Marc Fink has played his oboe in remote Alaskan villages where the touring musicians spent the night in sleeping bags on the floor of the gymnasium in which, hours earlier, they had performed.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Music Department will hold another vote to determine whether it will join a proposed College of the Arts.
Flutes probably aren?t the first thing that come to mind when discussing hip-hop, but Sam Hartley knew he could change the conversation. The UW-Madison sophomore brought extra rhythm and bass to his performance at the Wisconsin Flute Festival on Saturday. During “Three Beats for Beatbox Flute,” he incorporated vocal melodies and percussion, drawing an enthusiastic response from the audience.
FX has put in development They Marched Into Sunlight, a six-part limited series executive produced by Oscar winner Stephen Gaghan.
Student honors: Emily Belknap, a graduate student in the UW-Madison Department of Art, has been named winner of the 2013 Chazen Prize to an Outstanding MFA Student. An exhibition of her work, ?Backyard Dilemmas: Constructed Landscapes by Emily Belknap,? will be on view at the Chazen Museum of Art through May 12 in the Oscar F. and Louise Greiner Mayer Gallery of the Elvehjem Building. Belknap is a painter and sculptor.
Most students see spring break as a chance to get away from doing work, maybe apply some sunscreen or at least try to find somewhere to have fun that requires sunscreen. UW-Madison students Alex Kowalsky and Josh Lieberthal, founders of AJ&Beyond, however, are not most students.Instead of hightailing it out of Madison this week, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication seniors are offering up their digital and social media expertise for the week, and they are doing it to help their school.
Jennifer Angus, a professor in the design studies department at UW-Madison, authored ?In Search of Goliathus Hercules.?
Jennifer Angus, a UW-Madison professor of textile design, pins insects into elaborate patterns for her art exhibits.
Five players make up a quintet. And 40 years marks a milestone. Both are significant numbers for the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, whose 40th season will be celebrated with a free concert Friday, March 15, in Mills Hall.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives will host the seventh annual Line Breaks Festival March 13-20, which features nightly performances from UW-Madison students.
The University of Wisconsin will welcome the Dalai Lama to campus in May to participate in a panel moderated by nationally-acclaimed journalists Arianna Huffington and Daniel Goleman.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to visit Madison along with other international thought leaders to take part in a series of panel discussions in May as part of the ?Change your Mind Change the World? event at the Overture Center.
University of Wisconsin administrators are in the early stages of developing a plan for a College of the Arts, which would provide a more cohesive and centralized home for the arts on campus.
For 85 years, the UW-Madison students who?ve made up the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee have taken it upon themselves to select, install and promote the art shows that rotate through the galleries of Memorial Union.This year, however, committee director Carly Herzog and her group want to do something different.
Though the great tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon died of liver failure in 1990, the UW will celebrate his life and legacy this winter, when he would have celebrated his 90th birthday. Several Gordon-themed activities complement the university?s efforts to build a new jazz program.
HAMDEN ? They rap, they beat, they slam. They are the cream of the crop of student poets who have raised hip hop to an art form that combines it with theater from a program that has become The Juilliard School of its genre.
When most Madisonians think of where to view art on campus, the newly expanded Chazen Museum of Art comes first to mind.
It all started with a crushed orange velvet couch.
?This lovely down-filled couch showed up in the bathroom,? said Linda Zwicker, an assistant dean at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?And its always been a puzzle ? how the hell did it get in there?
For the vast majority of people, faces are just another part of our lives. Thousands of them can pass by on a single day, yet they vanish from our minds a second after they disappear – a fleeting moment lost in the everyday shuffle.
First Pamela Whitehorse had her dream catcher featured on the silver screen. This spring, a larger version will grace a wall in the new Dejope Residence Hall on the UW-Madison campus.
The exhibition opening Saturday at the Chazen Museum of Art was ? fittingly ? put together by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a way to cope with an economic downturn.
Reviewed: Jim Crace grew up along London?s northern perimeter in a housing estate that felt, he has said, like the last building before the countryside began. In one direction stretched an interminably rural England, in the other an interminable metropolis. Through this accident of childhood, Crace developed an edgeland imagination that has powered his writing ever since, attracting him to dramatic showdowns between clashing values. His characters typically face some encroaching, inhospitable new order, as in ?Harvest,? his glorious new novel, where they must scramble to adapt or be mowed down.
University of Wisconsin faculty addressed the evolving partnership between Madison and China during a panel event at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery Wednesday.
Out-of-state admissions and the developing proposal for a College for the Arts that would merge together departments from different colleges within the university were highlighted at a meeting of the Faculty Senate Monday night.
A University of Wisconsin Cool Science Image Contest seeks to uncover unique photographs of science research to display.
Author Lorrie Moore is about to leave the building, the UW?s Helen C. White Hall, to be exact. She?s headed to Nashville, where she?ll assume an endowed chair in Vanderbilt University?s English department this fall.
Tucked in a nondescript building on South Dickenson Street, Tandem Press quietly invites world-renowned artists to work and experiment with expert printmakers and UW?Madison students to create innovative and exciting contemporary prints.
Karl Schmidt puts images in people?s heads. His vivid reading of great books across seven decades on public radio has seen to that. The thing is, Schmidt himself occasionally fixes on an image he can?t shake. One involved a longtime listener to the Wisconsin Public Radio “Chapter a Day” program Schmidt has handled off and on, mostly on, since 1941.
Journalists and politicians delight in telling us what is wrong with public education, when in fact they know very little about it. A case in point is Jonah Goldberg?s Wednesday column, a denunciation of historians? use of “left-wing” textbooks. I agree that left-wing historians can be boring, but I disagree when he suggests that history teachers use left-wing textbooks.
? Norman K. Risjord, history professor emeritus, UW-Madison
In 1977, Bruce Chatwin?s ?In Patagonia? and Patrick Leigh Fermor?s ?Time of Gifts? prompted a renaissance in British travel writing, which for 20 years would remain as pre-eminent in the United Kingdom as the memoir was in the United States.
As Superstorm Sandy barreled toward the East Coast in late October, it became more urgent for Paula Panczenko, the executive director of Tandem Press, to get to New York. So she jumped on a plane before the start of the 2012 International Fine Print Dealers? Association Print Fair, an important event in the art world ? and the most significant sales venue of the year for the artwork that?s created by UW-Madison?s Tandem Press….Sales for Tandem at that show, Panczenko said, were ?very good.?
The tale illustrates Tandem?s entrepreneurial spirit and the broad reach that Tandem Press, founded 25 years ago, now has across the country. More than 300 university students and 63 early-career and well-established artists have worked at the fine art press, whose very name ? Tandem ? is about the collaboration between artists and master printers.
The UW-Milwaukee student newspaper, the Post, announced last week that it will no longer be available in print, shifting in January to an exclusively online news model. It?s not necessarily bad news, since news online is better than no news at all. But the paper?s dueling headlines reflect the ongoing upheaval in the media industry, even at the collegiate level: The headline announcing the news to readers ? THE POST IS DEAD ? does not exactly inspire confidence of a bold, new era of online student journalism. The adjacent headline ? LONG LIVE THE POST ? suggests brighter days may be ahead for the 56-year-old weekly.
A UW-Madison student magazine turns 10 this week. Curb Magazine, which in 2010 became the first college publication in the nation to include an iPad version, will launch its latest edition Wednesday. The launch is being preceded by a “10 Days of Curb” lead-up on Facebook, in which editors created a puzzle out of the magazine?s cover, filling in a new piece each day. More at facebook.com/curbmagazine.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Odyssey Project was featured Sunday on the Big Ten Network?s television show ?Forward Motion,? which is produced by the university. The episode focused on the project?s impact on the participants involved in the program.
As she notes on her blog, Deborah Blum?s latest piece of nonfiction writing is one to be read with the lights on. Blum, a UW-Madison professor of journalism and author of ?The Poisoner?s Handbook,? tells the true-crime story of Albert Fish, by all appearances a harmless old man who harbored a history of kidnapping, killing, and sometimes eating children. His is the story of a deranged serial killer-cannibal who took directions from the voices of angels who came to visit him, a man who felt that each victim he claimed was a sacrifice to God to atone for his sins.
America?s passion for The Nutcracker ?is not as old as time,? said Li Chiao-Ping, chairwoman of the dance department at UW-Madison and artistic director of Li Chaio-Ping Dance company, which is staging its third annual production of ?The Knotcracker? at Overture Center this weekend. The American ?Nutcracker? rage came about in the 1950s, when a Balanchine production caught on with the dance world, Li said.
?It became something of a staple for ballet studios. Actually, the story?s a little dark,? Li said. ?But perhaps there was something about the way it was dressed up, the music itself, maybe the fantasy aspect to it.? When she created ?The Knotcracker,? an all-ages production with aerialists, dancers and lots of ?serious fun,? Li said, she wanted to stage ?a celebration of community.?
American Disability Research scholar Kim Nielsen visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison Tuesday to discuss the history and repercussions of disabilities in the U.S., as part of an event put on by UW-Madison Disability Studies. Nielsen, author of ?A Disability History of the United States,? is a professor in the department of disability studies at the University of Toledo. Her research is one of the first scholarly attempts to examine the history of disabilities dating back to the period prior to European arrival.
Still ingrained in Michael Cobb?s head are the words his grandmother told him shortly before her death. ?You have to find somebody to be with. I don?t want you to die alone,? she told the now 39-year-old English professor from the University of Toronto. ?Coupledom,? as Cobb calls it, has become so much the norm in society and pop-culture that it has stigmatized single life, he argues in his newest book ?Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled.? In his book, Cobb sets out to dismiss the assumptions and scorn that equate being single with loneliness through sharing personal experiences and examining pop-culture. He will bring those same ideas Thursday to UW-Madison with his longtime friend and fellow single crusader Kate Bolick.
The anti-Black Friday shoppers didn?t have to line up in the cold outside of Best Buy or Toys R Us with their sprinting shoes on. They weren?t looking for the best deals on electronics or toys made in China. Dedicated to buying homemade gifts made locally, these shoppers simply moseyed through the UW Arboretum?s Visitor Center on Sunday looking over the mostly handmade arts, crafts and edibles sold by 41 vendors during the ?Close to Home: Arboretum Local Products Fair.?
Norma Saldivar, professor in the Department of Theatre and Drama at UW-Madison and a director, which means I stage plays and am a storyteller by trade. I?m also executive director of the UW-Madison Arts Institute, which is a consortium of the arts units on campus.
Dancing toys, flaming figgy pudding, John DeMain in a Santa hat ? looks like the holidays are here again.
UW-Madison will play host to a power couple in international human rights on Monday, as Carrie Hessler-Radelet, the acting Peace Corps director, and her husband, Steve Radelet, chief economist of USAID, the U.S. international aid program, visit campus. Hessler-Radelet will give a free public lecture from noon to 1 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26 in room 158 in the Education Building, 1000 Bascom Mall. She?ll discuss the Peace Corps? role in promoting sustainable solutions in global health.
Tensions between unions, business owners and the government started long before Wisconsin?s recall election or the more recent demise of the Twinkie. The University Theatre?s current production, Marc Blitzstein?s ?The Cradle Will Rock,? directed by Norma Saldivar, highlights these tensions in both the drama onstage and the history of the musical itself.
Noted: When the Wisconsin Film Festival announced its dates and venues for April 2013, some were alarmed that no downtown venues will hold screenings. Instead, screenings will take place at UW venues and Sundance Cinemas Madison on the near west side. Outside of the festival, does a downtown film culture exist without commercial theaters? And do downtown audiences value alternative film programming like they value the Capitol area?s music and arts scenes?
UW-Madison?s vampire lore expert Tomislav Longinovic attributes the sometimes graphic creatures? foothold in popular culture to people becoming more accustomed to violence through war and what?s seen daily in the news. “As we accept more evil, the image of the vampire becomes more acceptable,” said Longinovic, who teaches “The Vampire in Literature and Film. “Plus, people want an escape. The rise of ?Twilight Saga? … really comes at a time when I think there?s a youth withdraw from reality,” Longinovic said. “It provides a nice imaginary niche … a psychological solace.”
It?s fitting that Dan Savage?s syndicated column reaches Madison readers in the pages of the Onion. That?s because Savage ? the author of sex advice column Savage Love and an outspoken advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights who will speak Monday night at UW-Madison ? started his column in the back offices of Four Star Video just off State Street in 1991. Savage is returning to Madison as a Distinguished Lecture Series speaker. But despite the program?s name, Savage says the event won?t be a lecture ? rather, it will be a question-and-answer session, where the audience determines what he?ll discuss.
One of the first things little girls learn in dance class is that ballerinas are quiet. So for Marlene Skog, choreographer and assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department, adding spoken word poetry to a trio of pieces in her new show goes deliberately outside her comfort zone.
The lieutenant colonel got a promotion for ordering the dogs shot. Actually, the promotion to colonel came after he tackled a private who threw a grenade in protest of the dogs being shot. It was all crazy. Of course it was. It was Vietnam. The episode above is out of “Dog Tags,” the first short story in a new collection, “DEROS Vietnam,” from longtime Madison journalist, veterans advocate and communications specialist Doug Bradley.
A doomed love triangle involving a hero, a princess and a scorned sorceress hell-bent on murder and revenge, the Greek myth and of Medea is ideally suited to an opera plot. Indeed, it has been interpreted into a number of operatic versions, and University Opera has chosen Cherubini?s fiery and challenging ?Medea,? in its Italian translation, as its latest stage production.
The Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives and First Wave dedicated their eighth-annual ?Passing the Mic? showcase to the late First Wave performer John ?Vietnam? Nguyen, who drowned in Lake Mendota in August. The showcase, which the Office of the Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity also sponsored in conjunction with the Wisconsin Book Festival, featured spoken word and music performances by First Wave, high school spoken-word artists from around the Midwest and guest performances.
One of Molly Kunz?s first exposures to the movie business came in the late 1990s, when her older brother, Eddie, got a role in the BBC production of ?Wisconsin Death Trip,? a dark film based on a dark book by Michael Lesy. Eddie played a young boy who was abandoned near some railroad tracks and ended up freezing to death.
?I was crying uncontrollably,? Molly said. Life being occasionally funny, Molly Kunz is now in the movie business. Kunz, 20, is a junior at UW-Madison, but she?s most definitely in the movie business. Kunz has spent parts of the past few summers acting in films in distant locales.
Katie Kitamura?s fiction is filled with caged men ? men trapped in waning bodies, fighting for professional and psychic survival, fighting for dignity, or at least the appearance of it
When Dane County had to pick an artist to share with the world, it chose Michael Velliquette.
Velliquette traveled to Germany this past summer as the county?s representative to EUARCA, an elite group of artists invited to make artwork on-site during one of the world?s largest contemporary art festivals.
There are stories of people who have seen ?Jersey Boys,? the 2005 blockbuster musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, a half-dozen times. At its Chicago opening in 2007, the boys got three standing ovations ? one before intermission ? and enjoyed a successful run for two-and-a-half years. The year before, the show won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. None of this is particularly surprising to Marshall Brickman.
Editor?s note: Doris Teresa Wight of Baraboo wrote the following poem decades ago after her pick for president lost. She is a professor emeritus at UW-Baraboo-Sauk County, where she taught creative writing. “I am 83 years old and have survived many an election that went the ?wrong? way for me,” she wrote to the State Journal, “so I trust that half the American electorate in 2012 will appreciate the insights I present.”
Karen Kendrick-Hands is sick of knit and crochet being treated as ?the country cousins? of the textile world. She and fellow enthusiasts want to elevate the crafts? status by potentially opening a museum dedicated to preserving, documenting and sharing the knit and crochet heritage….To get the ball rolling, Kendrick-Hands, along with the Wisconsin Historical Society and a group of volunteers are organizing the symposium ?Knit and Crochet Heritage Project? Thursday through Saturday in Madison. To coincide with the symposium, the Wisconsin Historical Society will open an exhibit of 21 knitted or crocheted items from their collection and eight from UW-Madison?s Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.
Book lovers will be descending on the UW-Madison Memorial Library Nov. 7 through Nov. 10 for the annual used book sale, one of the largest used book sales in the state, according to a UW news release. More than 15,000 books will be for sale, along with maps, DVDs, CDs and many record albums.
Qi Cao of Shanghai, China, recently received a national Love of Learning Award from The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. She is one of 140 recipients nationwide to receive the award, which helps fund post-baccalaureate studies and career development. Initiated into the Society in 2012 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cao currently is a candidate for a Doctor of Musical Arts with a major in music performance and minor in music theory at UW-Madison.
It turns out that midterm you didn?t study for, or the tuition bill you paid for your son, aren?t the only scary things on the UW-Madison campus. According to author Matthew L. Swayne, the campus is home to all sorts of mysterious supernatural forces. In his new book, ?America?s Haunted Universities,? Swayne collects ghost stories and unexplained phenomena from colleges all over the country, including a bunch from right here in Madison.
The young people over at the Simpson Street Free Press are proudly busting their buttons these days. And well they should. They?ve just put out another great edition of their little newspaper, which has been distributed to area schools where other kids read it and some of their teachers use it in class. The public can also pick up copies at local grocery and drugstores and other outlets all over town….The editorial page tackles the dismal graduation rate in Madison high schools and includes a column that labels recent attacks on UW-Madison?s admission policy misguided.
