From now through January 17, share your thoughts about the spring events at the Center for the Arts in one (or both!) of the following ways:
1) Like us on Facebook and write something about our spring events on our Wall.
2) Follow us on Twitter and compose a tweet about our spring events (be sure to mention @WesCFA).
Everyone who writes about our spring events on Facebook or Twitter will be entered to win some excellent prizes, including the following:
We hope that you will take advantage of all that the Center for the Arts has to offer in the coming months:
In keeping with our tradition of welcoming the world to Wesleyan at the CFA, you will have the opportunity to discover one of Australia’s most adventurous contemporary dance companies (Chunky Move); a sizzling jazz guitarist/vocalist from Benin (Lionel Loueke); and an Argentine quartet that celebrates the tango music of Buenos Aires (Fernando Otero).
And in keeping with our interest in the intersection of art and science, the CFA has commissioned two works that will have their first performances at Wesleyan in conjunction with Feet to the Fire: Fueling the Future. SPILL, by Leigh Fondakowski and Reeva Wortel, is a visual art/performance installation that explores the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The work will debut at Beckham Hall in February. Composer Paula Matthusen, new to Wesleyan’s music faculty, will premiere work divided by time at the Van Vleck Observatory. The sound installation is a reflection of how the scientific definition of energy resonates and clashes with cultural and historical concepts.
Other highlights include the world premiere of a new multi-part suite by jazz vibraphonist and music faculty member Jay Hoggard; the U.S. premiere of Quicksand, a provocative new work by inDANCE, the highly acclaimed Toronto-based contemporary dance company directed by Wesleyan Artist in Residence Hari Krishnan; and a 21st-century examination of Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, directed by Theater Department Chair Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento.
We invite you to stretch your imagination, contemplate new ideas and celebrate all that the CFA’s faculty, students, and visiting artists and companies have to offer.
Best wishes,
Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts
P.S. If you are looking for arts interaction over the holidays, please attend Middnight on Main, New Year’s Eve on Main Street in Middletown.
When I was a student at Wesleyan, I was a member of both the Wesleyan Concert Choir and Wesleyan Singers. The annual Candelight Concert was one of my favorite concerts. I’ll never forget what it was like to have Richard Winslow, revered Professor of Music at Wesleyan, ask me to do a solo in The First Noel—how honored and delighted I was, then how I worried about it for weeks, singing my one stanza in the shower, on my way to class and for my mother over Thanksgiving Break. I also remember the combination of terror and awe that I felt as I heard my voice, seemingly soaring up and out in front of me in that magnificent space.
This Saturday, December 3, a group of Wesleyan students will have their turn at singing solos, in one of the world’s most popular holiday masterpieces, Handel’s Messiah, Part I. Artist in Residence and University Organist Ronald Ebrecht and the Wesleyan Singers have been preparing for this ambitious choral work for months. Mr. Ebrecht, the new Director of the Wesleyan Singers, will conduct a chorus of 26 voices, accompanied on the organ by one of Wesleyan’s most versatile and ubiquitous graduate students, Brian Parks. The evening opens with a beautiful piece from Quatre Motets by Maurice Duruflé (Mr. Ebrecht is one of the foremost authorities on Duruflé, and is his first biographer).
Ron concludes his program notes with: “We hope that its message of beauty and peace and Handel’s magic transcends its origins and reaches each of you, as it has our group who come from around the globe and every religion or none.”
(Ron told me that they will be singing the first piece from the aisles with the lights out!). It’s sure to be a stunning performance.
Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts
Candlelight Concert
Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 7pm Memorial Chapel, 221 High Street FREE!
Featured soloists will include Naakai Addy, Connor Bennion, Emma Daniels, Maggie Feldman-Piltch, Tess Jonas, Paulina Jones-Torregrosa, Chloe Lalonde, Chun Kit Ng, Alan Rodi, Borworn Satayopas, and Jeremy Senie.
I was one of the lucky people to have a ticket for The Great God Brown last night, the Theater Department’s production directed by Associate Professor Yuriy Kordonskiy. I can tell you it’s a massive undertaking in which an extraordinary ensemble of our top student actors explore the duality of personalities: our struggles between indulgence and restraint; who people expect us to be and who we truly are; our rational and irrational selves. All played out on an inventive, flexible set that is dramatically lit to move the action forward. As of this writing, there are still tickets for the Saturday matinee.
The Great God Brown By Eugene O’Neill
Directed by Yuriy Kordonskiy
Designed by Jack Carr, Marcela Oteiza, and Leslie Weinberg Wednesday, November 16 through Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8pm Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 2pm & 8pm
CFA Theater
$8 general public; $5 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $4 Wesleyan students
Bebe Miller Company: "History"
The Dance Department and Center for the Arts welcome Bebe Miller Company to the Patricelli ’92 Theater this weekend for three performances. Bebe is a master contemporary dance choreographer who has influenced the work of numerous dance makers who have worked with her over the years. In her newest work, History, she asks the question: how are dances made and how can we give our audiences a window into our creative process? Audiences coming to the ’92 will be invited into an installation and then engage in a performance by veteran company members Angie Hauser and Darrell Jones. In Bebe’s words: “Dance works are made of a complex mix of ideas, physical practice, forgetting, remembering, minor epiphanies and daily discoveries, joined together piece-by-piece in the evolving circumstance of creative research over time. [History is] an archeological dig into our continuously evolving manner of asking questions about people, relationships, and the culture in which we live.” She’s collaborated with long-time dramaturg, Talvin Wilks, and video artist (and Wes alum!) Lily Skove, in the making of the work. Wesleyan audiences will be invited to give Bebe feedback about the work in a Q&A session following each performance.
Bebe Miller Company: “History” Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8pm Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 2pm & 8pm Patricelli ’92 Theater Pre-performance talk with dance scholar Debra Cash on Friday at 7:15pm, Memorial Chapel $23 general public; $19 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
Joshua Roman. Photo by Jeremy Sawatzky.
Finally, tomorrow night, you’ll have the opportunity to see cello virtuoso, Joshua Roman, at Crowell Concert Hall. Because of his charismatic presence, at age 27 he’s already been dubbed a “classical rock star” by the press. He was the principal cellist for the Seattle Symphony at the young age of 22 and since then has earned a national reputation for performing a wide range of repertoire with an absolute commitment to communicating the essence of the music at its most organic level. This year he was named a 2011 TED Fellow, joining a select group of Next Generation innovators of unusual accomplishments with the potential to positively affect the world. You really have to hear this young man live to understand his power…and you can see what Yo-Yo Ma had to say about him here.
Joshua Roman Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
Pre-performance talk at 7:15pm by Julie Ribchinsky, Wesleyan Private Lessons Teacher
$22 general public; $18 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
Despite the power outages earlier in the week, and fallen trees and branches in the Center for the Arts, we are still preparing to welcome artists and scholars from around the world to Wesleyan this weekend to explore the work of Alvin Lucier. Alvin has been the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music at Wesleyan for over four decades. At eighty, he is as prolific as ever, and all of us who have been working on the events in his honor have so appreciated getting to know the depth of the impact of this magnificent man. It is fitting that the festival is scheduled in conjunction with Wesleyan’s Homecoming/Family Weekend, as several thousand of our undergraduate and graduate students have been influenced by Alvin over the years.
Perhaps no one has come to know more about Alvin than Andrea Miller-Keller who has expertly and lovingly curated an exhibition that opens this Saturday at the Center for the Arts Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. You may know Andrea from the nearly thirty years she spent at the Wadsworth Atheneum where she was the founding curator of MATRIX gallery. Alvin Lucier (and His Artist Friends) is the first exhibition to explore the breadth of his work in a gallery context. It’s a broad and colorful overview of his nearly six-decade career, featuring seventeen of his major works through audio presentations, performance videos, scores and archival memorabilia. A special section includes both a presentation of Alvin’s landmark 1969 piece, I Am Sitting in a Room and an exploration of its widespread influence on other artists over the past four decades. Andrea also examines the sources of inspiration and exchange of ideas among Alvin and his some of his artist-friends, including Sol LeWitt, John Ashbery, John Cage and others. One of my favorite films in the exhibit is George Manupelli’s Dr. Chicago trilogy that premiered from 1968 to 1971, featuring Alvin in the title role.
An installation that is sure to fascinate and delight is the tribute to Alvin’s 1968 masterpiece, Chambers, organized by Ron Kuivila, chair of Wesleyan’s Music Department and a former student of Alvin’s. Over forty Wesleyan alums recorded environmental sounds following Alvin’s instructions and submitted mp3 files along with a small resonant object into which the sounds will be played. The objects, some fanciful, some ordinary, are displayed on long tables and include a toaster, a shotgun shell, a flute, a vase, and a sauce pot, among many others. Patrons to the gallery will have the opportunity to lean in and listen to each object.
Kuivila has also staged a “flash-mob” for current Wesleyan students who have created their own Chambers works that will begin on Foss Hill at 1:45pm and process to the gallery in time for the opening.
Buy Three, Get One Free!
Call or visit the Wesleyan University Box Office at 860-685-3355 to purchase subscription packages for the Alvin Lucier Celebration, which include all four concerts: $36 general public; $30 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty & staff, non-Wesleyan students; $18 Wesleyan students.
We invited Hari Krishnan, Artist in Residence in the Dance Department, to write to us about Sunday’s performance by Rama Vaidyanathan. Here’s what he said:
Hari Krishnan and Rama Vaidyanathan
Rama is a leading Bharatanatyam dancer from her generation in India today. Through sheer hard work and constantly creating new innovative dances, Rama has transformed the traditional solo dance of Bharatanatyam into a vibrant, dynamic and engaging solo dance style – current and relevant for a 21st century global audience. This is why she is much sought after by the most avant-garde theaters/festivals in Europe to the most conservative classical arts-friendly venues in India. Rama’s Bharatanatyam cuts across linguistic, social, political and cultural boundaries.
Rama is also a dear friend and I remember in the summer of 2010 when we were on the teaching faculty for a dance residency in the U.K., the students had insisted that we perform together. Not having prepared any piece, we improvised right there and then a nouveau-Bharatanatyam duet to the delight of all present.
Being a contemporary dance and Bharatanatyam dance artist myself, I wasn’t too sure if Rama would be game to improvising a duet with me involving close physical touch. I was struck at Rama’s versatility not only to passionate collaborate but also boldly bringing her art into new experimental terrains while still maintaining her identity of that of a classical Bharatanatyam dancer. She is able to bring out the inherent beauty of the Bharatanatyam form with her creativity and genuine love for the dance.
I am delighted Rama is performing at Wesleyan with her team of stellar musicians [vocalist Indu Sivankutty Nair, violinist Vikram Raghukumar, K. Sivakumar on nattuvangam, and Kalapurakkal Arun Kumar on mridangam], offering her dazzling, highly individual brand of Bharatanatyam. Wesleyan is truly in for a treat of innovation, grace and pure joy – a Bharatanataym 21st century gazelle will be strutting her stuff on the Crowell Concert Hall stage this Sunday afternoon.
We invited B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, to write to us about Saturday night’s performance by T.M. Krishna. Here’s what he said:
T.M. Krishna
Krishna is a vibrant musician of South Indian classical Karnatak music. He is young, but very senior in artistry of this music. I have been listening to him since he was a teenager. His ability, confidence and perfectionism keep him busy. He spent years learning from the great masters Seetharama Sharma, Chengalpattu Ranganathan and Semmangudi Srinivasa Ayyar. His training combined with pure passion and hard work brought high acclaim at a very young age. His recent work as a Jugalbandi performer with North Indian musicians is one more step to popularize South Indian classical music in the northern region.
In addition to his musical artistry, he is a also a renowned teacher and scholar. He is a Founding Trustee of Jnanarnava Trust, an organization devoted to the research, documentation and archiving of the ancient traditions in Carnatic music. In 2006, the trust launched its Audio Archival Project of the Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini. This text, published in 1904 in Telugu, is of seminal importance in understanding the changes and developments in Carnatic music over the past 200 years. This was the first text that gave an authoritative and comprehensive notating system to Carnatic music.
He is noted for performing and teaching in remote areas for people who have not been exposed to Karnatak music. He’s also an expert at spotting rural talent and giving musicians the opportunity to learn and perform through his trust.
[T.M. Krishna will be accompanied by HK Venkatram on the violin and Trichy Sankaran on the mridangam.]
Haveli India will present a bountiful meal, from appetizer to dessert, in World Music Hall at 5pm before the T.M. Krishna concert. Tickets, which include both the dinner and the concert, are $25 for the general public; $22 for senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff and non-Wesleyan students; and $13 for Wesleyan students.
The concert by Joy Harjo with Larry Mitchell in Crowell Concert Hall has been canceled. The Wesleyan University Box Office will be in contact with ticket holders regarding refunds.
Joy Harjo. Photo by Karen Kuehn.
Wesleyan University Press has just published a fantastic new collection of poems by the powerful poet, Joy Harjo. Soul Talk, Song Language has been on the table in my office for the past few weeks, in anticipation of her visit to Wesleyan. I can’t tell you the number of people who have come in for meetings who’ve said, “I love Joy Harjo! Is she coming?”
We’re delighted to have Ms. Harjo and her longtime musical partner, rock guitarist and Grammy award-winning producer Larry Mitchell, perform at Crowell Concert Hall next week. Click here to visit her YouTube Channel.
I sat down with Stephanie Elliott from WesPress to talk about Ms. Harjo and her work. Ms. Elliott said: “[Joy] Harjo’s work is a search for truth—a questioning of purpose and identity—as much as it is an expression of beauty. Her poetry embodies a reconstruction of the tribal past, and is cause for reflection on the continuing confrontation between Indigenous and Anglo civilizations.” When I asked her why Ms. Harjo’s poetry is so important and relevant today, she said: “With projects like Brazil’s proposed Belo Monte dam and the development Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands threatening indigenous people in calamitous ways, [Joy] Harjo’s artistic expressions are especially timely.”
Joy Harjo’s performance invokes spoken word, storytelling, and song—punctuated by her own mean jazz saxophone. Her character-driven narratives are inspired by the traditions of her people as well as by her observations from around the globe. According to Ms. Elliott, “her work is about healing, demonstrating how poetry, music, storytelling, and theater can bring new understanding to our lives.” The music is jazzy and soulful and punctuates her insightful poetry in surprising ways.
Here’s hoping you’ll join us next Friday for this special treat.
Music concerts at the Center for the Arts are programmed by the CFA’s Concert Committee, made up of faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students in Music, and CFA staff. We are so delighted to be opening the Crowell Concert Series with the magnificent AnDa Union, a group of young musicians from Mongolia whose virtuosity and artistry will, quite simply, leave you breathless.
Andrew Colwell, a PhD student in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan whose research focuses on Mongolian music sent me a ringing endorsement after seeing them at a recent stop on their U.S. tour:
“This friendly bunch of established musicians … were a hit with the crowd, who clapped and clapped for more throat-singing, horse-head fiddle playing, and singing about what matters most: nature, horses, your beloved, family bonds, and heritage. Few bands from the Mongolian world of music–which also encompasses independent Outer Mongolia and parts of Russian Siberia–commune with their nomadic roots in the innovative and all-encompassing ways that this highly flexible, ten member band does on the international stage. To boot, few bands from the distant Mongolian grasslands of Inner Asia even make it out as far as Middletown, Connecticut.”
The tour has been organized by a group of major research universities in partnership with Arts Midwest and the Chinese Ministry of Culture. Wesleyan is the only liberal arts college on the tour!
Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts
AnDa Union New England Premiere Friday, September 23, 2011 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall Pre-concert talk at 7:15pm by Andrew Colwell
$22 general public; $18 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, and non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
Dewey Dell (left to right): Teodora Castellucci, Demetrio Castellucci, Agata Castellucci, and Eugenio Resta. Cesena, Italy. April 2009.
In the summer of 2009, Associate Professor and Chair of the Theater Department, Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento, attended a festival of contemporary European performance at Centrale Fies, a venue that invests in the creation of new performance work located just outside of Trento, in Northern Italy. There, she discovered Dewey Dell and was so taken by their work, their process and sheer talent, that she wanted to find a way to bring them to Wesleyan for an extended residency.
Formed in 2007 by Teodora, Demetrio, Agata Castellucci and Eugenio Resta, Dewey Dell’s founders grew up as artistic collaborators, sharing the important formative experience of the Stoa, a rhythmic movement and philosophy school of the Sociètas Raffaello Sanzio based in Cesena, Italy. The name Dewey Dell is a tribute to the young girl in William Faulkner’s 1930 novel, As I Lay Dying.
Nascimento wrote to me upon her return from Italy:
“Dewey Dell is the strongest representative of what is most innovative and sophisticated in the new generation of European stage artists. They perfectly integrate the actor’s bodies, visual elements, and soundscape to create performances that may at first resemble pure dance, but ultimately possess a dramaturgical treatment that brings them closest to theater. Through the exploration of themes ranging from an Eastern perspective on raw animal energy to an abstract interpretation of Western political history in the figure of Richard the Lionheart, their performances are at the same time nostalgic and deeply marked by post-modern art. Visually stunning and musically powerful, above all their pieces create a truly arresting experience for the audience.”
The Theater Department and Center for the Arts joined forces with Ellen Nerenberg, Professor of Italian and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literature, to create a two-week residency for the company that includes the presentation of à elle vide, the earliest work in their repertoire, and Cinquanta Urlanti Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti, their most recent work. In between the two performances, the company members will be visiting with five different Italian classes and conducting a seven-day workshop on their generative process with theater and dance students. At the same time, the members of Dewey Dell, who are close in age to Wesleyan students, will be experiencing life on an American campus.
Nascimento says, “my objective for their residency is to allow for a true exchange between Dewey Dell and Wesleyan students; the company is not only teaching a workshop, but also attending classes, eating at USDAN, socializing with students, meeting as many members of the Wesleyan community as possible; in short: establishing relationships and experiencing the university as maybe exchange/international students would.”
Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts
Dewey Dell: à elle vide United States Premiere Friday, September 9 and Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 8pm Patricelli ’92 Theater $10 general public; $8 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $5 Wesleyan students
Dewey Dell: Cinquanta Urlanti Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti United States Premiere Friday, September 16, 2011 at 8pm CFA Theater $18 general public; $15 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
At a time when so many of us are turning to YouTube to see performances by our favorite artists, we can lose sight of what it’s like to experience live performance. This fall, the Center for the Arts offers you a wide range of performances and exhibitions that will connect you with some of the brightest minds in contemporary art-making, transport you to foreign lands, and inspire you to think about the world in new ways—and the performers will never be more than 69 feet away!
We recognize that it has become increasingly difficult to classify a work as strictly music, dance, theater, visual art, or film as more artists are blurring the boundaries among disciplines. So we have merged our visiting artist performances into a single Performing Arts Series. We hope this will lead you to cross the boundaries of your own comfort zone and discover new artists and art forms.
Highlights of the fall season include the American premiere of the ground-breaking Italian movement theater collective Dewey Dell and the return of Philadelphia’s Rennie Harris Puremovement, that has been a trailblazer in taking hip hop forms from the street to the concert stage for nearly twenty years. We’ll also host two New England premieres: the astoundingly brilliant throat-singers and musicians from Inner Mongolia, AnDa Union and, continuing our collaboration with the College of the Environment, we’ll welcome Water is Rising, a breathtaking performance by a group of 35 dancers and musicians from the Pacific Island atolls, the first islands predicted to be submerged due to climate change. In November, the Music Department and CFA join forces to celebrate Alvin Lucier, internationally renowned composer who has just retired after serving on our faculty for four decades. Alvin Lucier: A Celebration features a major symposium, concert series, film screenings and an exhibition curated by Andrea Miller-Keller.
With performances and exhibitions by visiting artists, students and faculty, there is an extraordinary amount of good work to see at Wesleyan this fall, with 60% offered free to the public or at ticket prices that make us one of the most affordable venues in the state. Tickets are on sale now online. Starting at 10am on Tuesday, August 16, you can call or visit the Wesleyan University Box Office at 860-685-3355 to receive a 10% discount on your purchase of four or more Performing Arts Series events (and if you buy six or more “Performing Arts Series” events, you’ll save 15%!) Starting August 16, you will also be able to buy subscription packages for both the 35th annual Navaratri Festival (a 15% savings) as well as the Alvin Lucier Celebration (a 25% savings!)
Please join us. We appreciate that you believe, as we do, in the power of the arts to add meaning to our lives and to remind us of the capacity of the human spirit. Thanks for making Wesleyan’s CFA your center for the arts.
