Updates and reflections from Wesleyan's Center for the Arts in Middletown, Connecticut
Wes Out-Loud: Stories of Place, a site-specific auditory piece conceived and created through a collaboration between theater students and Assistant Professor of Theater Marcela Oteíza was held on Thursday, April 28th through Sunday, May 1st in the CFA Courtyard.
Click here to view the full album on Flickr. Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography.
Dear Friends of the Center for the Arts,
It is astonishing to me that Friday April 1 is my last day at Wesleyan University, after nearly seventeen years. I wanted to send you a note to thank you for being patrons of the Center for the Arts. There is simply no way we can ever welcome artists to Wesleyan without the presence of an engaged and committed audience. You have no idea how wonderful it was for me to look out at you from the Crowell Concert Hall or CFA Theater stage, or to see you at an opening in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. I knew that you were there to join me in celebrating what the arts can tell us about other cultures and other worlds; how they can help us to make sense of the world in which we live; and how they can make us feel both the exhilaration and the sadness of what it means to be alive. I want to thank you, in particular, for the times you bought a ticket to a performance by an artist whom you didn’t know but, because we at the CFA felt it was an important artist or group, you took the risk.
In these last days at my desk overlooking the CFA Courtyard, I am reflecting on so many great moments when we shared such joy and excitement not only for visiting and faculty artists, but also when we marveled together at the virtuosity and creative power of Wesleyan students and all that they have to offer us.
I will miss my Wesleyan and Middletown families greatly, but as an alum and parent of a member of the class of 2016, I know that I will return often and continue to experience the arts as only Wesleyan can present them. I also want to take the opportunity to introduce Laura Paul, Interim Director of the Center for the Arts, who will lead the CFA in its next chapter. Together we have been planning a 2016–17 season of performances and exhibitions that I know you will enjoy.
If, by any chance, you are free this Friday, April 1, I will be in Crowell Concert Hall at 8pm to introduce the great Wu Man and the Shanghai Quartet. I would love the chance to say goodbye and thank you in person; if not, I hope you will come to visit me this summer at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts (if you missed the announcement in January, I’m going there to be their new Executive Director)!
Thank you again for your generous support of the Center for the Arts.
Fondly,
Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts
The Center for the Arts is one of the rare places in the state where you can consistently experience arts from around the world. This semester is no exception. In January and February, the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery hosts the work of ten contemporary Chinese artists born after the Cultural Revolution who are challenging traditional notions of Chinese identity and inventing new ways to shout out in the global arena. In February, Syrian singer Gaida brings her band to Crowell Concert Hall. At a time when her country is under siege, her soulful voice will remind us of the beauty and power of Syrian music and culture. And playwright Guillermo Calderón will discuss his award-winning works about Chile in the aftermath of the dictatorship.
The CFA is also the home of countless premieres. In April, you’ll be the first to hear Harlem Heiroglyphs, a new album by composer, vibraphonist, and Adjunct Professor of Music Jay Hoggard, both in concert and as the music for Storied Places, directed and choreographed by Dance Department Chair Nicole Stanton with text by Center for African American Studies Professor Lois Brown.
Finally, the Music Department will host a March symposium on the work of the legendary experimental music composer David Tudor and, in April, the Theater Department offers Wes Out-Loud, a site-specific work created by Assistant Professor Marcela Oteíza and her students.
The semester ends on May 7 with Feet to the Fire: Riverfront Encounter, the second annual eco-arts festival featuring world music bands, educational exhibits, and site-specific performance works by area organizations at Middletown’s Harbor Park, located on the bank of the Connecticut River.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts
SUMMER AT THE CFA
June 30 – July 23, 2015
SUMMER AT THE CFA: EVENING PERFORMANCES
1. Las Cafeteras – Wednesday, July 1, 7pm, CFA Courtyard (Rain location: Crowell Concert Hall); FREE!
2. Regina Carter Quartet (U.S. Debut) – Thursday, July 16, 8pm, Crowell Concert Hall
3. Work-In-Progress Showing of /peh-LO-tah/ and Conversation with Marc Bamuthi Joseph – Thursday, July 23, 8pm, CFA Theater, FREE!
SUMMER AT THE CFA: FREE AFTERNOON TALKS AND PERFORMANCES
4. Elizabeth Willis: Live Poetry – Tuesday, June 30, 12:10pm, CFA Hall, FREE!
5. Taking Over Space: Exploring Three-Dimensional Paintings by Marela Zacarias – Tuesday, July 7, 12:10pm, CFA Hall, FREE!
6. This Is It! The Complete Piano Works of Neely Bruce: Part VI (World Premiere) – Sunday, July 12, 3pm, Crowell Concert Hall, FREE!
7. How to Seduce an Audience? A Talk by Tamilla Woodard and Ana Margineanu – Tuesday, July 14, 12:10pm, CFA Hall, FREE!
8. Okwui Okpokwasili: Embodied Performance/Making the Invisible Visible – Tuesday, July 21, 12:10pm, CFA Hall, FREE!
SPECIAL EVENTS
9. Blackbird: A Benefit Concert for the Stephanie Nelson Memorial Scholarship Fund – Saturday, July 25, 8pm, Crowell Concert Hall
Programs, artists, and dates are subject to change.
In the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from January 29 to March 1, Studio Art faculty members Jeffrey Schiff and Sasha Rudensky curate Picture/Thing, an exhibition featuring the work of ten artists working at the intersection of photography and sculpture.
Summer at the CFA
July 1-20, 2014
EVENING PERFORMANCES
1. Zili Misik – Wednesday, July 2, 7pm, CFA Courtyard (Rain Location: Crowell Concert Hall), FREE!
2. Camille A. Brown & Dancers – Friday, July 11, 8pm, CFA Theater (Connecticut Premiere)
3. Joe Lovano Trio Fascination with special guest vocalist Judi Silvano – Thursday, July 17, 8pm, Crowell Concert Hall (World Premiere)
FREE AFTERNOON TALKS AND PERFORMANCES
4. Banning Eyre: Tales from the Afropop Road – Bringing the World to American Public Radio – Tuesday, July 1, 12:10pm, CFA Hall, FREE!
5. James Grashow: Art and Cardboard – Tuesday, July 8, 12:10pm, CFA Hall, FREE!
6. Aaron Jafferis: How to Change the World with Hip-Hop Theater – Tuesday, July 15, 12:10pm, World Music Hall, FREE!
7. This is It! The Complete Piano Works of Neely Bruce: Part III – Sunday, July 20, 3pm, Crowell Concert Hall, FREE!
Tickets for Camille A. Brown & Dancers and Joe Lovano Trio Fascination with special guest vocalist Judi Silvano are on sale now online!
As winter sets in, the Center for the Arts heats up with many events and experiences designed to inspire, entertain, provoke and delight. We are welcoming two groups who, like the CFA, are also celebrating their 40th anniversary. The first is Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier dance companies that will perform the New England premiere of Times Bones, an enthralling work that features music by Paul Dresher and poetry by Michael Palmer. Jenkins is one of this country’s master choreographers with an astonishing body of work and we are delighted to be bringing her company to Connecticut. We are also bringing members of Sweet Honey in the Rock to Wesleyan. For four decades, this Grammy Award-winning all female African American a cappella group has brought joy to audiences around the world. Three members of Sweet Honey will be teaching workshops that will culminate in a showing on April 17. This is an extraordinary opportunity for both singers and non-singers to enter into their creation and performance practice. Other highlights of the spring include the first major solo exhibition in the U.S. by Paris-based American artist Evan Roth, whose work lives at the intersection of viral media and art, graffiti and technology. You’ll also have the opportunity to hear Ukranian Vadym Kholodenko, winner of the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, play a program that includes Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, and Nikolai Medtner. Wesleyan’s Music Department will host the 28th conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, which will feature a series of concerts where you can immerse yourself in new music by American composers. And Associate Professor of Dance Nicole Stanton will premiere the work Threshold Sites: Feast, which explores how we experience and enact our own corporeality, and how that impacts the way we experience our communities and our environments. At the end of the semester, you’ll have the chance to see the culminating works created by Wesleyan students, and be able to put your finger on the pulse of the current generation of art makers. Highlights include a production of Slawomir Mrozek’s Vatzlav, directed by Lily Whitsitt ’06; thesis performances in music and dance; and three weeks of thesis exhibitions by studio art majors. We have a rich and expansive spring planned for you. Please join us as often as you can.
Pamela Tatge
Director
Center for the Arts
Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts, discusses the four new trees planted in honor of the CFA’s 40th anniversary, to be dedicated at the concert by Amy Crawford + STORM and mamarazzi on Saturday, November 2, 2013 at 8pm in Crowell Concert Hall.
If you’ve ever taken a stroll through the Center for the Arts courtyard before a performance, or sat out on the lawn for an outdoor concert, you know how important the trees are to the architecture of the CFA. Architect Kevin Roche designed the buildings around the trees back in the early seventies, making sure that the building equipment would have as little impact on them as possible. Over the past forty years, many of the trees have died from extreme weather conditions and disease. In honor of the CFA’s 40th anniversary, the University has planted four new trees including one right outside the window of my office on the second floor of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. Here’s a picture of them planting it earlier this month.
![DSC_6030[2]](https://cfa.blogs.wesleyan.edu/files/2013/10/DSC_60302.jpg)
This beautiful red maple replaces a willow tree we lost during Hurricane Irene. It’s wonderful to come into work every day and see that little tree blowing in the breeze, knowing that one day it will grow to be every bit as majestic as its older brothers and sisters in the complex.
There is also a new paper bark maple between Art Studio South and the Music Studios, a beech tree near the World Music Hall’s north stairwell, and another paper bark maple between the Skull and Serpent building and Music Studios.
Please join us for the 40th Anniversary Celebration Concert of music alumni this Saturday, November 2, 2013 at 8pm when the trees will be dedicated, or just come by and take a stroll and welcome them to the CFA!
CFA 40th Anniversary Celebration Concert:
Amy Crawford + STORM and mamarazzi
Featuring Music Alumni of the Past Decade
Saturday, November 2, 2013 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$20 general public; $18 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $15 Wesleyan alumni; $6 Wesleyan students
Center for the Arts Story: I found the Center for the Arts through an unexpected route: my extracurricular activities in the Environmental Organizers Network (EON). As an Art History person, I’d always been involved in what was happening on the other side of the CFA green, but it wasn’t until I by chance attended a meeting about the first Feet to the Fire Festival that I really got to know the CFA. I kept going to planning meetings, and before long I found myself co-leading a student forum on environmental art and helping with logistics for the festival. As part of the student forum, I co-created an animation about the carbon cycle, but the best part about the actual day of the festival definitely wasn’t seeing my own work: it was getting to see the work of so many artists and thinkers (dancers, musicians, biologists, sculptors, and more) and the Middletown community (professors, students, and citizens) come together. That was really when the value of interdisciplinary work became clear to me.
The Feet to the Fire Festival in May 2008 allowed me to deepen interests I already had, while simultaneously discovering things totally new to me. At the same time that my two major passions serendipitously came together, I was introduced to the related (but new for me) field of performing arts. That became another passion, and as a senior I returned to the CFA as the Arts Administration Intern.
Interdisciplinary work and cultural planning became dominant threads in the rest of my Wesleyan experience. Even though I spent most of my time in the same corner of campus (between the CFA and the Davison Art Center), I found a lot of boundary-breaking activity there, and that broadness defined my time at Wesleyan. Actually, it’s still defining me: I found my current path (library and information science) through a studio art class about information theory I took with Jeffrey Schiff.
Favorite Course: Topics in Studio Art
Favorite Professor: impossible to choose just one!
Thesis Title: “Notions of Method: Text and Photograph in Methods of Connoisseurship” (Art History)
Tickets for Gallim Dance and Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Word Becomes Flesh are now on sale online! Click here to buy your tickets.
EVENING PERFORMANCES
FREE NOONTIME TALKS AND PERFORMANCES
