I love the lineup for this year — Mutemath, Lucero, and Brett Dennen — but I’m always cautious and worried about our poorly designed “bandshell” in Forsyth, which is at least three feet too low and surrounded by the virtual moat of a little-used fountain. It’s a terrible design.

The reason I didn’t write about the lineup announcement here before now: since last fall, I’ve been editing the music blog hissing lawns, where Anna Chandler promptly put up an excellent post about the May 30th show: Mutemath, Lucero, Brett Dennen to play SCAD New Alumni Concert

I also put a link to that post on the Savannah Unplugged Facebook page.

So go check out Anna’s coverage if you want more info on the bands.

Here’s a shot I took of Lucero from their gig earlier this year at The Jinx:

From the website for the micro-housing initiative by the Savannah College of Art and Design:

SCADpad embraces and advances the universityâ€s deeply rooted commitment to adaptive reuse by utilizing a parking structure at SCAD Atlanta to create an inspirational and sustainable community that proposes an answer to the growing urban housing challenges cities are facing around the world.

An interdisciplinary group of SCAD students, faculty, and alumni worked for 10 months to design and develop SCADpad—from its architectural footprint to custom furniture to remote home control—to fit in the mere 135-square-feet of a standard parking space.

Each of the three SCADpad units has a unique theme and visual identity, reflecting SCADâ€s global footprint. A common green space extends the living area, creating a community environment.

My friend Jerome Elder is actually living right now at SCADpad in Atlanta. Here’s the video he posted to YouTube, presumably the first of many:

You can click on through this tweet to see what Architectural Record has to say:

And SCADpad is not just in the U.S.:

We’ll check in again soon.

As in previous years, the bright sun and deep shade from the live oaks makes it very difficult to get a lot of great photos of the event, and I didn’t hang around all that long anyway.

So here are a few dozen, some better than others. As you can see, the big thing in recent years is for the participants to mix the chalk with water, in effect making paint.

If you’re in Savannah and have never stopped by the park for this event, you’re missing out. I can only imagine how much fun it is for tourists who just happen to chance upon it while visiting the city on a beautiful spring weekend.

The movie’s star Bruce Dern will honor Payne with an “Outstanding Achievement in Cinema” award before the screening.

Dern himself was honored by the SFF in 2006 and was the winner of the Best Actor Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for his performance in Nebraska.

Payne has won Oscars for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for both Sideways (2004) and The Descendants (2011).

Nebraska tells the story of an aging father (Dern) who is duped into thinking he has struck it rich. He convinces his son (Will Forte) to hit the road to claim the fortune.

Click here for a roundup of reviews at the LA Times.

Payne’s complete filmography includes Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), and About Schmidt (2002).

Dern’s legendary career includes Coming Home, The King of Marvin Gardens, The Great Gatsby, Wild Bill, and After Dark, My Sweet (one of my favorites).

Both Dern and Payne will conduct master classes for Savannah College of Art and Design students while they are in town for the festival, which is of course organized and produced by SCAD.

The stellar list of folks who have attended the SFF over the years includes Peter O’Toole, Michael Douglas, Oliver Stone, Jane Fonda, Sidney Lumet, James Gandolfini, Ian McKellen, Isabella Rossellini, Lily Tomlin, Ellen Barkin, Liam Neeson, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, Matt Dillon, Norman Jewison, James Marsden, Jason Patric, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Donen, John Waters, James Franco, Alec Baldwin, Natasha Richardson, James Ivory, Ray Liotta, Aaron Eckhart, Stan Lee, Roger Ebert, Terrence Malick, Ben Edlund, Matthew Modine, Claire Danes, Hugh Dancy, Diane Lane, Chris Noth, Sydney Pollack, Rex Reed, Malcolm McDowell, and Milos Forman.

I’ve been fortunate to be covering the Savannah Film Festival almost since its inception. It has become one of the most important events on Savannah’s cultural and social calendars. The speed with which the coveted evening screenings sell out indicates even stronger demand than the festival can meet.

MLK was of course the old West Broad Street — the western border of downtown. The magnificent Union Station once stood a few blocks south of the SCAD MOA location, and the museum for years was housed entirely in old railway company offices in Kiah Hall. It was a nice space, but confining.

So some visiting artist friends who had already made several trips to Savannah were in town a couple of weeks ago. My old friend Kora had read something about Ursula von Rydingsvard’s massive sculptures on display at the museum, so we made that one of our stops during their short stay.

From the SCAD MOA website:

The SCAD Museum of Art presents a selection of cedar sculptures by artist Ursula von Rydingsvard. “Shadows Remain” consists of wall reliefs and monumental freestanding floor pieces that are at once abstract and referential, evoking forces of nature, anthropomorphic forms and utilitarian objects.

We also enjoyed “Rehearsals: The Practice and Influence of Sound and Movement”, which pairs various multimedia pieces with works from the Walter O. Evans Collection and “Reconstruction,” a site-specific painting by Adam Cvijanovic. From the museum website:

Deeply inspired by the museum as well as the history and landscapes of Savannah during his numerous trips to the area, Cvijanovic has created a surrealistic representation of an extruded “old Savannah” house.

Three partial landscapes—a cotton field, railroad tracks and the night sky—appear through the distorted rooms collectively combined and reconstructed into what the artist calls “a memory house.”

Other exhibitions included “Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein Collection” in the Andre Leon Talley Gallery and “Streaming Spirits” by Valerie Hammond and Kiki Smith.

Quite a nice mix of shows. Photography without flash is allowed at the SCAD Museum of Art, so I suppose it’s OK for me to post these to my blog . . .

Enjoy:

Just a few random thoughts, followed by some photos of the event on Friday evening.

• Gringo Star was excellent, I thought, but the problematic nature of the stage in Forsyth is tough for a band like that. If we had been at The Jinx (where I likely last saw Gringo Star), the moat and barricades last night would have been the equivalent of trying ton watch the show from somewhere in Ellis Square. Seriously. Gringo Star also started well before dark and before many arrived. The sound wasn’t as good for Gringo Star as for the other acts.
• The Greyboy Allstars sounded great and added to the exuberant atmosphere in the park, but that sort of jammy funk really isn’t my favorite music. I took a few shots and watched up close for a while, but spent much of the evening with friends further back.
• I only listened to Mayer Hawthorne for a few songs, but I was a little disappointed overall.
• In my column in the Savannah Morning News on Sunday, I mention how much this year’s crop of SCAD graduates contributed to the cultural life of the city, but I saw very few of the grads that I know at the park.
• There was a huge crowd, but there was also ample open space throughout the audience, including right up front. Anyone wanting to get as close as possible to the stage could just walk right up there at any given moment. (It still wasn’t that close.)
• It’s tough to take good photos of bands on stage without getting press access — and even then it’s tough given the backdrops, the lighting, the distance from the crowd, etc. So I primarily took photos of people in the incredibly diverse audience.
• If there are any pics here of you or your family that you’d like removed, I’d be happy to take them down.
• Savannah is beautiful.

Click for larger versions or view with CoolIris.

It’s an interesting development.

Safdie is a renowned architect with a stunning list of major projects that includes Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. (Wal-Mart money); Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City; Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv; Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv; Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem; and Habitat ’67, the innovative Olympic residences in Montreal decades ago.

The list also includes the Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center for the Arts.

In recent years, SCAD’s commencement speakers have included “James Cromwell, Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close, Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley, Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Philippe de Montebello, playwright Edward Albee and movie critic Joel Siegel.”

Now, those are all perfectly fine commencement speakers, in my opinion, especially for an art school that also offers performing arts and film. Those are serious people, but the list still has a celebrity ring to it — which is entirely fine and appropriate.

But Safdie seems like something of an outlier. He’s not a celebrity by any stretch. He probably gets recognized in public more than I imagine, but he’s hardly a household name or face. Many SCAD grads may not have known James Cromwell’s name, but I’ll bet they and their parents recognized him as soon as they saw his face and heard his voice.

Longtime Savannahians might also know that there has historically been some tension between the Telfair Museums and SCAD. In part, this seems to have to do with personnel decisions made years ago, and I should note that the tensions seem to have faded markedly over the years.

But institutional tensions and personalities resonate throughout bureaucracies. Once a certain institutional attitude is created, it can be hard to change. All of Savannah’s major institutions have their own defining characteristics.

I know I’m being too cryptic here for some of you, but that’s what you get. It’s a blog.

The upshot of all this is that I suspect many of tomorrow’s graduates have never even set foot inside the Jepson, despite the fact that it’s the most important building constructed in many decades in Savannah, despite the fact that it would be a logical destination for SCAD students to visit routinely, and despite the fact that the building’s architect is a towering figure of the profession — one important enough to deserve the honor of delivering a commencement address.

Here’s a shot I posted to my Instagram account recently of the side of the Jepson, while dozens of people were hoping to see a Kanye West video projection outside and a Nigerian wedding was taking place inside.

UPDATE: Here’s Safdie at the Jepson with Telfair director Lisa Grove and (I think) Bob Jepson. No word on whether any SCAD staff joined him there:

ORIGINAL POST:
I’ve already done one short post listing the three acts for SCAD’s New Alumni Concert in Forsyth Park on Friday, May 31 — the night before graduation — featuring The Greyboy Allstars, Mayer Hawthorne, and Gringo Star.

That post has gotten a lot of traffic, but not as much as another post pointing out the ridiculousness but doggedness of the rumor that SCAD had booked Mumford & Sons for the annual free show. It’s a great example of the durability of misinformation on the web — once incorrect info is out there, it’s hard to correct it.

Since I didn’t actually write anything about Friday’s show for any of my print columns, I just wanted to say a little more here.

SCAD has clearly — and justifiably — lowered their sights for these big graduation concerts. Even with a permanent — if deeply flawed — stage in the center of Forsyth, a free concert of this scale is still a major production and a major expense.

Years ago, SCAD was pulling out all the stops, booking acts like George Clinton, James Brown, and Ziggy Marley (with the Neville Brothers opening). Michael Franti also did a great show as a big storm brewed in the distance.

There have been some strong acts the last few years too, but not quite the blazing headliners of earlier concerts. I found Cold War Kids a little disappointing two years ago, and last year I didn’t even make it to Grace Potter & the Nocturnals and JJ Grey & Mofro.

This year’s New Alumni Concert looks really good. We’ve known the lineup for a while, but only in the last few days or maybe a week has SCAD posted the following to its events calendar:

The annual New Alumni Concert in Forsyth Park is a celebration of the newest SCAD alumni and their achievements while SCAD students. Headlining this year’s concert are The Greyboy Allstars, a jazz-funk band from California. Also slated to perform are Atlanta indie rockers Gringo Star and R&B singer and songwriter Mayer Hawthorne, a longtime Savannah favorite. The concert is free and open to the public.

I should note that somewhere along the line, that press release has gotten a little garbled. Gringo Star is the longtime Savannah favorite. To my knowledge, Mayer Hawthorne has never played Savannah. Anyone?

One music-savvy friend expressed some surprise that Mayer Hawthorne isn’t the headliner. From his official bio:

Hawthorne grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, and vividly remembers, as a child, driving with his father and tuning the car radio in to the rich soul and jazz history the region provided. “Most of the best music ever made came out of Detroit,” claims the singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, who counts Smokey Robinson and famed songwriting trio Holland, Dozier, Holland among his influences, but also draws inspiration from Michael McDonald, Juan Atkins and J Dilla.

Hawthorne has produced and played instruments for much of his life, but never intended to become a singer. What he became, however, was a new school soul sensation, touring globally and earning accolades from Playboy, NPR and Entertainment Weekly. “Heâ€s an able singer…an arranger of astonishing precision,” wrote the New York Times when Hawthorne first hit the scene.

Hawthorne recently collaborated with Booker T on “Sound the Alarm”:

And Hawthorne has some videos with a stunning number of views on YouTube, including this one approaching 4 million:

And this one with almost 2.8 million:

I can’t say that I’m in love with Hawthorne’s sound, but clearly he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Gringo Star seems to me to have long been a candidate to hit it big. The jangly garage rock sound works well in small clubs and translates beautifully to the studio, as you can tell here:

I will be curious to hear Gringo Star in the big space of Forsyth Park. I’m not quite sure what piece of the puzzle has been missing to prevent the band from finding a broader audience — or whether it’s just been bad luck. The band has 18,000 likes on Facebook — an accomplishment in itself — so clearly I’m not the only one who has been impressed over the years. The problem might be simply PR — it’s hard on any of those sites even to find a simple band bio, which is an incredible frustration for writers like me.

The Greyboy Allstars, who have been playing together for almost 20 years, have the type of jammy sound that should be a big hit after dark with a young crowd in Forsyth:

The Greyboy Allstars recently released their album Inland Emperor. From the band’s bio:

On Inland Emperor, the Greyboy Allstars†fourth studio album to date, one hears the benefits that accrue when a group of exceptional players with a wide variety of tastes and musical experiences continue to collaborate for 20 years. The cornerstones of The Greyboy Allstars sound remain the same: funk, soul and jazz; or, looked at another way, rhythm and spontaneity. Without attempting to recreate them, the band has drawn upon elements of many genres: old soundtracks, psychedelic garage rock, â€80s dance music, â€70s FM soft rock and Tropicalia, to name a few. As a result, Inland Emperor has the vibe of a mixtape whose tracks are united by an emphasis upon rhythm.

The Greyboy Allstars came together in 1994, when the individual members were asked to perform at a record release party for the landmark acid jazz and club staple “Freestylin,” by San Diegoâ€s DJ Greyboy, who was famous for spinning `70s soul and funk. The guys so enjoyed playing together that they decided to continue on as a band. Right out of the box, The Greyboy Allstars starting playing weekly at San Diegoâ€s now defunct Green Circle, weekends at San Franciscoâ€s Elbo Room and various clubs throughout Europe. By playing danceable boogaloo music within the soul jazz genre, they became a national and international phenomenon. The lineup of the band remains nearly the same as it did on their breakthrough, West Coast Boogaloo: Denson on horns and vocals, Robert Walter on keyboards, Elgin Park (aka Michael Andrews) on guitars and vocals, and Chris Stillwell on bass. Original drummer Zak Najor has passed the baton on to Aaron Redfield, an old friend of the band and frequent collaborator. While DJ Greyboy is no longer a member of the band, he remains a central figure in their artistic output, having introduced the band to many of the records that inspire their sound, produced their first album and appeared on 2007′s What Happened to Television?

At this point, the bandâ€s members are as well known for their non-Allstars projects as for their work with the band. The individual members have gone to score film and television shows, work with platinum artists and bands both on the road and in the studio, and head their own highly regarded solo projects.

SCAD has the show listed for 6 p.m., and it might actually start then. Graduation is the following morning, and there’s no real upside either for graduates, SCAD staff, or visiting guests in having a show that runs extremely late the night before.

The weather forecast looks perfect, with a high in the 80s falling into the 70s in the evening.