Almost since the release of her first single, "Younger," at the ripe age of 23 in 2013, Gambian-Swedish singer Seinabo Sey has been hailed as a pop sensation. She went on to win the Swedish Grammy for Best Newcomer in 2014 and, after the release of her debut LP, "Pretend," last year, for Best Pop Song in February. Her performance at the Grammys, compared in the European press to Beyonce's SuperBowl show, involved bringing 200 black women on stage to stare silently at the audience while she sang.

Sey's powerful, soulful delivery betrays the complicated uncertainty that lies beneath the surface of her music. Sey came to the OPB studio to perform and to speak with State of Wonder's Aaron Scott. Highlights from their conversation are below.

On her song "Pretend":
"I feel sometimes that I know what I should think. I know reasonably how things should be, but it's hard to feel it and to really believe it. So, the song is about if the world would end tomorrow, you'd be alright with it and it wouldn't feel like a catastrophe. I feel like I'm always preparing for a catastrophe in my music, but I don't know if that's a good thing. I'm trying to teach myself how to take it easy, calm down and take each moment as it comes."

On her performance of "Hard Times" at the Swedish Grammys:
"I started googling magazine covers of Swedish magazines, and I realized that no one was black on the cover for a year. I got really pissed off one night on Instagram and started posting about that, because a lot of our business is about being nice to magazines because you want the press to cover you. I just flipped out and started calling them out.

"I felt the main argument in Sweden is 'we don't know who to put on the cover' or 'where are the black people?' I put 100 black women on the stage to show that we do exist and this is a fragment of us here. Take a [screen shot] and put it on your magazine."

On the similarity between her Grammy performance and Beyonce's Super Bowl show:
"I've been obsessed with Beyonce since I was 10 years old. Whatever Beyonce tells me to do, I will do. I did come up with the whole performance thing before she did it, but I don't care, because I feel like for her to take those steps and to be brave enough to do those things that I, as a teeny weeny artist from Sweden — for me it's not very brave, but for her and the whole machinery of her to do those things, I think is crazy. I'm totally looking forward to her new album and I hope she just flips the f--k out, so that everyone else can do that."

Almost since the release of her first single, "Younger," at the ripe age of 23 in 2013, Gambian-Swedish singer Seinabo Sey has been hailed as a pop sensation. She went on to win the Swedish Grammy for Best Newcomer in 2014 and, after the release of her debut LP, "Pretend," last year, for Best Pop Song in February. Her performance at the Grammys, compared in the European press to Beyonce's SuperBowl show, involved bringing 200 black women on stage to stare silently at the audience while she sang.

Sey's powerful, soulful delivery betrays the complicated uncertainty that lies beneath the surface of her music. Sey came to the OPB studio to perform and to speak with State of Wonder's Aaron Scott. Highlights from their conversation are below.

On her song "Pretend":
"I feel sometimes that I know what I should think. I know reasonably how things should be, but it's hard to feel it and to really believe it. So, the song is about if the world would end tomorrow, you'd be alright with it and it wouldn't feel like a catastrophe. I feel like I'm always preparing for a catastrophe in my music, but I don't know if that's a good thing. I'm trying to teach myself how to take it easy, calm down and take each moment as it comes."

On what drew her to music and soul in particular:
"I grew up listening to reggae a lot. I feel like Luciano or Beres Hammond are definitely soul singers. Those were the first voices I heard when I was a kid. Then I learned to listen to soul through Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and Destiny's Child. A lot of people think I listen to really old music. I haven't listened to an entire Nina Simone record ever, but I feel like I've received those influences through a Lauryn or an Erykah. I've listened to a lot of voices and I feel like soul is not a genre. It's more an expression or a timbre in your voice and telling the truth."

On her performance of "Hard Times" at the Swedish Grammys:
"I started googling magazine covers of Swedish magazines, and I realized that no one was black on the cover for a year. I got really pissed off one night on Instagram and started posting about that, because a lot of our business is about being nice to magazines because you want the press to cover you. I just flipped out and started calling them out.

"I felt the main argument in Sweden is 'we don't know who to put on the cover' or 'where are the black people?' I put 100 black women on the stage to show that we do exist and this is a fragment of us here. Take a [screen shot] and put it on your magazine."

On the similarity between her Grammy performance and Beyonce's Super Bowl show:
"I've been obsessed with Beyonce since I was 10 years old. Whatever Beyonce tells me to do, I will do. I did come up with the whole performance thing before she did it, but I don't care, because I feel like for her to take those steps and to be brave enough to do those things that I, as a teeny weeny artist from Sweden — for me it's not very brave, but for her and the whole machinery of her to do those things, I think is crazy. I'm totally looking forward to her new album and I hope she just flips the f--k out, so that everyone else can do that."

Rick Bartow, one of the region’s most striking and accomplished artists, died on Apr. 2 at the age of 69 from complications arising from congestive heart failure.

Bartow's sculptures, paintings, and prints have shown everywhere from the White House to the Smithsonian, and they hang in museum collections around the country.

His boldly colorful, emotive, and idiosyncratic works refuse to be contained by medium or style or even species. Inspired by his Native American heritage and travels to Mexico, Japan, and beyond, his works depict beings that blend the human and the animal. They are creatures on the cusp of the material and the spiritual world, like stories and myths made flesh.

"We all are given a gift," Bartow told Think Out Loud last year during a major retrospective of his work at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene. "My job is to be an artist. As I tell my son, who's a hip-hop artist — I told him early on that we were given a blessing, and we were given a curse. Because sometimes it's not much fun, but you have to do it."

When we first heard Bartow was not well in February, we invited Bartow’s longtime friend and gallerist, Charles Froelick, into the studio to talk about his legacy. You can hear the conversation above.

Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/rick-bartow-stunning-nw-artist-dies-at-69

Our columnist in residence, Randy Gragg, directs the John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape. This week he suggested we talk with Gil Kelley about Portland and San Francisco's parallel tracks. Gil is director of citywide planning for the City of San Francisco. He also served for 9 years as Portland Planning director under Mayor Vera Katz, guiding the Pearl District’s ascent, setting the stage for OHSU’s expansion into South Waterfront, and codifying the planning goal that Portland's neighborhoods should serve basic needs within a 20 minute walk. Here are a few highlights from the conversation:

On the magnitude of the planning challenges facing the Bay Area and Portland:
"We tracked [the years]1980-2014, a 35-year period. Portland, over that span, grew at a population rate of 2%, whereas for SF it was only 0.8%. So Portland has gained population at twice the rate of its sister cities."

On what Portland might expect in coming years, based on San Francisco's experience:
"Some of that [population] "churn," is people moving to places in the region that are affordable. But for the most part it's tech workers and higher income individuals moving into San Francisco and moderate and middle income people, especially with families, moving out with this new flush of economic activity. I would ask Portlanders to consider: How do you maintain that economic diversity in a city that will increasingly experience this affordability gap?"

On what measures Portland should consider to deal with growth:
"I would suggest Portland look at things it hasn't looked at before: inclusionary zoning, linkage fees with new economic development is another thing we do in San Francisco — new office developments pay some amount into a housing fund to build moderate and low income housing. The city here passed a bond measure recently $300 million bond to underwrite a number of 100% affordable housing projects. That sounds like a lot but won't go far."

On whether Portland has a leg up, in some respects:
"Portland's planning history have really put [the city] in a position that it knows where it wants to go and has policy consensus around some of the basic land use and transport questions. And there is a capacity for Portland to accommodate growth. The closer questions are how does it deal with some of these potential inequities as this growth occurs.

On whether the Portland Development Commission is on the right track to shape growth:
"The important question is "who are they?" Are they the cities' economic development agency? Des that really belong in the mayor's office? What can PDC do? how does that match with really being the city's real estate development entity? They need to be very engaged not just in attracting business but in helping build the infrastructure for these new companies that will be looking for a home in Portland."

On what Portlanders should be looking for in their next mayor:
"The new mayor really needs to be a champion for good planning again. We have risen to the occasion at a number of critical moments in our history, including late '60s to mid-'70s, and another period in the '80s when we doubled down on transportation investments. But we can't just live on the fumes of those past efforts. There is no substitute for a mayor as champion of good planning."

Listen to the full interview for more on how Portland's form of government influences planning culture, and Kelley's thoughts on central city hot-spots, and strengthening neighborhoods east of 82nd without giving way to gentrification.

What happens when a conductor, a chanteuse, and a visual artist walk into a dance studio?

To start out, you get words and descriptions like “floorography” and “it’s jazz crabs versus hot rocks.” That is, if you’re working with the likes of Pink Martini singer China Forbes, Oregon Symphony music director Carlos Kalmar, and artist Malia Jensen.

The dance company BodyVox has always delighted in pushing boundaries, whether defying genre by mixing in things like opera or monsters, or defying physical laws by using video projection to make it look like they’re dancing on the wall. Now they’ve invited eight well-known local artists to choreograph new dances for “The Pearl Dive Project.” Only catch? None of the artists are choreographers. Alongside Forbes, Kalmar and Jensen, there’s a landscape architecture firm, a film director, a composer, and more.

“We thought this has never been done: you find very highly evolved creative people in their field and then they jump from that field to our own and apply their creativity and imagination in choreography,” says BodyVox’s co-artistic director Jamey Hampton. “So we became the curators of an absolute gusher of creativity.”

Full story: http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/bodyvox-china-forbes-carlos-kalmar

Hear the Dandy Warhol's new record early at a dive bar near you; get moved by BodyVox's big collaboration with A-list non-dancers; tune in to an opbmusic session with the Thermals; meet Oregon's new poet laureate and more.

BodyVox Brings Its A-Team - 1:01
The dance company BodyVox does not do normal, choosing instead to push boundaries of genre and form. So how are they pushing forward with their new performance, “The Pearl Dive Project”? How about asking eight top-tier artists to choreograph for them. Only thing: none of the artists are actually dancers. Instead, they're folks like Pink Martini singer China Forbes, Oregon Symphony music director Carlos Kalmar, and visual artist Malia Jensen.

Elizabeth Woody Names New Oregon Poet Laureate - 9:40
Governor Kate Brown has appointed Elizabeth Woody as Oregon’s next poet laureate. Her mandate: to represent the poetic powers, to encourage the reading and writing of poetry, and to be our mirror, reflecting on public life. Woody’s maternal family is part of the Confederated Tribe of the Warm Springs, but she was born on the Navajo Reservation — among her father’s folks — and identifies as Buddhist.

Pioneer Mall Shows Its Galleries the Door - 14:45
For the past several years, one of downtown Portland’s most unusual art hubs in has been on the top floor of the Pioneer Place Mall. Mark Woolley Gallery, People’s Art of Portland, Artist in Residence Gallery and One Der Gallery have lured the art walk crowds past J. Crews and Forever 21s and up escalators to take in fine art in a building where skill and quality is generally associated with Louis Vuitton. Now, mall management has informed the galleries they need to make way for a new commercial tenant by the end of April.

opbmusic Session with The Thermals - 16:28
The Thermals’ newest release, “We Disappear,” dives deep, exploring concepts of love, loss and technology’s role in both. Of course, the dark subject matter doesn’t mean Hutch Harris, Kathy Foster and Westin Glass have ditched their penchant for writing fun, catchy sing-a-longs, like “My Heart Went Cold.”

What Can Portland Learn From San Francisco? 24:14
What are we supposed to make of what’s happening in the Bay Area. Is it a cautionary tale of what could happen as Portland’s Oregon’s growth keeps surging? Or a preview of things that are definitely coming, no matter what we do? We sit down with Gil Kelley, San Francisco's citywide planning director who formerly directed Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, to talk about his unique view on how the city's compare.

Beverly Cleary Turns 100 - 36:58
We are celebrating a huge 100th birthday for a true Oregon original: the one and only Beverly Cleary. Mrs. Cleary’s books, featuring Ramona, Beezus, Henry Huggins, and other kids, helped invent what we understand today as children’s literature, and remade the rules for how girls are represented in books. While she was at it, she brought a slice of Northeast Portland’s Klickitat Street to vivid life for people all over the world. We listen in on part of Cleary's conversation with Oregon Art Beat in preview of Art Beat's half-hour special, "Discovering Beverly Cleary."

Chris Arellano - 44:20
In Albany and Corvallis, people know Chris Arellano as a music teacher and guitarist. In New Mexico, he’s quickly becoming a star.

Be the First to Hear the Dandy Warhol's Newest Record: At a Dive Bar Near You - 47:57
There are two places the public can hear the Dandy Warhol's first album in four years, "Distortland," in advance of its Apr. 8 release: on the jukebox at Tony's Tavern on West Burnside and at Tony's Tavern on Northeast Sandy. The band held a listening party at the Burnside dive on Saturday because, according to bandleader Courtney Taylor-Taylor, it has the single best sound system in any Portland bar.

Read the full story:

Shelley McLendon struggled for years to find affordable theaters to stage her sell-out adaptations of movies like “Road House” and “The Lost Boys,” as well as sketch and improv comedy shows.

“It wasn’t just affecting me — it was affecting everybody else,” McLendon told State of Wonder during an episode she guest curated. “So you had all these companies, from comedy to straight-up drama to dance to poetry, looking for places to put up a show—places that were not only available, but affordable. We were all in competition.”

McLendon decided to go in search of her own space. After two years of hunting for the right building, she opened the city’s first new theater in some time, the Siren Theater.

McLendon’s story is a bright light in an otherwise darkening theater landscape. The list of performing companies who have lost their homes or struggled to find new ones as a result of Portland’s booming real estate market continues to grow at an alarming rate, starting with the companies sent scrambling after the close of Theater Theatre in 2013 and most recently seen in the displacement of three of the city’s dance companies — Northwest Dance Project, Conduit Dance and Polaris Dance Theater.

Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/could-the-arts-get-pushed-out-of-portland

Leviathan bills itself as the monster of all improv shows, and a canny beast it is. It works like this: a guest storyteller tells a series of stories based on suggestions from the audience, and then a group of hardy improvisers riff off those stories through a serious of hilarious sketches.

When Leviathan producer Shelley McLendon invited be to risk my dignity on stage, I demurred, intimidated the idea of having to generate not one but multiple stories off the cuff. But as we talked further about her guest curating an episode of State of Wonder, it became hard to resist the opportunity, if only because spectacular failure can make for great radio. (Then again, it can also make for truly awful radio.)

Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/leviathan-siren-theater/