Featured series 
Tag: Music
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Arts & Culture
How the ‘talking machine’ allowed music and dance to cross oceans
In the late 1920s, with the advent of new technology, gramophone and “talking machine” companies were able to capture the sounds and rhythms of life in cities across the globe. From New York to Havana, Paris to Honolulu, labels like Victor, Gramophone Company, and Okeh competed to record vernacular music.
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Campus & Community
Day of the Dead celebration
Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography will come alive in a unique way Nov. 2 when it joins the Consulate General of Mexico in Boston in hosting a celebration of the traditional Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
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Campus & Community
Dunster House calls for soloists
Dunster House seeks vocal soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists for its 36th annual Messiah Sing, scheduled for the evening of Dec. 11. One soloist for each voice part will be selected to perform. Auditions are scheduled Nov. 8 from 10 a.m. to noon in Dunster House. To sign up for an audition or for…
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Arts & Culture
Judaica Division concert includes world premiere of sax concerto
As part of its celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, the Harvard College Library’s Judaica Division will host the world premiere of a saxophone concerto composed by an award-winning Israeli composer Nov. 2, at 3 p.m. at Sanders Theatre.
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Campus & Community
Peabody Museum to host Day of the Dead celebration
Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography will come alive in a unique way Nov. 2 when it joins the Consulate General of Mexico in Boston in hosting a celebration of the traditional Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
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Arts & Culture
Maestro Previn guides students with expertise, wit
Music great Sir André Previn’s motto, listed on his official Web site, reads, “A day without music is a wasted day.” Several Harvard students and two classical master composers put their day with the maestro to good use on Monday (Oct. 6).
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Campus & Community
RiverSing rings in autumn
Fall was grandly ushered in by local residents on Sunday (Sept. 21) with RiverSing, a unique arts festival along the Charles River in Boston and Cambridge.
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Campus & Community
RiverSing to ring in fall with communal sing-along
Later this month, the Revels and the Charles River Conservancy will again team up for RiverSing, a free and open-to-the-public event celebrating the beauty of the Charles River and the first day of fall. Featuring seasonal music and communal singing, the Sept. 21 event will be held on the John W. Weeks Footbridge linking Allston…
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Campus & Community
Praise and preservation
Harvard University President Drew Faust used the bully pulpit of Appleton Chapel this week (Sept. 16), urging the University’s citizens to act responsibly on environmental matters.
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Campus & Community
HRC to hold auditions
In preparation for its 2008-09 repertoire (including performances of Mozart’s “Requiem” and Poulenc’s “Gloria”), the Harvard Radcliffe Chorus (HRC) will be holding auditions for University students on the following days and times: Sept. 11 from noon to 3 p.m.; Sept. 12 and Sept. 14 from 1 to 4 p.m.; and Sept. 15 from 1 to…
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Arts & Culture
Harvard’s Department of Music announces fellows and award winners
Harvard’s Department of Music recently announced a host of fellowship and award recipients. The Oscar S. Schafer Award is given to graduate students “who have demonstrated unusual ability and enthusiasm in their teaching of introductory courses, which are designed to lead students to a growing and lifelong love of music.”
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Arts & Culture
Beatrice Viramontes is a maestro of gigs and digs
Despite her roots in the primarily Mexican-American East L.A. and a father who played traditional Mexican music on his guitar, Beatrice Viramontes says it “stressed her out” when her father performed at family parties and asked her to sing.
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Arts & Culture
Changing lives with music and science
When Bong-Ihn Koh’s mother brought home a cello piece by mistake, the young Koh got his hands on it and was hooked.
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Campus & Community
Craig Hugh Smyth
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 6, 2008, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Craig Hugh Smyth, Director of Villa I Tatti Professor of Fine Arts, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Smyth was a promoter of the study and practice of art conservation.
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Arts & Culture
Rain doesn’t dampen spirit of Arts First
It was a rainy (not to say explosive) weekend, yet despite the daunting weather, the arts not only endured but prevailed at the University as dance, song, theater, and conceptual art brightened up the Yard and its environs.
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Arts & Culture
Hamlisch offers vital audition advice
The multigifted and much-admired musical composer Marvin Hamlisch taught a master class in the New College Theatre on “The Art of the Audition” recently (April 9) under the auspices of Learning From Performers.
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Campus & Community
Office for Arts announces spring 2008 grants
More than 800 students will participate in 27 projects in dance, music, theater, and multidisciplinary genres at Harvard this spring, sponsored in part by the Office for the Arts (OfA) grant program. Grants are designed to foster creative and innovative artistic initiatives among Harvard undergraduates.
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Campus & Community
In brief
PDK TALK TO EXPLORE LEADERSHIP, LAST CALL FOR ARTISTS, FREE TICKETS FOR YING SWAN SONG, DUMBARTON OAKS SET TO REOPEN
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Arts & Culture
Arts In brief
A.R.T. PRODUCTION UP FOR TOP AWARD LOCKWOOD, JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET TO EXPLORE BEETHOVEN
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Arts & Culture
With old forms, improvisation, Bielawa creates ingenious anachronism
Manhattan composer Lisa Bielawa is a Radcliffe Fellow this year. Her tiny studio on Concord Avenue is spartan: white walls, a piano, a violin, two chairs, a table strewn with music staff paper. On one side is the glow of a computer. On the other is a single window, with a blur of trees beyond.…
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Arts & Culture
Conference brings out pacific potential of African hip-hop
Harvard and hip-hop. One is the famous university, the other the music style marked by rapping, rhyming, and a synthetic backbeat. Both begin with the letter “h.” Nothing else in common, right? Wrong. Harvard last week (March 13-15) hosted a three-day conference on African hip-hop, a musical style that experts say not only makes audiences…
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Arts & Culture
Mining a trove of old ballads gives women a new voice
In the mid-1930s, Milman Parry, a professor in the Department of the Classics at Harvard, traveled throughout Yugoslavia to research and record folk songs. Assisted by his former student Albert Lord, Parry spent 15 months on the road and returned to Harvard with innumerable texts and sound recordings of more than 1,500 epic songs. Their…
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Arts & Culture
A series of concerts by Fromm Players marks 60 years of electronic music
The names Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Haydn are etched in a ring near the ceiling of Harvard’s Paine Hall. It’s an open question whether these classical masters would have recognized the music performed there last week (March 7-8). But at least one performer is certain that they’d understand.
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Arts & Culture
Celebrating thirty years at helm of choruses at Harvard
“It’s one of those great moments in Western music. It’s the highest level of the compositional technique of Bach, one of the most difficult [pieces] to sing,” said Jameson Marvin, director of choral activities and senior lecturer on music at Harvard University. Marvin will conduct the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, an undergraduate chorus, along with musicians…
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Arts & Culture
Redman ’91 to be awarded 2008 Harvard Arts Medal
In conjunction with Harvard’s Arts First festival (May 1-4), Grammy-nominated saxophonist, recording artist, and jazz bandleader Joshua Redman ’91 will receive the 2008 Harvard Arts Medal. President Drew Faust will present the award to Redman, who is the 14th distinguished Harvard or Radcliffe alum or faculty member to receive this accolade for excellence in the…
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Arts & Culture
Mulatu Astatke gives a primer on Ethiopian music, culture
It’s not easy to be a musician in most of the Third World, said legendary Ethiopian composer and musician Mulatu Astatke, who is a 2007-08 Radcliffe Fellow. Music is not typically taught in elementary schools, and in later life, opportunities for musicians are limited by poverty. In Ethiopia “we have beautiful music, beautiful dance, and…
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Arts & Culture
Master artist gives master class
Herbie Hancock radiated coolness — from his hip, all-black attire, to his trademark, slightly tinted glasses, to his deep soulful voice, to his calm, measured delivery. And as unmistakable as his aura of cool was his sincerity. Both qualities and more were on display Friday (Feb. 29) in the junior common room in Kirkland House…
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Arts & Culture
Jazz great Herbie Hancock takes home Artist of the Year
Music legend Herbie Hancock received the 2008 Cultural Artist of the Year Award from the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations at the organization’s 23rd annual Cultural Rhythms celebration, an afternoon and evening of performances from a diverse cultural mix of 29 student groups. Hancock was feted at the first of two shows (March…