Campus Stories - Music
Stanford offers online creativity course featuring Warner Music Group artists
Stanford University has launched Creativity: Music to My Ears, a free, massive open online course (MOOC) teaching creative problem-solving skills through the lens of music. Taught by Stanford Engineering Professor Tina Seelig, the course features contributions of Warner Music Group artists, songwriters and executives. Participating artists include Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, Nate Ruess from…
Stanford student’s research contributes to the history of black sacred music
Jessica Anderson spent three months during her junior year immersed in the culture, sights and sounds of Cape Town, South Africa. Mostly the sounds. What she found in the music she heard around town was the influence of American swing, jazz and bebop, but also the African American gospel music of her childhood. She discovered…
The Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary
Inaugurated in the 2004-2005 season, the Pan-Asian Music Festival is dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of music in contemporary Asia. Jindong Cai, the festival’s founder and artistic director, states: “It has been a remarkable ten years during which we have explored many of the rich and diverse musical cultures from Asia. With the…
Freshmen immersed in the arts in their Stanford dorm
During her first quarter at Stanford, Gloria Chua performed in The Show Must Go On and met Jérôme Bel, the celebrated French choreographer and conceptual artist who created the contemporary dance, which is set to vintage pop hits. “I appreciated the entire process, from being part of the performance and understanding it on an experiential…
Determined students overcome challenges and breathe new life into a classic musical
Reimaging Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins as part of the British Asian immigrant community in early 20th century London was the first of several challenges for Ken Savage, ’14, and Asia Chiao, ’15, two students who don’t take no for an answer. It was fall 2012 when they agreed to join forces and stage My…
Yearend tradition: Stanford singers share their music
As the year draws to a close, a diverse selection of campus musicians – from the Memorial Church Choir to the Stanford Fleet Street Singers to Talisman – all give their final performances of 2013. Stanford videographer Kurt Hickman provides some of the highlights.
Stanford Professor Leland Smith, innovative music creator, dies at 88
Stanford Professor Emeritus Leland Smith died Dec. 17 at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 88 years old. He was an educator, composer, bassoonist and computer coder who led music publishing into the digital age. A memorial gathering will be held at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at…
Ultimate Stanford Bing Concert Hall souvenir: limited edition ukuleles made from stage floorboards
The idea started with a gift. For music Professor Stephen Sano’s 17th wedding anniversary in 2012, his wife found a ukulele at a local shop, Gryphon Stringed Instruments, with a top made from a piece of discarded fence found on the Stanford campus. From ugly duckling to swan, the old piece of weathered California redwood…
Stephen Hinton wins Kurt Weill Book Prize
Hinton won the award for his book Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform. Published in 2012 by the University of California Press, Hinton’s musicological study offers the most comprehensive overview yet of Weill’s output for the stage, according to a press release by the Kurt Weill Foundation. “In tracing Weill’s extraordinary journey as a theatrical…
Stanford Band ‘writerz’ aim for irreverent, wacky and fun shows
There’s nothing easy about entertaining more than 50,000 people all at once, especially if they are in a football stadium surrounded by friends, fans and lots of good food. Just ask senior chemical engineering major Andrew Kleinschmidt and junior product design major Matt Appleby. The two – backed by a cadre of fellow student “writerz”…
What were the aristocracy enjoying at the Paris Opéra while the peasants starved in the days before the French Revolution?
Stanford University Libraries is pleased to introduce Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres, a cross-index of data for over 38,000 opera and oratorio premieres. It allows complex searches across multiple categories or simple browsing within any single category, such as genre, composer, librettist, premiere date, country, oratorio subject or theater. The database is linked to…
Eat, play, learn at Stanford: You can’t live without music
Speeding over the Mojave Desert on his blue BMW motorcycle with a viola strapped to his back, Robert Hauswald isn’t the typical professor of economics. But he is emblematic of the diverse performers who travel across the world each summer to attend the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s annual Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford. Lifelong amateur musicians join…
My Three Weeks with the Workshop (Part 1 of 2)
I had the privilege of covering the 2013 Summer Jazz Workshop and Festival (SJW/F) for its duration – following the international cast of students, staff and faculty who make up the immersive three-week world of summer jazz camp at Stanford. The first two weeks of the Workshop (part one of my two-part SJW/F coverage) are…
My Three Weeks with the Workshop (Part 2 of 2)
I had the privilege of covering all programs that ran the last week of SJW/F’s concurrent weeks, Aug. 3-10. In that time, I attended concerts including Savion Glover and His Trio, Jazz Guitar Night with Julian Lage and Larry Koonse, Taylor Eigsti Quintet Featuring Julian Lage, Chris Potter and Larry Grenadier, the SJW All-Star Jam,…
Listening in on Tyler Brooks at the 2013 Stanford Jazz Festival
Omaha-native and Oakland-based guitarist Calvin Keys is the definition of a serious musician. Quiet, husky-voiced, and concealed behind dark auburn shades, Keys wore a steady, sagacious cool that warranted the opening line of Tuesday night’s program which frankly and endearingly read: “Calvin Keys doesn’t call a lot of attention to himself.” And true enough to…
Cool learning tools to be showcased at Stanford Aug. 2
Sitting on a stool and staring intently at a laptop screen, Jim Huang plucked out the melody of Happy Birthday and the rock song Circuital on a guitar – an instrument he was playing for the first time during a recent visit to The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif. The seventh grader…
