Category: Arts & Humanities

Snow-packed highways or not, Sarah McShane and three fellow students from central Illinois ‘ Millikin University piled into a car this week and headed to Memorial Union with hopes of singing and dancing their ways to a summer job.

“It ‘s a good experience. I love auditioning, ” said McShane, 18, one of about 60 people from across the Midwest who participated in workshops Friday in preparation for today ‘s Wisconsin Theatre Auditions and Technical Interviews, a wide-ranging talent search for summer theater jobs and beyond.

In the small second-floor Mayer Gallery at the Chazen Museum of Art, the five strikingly contemporary digital inkjet portraits by Dennis Miller that depict human sensory organs hang on a wall only a few feet across from a dozen of Leslee Nelson’s old-fashioned embroidered linens.

Figuratively, you can situate most the rest of the huge show of new art by faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in between those two extremes.

Variety in both technique and subject matter is what once again recommends this extensive survey show, which has taken place every four years or so since 1974. Visitors are sure to find things they love, like, dislike and hate.

That is as it should be in the experimental environment of a world-class public teaching institution that was ranked last year as 13th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. An art school, after all, encourages the faculty to learn from the students, and each other, as much as it encourages the students to learn from the faculty.

Pianist Christopher Taylor learned his first sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven when he was 9, his latest one last year at age 37. In between came the other 30 sonatas, in just about as many years.

And from Feb. 13 through April 18, the prize-winning and critically acclaimed virtuoso, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will perform all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of 10 concerts.

This is one of those weeks when you begin to wonder just how much classical music Madison can take — and still leave fans time to work, eat and sleep.

Any one of the following concerts is so outstanding, it could easily be the lead item of this column. But somehow chronological order seems the clearest, fairest and easiest way to keep track of it all.

They are possibly our most beloved and best-known icons. They’re also, perhaps, our least appreciated works of public art.

They are the murals inside Der Rathskeller of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union. This year marks the 80th anniversary of their creation. It’s also the 30th anniversary of the murals in the adjacent Stiftskeller.

During the conflict and chaos that took over the UW-Madison campus during the Vietnam War, one student found a strikingly simple way to preserve a piece of history.

Jim Huberty just collected everything he could get his hands on during the tumultuous time — posters, leaflets, brochures, broadsides, newspapers, photographs — and while most others would dismiss these snapshots of history as pieces of paper and toss them away, he kept them.

On Friday at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW cellist Parry Karp, with his pianist dad and pianist mom, Howard and Frances Karp, will open the UW School of Music’s spring season after its winter break.

….On Saturday at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, various UW faculty members will continue this year’s three-concert “European Capitals” mini-series with music and readings with the theme “Vienna, City of Contradictions.”

Is there a show biz role that Olympia Dukakis hasn ‘t had?

She won an Oscar for 1987 ‘s “Moonstruck.” Her one-woman show “Rose,” commissioned to welcome in the 21st century at London’s National Theatre, also spent three months on Broadway. In all, she’s played 88 TV and film roles, ranging from “The Simpsons” to the recent indie film hit “Away From Her.”

It’s hard to think of two film directors more unlike than John Ford and Michael Haneke, except to say that both their films need to be seen on the big screen.

Ford’s movies, especially westerns like “The Searchers” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” need to be seen in a theater to fully appreciate the widescreen splendor of their visuals. Haneke’s films need to be seen in the theater, on the other hand, because they’re so disturbing that if you were watching at home, you might turn them off.

Bringing a venerated classic American director and a controversial modern German director together is business as usual for the UW-Cinematheque program, the free on-campus film series that features foreign, classic and independent films. Even in the age of Netflix, many of the films that Cinematheque shows simply aren’t available on DVD.

The big art event this week — and I mean big in so many ways — is the opening of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Faculty Art Show at the Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave., which runs through March 30.

Every four years or so, a mammoth view of what is happening in the art department, which enjoys a fine reputation nationally, goes on view at the Chazen.

As in previous years, this year’s exhibit will be expansive (displayed in all the Brittingham Galleries and the cavernous Paige Court) and very varied.

Almost three dozen current and retired UW art professors are featured among the artists. Also showing are affiliated artists who work with the Tandem Press and related departments.

Piano fans have a lot, maybe even too much, to look forward to this semester.

First and foremost, they have University of Wisconsin pianist Christopher Taylor’s 10-concert cycle of Beethoven sonatas in February, March and April to attend.

Tom Haig came to work at UW-Madison after a career in research and development in the U.S. Air Force, and spent 32 years on his 80 acres near Black Earth converting a dairy barn to a home. He and Bobbie raised five children, 23 foster children, and seven “borrowed ” children, the kids of friends and relatives who ‘d move in on the farm and just stick around.

Art-wise, things are generally quiet here during the “winter intermission,” though the beginning of the month will always see some new shows going up. More important, this is your last weekend to catch three major shows that come down after Sunday.

At the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, you can see a big, bright and beautiful exhibition drawn from the museum’s extensive collection of Japanese woodblock prints. It’s called “Competition and Collaboration: Japanese Prints of the Utagawa School.” It’s one of the must-see shows of 2007.

….If you’re looking for new art to see, early January is also a great chance to remind you that the Wisconsin Union Galleries, at the Memorial Union at 800 Langdon St., have opened again after the UW winter break.

….it is worth noting how much outstanding fine art is already located in this city of less than 250,000 that sits in a county of only about 460,000 — hardly a major metropolitan center or money axis to compete with New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and even Milwaukee, all of which have much bigger populations and more wealthy patrons.

And the local collections are about to get even better. By a lot.

Although details are still being worked out, the Chazen is about to benefit mightily from a rich bequest by a New York businessman whose personal art collection included works by such titans as Giacometti, Picasso and Matisse among many others. Small wonder the Chazen desperately needs the new building that is scheduled to open by 2011.

(In addition the Chazen, the UW’s Gallery of Design and the Memorial Union Galleries also mentioned in this article.)

If you’re looking for a break from the cold, snow and ice we’ve had this December, you might stop into the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave., and climb up to the second floor to the niche case, between Brittingham Galleries III and IV, which is used to display new acquisitions.

There you will find a very large (approximately 3 feet by 4 feet) inkjet color photograph, “Cuba,” that will you transport to a different, warmer climate.

….Unfortunately, the photo will only be on show through Dec. 28. Then another recent acquisition will take its place.

Andrew Imbrie, a prominent San Francisco Bay Area composer and noted University of California-Berkeley music professor who was perhaps best known for his 1976 opera “Angle of Repose,” has died. He was 86.

….Imbrie also had close ties to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught and coached the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble….He dedicated his String Quartet No. 4 (1969) to the Pro Arte String Quartet, which has performed all five of Imbrie’s string quartets and which recorded the String Quartets Nos. 4 and 5 and the Impromptu for Violin and Piano with retired UW piano professor Howard Karp.

Imbrie also taught current UW composer Laura Schwendinger, and UW Pro Arte violist Sally Chisholm participated in the world premiere of Imbrie’s Piano Quartet.

Between cranky relatives and overcooked ham, the holiday season provides plenty of fodder for writers. In that spirit, here are a few writing-oriented events to get literary types through the holiday season:

In 2001, UW-Madison graduate Barry Poltermann was living in Los Angeles and trying to find “something fun to do for our work Christmas party” at his company, Civilian Pictures.

LAST WEEK was pretty special for Joe McBride, a Wisconsin native who studied film at UW-Madison in the late 1960s and in 1970 went west to interview the great director John Ford.

McBride spent an hour with Ford, or, I should say, spent an hour in Ford’s company. As a film scholar, McBride has actually spent decades with the famed director of such classics as “The Searchers” and “Fort Apache,” and the association may have peaked last week.

Most scientists specializing in hurricane studies work primarily to increase their physical understanding of the dynamics and thermodynamics of hurricanes and to improve the ability of meteorologists to forecast a storm’s track and intensity. Until recently, only a few of them were involved in research related to climate change, but over the past few years, the topic has received a great deal more attention. Interest in it has been piqued by an increase in North Atlantic hurricane activity.

James P. Kossin is a research scientist specializing in hurricane studies and tropical meteorology at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

By early 1985, one year before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, the United States, the Soviet Union and a few other states had together amassed 50,000 nuclear bombs and warheads. These devices threatened destruction 1.5 million times greater than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 40 years earlier. Future generations of historians will struggle to explain why the leading Cold War states devoted so much treasure to so many of these horrible weapons.

Requiems are not your usual fare when its comes to holiday music.
One usually turns to brighter, more uplifting music.

….And yet last weekend’s performances at the UW-Madison of Karol Szymanowski’s darkly moody “Stabat Mater” and especially Mozart’s poignant Requiem felt right for the season. They helped set up a heart-felt and very non-materialist, alternative mood for the holidays. One left those works, and those performances of them, awed by beauty and pensive about life.

When people think of Britain in the 1800s, they often think of the technological and scientific advancements of the emerging empire. What they do not think of immediately are the improvements in art techniques that dramatically changed British society and its depiction on canvas.

Among the numerous artistically enriching opportunities available throughout Madison, the Chazen Museum of Artâ??s impressive exhibition of 120 works from its renowned Van Vleck collection of Japanese woodblock prints is both aesthetic and educational.

The genius of forever-young insouciance staring into his own grave? That’s the monumental paradox emanating from Mozart’s “Requiem.” He died before he could finish the work, which he had promised for another dying man.

The UW Choral Union and Chamber Orchestra and director Beverly Taylor will resurrect this dark transcendence at 8 tonight and Saturday in Mills Hall, 455 Park St. Karol Szymanowski’s “Stabat Mater” also is on the program.

Some artists talk a lot about working with young people and students. Other artists just do it.

Among the latter is four-time Grammy-winner soprano Dawn Upshaw – who will perform Joseph Cantaloube’s popular “Songs of the Auvergne” and contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov’s “Three Songs with Orchestra” with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in Overture Hall this Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Upshaw will lead an on-campus master class at the Carol Rennebohm Auditorium, Music Hall, UW-Madison on Thursday, Nov. 15, beginning at 2:30 p.m. and running to about 4 p.m

Many things distinguish Madison, but one of the least known ones is the impressive collection of some 4,000 Japanese woodblock prints in the Van Vleck Collection of the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art.

You can see a major and large new exhibition of these prints in two galleries. About 130 prints are in the show “Competition and Collaboration: Japanese Prints of the Utagawa School” and about 210 are featured in the impressively illustrated catalog. Both offer some eye-catching art.

“Looks like Madison was ready to have an environmental film festival,” declares Gregg Mitman to an overflowing crowd at the Orpheum Theatre on Friday night. The entire lower level of the auditorium is filled for the kickoff of Tales from Planet Earth, a free showcase of nearly two dozen movies that tell stories about the environment and how humanity interacts with and depicts our shared world. In fact, hundreds of people stand outside in a line running down State Street, waiting for a chance to get in for a talk by writer Bill McKibben and a screening of Everything’s Cool, a documentary about the political battle over global warming.