T Bone Burnett

Wednesday, June 19, 2019
8pm (6:30-7:30pm Reception) 


An Evening with

T Bone Burnett

in a conversation about art, artists and creativity in our digital world
The Invisible Light

Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Blvd.,
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS
$30 Reserved Section 
$20 General Admission Section
$95 Reception + Reserved Section Seats 

At the 2019 SXSW conference, T Bone Burnett gave a compelling speech about artists and art in the digital age.  This talk is a conversation about the themes he brought up in the speech.

“Music industry veteran T Bone Burnett has no big love for Big Tech. In a scorching keynote speech this week at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the Grammy- and Oscar-winning musician/producer spoke out against the growing power of Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook while affirming the importance of artists’ rights. “Artists create conscience,” the O Brother, Where Art Thou? producer said. “The artists are our only hope.”
Fast Company.

“Instead of tending toward a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”
–Marshall McLuhan from his 1962 book, The Gutenberg Galaxy

“We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places. [The Web] has ended up producing—with no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform — a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.”
— Tim Berners-Lee, who drew the original diagram for the world wide web on a napkin, and who now has Dr. Frankenstein’s remorse.

With 50-years’ experience in music and entertainment, T Bone Burnett has earned an unparalleled reputation as a first-rate innovative artist, songwriter, producer, performer, film and concert producer, record company owner and artists’ advocate. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Burnett grew up in Fort Worth, Texas where he first began writing songs and making records. Burnett was traveling the country as a free-lance record producer when he was asked by Bob Dylan to play guitar in his band on the now-legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour leading Burnett to form the Alpha Band with David Mansfield and Steven Soles. Burnett madethree acclaimed albums with the group before making a string of solo records in the 1980’s atthe end of which, he began to work in film, beginning with Roy Orbison’s, A Black and White Night.

Burnett is an Academy Award winner, a Golden Globe winner, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award (BAFTA) winner, and a 13-time Grammy® Award winner. He’s workedand collaborated with musicians across many genres including Elton John, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Elvis Costello, The Civil Wars, Taylor Swift, RyanBingham, Steve Earle and Leon Russell. Burnett’s first major foray into film was his collaborationwith the Coen Brothers on The Big Lebowski, and has since held multiple titles for numerous films including The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain, The Hunger Games, Walk The Line, Inside Llewyn Davis and Crazy Heart, for which he served as one of thefilm’s Producers. He also has multiple credits in television including as the Executive Music Producer and Composer for the HBO series True Detective, and the first season of the ABC television series, Nashville.

T Bone Burnett with Jonathan Taplin

Monday, January 30, 2017
8pm 
 
T Bone Burnett
in conversation Jonathan Taplin
 
The Value of the Artist,
and the Value of Art


Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School

Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission Seat
$30 Reserved Section Seat 
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat

T Bone Burnett recently gave gave the keynote address at AmericanaFest convention of the Americana Music Association on the value of the artist and the value of art.  We felt the compelling speech needed to be delved into further and invited him to our stage. Read more about the speech.

T Bone Burnett is an Academy Award winner, a Golden Globe winner and 13-time Grammy Award winner. He’s worked and collaborated with musicians across many genres including Elton John, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Elvis Costello, The Civil Wars, Taylor Swift, Ryan Bingham, Steve Earle and Leon Russell. With 50-years’ experience in music and entertainment, he has earned an unparalleled reputation as a first-rate innovative artist, songwriter, producer, performer, film and concert producer, record company owner and artists’ advocate.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Burnett grew up in Fort Worth, Texas where he first began writing songs and making records. Burnett was traveling the country as a free-lance record producer when he was asked by Bob Dylan to play guitar in his band on the now-legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour leading Burnett to form the Alpha Band with David Mansfield and Steven Soles. Burnett made three acclaimed albums with the group before making a string of solo records in the 1980’s at the end of which, he began to work in film, beginning with Roy Orbison’s, A Black and White Night.

Burnett’s first major foray into film was his collaboration with the Coen Brothers on The Big Lebowski, and has since held multiple titles for numerous films including The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain, The Hunger Games, Walk The Line, Inside Llewyn Davis and Crazy Heart, which he also produced. He also has multiple credits in television including as the Executive Music Producer and Composer for the HBO series True Detective, and he was Executive Music Producer and Composer for the first season of the ABC television series, Nashville. He is currently producing and narrating an animated series with Drew Christie called Drawn and Recorded.

Jonathan Taplin is an author and Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Taplin’s book Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy will be published in April, 2017. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese’s first feature film, Mean Streets that was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival seven times. 

A graduate of Princeton University, Taplin was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism from 2003-2016. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Broadband Task Force in January of 2007. He currently sits on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Council on Technology and Innovation. His commentary has been published  by The New York Times, Time.com, The Huffington Post, Medium and Talking Points Memo.