Hindsight : TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY - IT'S SHOWTIME FOR TFA PIA 2011 BATTLE OF THE BANDS

HAT OPENING COMMENTS

Things move so quickly at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy that I wanted to take just a few minutes before we start the festivities to say a couple of thank yous to the people who have helped us year after year make this part of our program possible and to recall the humble beginnings of PIA when it was just John Murray making some shadow puppets with his hands in front of a flashlight held by Paula that was focused on a bed sheet held tightly by Peter Hawley and Amy Rising. This was long before John Schlauch and Billy Carton managed to turn Production in Action (PIA) into an annual spectacle with a budget just slightly less than the millions NASA spent on the last shuttle launch.

In any event, PIA is the BEST and the ONLY program of its kind anywhere in the world and all of you are the beneficiaries of our several years of development, fine-tuning, experimentation and collaboration – and I REALLY hope that every one of those words sounds more than familiar to you by now. But, as always, we didn’t do it alone.

Every year (and in some cases year and year since our first production in 2007), we ask the men and women who really know what they’re doing – our industry partners – to volunteer huge chunks of their time and resources to help us pull this off and – to a person – every time we’ve asked, they have stepped up. They are as critical a part of the education component of PIA as any staff or faculty member because it’s working side-by-side with them as they deal with the minute-to-minute changes that are the heart of these productions which provides the students with the most critical real-world experiences. I just want to ask everyone to give them another round of applause and thanks for their contributions.

I personally want to thank our judges for agreeing to work with us tonight – we have newbies like Lisa Dent (who I hope will be a regular at the Academy from now on) and oldies, but goodies (like my friend Joe Shanahan from Metro) who just seems like he’s always been a central part of the music scene in the city (mostly because he has) and Frayne Lewis whose music production chops and daily experience handling young, upcoming talents are simply unmatched. I also want to thank Barri Klutznick and our friends at Music Dealers as well as Michael Rudoy from Biglive.com for making this a national event and ultimately bringing us 3 amazingly talented and committed bands.

Lastly, I want to thank Paula and John for creating this monster, bringing it together year after year, and making it every year an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for each of you. So thanks to everyone and let’s get on with the show.

EMCEE FOR THE EVENING - CHRIS WITASKE