PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 27, 2013
CONTACT: Rashida Black, 773.702.3427
EMAIL: rashida@uchicago.edu
TOPSY-TURVY AND LIVE PREVIEW OF PIRATES OF PENZANCE AT DOC FILMS
CHICAGO, Hyde Park – DOC Films, the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company, and the University of Chicago Department of Music join forces to present the Oscar-winning film Topsy-Turvy, and an on-stage preview of the Company’s upcoming production of The Pirates of Penzance. The event takes place at 3:30 p.m. Sunday March 10 in Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St.
The 1999 Mike Leigh film highlights how Gilbert and Sullivan came to write their greatest hit, The Mikado, amidst backstage fighting and intrigue. The result is a brilliant reconstruction of the original Savoy production, full of infectious music and bravura performances featuring Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner as the battling duo.
Prior to the film’s showing, members of the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company will perform two songs from Pirates. Baritone Michael Swisher will sing the Pirate King’s song, and Michael Sherman, a tenor, will do the patter song, “I am the very model of a modern Major-General.” Both Swisher and Sherman have had leading roles in many of the Company’s previous productions. They will be backed up by choristers Martha Swisher, and David Jones. read more…
47 years ago, the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company tested its sea legs with The Pirates of Penzance in 1966. The Company, founded in 1960 and incorporated in 1964, is Chicago’s only theatre company devoted exclusively to performing the works of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan**. The Company was originally sponsored by Adventures in the Arts, an organization affiliated with University High School, but began its ongoing collaboration with the University of Chicago Department of Music in 1983.
Sail back in time to find treasures buried at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center. The University’s Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company Collection includes programs, audition notices, flyers, props, and stage models. The following photos reveal rare Pirates of Penzance memorabilia in honor of The Company’s 30th collaborative year with the University of Chicago Department of Music and the upcoming performance of Pirates March 15-17 in Mandel Hall.
1966 program
1970′s mystery swatches
1970′s mystery swatches
1975 costume designs
1975 costume designs
On March 2nd, the Piano Studies program performs J.S. Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, in Fulton Recital Hall. (event info) What is the inspiration behind this ambitious program?
One of the surprises as I started in the Piano Program was the curious repertoire preferences of new students, usually locked firmly somewhere between late Beethoven and late Brahms, with an occasional over-played bit of Rachmaninoff. When I suggested perhaps learning some Bach, the shocking response was often “Bach is boring”. This is just like saying “Chocolate is tasteless”! (Or waving red in front of a bull.) I must assume that the little bit of Bach taught to these unfortunates in the past was somehow misrepresented, or never properly explained… In my not-at-all nagging way, I would suggest (cajole, order, bribe) learning some Bach pieces with me, and try to illustrate why “boring” is the very last epithet one might apply to them. One after another, students would become converted, and ask for more Bach! The annual Bach project (in its third year now) is a way to convert student en masse, and to allow those already addicted a chance to enjoy lots of this music surrounded by the like-minded.
We all cordially extend an invitation to everyone in the community to come and join us. Especially to those poor souls still not certain that Bach was the greatest musical genius to have graced the Earth!
On Sunday, February 24th at 4PM, the University Wind Ensemble (UWE) presents “Connections,” the 2013 Winter Concert in the Reva and David Logan Center Performance Hall. For this concert, the Wind Ensemble will perform with the University of Chicago Lab School Concert Band. Chip De Stefano, Director of UWE, elaborates on the “connection.”
We’re extremely excited about this joint concert. Not only is this the first collaboration between the University Wind Ensemble and the Lab School Band, that we’re aware of, but it’s our first opportunity to perform in the Logan Center Performance Hall. It’s a great chance for our students to provide some mentoring, and hopefully inspiration, to the high school students, and we hope to draw a large audience for the performance.
Interview with Kaley Mason, Assistant Professor of Music
Amie Maciszewski playing sitar
Monday, February 11th begins a FREE weeklong series of events in multiple locations across campus when The South Asian Sound Interventions Series presents “Performing the Bengal Borderlands: Music, Movement, and Encounter.” What is the back-story behind this exciting, five-day event?
“Performing the Bengal Borderlands,” a SASI weeklong series of workshops, performances, academic papers, screenings, and roundtables beginning on February 11, grew out of an earlier program organized around the short-term residencies of Bangladeshi Boyati bardic singer Momtaz Begum and bamboo flautist Jalal Ahmed. Due to visa delays, we rescheduled and revised the program with an equally distinguished set of invitations, including Dallas-based sitarist, ethnomusicologist, and documentary filmmaker Amie Maciszewski, Kolkata-based sarodist and instrument curator Somjit Dasgupta, Illinois-based tabla artist Manpreet Bedi and Dhaka-based playwright, folklorist, and scholar Saymon Zakaria. With the support of faculty in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and our sponsors, including the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the University of Chicago Arts Council, and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, we have planned a compelling week of events highlighting musical traditions, instruments, and scholarship from the Northeastern region of India and neighboring Bangladesh. The focus on this particular international region complements the current research interests of faculty and ethnomusicology graduate students, including the work of Bertie Kibreah, Rehanna Kheshgi, Philip Bohlman, and Thibaut d’Hubert, among others. It also coincides with the opening of the SMART Museum exhibit, The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989, on February 14.
(SASI website)
