Jared Leto Touches On Music, Film and Tech at Series Of SXSW 2013 Shows

March 10, 2013

Like South by Southwest® (SXSW®), award-winning band Thirty Seconds To Mars inhabits the space where music, film and emerging technologies converge. Musician, actor, director and entrepreneur Jared Letowill share his experience in each of these areas at a series of SXSW 2013 events next week, including a screening of the award-winning documentary, Artifact.

Jared Leto is a founding member of Thirty Seconds To Mars (along with his brother Shannon Leto) and has sold more than five million albums worldwide. The band has won acclaim for its music, its videos and its innovative use of technology to deepen its relationship with an enormous worldwide fan base. Fast Companyplaced Leto, founder of a trio of startups, on its 2012 list of “The 100 Most Creative People in Business.”

Tuesday, March 12

Noon – 1 p.m. -Invitation required
Sonos Lounge, 608 E. 3rd St., Austin, TX 78701

Twitter Music: An Exclusive Conversation with Jared Leto. An invitation-only Twitter Music event for artists and their teams about leveraging Twitter to help bands and brands.

2 – 3 p.m. – Invitation required
Fast Company Grill @ The Cedar Door, 201 Brazos St., Austin, TX 78701 Fast Company Creative Conversation – Jared Leto & Jonah Peretti (founder of Buzzfeed)

Wednesday, March 13
2 – 3 p.m. - SXSW badge required
Room 12AB, Austin Convention Center,500 E. Cesar Chavez St., Austin, TX 78701
The SXSW Interview with Jared Leto
3:45 p.m. Artifact – Red Carpet
4:30 p.m. Artifact -Screening
Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701
6:30 p.m. – Invitation Only
Artifact After-Party

Jared Leto, lead singer of Thirty Seconds To Mars and founder of a trio of startups, will be featured in a series of SXSW 2013 events that draw upon his experience in music, film and technology. On Tuesday, March 12,hewill participate in a pair of invitation-only events:Twitter Music: An Exclusive Conversation with Jared Leto and the Fast Company Creative Conversation with Jared Leto and Jonah Peretti, founder of Buzzfeed.

Named one of “The 100 Most Creative People in Business of 2012″ by Fast Company, Leto has launched three businesses to enable fellow artists to foster a sense of community with their core fans: The Hive (http://thisisthehive.net/), which specializes in social media management, digital marketing and e-commerce, VyRT (www.vyrt.com), a platform which sells digital tickets to live events and broadcasts them online, and Adventures In Wonderland (http://www.adventuresinwonderland.com), a VIP experiences company which facilitates and creates unique events. Each enterprise grew organically from Leto’s need to use services that didn’t yet exist, so he created them.

The SXSW Interview with Jared Leto will take place on Wednesday, March 13. Later that afternoon there will be a screening of Artifact, a documentary that follows Thirty Seconds To Mars as they battle their record label in a brutal lawsuit and record their album This Is War. The film won the People’s Choice documentary award at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and the Audience Award at the 2012 Gotham Independent Film Awards.

This Is War, which contained two No. 1 Modern Rock radio hits – the title track and “Kings and Queens” – was hailed as “an artistic triumph” (Alternative Press) and “a shimmering epic” (MTV.com). Thousands of fans can be heard singing on the album, recorded at a series of nine Summits held around the globe and a Digital Summit. “It was an interactive recording experiment that succeeded far beyond our hopes,” recallsJared.

The band’s latest experiment involved launching its new single “Up In The Air” into space. On March 1,Thirty Seconds To Mars witnessed the lift off of the SpaceX cargo mission, which was carrying more than 1,200 pounds of scientific experiments and cargo plus the first copy of “Up In The Air” to the International Space Station. The song is the first single from the band’s fourth studio record, which will be released later this year. “Up In The Air” will premiere worldwide on Monday, March 18, and be commercially available at all digital retailers the following day, March 19.

“A core part of what Thirty Seconds To Mars is about is dreams … creativity and dreams are one in the same,” Leto told MTV from Cape Canaveral. “And so it’s inspiring and challenging to try to make the impossible into reality. And this has certainly been an example of that; putting your music into space is no easy feat.”

Thirty Seconds To Mars – comprising brothers Jared Leto and Shannon Leto as well as Tomo Milicevic – has sold over five million albums worldwide and the band’s videos have more than 300 million views on YouTube. The group has received numerous awards, including a dozen MTV awards worldwide, a BillboardMusic award and honors from NME, Kerrang! and Fuse. In its two-year tour in support of This Is War, Thirty Seconds To Mars played over 311 shows in nearly 60 countries on six continents to an astounding three million people, breaking the Guinness World Record® for most shows played during a single album cycle.

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