April Events on Campus

Amy Finkelstein is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1995, and received a PhD in Economics from MIT in 2001. Her research is in public finance and health economics, specifically market failures in insurance markets and the impact of public policy on these markets. Among many awards and fellowships, Amy recently won the John Bates Clark Medal which is awarded annually to the American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.

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5:00pm

The choral program at Wellesley allows students to experience the exhilaration and joy of performing the great choral repertoire from the Renaissance to the present day. National and international tours have led them to perform in such venues as the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., La Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal and the Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain.

The Rutgers Glee Club, Patrick Gardner, conductor are guests performing Brahms' Nanie with the Wellesley College Choir.

Pianist and Phyllis Henderson Carey Professor of Music Charles Fisk present a concert of music by--and inspired by--Johann Sebastian Bach. The program will include Bach's Goldberg Variations, a selection from Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and two transcriptions: one by Busoni of the chorale prelude Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, and one by Mary Howe of the aria Sheep May Safely Graze. The concert will also feature the world premiere of a work based on Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze by Wellesley composition faculty member Martin Brody.

No tickets are required. The performance is free to the public.

Marilyn Nelson is a poet, translator and children's book author. Her poetry collections include The Homeplace, which won the 1992 Anisfield-Wolf Award, and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award, and The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems, which won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award. Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2012, the Poetry Society of America awarded her the Frost Medal. Nelson is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut and the founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat. She was poet laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

Anis Mojgani is a two time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam. Anis has performed at numerous universities, festivals, and venues around the globe. He has performed for audiences as varied as the House of Blues and the United Nations, and his work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in the pages of such journals as Rattle, Used Furniture Review, Muzzle, and The Lumberyard. A founding member of the touring Poetry Revival, Anis is also the author of two poetry collections, both published by Write Bloody Publishing:Over the Anvil We Stretch(2008) and The Feather Room(2011).

This exhibition, featuring work by the talented senior thesis students and senior art majors, highlights a broad range of different artistic media and conceptual approaches. 

Winners of the 2010 American Prize, two-time TimeOut New York Critic's Pick and featured ensemble in the 2011 Merkin Hall Ecstatic Music Festival, Roomful of Teeth is a vocal octet dedicated to re-imaging singing in the 21st century. Through study with vocal masters from non-classical traditions the world over, Roomful of Teeth continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an ongoing commissioning project, invites today's brightest composers to create a repertoire without borders

Thursday, April 18-21 and  25-28

The Wellesley BlueJazz Ensembles Program includes Wellesley BlueJazz Big Band, directed by Cercie Miller and BlueJazz Combos, directed by Paula Zeitlin. Students are immersed in a rich jazz repertoire, from classic to contemporary. Faculty-directed rehearsals encourage the development of fluency in jazz improvisation. The ensembles perform throughout the year on campus and also collaborate with other colleges in the Boston area to present joint concerts. The Wellesley BlueJazz experience includes workshops and master classes with visiting guest artists and WBJ Nights Out attending jazz performances in the Boston area

Four decades into hip-hop history, rap music is the preeminent form of hip-hop practice, but the other three elements of hip-hop culture, DJ-ing, graffiti writing, and b-boying (sometimes called break dancing) are alive and kicking. This spring, Wellesley welcomes The Floorlords, one of Boston’s longest running b-boy crews, to campus for the first time as part of this series on improvisation.  The Floorlords have been performing for thirty years at venues nationwide, with a changing roster of gifted and committed dancers. Their acrobatic stage show amazes and educates, as these hip-hop ambassadors embody the b-boy spirit, spinning, flipping, and breaking boundaries until the beat stops.

Director Neal Hampton and the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra perform Dvorak's 8th Symphony, Steven Karidoyanes' Cafe Neon, Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave Overture, and Beethoven's 2nd Piano Concerto featuring concerto competition winner, Michiko Inouye.

This event is free to the public.

This event runs through June 8, 2013.  Jenny Olivia Johnson, Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory, debuts a Davis Museum commission, Glass Heart (bells for Sylvia Plath). Johnson's work is linked to synaesthetic experiences, in which certain sounds evoke particular colors in the mind. Inspired both by Sol LeWitt's 1991 series of etchings, All Combinations of Red, Yellow, and Blue, with Scribbles, and the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Johnson has created an interactive musical instrument that will share the gallery space with LeWitt's prints. The instrument consists of seven glass bell jars fitted with microphones and lights. A touch triggers a sound sample of a new composition written by Johnson and featuring Plath's poetry, and causes the lights of the glass hearts to dance to the sound. Johnson's work, a daring foray into the potential of intersecting emotional undertones among distinct pieces of literature, music, and visual art, is linked to synesthetic experiences, in which certain sounds evoke particular colors in the mind. The exhibition is curated by Elaine Mehalakes, Kemper Curator of Academic Programs.