If you would like a copy of todays program please check out our website at press. Org. Thank you all very much. We are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the 2015 cspan student can video competition is under way open to all middle and High School Students to create a 5 to 7 minute documentary on the theme of the three branches and you showing how policy, law or action by the executive, legislative or Judicial Branch of the federal government has affected you or your community. There are 200 cash prizes totaling 100,000 for the list of rules and how to get started go to studentcam. Org. Next, remarks by the new president of the john f. Kennedy center for the performing arts, Deborah Rutter. She outlined her plans for the Kennedy Center and emphasized the importance of Art Education and cultural diplomacy. Agree easily served as president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and was executive director of the seattle symphony. This is an hour. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon and welcome. I am an adjunct professor of George WashingtonUniversity School of media and public affairs. Former International Bureau chief of the Associated Press and president of the National Press club. The National Press club is the worlds leading professional organization for journalists committed to our professions future through our program in the events such as this while fostering a free press worldwide. For more information about the National Press club please visit our web site at press. Org. On behalf of our members worldwide and would like to welcome our speaker and those of you attending todays event. Hour head table includes guest of our speaker as well as working journalists who are club members. We hear applause in our audience. I know members of the general public are attending. It is not necessarily evidence of a lack of jenna listed object to the if you here applause. I would like to welcome our cspan and public radio audiences. You can follow the action on to using the hash tag in pc lunch. After august speech, we will have a question and answer period. I will ask as many questions as time permits. Now it is time to introduce our head table guests. I would like each of you to stand briefly as your name is announced and let me begin with on your right, the Speaker Committee member, elizabeth brownstein. A member of the press clubs history and Heritage Committee and a writer of our online newsletter is this week in the National Press club history. Doris margolis, president of the Editorial Associates and member of the Speakers Committee. Jasmine sabawi , washington correspondent for the kuwait news agency. Nick apostleitys, quote organizer of this luncheon. Pgi adrian arts, leading arts philanthropist who serves on the board of trustees at the Kennedy Center and a major funder notably of the adrian arts musical theater fund at the center and she is a guest of our speaker. Jerry zeremsky, chairman of the Speakers Committee and former president of the National Press club. Skip the novara, any henderson, historian at the National Portrait gallery and co organizer of this luncheon. Thank you very much. Helen henderson, important philanthropist who serves on the boards of the Kennedy Center and the national Symphony Orchestra. She contributes to both through the h R H Foundation named for her mother, Helen Henderson in she too is the guest of our speaker. Maria, art and culture correspondent for the fort worth telegram. Mark lino, Senior Associate Editor for the personal finance magazine and secretary of National Press club. In melbourne, chairman of the board of governors of the National Press club, former chair of the broadcast committee and retired staffer from the Associated Press broadcast division and michael phelps, former publisher of the Washington Examiner and adviser to news media executives. Round of all applause. [applause] the year before his death president john f. Kennedy spoke on behalf of the National Cultural center that would ultimately bear his name. After the dust of centuries is passed, he said, we too will be remembered not for victories or defeats or bat or politics but our contribution to the human spirit. This september, debra Deborah Rutter became president of the john f. Kennedy center for the performing arts, the first woman to serve in that office and the first to come from the world orchestras. She grew up in a family that loved music, her father was a founder of the los angeles master chorale. She began playing the violin as a child and she said playing the violin was how i found out who i was. She comes to washington from chicago where she whats president in Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. She said she was drawn to the Kennedy Center because of the opportunity to use art to affect the rest of the world. Once develop greater collaboration with other art and cultural organizations including museums, theaters and nontraditional groups. She said Kennedy Center should have a seat at the table in dealing with challenging social and cultural issues. Deborah rutter is a prolific fundraisers known for recruiting top talent and boosting out reach to new audiences. She will serve as the centers artistic ended ministry of leader for theater, dance, Chamber Music and jazz. She will also oversee the national Symphony Orchestra and Washington National opera. You will be inheriting an ambitious 100 million renovation that is expected to be completed on john f. Kennedys 100th birth day in 2017. Please join me in welcoming the new president of the Kennedy Center, Deborah Rutter. [applause] i think you said it all, so we are done now. We can all have a nice afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to be here, thank you nick, thank you, amy, for the opportunity to be here and for your very generous words. You have done great research. It is a pleasure and honor for me to be here. When you dont live in washington d. C. This place, this place right here, not just washington d. C. But this places a very famous or inspiring place so it is a great honor for me to be here and im really grateful to my friends who are here from the Kennedy Center and care about the arts and our society. I want to say thankyou to adrian and helen for being my stalwart side by side great friends and support. I have been thinking a lot about storytelling recently. I am not exactly sure why but as i think about it, there are some signposts. This has been a year of major transition for me and my family and as one says farewell to one home, community and friends there, it leads you to reflect to some degree and commemorate your time there. Last spring i had many opportunities to share memories, tells stories and laugh about shared history. Also in moving, the trauma of moving, you and cover all kinds of things and we have come across the countless boxes of memorabilia, some reason, some really ancient, all of which job ones memory of stories that are told and some untold. Then of course my daughter who has the same propensity to keep things that her mother as has childhood story books and they are plentiful recalling for me the moments of joy and intimacy and wonder in the telling and retelling of those wonderful stories so perhaps this is why i have a preoccupation with storytelling right now. Arriving in washington has been an adventure for all of us. Meeting new friends and colleagues such as you today connecting with old friends which has been really wonderful for me, learning the system of how the city works, my daughter finding ways around her school and for me a new place to work. Let me tell you that is a real study, figuring out how to get around there. Stories are plentiful. As i introduce myself and hear about the history and the people of our new home. You might say that is what washington d. C. Is all about, but i would say this is what our world is all about, not just washington but our world. It is about storytelling. Storytelling is the way we share who we are with others. It is a way to reveal oneself, to communicate feelings and ideas. With our stories we share history, get to know one another. Storytelling connects us and represents the drawstrings of our lives. All of us are storytellers in one form or another. Some of us are better or funnier than others, some more colorful and creative. Others more liberal and concise but we are all telling one story or another. Just to make sure i was on the right track i went to the ultimate source and tight in definition of storytelling on my internet browser. The results, storytelling is the conveying of events in words and images often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and instilling more of values. I didnt have to look far to find out exactly what i was looking for in terms of that definition. So with this definition it argues that journalists are true professional storytellers, hopefully without too much embellishment or improvisation. Journalists provide the heroic war role of documenting our collective lives, our shared history, you are the ones we engage with everyday who are hopefully everyday every day in my case. Your work provides the recorded history we reflect back on to understand who we are the culture, what actions we are taking, what decisions were made. What we have done as a result of those decisions, how we reached the larger world has responded so i put forth to you that art is just another form of storytelling. It provides the narrative to our lives. A way of advancing as well as preserving our culture, the story as conveyed through artistic expression comes in varying forms. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes it is the obscure. Initially beyond understanding. It can be fun and entertaining, engrossing and provocative. No matter the medium or the actual story, it is always making one think and feel. Theater, opera, dance, music, film and the visual arts, all of these are telling the stories. Often there is just Pure Entertainment to be enjoyed as well. Who doesnt need that maybe now more than ever but an evening of socalled Pure Entertainment is likely also a time when other emotions and ideas are bubbling inside. I sought of the out with my daughter and her friend recently at the opera house at the Kennedy Center and this is a perfect example of an evening where one begins by saying i am going to hear a music theater work with great tunes, and dancing, it will be fun. But the truth, great music, wonderful actors telling a story. What is that story about . The struggle of lower class to break out of its cycle of poverty. Overwhelming narcissism, agreed consuming power that brings down not just a woman and a family but a whole country. Yes, it is us story about history using the theater to convey not just the details but emotions, insights and values. The performing arts highlight all the emotions of our world. 9 a spotlight on those topics, sometimes we dare not to debate, force us to experience feelings we may want to brush aside. The quiet of a darkened theater allows us to enter a world simultaneously shared with others in the audience and yet experience individually in our hearts and minds. With a veto will look back on an era of a country, its history. In the case of tony customers angels in america we are faced with the reality of life experienced by another part of our society. That epic play change the way we talk about gay life and aids. While it is perhaps shocking when it premiered in its format, dialogue and frank treatment of the issues and ultimately was one of the first and most important bautista expressions on that topic using the theater again as a way to explore social issues. So think about swan lake, reflect on the right of spring, consider balks st. Matthews passion which i love so much, all our stories to be told using the performing arts to communicate beauty, perspective, thoughtfulness, spirituality. They also challenged us as we sit in the darkened theater to understand ourselves, consider our society and our environment. My argument, arch is certainly for arts sake. I really agree with that statement and i support all who enter it but i also fervently believe in the concept of art for lifes sake. We cannot live or share this World Without art. Art is the way we tell stories of our lives, to offer commentary on the world we live in, to provide a sanctuary for personal, spiritual reflection, opportunity to state more boldly those ideas that may feel too difficult, too dangerous for whatever reason, to personal or social the challenging, or better yet the joy and exaltation of life. The examples of Andrew Lloyd Webber or tony kushner perhaps seem rather obvious as a way of demonstrating the rolling to importance of art in storytelling but i want to tell you now of quite a different example. When we announced in chicago that art and music direction was Ricardo Lucci he surprise us not for the first tour last time by announcing at his Introductory Press Conference that he wanted to take the orchestra to all parts of chicago especially those without access to news at, even to prisons. He and i spoke often of his interest in sharing their resources, the musicmaking of the orchestra in community but prison was a bit of a surprise to us. Our team took the challenge it after some consideration developed a really special program. We chose to go to a juvenile Detention Center to work with young women in partnership with story catchers the. Every week, every week two members of our course go to the Illinois StateDetention Center in warren ville working side by side with feeder teaching artists, developing stories and lyrics written by the girls, the inmates themselves, their stories, stories that are hard to tell, stories that are hard to hear. After four months of preparation like this, the cfo composer and residents also go to the center for residency end work on developing songs with the girls. They write the tunes and she helps orchestrate it. She ranges the songs for instance, instruments to are performed by members of the cso and civic orchestra in chicago who ultimately perform with the girls their original musical theater piece. The performances for the other girls in the center and all of their families, an incredibly powerful experience telling the stories that are often unfolds, hidden, locked away. You can imagine the powerful emotions that fill the library of that Detention Center. I experienced a couple times as a guest. Some of those families never heard their daughter or sister or niece or granddaughter communicate so directly. They didnt know that she had the power to share that story which is on tolls and therefore unknown. That our of performance changed the lives of those girls, those families for me forever. That is what i mean by a hartford lifes sake. [applause] thank you. The followup activity that includes ricotta takes place before or after those four to six months. I was rather skeptical about his participation before i first went to warrantville with him. He requested a piano and the two singers who goes there which was really good because they didnt know him but they knew the singers well. Twice each year he does this, he goes and spends 90 minutes with about 2 dozen girls from the center and you probably think this is as crazy as i did but in fact performing opera arias, the women they knew so well was offering a mirror for these girls lives and inspiration. Where else do you hear stories of anger, fear, deception, family strife, betrayal, love and possible seats of courage . Opera. Somehow lucci knew that and he knew exactly how to convey that to them, to have someone of that renowned care about 2 dozen girls in a Detention Center in a small town in illinois. Imagine what that means and imagine how that is so affirming in their lives. Art for lifes sake. At the Kennedy Center we overflow in the sharing and telling of stories. You probably know all of the programs, so many of you told me how you attend programs at the Kennedy Center, but i suspect there are a number of programs you dont know about because i didnt know about them much and i am paying pretty close attention and until i got here i didnt know about them so in addition to the daily stage performances, the six productions of the Washington National opera, 30 weeks of subscriptions to the national Symphony Orchestra, the annual international festival, the extra