Campus Stories - Music
Louis Menand unmasks the rock god in his cultural history of rock’n’roll
Who invented rock’n’roll? It’s not who you think. At the Stanford Humanities Center’s 2018 Harry Camp Memorial Lecture, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and cultural critic Louis Menand exposed rock’n’roll’s origin myths, shedding light on the power of media to shape cultural myths today. In his lecture, titled “Conditions for the Possibility of Rock’n’Roll: An Exercise in Cultural History,” Menand…
Stanford’s spring quarter guest artists
Guest artists are all over campus this spring. Indie rock band Glass Animals play Stanford Stadium; the open-air literary celebration Stories of Exile, Reckoning and Hope takes place on the main stage in White Plaza; Mina Morita directs Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan in Roble Studio Theater; and Stanford Live’s popular Cabaret series continues in Bing’s cozy…
Stanford students play leading role in first U.S. performances of Elfman’s “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra”
“Great concentration, great job and great work,” composer Danny Elfman said, complimenting Stanford student musicians after a run-through of his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra: Eleven Eleven. Caption: Members of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra were the first musicians in the United States to play Elfman’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. In anticipation of Stanford Symphony Orchestra’s March…
Neuroscience and music: A conversation with opera singer Renée Fleming
About a month before she opens on Broadway in the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Renée Fleming is sitting in a broadcast booth talking to me about neuroscience and music. I’m able to grab time with the celebrated soprano to discuss Sound Health: Music and the Mind, a collaboration between the Kennedy Center, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Endowment for the Arts,…
Stanford’s winter quarter guest artists
Stanford in winter is a hotbed of creativity and artistic expression. The extensive roster of guest artists on campus includes actor/alum Sterling K. Brown, recent winner of the Golden Globe for best actor in a TV drama series and the first African-American male in history to do so, with fellow actor/alum Ryan Michelle Bathe performing…
Stanford community participates in intuitive/rational creative exercise
The intersection of science, music, art and improvisation has long fascinated experimental artist Pamela Davis Kivelson. Her latest foray into the busy intersection – Drawing with Gravitational Waves – reaches out of this world. Video by Kurt Hickman Artist Pamela Davis Kivelson created a participatory performance piece with violinist and scientist Lucy Liuxuan Zhang and creative coder…
Three wise women meet the baby King in Stanford production
What if when the Magi went off to Bethlehem to meet the prophesied King, three wise women stayed behind and ended up meeting the baby King in a shared dream vision? This is the premise of Conrad Susa’s one-act opera The Wise Women: A Christmas Mystery Fable, presented by the Department of Music and the Office…
Education Professor John Willinsky rocks free sharing in music and scholarship
Prof. John Willinsky rocks free sharing in music and scholarship When John Willinsky, the Khosla Family Professor of Education, came to Stanford a decade ago from Vancouver, Canada, he brought his leadership of the Public Knowledge Project, which promotes and studies the sharing of research and scholarship as a public good. He also brought his electric guitar. Today, Willinsky’s…
Associate Professor Anna Schultz receives H. Colin Slim Award
Anna Schultz, Associate Professor (Ethnomusicology), was recently presented with the H. Colin Slim Award by the American Musicological Society during their annual meeting in Rochester, NY. The H. Colin Slim Award honors each year a musicological article of exceptional merit. For the year 2016, that honor has gone to “Sentimental Remembrance and the Amusements of Forgetting in Karl and Harty’s ‘Kentucky’,” by Sumanth Gopinath and Anna Schultz, published in…
Pakistan’s Sachal Ensemble comes to Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall as part of its first U.S. tour
A jazz song from the 1950s, an Oxford-educated financial advisor and a group of once-celebrated but unemployed musicians — some of whom no longer even owned an instrument — are not the standard ingredients for a global hit. But a viral video of Dave Brubeck’s iconic “Take Five” led to an invitation to perform with…
Keepers of the Flame
Tradition has been defined as “the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction.” Stanford Live is presenting two ensembles, Jason Moran and his Big Bandwagon and the Sachal Ensemble, that deal with their specific cultural traditions in ways that on the surface sound…
20.8% of the 2017 MacArthur Fellows were Stanford guest artists within the last year
Stanford congratulates the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winners who recently spent time on campus engaging with students, faculty and the public. Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY, whose work tells elaborate and delicate stories of her life, was in conversation with Jodi Roberts, the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Curator for Modern and…
Fall quarter guest artists
One of the ways that Stanford is creating opportunities for meaningful engagement with the arts for students and the university community is by inviting over 100 artists each year to campus to create, perform and discuss their work. This fall quarter the roster of guest artists includes comedian and political commentator Samantha Bee in conversation…
Stanford Honors in the Arts capstone program evolves with a new Mellon grant
Stanford University has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to support the development of a new undergraduate, interdisciplinary program in the arts to be administered by Stanford Arts Institute. Honors in the Arts students present Bacchae, an immersive theatrical experience utilizing locations across the Stanford campus. (Image credit: Kristen Stipanov) The $400,000 grant provides support for…
Stanford Libraries’ rare score of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida provides clues to the past
A rare, orchestral score of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida has become a valuable source of instruction and inspiration for Stanford scholars. The handwritten manuscript, used in Aida’s Paris premiere in 1876, appears to be the earliest surviving copy of the famous opera’s full score – and the only surviving score from a performance…
Stanford Live celebrates Canada Day as part of its Summer Series at Bing Concert Hall
Summer is upon us, but that doesn’t mean the arts are going on vacation. Many Stanford concerts, performances and events are scheduled on campus in the coming months, including the Stanford Jazz Festival, Stanford Repertory Theater‘s summer festival, “The Many Faces of Farce,” Department of Music and Stanford Live performances at Bing Concert Hall, starting…
