Past Performing Arts | Music

Moviola

Broken Rainbows: Deadpan Charms and Dubious Yarns

Five members of Moviola standing in the outdoors looking into a set of windows

Join us for a special evening as we shine a light on Moviola, one of Columbus’s hidden musical gems, in an expanded staging of their 10th album, Broken Rainbows, in its entirety. 

With fervent fans across the globe in pockets of the indie landscape, Moviola has forged a unique DIY path over the past two-plus decades—creating everything from fuzzy, fractured, lo-fi pop to lush, hi-fi art-country and exuding a chameleonlike, DIY musical ethos, yet somehow always sounding like the same core of friends who started the band while attending Ohio State. Evoking a broad range of the American songbook, everything from the noise of the Velvet Underground to the sweetness and light of Terry Allen or Willie Nelson, Moviola has always carved out its own path: five songwriters and singers who believe the “whole is greater than the individual parts.”

For this special evening, the group will expand on the music of Broken Rainbows with additional players and multimedia components, giving life to each of its 11 songs and the pandemic-era conditions in which they developed. Don’t miss a one-of-a-kind performance.

Please note: this performance contains strobe lights.

"Wry songs, human voices, and sounds calling back classic rock radio vibes from my midwest youth, cut with enough present-time weirdness and mystery to keep me in it. Mostly I can feel the love and longtime journey that exists between these guys. Feels like home."
Tim Rutili of Califone on Broken Rainbows
Five members of Moviola standing in the outdoors looking into a set of windows

Moviola | Image courtesy of the artist

An image of a blue jean jacket with the words Moviola and Broken Rainbows on the back

Image courtesy of the artist

Five members of Moviola standing in profile

Moviola | Image courtesy of the artist

About the band

Moviola chevron-down chevron-up

Moviola is Jake Housh, Ted Hattemer (Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments), Scotty Tabachnick, Greg Bonnell, and Jerry Dannemiller. On the fringe of the indie Rust Belt scene since the 1990s, the quintet has quietly forged a low-key career of high-quality recorded output, issuing 10 records and countless 7-inch singles over 25 years. In this artistic continuum, Moviola has produced everything from 4-track fuzz-pop to hi-fi country soul. Today, the band steps forward with Broken Rainbows, its strongest collection of songs to date, all written, recorded, and mixed inside the group’s HQ in Columbus.

“This album feels like a culmination of our collective wits,” says Jerry Dannemiller. Jake Housh adds: “There is a certain directness to it. The songwriting is more assured and topical, matched only by a clarity in the production.”

Moviola started in 1993 in the shadows of Ohio State (from which all its members graduated) as a noisy indie quartet. However, over the years, the band has morphed into a unique DIY music and art-making collective with five distinct singers and songwriters, recalling the creatively democratic lineage of The Band, The Mekons, Pink Floyd, many others. More about the band.

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
The Wexner Family
Greater Columbus Arts Council
Mary and C. Robert Kidder
L Brands Foundation
American Electric Power Foundation
The Columbus Foundation
Ohio Arts Council
Bill and Sheila Lambert
Adam Flatto
Huntington
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Nationwide Foundation
Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease
Arlene and Michael Weiss

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Carol and David Aronowitz
Michael and Paige Crane
Axium Packaging
Fenwick & West LLP
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
KDC/ONE
M/I Homes
Ohio State Energy Partners
Regina Miracle International Ltd.
Washington Prime Group
Alene Candles
Lisa Barton
Fuel Transport
Russell and Joyce Gertmenian
Liza Kessler and Greg Henchel
Nancy Kramer
Matrix Psychological Services
Paramount Group, Inc.
Bruce and Joy Soll
Clark and Sandra Swanson
Business Furniture Installations
CASTO
E.C. Provini Co, Inc.
Garlock Printing & Converting
M-Engineering
New England Development
Our Country Home
Performance Team
Premier Candle Corporation
ProAmpac
Steiner + Associates
Textile Printing
Andrew and Amanda Wise

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Past Performing Arts

Moviola