alumni – Page 23

"Hamilton" writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda '02, Hon. '15, bested Beyonce, Adele and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, among others for the title Associated Press Entertainer of the Year for 2016. The award is voted by members of the news cooperative and AP entertainment reporters. In 2016, Miranda also won a Pulitzer Prize, multiple Tony Awards, a Golden Globe nomination, and the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. He also hosted Saturday Night Live, asked Congress to help dig Puerto Rico out of its debt crisis, performed at a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Broadway, lobbied to stop gun violence in America and teamed…

Author Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky ’05 talks to News @ Wes about his new book, The Quarter-Life Breakthrough: Invent Your Own Path, Find Meaningful Work, and Build a Life That Matters.

Tierney Sutton ’86 has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. The Sting Variations is a collection of Sting and Police songs reinterpreted by The Tierney Sutton Band and released on the BFM Jazz label. Sutton had previously explored the music of Bill Evans, Frank Sinatra, and most recently Joni Mitchell, with her 2013 album, After Blue. In a September interview for Billboard, Sutton told writer Melinda Newman that the choice to explore Sting's work was a natural one: “‘[Sting’s] autobiography is full of references to Miles and Coltrane and the Great American Song tradition.’” The Sting Variations includes both well known songs…

Stephen McCarthy ’75, managing director at KCG Capital Advisors, is also partner/executive producer with Matthew Miele’s Quixotic Endeavors (QE) film production company, featuring corporate/individual biopics, such as Crazy About Tiffany's (starring Jessica Biel and Katie Couric, among others) and Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs (starring Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, among others). Their third film Harry Benson: Shoot First, will be in theaters—including New York City—and video on demand, starting Dec. 9, 2016. Harry Benson: Shoot First is a 90-minute documentary on one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the past five decades. Benson's work has captured cultural icons in…

Sarah Mohamed Abunama Elgadi ’04, known by her stage name Alsarah, recently released a new album, Manara, with her band, Alsarah & the Nubatones. Manara, or The Lighthouse, is rooted in the style of Sudan and Nubia, and inspired by East-African music. KCET.org says Manara “is more fluid and free-flowing than the band’s debut album, lifted by moaning trumpets and humming electronics, broken up by interludes of radio static and bits of the album’s penultimate track ‘Fulani.’” Alsarah, who was a music major at Wesleyan, is a Sudanese-born singer, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist based in Brooklyn. She is a self-proclaimed practitioner of…

Wesleyan University has announced the distinguished members of its inaugural Hamilton Prize Selection Committee. The all-star committee, made up of Wesleyan alumni, will choose the first-ever recipient of the university’s newly established Wesleyan University Hamilton Prize for Creativity—a four-year full-tuition scholarship that will be awarded to the incoming Wesleyan student of the Class of 2021 whose creative written work is judged to best reflect the originality, artistry and dynamism embodied in Hamilton: An American Musical. (more…)

Return to the Tea-Horse Road, an exhibition by acclaimed National Geographic Magazine photographer Michael Yamashita '71, will be featured in the Sony U Space in Beijing, from Dec. 6, 2016, to Jan. 8, 2017. Drawn from a series of photographs created for a 2010 National Geographic article, "Tea Horse Road," Yamashita traces the legendary trail of grand vistas, where both Chinese tea and Tibetan horses were traded. His photographs offer cultural highlights rendered with intimacy—equestrian festivals revealing pageantry and brightly-colored flags, travelers sipping tea by yak-butter candlelight, men squatting to gather worms for herbal healers—as well vast landscapes of distant mountains…

More than 100 members of the Wesleyan community attended “Hamilton on the Road: Chicago” Nov. 22 at the PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago. The event included a pre-show reception hosted by alumnus David ’78 and Mimi Olson and a first run performance of Hamilton, the Tony-award winning musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02 and Thomas Kail ’99. Photos from the event appear in this Wesleyan Flickr album.

Season one of Amazon’s period drama, Good Girls Revolt, premiered in October 2016 and the show's star is Genevieve Angelson ’08. Good Girls Revolt is based on the book by Lynn Povich P’03, and coincidentally stars another Wesleyan parent, Jim Belushi P'04. Povich is an award-winning journalist who wrote about her early career at Newsweek. She was one of 46 women who sued the magazine for sex discrimination in 1970. After the lawsuit, Newsweek agreed to provide equal employment opportunities to women, and Povich went on to become the first female senior editor in Newsweek’s history. Angelson, who was a…

Tyshawn Sorey MA '11 is the subject of a Nov. 26 article published in JazzTimes titled "Tyshawn Sorey: The Maestro." "It’s something to see," writes David Adler for JazzTimes. "A fired-up young sideman blossoms into one of the most multifaceted and restlessly evolving artists of our time at age 36. It’s hard to tally just the most recent accomplishments." His accomplishments include premiering a work—Sorey on piano and drums—at the Ojai Festival in California that had been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) at the Ojai Festival in California last February—and another ICE commission is upcoming. His Alloy trio (pianist…

"A featured performer at the The Progressive’s 100th anniversary party in 2009, [Dar] Williams [’89] has always identified with progressive causes," writes Bill Luedes, associate editor of The Progressive magazine, by way of background to his Q&A with Williams that follows. "She toured with Joan Baez early in her career and has embraced feminist, anti-war, and pro-environment positions. She’s taught a class titled 'Music Movements in a Capitalist Democracy' at her alma mater, Wesleyan University. A mother of two children, she has written a novel for young adults, Amalee, and is working on a sequel." In the interview, Luedes explores…

"There’s no other sound in music precisely like Mary Halvorson’s guitar, which she plays with a flinty attack, a spidery finesse and a shiver of wobbly delay," writes New York Times jazz critic Nate Chinen in a review of her recent shows around Brooklyn in October. She also released her eighth album, Away With You, on Oct.28. The album is produced by Firehouse 12, a production studio co-founded by fellow jazz musician Taylor Ho Bynum ’98 MA ’05, which has released his work, as well as the music of Halvorson's and Bynum's Wesleyan professor and mentor Anthony Braxton, whom Chinen calls…

Hamilton’s Miranda ’02 Named Associated Press Entertainer of the Year

Poswolsky ’05 Pens The Quarter-Life Breakthrough

Sutton ’86 Nominated for Grammy with The Sting Variations

McCarthy ’75 Produces ‘Star-Studded’ Documentary Harry Benson: Shoot First

Sudanese-American Singer Elgadi ’04 Releases New Album

Wesleyan Announces All-Star Hamilton Prize Selection Committee

Photographs by National Geographic Photographer Yamashita ’71 on Exhibit in Beijing

Alumni, Guests Attend “Hamilton on the Road: Chicago”

Angelson ’08 is Star of Amazon’s Newsroom Drama

Composer/Drummer Sorey MA ’11 is “The Maestro”

Williams ’89: “Bridge Broadly and Creatively”—Interview in The Progressive

Jazz Guitarist Halvorson ’02 Is “Unflinching and Full of Grace”