Category: Arts & Humanities

You could travel to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to see the work of Warrington Colescott and Frances Myers, or simply go to Grace Chosy Gallery, where an exhibit of their works titled “Thinking About War” runs until Oct. 1.

Rock, paper or scissors, everybody wins in ?Replay,? a playful piece choreographed by Jin-Wen Yu at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Originally made in 1995, ?Replay? casts young dancers as schoolchildren on a playground. The dancers jump as though playing hopscotch, spin beneath a tetherball, sway like trees and blow around the stage like autumn leaves.

Nearly 300 musicians will gather on the Overture Hall stage on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 11, to commemorate the terrorist attacks that shook the country 10 years ago on that day. But though the program acknowledges the fear and sorrow surrounding those devastating events, organist and director Gary Lewis hopes the concert?s ultimate message will be one of hope for a peaceful future.

….Part of the reason MMoCA chose 2011 to hail the Imagists was a gift of 100 works, received earlier this year, from longtime patron and collector William McClain. An emeritus professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in bacteriology, McClain grew up in the Chicago area but didn?t begin collecting until after he moved to Wisconsin in the early 1970s.

….this September?s Screening Room schedule at Sundance Cinemas, announced over the weekend, is a reunion of sorts for the two filmmakers. Fans of the series, indie, documentary and foreign flicks for which the usual Sundance amenities fees are waived, will be happy to see the upcoming schedule contains good films, and a lot of them. Most weeks have two new Screening Room movies opening, including favorites from this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival like the A Tribe Called Quest documentary “Beats, Rhymes and Life” and “Shut Up, Little Man,” a documentary made by two UW-Madison grads.

A professor at UW-Oshkosh has been awarded the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize, in a contest that asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentence to an imaginary novel.

Noted: Mills Music Library at UW-Madison recently ran an 18-month ukulele exhibit.

Jamie-Rose Guarrine as has been working consistently since graduating with a doctorate in musical arts in performance from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She said earning the doctorate may not have been the most traditional method of going into opera (many singers attend conservatories, like Julliard in New York City) but that hard work is what is important.

The 12th annual Madison Early Music Festival runs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through Sunday, July 16. This year, the theme is ?El Nuevo Mundo: The Age of Exploration in the New World,? and upcoming performers include Ensemble Viscera, a group of guitars and voices, and the quartet Chatham Baroque.

In University Theatre?s summer musical, four friends will play four friends who played … themselves.

“[title of show]” is a 2005 musical about making a musical with nothing more than four chairs, a piano and a goofy idea. In an early song, Hunter Bell asks Jeff Bowen: “What if the first scene was just us talking about what to write? We could put this exact conversation in the show.” And they do.

The Madison Early Music Festival heads south this year, with works created in Mexico and South America between the 16th and 18th centuries. Entitled “El Nuevo Mundo: The Age of Exploration in the New World,” this year?s fest opens Saturday, July 9, at 7:30 p.m. with a performance by Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. Pre-show lectures introduce each show at 6:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall, and each performance is in Mills Hall, both located at 455 N. Park St. on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

A music group run by UW-Madison students will be featured on a nationally-televised reality singing show called “America Sings.” The Wisconsin Singers will be showcased on the GMC-TV show on Wednesday, July 6, hosted by Drew Lachey, former member of the pop group 98 Degrees.

After the excitable crowds on the Memorial Union Terrace marvel at Madison?s annual Rhythm & Booms fireworks display taking place across the lake at Warner Park on Saturday, July 2, they?ll be greeted by an unlikely sight in Bill Callahan. The introspective singer-songwriter is not the first performer who comes to mind when one thinks of who should headline a day-long party capped by thunderous fireworks.

Noted: In October a new wing at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will display about 30 Lalique objects. The Chazen goblets, vases and perfume bottles are molded with pine needles, grapes, butterflies, scarabs, parakeets and grasshoppers.

People know me as: Samantha Crownover, executive director of Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society. It?s my mainstay and I?ve been at it for 13 seasons. BDDS is celebrating its 20th season and that is very exciting for a chamber music festival in Madison.

I also do some art consulting, ranging from projects such as the Art Enterprise Initiative at UW-Madison to helping clients select and hang visual art in their home or business. I also manage a historic building downtown, the Baskerville Condominiums, because the level of detail and craftsmanship in many of our older buildings is so beautiful and worth caring for.

Images with a message are the subject of the Chazen Museum of Art?s current exhibition of prints, drawn from the 16th century to the present.

The Pro Arte Quartet, one of the country?s oldest quartets-in-residence, will celebrate 100 years of performance and education this coming year with substantial help from a $40,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant. Sarah Schaffer, the ensemble?s manager, announced on Monday that with the $40,000 from the NEA?s Access to Artistic Excellence category, fundraising has risen to more than $300,000 toward the overall $460,000 goal.

People know me as: John Stevens, UW-Madison professor of tuba and euphonium; tubist with the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, a university faculty ensemble-in-residence; and a composer, arranger and conductor.

After learning in March that the National Writing Project had lost its federal funding, Melissa Tedrowe remembers feeling “fear” and “uncertainty.”

“I just wondered, what does this all mean?” she says. “It was a bit of a dark time.” That was a stark contrast from January, when Tedrowe enthusiastically explained how she?d spent the past 18 months spearheading an effort to secure funding and pull together a range of educators from around the area to get the Greater Madison Writing Project up and running as the newest member of the National Writing Project.

Fans of Madison-area artist S.V. Medaris can view her work, including “The Handbook Said…” (above), in two spots this week.

Jeff Greenfield, a 1964 graduate of UW-Madison?s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, was back at his alma mater this week to take part in a discussion of “where television news goes from here” and to deliver the annual lecture named in honor of the late Robert Taylor, a revered journalism professor. Greenfield, considered to be one of the country?s best political analysts, says he likes to get back to Madison as often as he can.

Quoted: Audrey Trainor, an associate professor of education at UW-Madison.

Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for LA Weekly, has eaten sea intestine (a Chinese seafood delicacy), numbingly spicy dan dan noodles and fermented, sticky-slimy soybean soup that is so fragrant, ?it takes over your system like an animus spirit.?

….Gold, the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize (in 2007), will speak about the concept of authenticity and global food culture in a local context at the Chazen Museum on Thursday, April 28. Gold is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Center for the Humanities.

Weavers who use a combination of new and old techniques are showing work in the Common Wealth Gallery, which celebrates with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, April 22. Included in the ?N[e]W[e]ave: Five Contemporary Weavers? show are Katie Glusica, who makes lovely, delicate waffle-weave drapes, Christy Madson and her detailed ?loomscapes? of oceans, forests and mountains, and Claudia Herbst-Tait, who uses 3D animation technology to make abstract works. The gallery is located at 100 S. Baldwin St. The show runs through April 27 and is sponsored by the Design Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In the classical music world, Jeremy Denk is perhaps as well known for his blog, ?Think Denk: The Glamorous Life and Thoughts of a Concert Pianist,? as his recordings of J.S. Bach and Charles Ives. Denk, 40, will play a recital of two works at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Thursday, April 21: Ives? Piano Sonata No. 1 and the Goldberg Variations by Bach, a set of 30 pieces.

MADISON, Wis.? It won?t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.

For the Madison Symphony Orchestra?s April program, music director John DeMain brings us three novelties and a warhorse. The program debuted Friday night in Overture Hall.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department gets talkative this spring with the conversational ?Vis-à-vis,? running through Saturday in Lathrop Hall.

….UW Dance?s colorful spring program charms the audience, with or without words.

It won?t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.