Olivia DrakeGreg Goldberg joined the Sociology Department as an assistant professor. His research interests include political economy, social theory, media and popular culture, digital and network technologies and music and sound. This semester he is teaching Introductory Sociology and Media and Society. "Thus far, I've found the students at Wesleyan to be ambitious, open, creative and independent thinkers; they are truly a pleasure to teach," he says. "They have sharp critical thinking skills, and are game for anything I can think to throw at them. I've been continually impressed by their ability to engage complex social questions and issues, and I…
For 40 years, Alvin Lucier, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, has pioneered music composition and performance, including the notation of performers' physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space. On Nov. 4-6, the Music Department and Center for the Arts will…
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles received the 2010 Wammie Award for Classical Conductor / Director by the Washington Area Music Association for his efforts directing the Post-Classical Ensemble, a Washington, D.C.-based orchestra co-founded by Gil-Ordóñez. The Washington Area Music Awards recognize significant career achievements by area musicians. Nominations and balloting come from the WAMA membership. Past show participants include Emmylou Harris, Joan Jett, The Clovers, The Orioles, Bo Diddley, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Dean, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Sweet Honey in the Rock.
(more…)
Jane Alden raises her hands and cues members of her Collegium Musicum performance ensemble to intone the music. The sopranos and basses situated in Memorial Chapel’s choir loft allow their voices to resonate throughout the space. Alden cuts them off at measure 17. "Measure 17 is the apex because the cantus firmus is in the top voice. You need to sound like angels floating on the top with the chant,” Alden says during a Nov. 23 rehersal . “Let’s try this once more." The MUSC438 course, which explores vocal and instrumental repertories of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods of European music history, is taught…
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of Private Lessons, Chamber Music and Ensembles, director of the Wesleyan Orchestra and Concert Choir, adjunct professor of music, was featured in the Sept. 27 Washington Post. Gil-Ordóñez also directs the Washington D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble. The orchestra performed a program titled "The Russian Gershwin" at the Clarice Smith Center. "Gershwin is overdue for a fresh look, and that's the ensemble's specialty: turning familiar music on its head, providing context and fresh perspectives and generally pulling the rug out from under listeners," the article states. "Pianist Genadi Zagor opened the evening with an introspective and elegant improvisation on…
Cem Duruöz, private lessons teacher on guitar, will perform at the Weill Recital Hall in New York at 8 p.m. Oct. 28 in a concert sponsored by D'Addario Foundation and Alhambra Guitars. The program will include Turkish music, Brazilian Bossa Nova and Tangos from Argentina. The program will include solos and duos with guitarist Philippe Bertaud. A frequent soloist, Duruöz has appeared with more than 10 orchestras regularly performing Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez among others, under the batons of such conductors as Wesleyan's Angel Gil-Ordóñez. In January 2008 he gave the world premiere performance of Concierto Anatolia, a guitar concerto featuring Turkish melodies…
David LowNew Haven, Conn. resident Taylor Ho Bynum ’98, an acclaimed avant-garde jazz cornetist and composer, is undertaking a strenuous 1,000-mile bicycle concert tour in September of all six New England states. He will travel by bike for two weeks to 10 venues from New Haven to Portland, Maine, and back. As part of his Acoustic Bicycle Tour, Bynum will perform at Wesleyan’s Crowell Concert Hall on Saturday, Sept. 11 at 8 p.m. with vibraphonist and Wesleyan music professor Jay Hoggard ’76. (Click here to order tickets.) Bynum has also performed with Wesleyan music professor Anthony Braxton in several jazz concerts…
Anthony Braxton, professor of music was honored at the “Tri-Centric Modeling: Past, Present and Future” benefit concerts June 18-19 in Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, N.Y. Braxton joined the performance at points, playing with his former students Taylor Ho Bynum ’98, James Fei ’99, Mary Halvorson ’02, and Chris Jonas '99. Proceeds from the concerts benefited the nonprofit Tri-Centric Foundation, set up to archive Braxton’s work and perpetuate his exuberant legacy. Braxton performed excerpts from his new opera, “Trillium E," which featured a cross-section of past and present collaborators, including pianist Marilyn Crispell, drummer Gerry Hemingway and cornetist Ho Bynum. In…
For two years, music graduate student Garrett Field will live in Sri Lanka studying the lives, music, poetry and writing of three composers who influenced Jatika Gi, the Sinhala nationalist poetry-song. As a 2010 recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowship, Field will have the opportunity to complete his dissertation on Sunil Santha, W.D. Amaradeva, and Ananda Samarakone - whose careers, music, and poetry articulated different strands of Sinhalese nationalist thought. The fellowship comes with a $26,000 award. “The Jatika Gi artists played a significant role in the development of Sinhala cultural nationalism and thus served as…