the post-COVID music industry and a  pandemic rescue pup named after a famous personal injury lawyer. 

You may hear him a time or two during the interview (the dog, not the lawyer).

To see more of Vogel's work, visit CalArts alumni magazine, The Pool (Issue 9).

Music by: Erick Pepper Rivera (Music BFA 12)

24700 presents Radical Practice a special podcast series: a podcast about finding growth and agency in design practice. In each episode, current CalArts Graphic Design students interview program alumnae to discuss how they have defined success for themselves and how their education might have played a role. 

For more information: https://radicalpractice.calarts.edu/

24700 presents Radical Practice a special podcast series: a podcast about finding growth and agency in design practice. In each episode, current CalArts Graphic Design students interview program alumnae to discuss how they have defined success for themselves and how their education might have played a role.