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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

College Arts Prepare for Milestone Year

Every year, the College’s prestigious and innovative arts programs provide students the opportunity to watch, discuss and create moving works that have the potential to inspire scientists and artists alike.  This year, a variety of impressive milestones will be celebrated across many departments, indicating the strong impact the arts have had, and will continue to have, on the College community.

Ten years ago, the Department of Music’s Carol Christensen and Town Hall Theater Executive Director Doug Anderson started to produce Broadway musicals during J-term. Now in its 10th anniversary year, the J-term musical is a hit with both students and the larger community. Last year’s production of Les Miserables included over 60 students and tickets sold out only hours after going on sale. This year’s show, Ragtime, is aiming to be equally as impressive. Set in 1900 in New York City, the musical cleverly intertwines the stories of Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, the upper-class residents of New Rochelle and the people of Harlem.

The musical features a clash of cultures and musical styles, and requires about 50 actors and 20 musicians that are able to participate in the show for Winter Term credit. Auditions to participate in the musical, which will be staged at The Town Hall Theater in late January, are Sept. 11 from 7 to 9 p.m. and Sept. 12 from 5 to 8 p.m in Room 221 of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (CFA). A sign up sheet is available outside of the Music Department office on the third floor of the CFA.

Also this weekend, the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) is organizing the S.O.S. (Start of School) Festival in collaboration with the College’s radio station, WRMC, and Middlebury Music United (MMU) on Sept. 12 and 13. The free festival will take place on the green in front of Voter, starting at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12 with Iron Eyes Cody, a student band known for unique instrumentation and vocal arrangements comprised of Evan Allis ’15.5, Renn Mulloy ’15.5, Mark Balderston ’15.5, Rob Shaw ’16, and Noah Stone ’16.5. Burlington native Caroline Rose and San Francisco duo TV Girl will follow in preparation for the headlining Delicate Steve. The following day, student group Milk Chocolate, or Innocent Tswamuno ‘15 and Mohan Fitzgerald ‘14, will open for a line-up of acts including Modern Diet, Poor Remy and Vunderbar.

The Performing Arts Series is celebrating its 95th season with an impressive line-up of internationally acclaimed music, starting with the Grammy Award-winning Takács Quartet’s take on Hayden, Debussy and Beethoven on Sept. 26.

“The opening concert of the Performing Arts Series by the Takács Quartet is one of the most exciting events of the fall,” said Director of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts Liza Sacheli. “They are a world-class ensemble, truly one of the best on the planet, and Middlebury is lucky to enjoy a long friendship with them.  I bet it [the concert] will sell out.”

The Belcea Quartet, under the leadership of Romanian violinist Corina Belcea, will again enchant audiences with their widely acclaimed playing of Mozart, Brahms and Schubert on Oct. 15. A free concert by The Jupiter String Quartet on Nov. 15 ensures that the world-class entertainment typical to the Performing Arts Series is available to the entire community.

To celebrate the 30th and final season of Series Director Paul Nelson, cellist Sophie Shao will perform Hayden, Brahms and a new piece composed by Associate Professor of Music Su Lian Tan in honor of the retiring director on Dec. 5.

Tickets to all Performing Arts Series events are $6 for students, and first-years are eligible for one free ticket. More ticket information can be found at go/boxoffice.

The Middlebury College Museum of Art opened their fall exhibition, Visual Weimar, 1919–1933, on Tuesday, Sept. 2, displaying a dynamic collection of paintings, drawings and etchings indicative of the German Weimar style. Otto Dix, George Grosz and Kathe Kollwitz are only three of the prominent artists featured in the exhibit who captured the trauma, devastation and suffering of post World War I Germany. Urban landscapes and portraits considering human mutilation, starvation and poverty, as well as the quest for mass entertainment, give the viewers a glimpse into a society torn between participating with and criticizing the rise and reign of Adolf Hitler. The exhibition will close on Dec. 7.

The first of two other fall exhibitions is Hyper! Works by Greg Haberny, which features culturally and politically critical pieces with media ranging from melted crayons to Band-Aids, and will run through Oct 26.

Picturing Enlightenment: Tibetan Tangkas from the Mead Art Museum is an exhibit showcasing 18 recently cleaned and repaired Tibeten Tangas from Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum that have been inaccessible to scholars and museum visitors for nearly six decades. Professor of Art History Cynthia Packert will give the opening gallery talk on Sept. 12, and the exhibit closes on Dec. 7. Admission to the museum is free.

A special double exhibition in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts and Town Hall Theater by Middlebury-based painter Kate Gridley, is called Passing Through: Portraits of Young Adults, and is running now through Oct. 26.

“It [the exhibit] features stunning, lifelike portraits of young adults ages 18-25, roughly the same age as Midd kids,” Sacheli said. “Psychologists have recently identified a new stage of human development and defined it as a key time for individuals to claim their voices and form their identities.  The paintings are riveting, and they’re also accompanied by ‘sound portraits’ and two special talks on Sept. 26 and Oct. 24.”

Contemporary playwright David Freeman’s heartwarming comedy Mendel, Inc., is the first of two faculty shows presented this semester by The Department of Theatre. Directed by Professor of Theatre Richard Romagnoli, the play follows a Jewish family’s pursuit of the American Dream in 1920’s New York City and will be staged Oct. 31 to Nov. 1 in honor of the 60th anniversary of Middlebury Hillel.

The second faculty show of the semester, Vampire, is a brash and gregarious play penned by British playwright Snoo Wilson which will be directed by Professor of Theatre Cheryl Faraone. Staged Nov. 20 to 22, the piece dramatically and intellectually changes setting throughout, roaming from Victorian England to World War I to a punk dominatrix presiding over a biker’s funeral.

Students participating in the College Choir, directed by Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Jeffrey Buettner, are presenting an ambitious array of work after returning from their Summer 2014 tour to Berlin, Prague, Leipzig and Vienna. On Oct. 3 and 5, the Choir will join the Opera Company of Middlebury in presenting a staged concert version of Verdi’s timeless tragedy, La Traviata, at the Town Hall Theater, and on Nov. 20 the group will join three other collegiate Vermont choirs and a professional orchestra as a part of the Vermont Collegiate Choral Consortium. The annual Lessons and Carols for Advent and Christmas concert will take place on Dec. 7.

Many other musical student groups promise to have an exciting fall semester, including the African Music and Dance Ensemble, which will present an interactive Nov. 18 concert featuring instruments as varied as bow-harps, gourd shakers, ankle bells and thumb pianos. A few days later, The Sound Investment Jazz Ensemble will showcase their fall repertoire of contemporary jazz and big band era music on Nov. 22, and the College’s Community Chorus, directed by Jeff Rebach, will perform their fall concert on Nov. 23.

Every Saturday throughout the semester, free acclaimed foreign and independent films are shown in Dana Auditorium at 3 and 8 p.m. as a part of The Hirschfield International Film Series. Highlights include Inside Llewyn Davis on Sept. 13, a raw exploration of a struggling folk musician in 1960’s New York City, a biopic of Hannah Arendt on Oct. 4 and the 2013 Italian film The Great Beauty on Nov. 15, which follows an aging playboy after he receives a surprise on his 65th birthday.

The community will have the opportunity to view the kick-off of the Dance Program’s season on Sept. 18 with a collaborative concert featuring choreography by Middlebury Dance Chair Christal Brown, University of Vermont Dance Chair Paul Besaw and their one-time mentor, Professor Emeritus Jan Van Dyke of the University of North Carolina in NC Dances VT. Emerging student choreographers will showcase their work at the Fall Dance Concert on Nov. 21 and 22 under the direction of Christal Brown.

Student works of studio art in a variety of mediums will be on display in the Johnson Building throughout the semester. From Oct. 26 to Nov. 6, Pinhole Photography will feature black and white photographs crafted through direct contact with negatives and exposed through cameras of the students’ own construction and design. Other works include ceramic and oil portraits Sept. 2 through 12, large-scale drawings Sept. 26 to Oct. 3 and silkscreen prints Dec. 1 to 9.

Whether viewing a student creation or listening to a world-renowned artist, members of the College community have a unique opportunity to engage with such a wide variety of mediums and talents. As the College celebrates a range of artistic milestones this year, students from all disciplines will have the chance to participate in the next evolving era of creative achievement.


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