Critics say that composer Elena Ruehr – a Radcliffe Fellow this year – makes music that is challenging, natural, intelligent, and socially aware. She brought all of these qualities to a Feb. 13 presentation on the creative process. “From Novel to Opera,” spliced with musical samples and punctuated by laughter, was a low-key discourse on how composers work.
Ask a well-read individual to list the most dangerous books in history, and a few familiar titles would most likely make the cut: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Marx and Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book.”
Actor, dancer, writer, and Academy Award winner Christopher Walken — best known for his big-screen roles as edgy villains — went to pot on Friday (Feb. 15), Hasty Pudding-style.
Three years ago, Big Dig officials approached David Cobb and his staff in the Harvard Map Collection with a request: Help them design a map for the North End parks that would illustrate how Boston had changed in the centuries since its founding. When the parks officially opened in November 2007, not one but seven maps from the Map Collection came to occupy the new parks.
The Harvard University Library (HUL) Open Collections Program recently launched http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion. Created with support from Arcadia, the new collection, titled “Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics,” brings carefully selected historical materials from Harvard’s renowned libraries, special collections, and archives to Internet users everywhere.
“Yo-Yo Ma was over the house yesterday … he was begging me to go to the piano and play a few notes and I said I wasn’t ready yet.” While the renowned composer John Williams could have uttered those words, last week they belonged to Harvard’s Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz, who was discussing his first — opera.
A new best-practices report co-authored by Loeb Music Library staff is drawing national and international attention for its comprehensive and candid approach to the field of audio preservation at both the curatorial and technological levels. “Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation” provides solid grounding for institutions pursuing audio preservation, either in-house or in collaboration with an outside vendor.
This year, Vivian Gornick, — a writer who lives in New York City — is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She updated her observations on the brilliance (literary) and the failings (cultural) of male Jewish American writers of three decades ago on Feb. 4 in the Julia S. Phelps Annual Lecture in Art and the Humanities.
Economic change was a hallmark of the late 20th century, when nations such as Russia, China, and Chile turned away from state-centered economic models to adopt free market exchange. Liberalization was not a simple process, particularly in Chile — where decades of political and social upheaval had left the country crippled. Even so, by the late 1980s, the economy was on the rise and the free market concept had taken deep root in Chilean culture.
The plight of families who struggle to reconcile their religious beliefs with their children’s sexuality is the focus of the film “For the Bible Tells Me So,” which was screened recently (Feb. 12) in the Thompson Room at the Barker Center for the Humanities.
There was no debating the glamour of the Harvard Foundation’s black-tie, red-carpet premiere of “The Great Debaters,” starring and directed by Denzel Washington, at the Harvard Film Archive at the Carpenter Center. Close to 200 students, faculty, and staff attended the Dec. 18 premiere, which was followed by a lively question-and-answer session with Washington and his wife, Pauletta, a Juilliard-trained pianist and vocalist.
Ever wonder what a soul looks like? You have 30 chances to see a picture of one at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Gutman Library through Feb. 15. Hundreds more chances if you look at the related book, “Soul” (Reg Vardy Gallery/Satellite Arts, 2007), or if you go to the Web site http://www.drawyoursoul.org.
Stepping carefully in their stocking feet, the musicians thread their way among the array of low-lying gongs, drums, and metallophones and lower themselves cross-legged onto the floor. Lifting their padded mallets, they begin to play. The ringing sound of the metal bars, punctuated by the dry slap of the drum and the gong’s shimmering resonance, come together in a gentle, unhurried rhythm, a flowing narrative that seems to capture the miraculous within the pulse of the everyday.
Certain adages exist about historical repetition: those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it, for example, or history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. Walter Johnson doesn’t necessary believe in these old chestnuts, but he does see how the past and the present can illuminate one another in order to provide each greater context, urgency, and understanding.
The hypnotic, orotund tones of Gamelan, a venerable musical tradition from Indonesia that employs gongs, drums and metallophones, now resonates in University seminar rooms.
Robert Darnton describes the political power of street songs, the “newspapers” of 18th century France, while French mezzo-soprano Helene Delavault sings her heart out.
In 18th century Paris, political gossip and courtly intrigue swirled through the city as smoothly and deliciously as well-aged wine. To stay current, most citizens turned not to newspapers but to street songs, popular tunes that were improvised and modified as affairs developed.
The title of Hillary Chute’s Nov. 29 lecture, “Out of the Gutter: Contemporary Graphic Novels by Women,” has a double meaning. It refers to the elevation of graphic narratives — comics — from the lowest, most disreputable level of artistic expression to a form worthy of New York Times best-sellerdom, literary prizes, and academic attention.
Relocating to a foreign city for a new job can be stressful in the most congenial circumstances. Trying to depart your home country in the middle of a Communist coup? As Serhii Plokhii, Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, can tell you — that’s downright complicated.
Harvard historian Andrew D. Gordon ’74, Ph.D. ’81 specializes in modern Japan and has written or edited a handful of breakthrough books on big labor, big steel, and big management.
The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) is offering a special discounted ticket price for its Nov. 23 premiere of “No Child … ” — the Obie Award-winning one-woman show by Nilaja Sun. Tickets for the “Family Friday” performance are $25 for each member of a family with a young adult under 21 years of age. (“No Child …” contains strong language and is suitable for children 15 and up.)
While Edward Gibbon was publishing his six-volume opus, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a large portion of Britain’s empire was declaring its independence and fighting to break free of the mother country.
Literary critics tend to discredit the concept of a “Great American Novel” as nothing more than media hype — an arbitrary appellation that has more to do with pipe dreams than merit. And yet, what would-be author hasn’t imagined, when putting pen to paper, what it would feel like to be hailed as the greatest chronicler of the age?
It was crowded in the hole in Harvard Yard, with sophomore Reyzl Geselowitz and freshman Alison Liewen crouching in the square pit, elbow to elbow and more than a yard deep in Harvard’s dark earth.
Sometimes what we call something changes the way we see it. Steven Hahn wants to call the groups of escaped slaves who found refuge in the northern United States prior to the Civil War “maroon communities.”
Brian Kane’s composition “Another Cascando” sounds a bit like barking dogs at a construction site; Johannes Kreidler’s “Piano Piece #5” is reminiscent of distant artillery fire; and Hans Tutschku’s “Zellen – Linien” seems to include the sharp, high-pitched sounds of breaking glass.
The third annual Freshman Costume Catwalk brought out the precocious brilliance of this generation of first-year students. Five hundred dazzling freshmen gathered in Annenberg Hall to get a chance to strut their costumed stuff on the runway.
The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) will join nine other theater groups to present at the 10th New Visions/New Voices festival this spring (April 25-27) at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
A black comedy from the early 1960s with a title too long to fit the average marquee may seem an odd choice for the New College Theatre’s first production, but once you’ve heard the story behind the play, it makes perfect sense.
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