Arts And Culture

courtesy of AETN.com Florence Price was the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra—in 1933. Bringing together the European classical tradition in which she was trained and the haunting melodies of African American spirituals and folk tunes, Price’s music has experienced… Read More

Photo by Philip Franck In October, Vanderbilt University Theatre opened its 2018–19 season with The Language Archive by Julia Cho, a comedy that explores what is lost and found in the gaps between what is meant and what is said. “One of the most interesting aspects… Read More

Photo by Tomas Loewy Dean Whiteside, BMus’10, of Miami—shown conducting that city’s New World Symphony PULSE concert—is the 2017–18 winner of the American Prize in Conducting in the Professional Orchestra division. After earning his undergraduate degree at Blair, the New York City native trained in Vienna at the… Read More

Seasonal Cycles mural by Polly Cook Come sun, rain or snow, one of the best places on Vanderbilt’s campus to find shelter is under Calhoun Hall’s stone portico, facing out toward the law and business schools. This refuge is also home to a mural of campus life, Seasonal Cycles,… Read More

Jon Parrish Peede Jon Parrish Peede, BS’91, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in April as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has taken several paths in government service, all of them paved with words. “I discovered during my student days that what I loved were… Read More

Students play alongside faculty in this side-by-side concert at the Aspen Music Festival. Photo by Alex Irvin Cornelia Heard has spent nearly every summer since she was in eighth grade at a music festival. “I went to the Rocky Mountain Summer Music Center that first summer,” she… Read More

Photo by Matt Murphy The Band’s Visit, a musical about an Egyptian orchestra stuck for a night in a remote Israeli town, swept the Tony Awards on June 10, winning 10 awards, including Best Musical. Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub (above, seated) both won Tony Awards for their… Read More

Lauren Urquhart, photo by Steve Green For the second year in a row, Blair undergraduates won national honors competing against both undergraduate and graduate students at the 2017–18 Music Teachers National Association annual competition March 17–21 in Orlando, Florida. To compete at nationals, musicians have already won their state… Read More

Joshua Austin Forges The Vanderbilt University Department of Art awarded its prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award for 2018 to Joshua Austin Forges, BA’18, from Davie, Florida. He received a $25,000 prize that provides for a year of art research and travel, culminating with a solo exhibition in Space… Read More

Renewed Energy: Insights for Clean Energy’s Future (2018, Kauffman Fellows) by John Weyant, Ernestine Fu and Justin Bowersock, BA’94 Renewed Energy sheds light on the recent history of clean energy between the 2009 recession and 2012, providing firsthand perspectives from the industry’s leading policy makers, technology investors and industry experts. Read More

Tom Wolfe by Everett Raymond Kinstler Successful portraiture is all about conveying the personality of the sitter. It sounds easy, but it’s not, because those character traits that make up a person’s true self have little to do with actual physical appearance. To successfully capture the sitter, portraiture requires… Read More

As music director for the world tour of Phantom of the Opera from 2012 to 2016–and as associate music supervisor for seven international companies of the production–Stan Tucker, BMus’73, has felt the whoosh of the show’s iconic falling chandelier hundreds of times as it landed inches from his head. Photo… Read More

Photo by Jason Sheldon Leah Stewart, BA’94, has five acclaimed books to her credit, and her sixth, What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw (2018, G.P. Putnam’s Sons), released this spring, is certain to further her reputation as a writer of keenly observed, engaging fiction. With its lively story… Read More

Such Sweet Thunder, the debut recording of the Blair Big Band, was released in March and includes Blair students and faculty, plus some of Nashville’s veteran players. Tracks include new compositions as well as standards such as “The Very Thought of You,” which features legendary Nashville pianist Beegie Adair. Read More

Literary Obscenities: U.S. Case Law and Naturalism after Modernism (2018, Penn State University Press) by Erik M. Bachman, BA’03 This comparative historical study explores the broad sociocultural factors at play in the relationships among U.S. obscenity laws and literary modernism and naturalism in the early 20th century. Putting obscenity case… Read More

The power of hope—and a dark history—come to life through violin project Some say the violin is the instrument that most closely imitates the human voice. In March, 22 violins, most of which were played by Jewish musicians interned in concentration camps during the Holocaust, will arrive in… Read More

HELLO, DOLLY  An exhibition of Polaroids and black-and-white photographs by Andy Warhol of his friends and clients—including Dolly Parton, above, taken in 1985—kicked off the 2018 season at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery. Famous! (and Not-So-Famous): Polaroids by Andy Warhol provides a glimpse into Warhol’s creative process… Read More

Costa Rica native Jose Sibaja, associate professor of trumpet, photo by Susan Urmy Building connections with Latin American musicians has been a major focus for the Blair School’s Thomas Verrier since first traveling to Central America in 2009. Now he and a group of like-minded Blair faculty members… Read More

DOMINICK REUTER/GETTY Daniel Bernard Roumain, BMus’93, (right, with the production’s assistant director and choreographer Bill T. Jones, center), composed the music for the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, which was named by The New York Times in December as one of the best classical music performances of… Read More

Above: The Cultures in Clay exhibit includes the Man and Beast seal (Arno Poebel Collection); below, left, a statue of Osiris, mythological father of the Egyptian god Horus, from the private collection of emeritus professor Douglas Knight; and, below right, the Drehem tablet (James Stevenson Collection). Clay… Read More