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Point Park Globe

Point Park University's Student-Run Newspaper

Point Park Globe

Point Park University's Student-Run Newspaper

Point Park Globe

Festival create ‘plays matchmaker’

For years, Lauren Goshinski thought about ways to leverage all of the musical and artistic events happening in Pittsburgh. With a background in fine arts and being a disc jockey, Goshinski took it upon herself and her group of friends to create a new event.“I wanted to build it from the ground up,” Goshinski said in a phone interview on Saturday.After “lots of talking” and hard work, Goshinski and her partners created VIA, is a collective of musicians and artists in Pittsburgh creating visual arts. For the past three years, they have held a music festival to showcase the talents of these musicians and artists.In its third year, the festival will last an entire week, from Monday, Oct. 1 through Saturday, Oct. 6. The festival is located at various venues all over the Pittsburgh area. Some of the locations include the Andy Warhol Museum, Brillobox and 6119 Penn Ave.Goshinski noticed that, as a whole, the people of Pittsburgh were slow to build trust and take chances. She saw this as an opportunity to bring people together from all different backgrounds through their love of music and the arts.“[Pittsburgh] is steadily growing, so it was a chance worth taking,” she said. According to Goshinski, preparation for the festival is “a year-long process.” They begin planning the next festival in December, starting with contacting and alerting the people involved. Then, Goshinski and her partners scout for locations and start contacting performers on their “wish list.” They do a lot of traveling, going to shows to see which artists have the best performances, while remaining relevant. Goshinski then “plays match-maker” by pairing up the musicians with visual artists.Goshinski said they do not usually book the same act twice, in order to give every up-and-coming artist an opportunity to showcase their talent and gain recognition. They try to find genre-pushing musicians who showcase “unique, forward-thinking music.”One of these performers is Jennifer Baron and her band The Garment District. Baron was born into a family of music lovers. Baron said she and her brothers were raised in a house where religion was the “Bob Dylan-Leonard Cohen-Neil Young Holy Trinity,” and she was named after Donovan’s 1968 song “Jennifer Jupiter.”While Baron has had a presence in the music scene for the majority of her life, she just recently got back into recording and released a limited-edition cassette version of The Garment District’s 2011 record, “Melody Elder.” She is also working on a 7” cassette featuring a remix by Sonic Boom of her song “Nature-Nurture,” as well as two brand new songs.“I’m very grateful VIA has asked me to play in the festival…It’s an incredible opportunity,” Baron said in a phone interview Thursday.Baron attended VIA the past two years and loves that it pairs local artists with international names, but the topography is her favorite part of the festival because it situates itself in different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.The Garment District will perform a mix of songs from the “Melody Elder” album and new songs on Tuesday, Oct. 2 at the Andy Warhol Museum at 8 p.m. Videos created by Keith Tassick, Albert Birney and Ryan Emmett, as well as a video Baron made with her step-father, will accompany their set.Baron said this was an “exciting challenge” for her because she played all of the instruments on the recordings for her album, but had to rearrange and translate them for the other musicians in the live show. During this performance, Baron will play various keyboards and some percussion.Baron sees VIA as a huge part of Pittsburgh development.“This is cutting edge stuff. It’s a huge honor to be a part of,” she said.One of the visual artists showcasing their work in VIA is Ben Tabas, a film studies and philosophy graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. Tabas will project visuals at the after-party on Oct. 6 for artists Magic Touch, ITAL, Laurel Halo and M. Geddes Gengris at 6119 Penn Ave.Tabas describes these visuals as videos people edit spontaneously to match the sound of the event.“I try to stimulate the viewers to view geometry and architecture of the environment differently,” Tabas said in a phone interview on Saturday.Tabas said he is excited to have total control of the venue to make it however he wants to put his talents to good use. He hopes to transform the venue into a very imaginative 3-D video architecture.Tabas was very enthusiastic about being involved in the festival because it brings together local, national and international names, as well as fans from all backgrounds.

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