Campus Stories - Bing Concert Hall
Stanford Live features world-class artists, integrates them into campus life
When the Danish String Quartet visited campus this past October, the members didn’t simply drop in for a public performance of Wallin, Janácek and Beethoven at Bing Concert Hall and head home. They also joined in a chamber music reading session with students and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford’s ensemble-in-residence. “They all read together…
Five things about Season Five at Stanford Live
CHRIS LORWAY was recently appointed executive director of Stanford Live and the Bing Concert Hall. Stanford Live will be celebrating its fifth anniversary. So there are five things he wants readers to know about the upcoming season: First, Stanford Live is celebrating five birthdays—those of American composers John Adams, Philip Glass and Steve Reich and…
The Live Context of War
Imagine a world in which the barriers between art and society, university and community, and mind and heart are erased, and creative synthesis becomes the norm. Such is the vision from which Stanford Live’s Live Context: Art + Ideas was born. This season’s two extraordinary Live Context: Art + Ideas series, War: Return & Recovery and Arts & Social Change,…
Welcome to the California Jazz Hall of Fame, Fred Berry
In February, Fredrick Berry, lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Music, was inducted into the California Alliance for Jazz’s Hall of Fame. Berry was one of three individuals chosen by the alliance’s board, which recognizes the best jazz educators and players in California. “I am both grateful and humbled to be considered a member of this…
Recording produced at Bing Concert Hall makes first step toward Grammy nomination
The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences announced that the recording of Joseph Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass (Nelsonmesse) and Symphony No. 102 performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford Chamber Strings and Stanford Chamber Chorale in Bing Concert Hall has qualified for the first-round ballot in four Grammy categories: Best Choral Performance, Best Chamber Music/Small…
Students and professionals join forces in the recording studio at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall
This fall, anybody and everybody will have the opportunity to enjoy the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Stanford Chamber Chorale‘s commercial release of Lord Nelson Mass (Nelsonmesse)by Joseph Haydn, recorded in Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall. The recording presents the best performances possible; both live in concert and in recording sessions. The SLSQ’s recording of…
A year of high notes for Stanford’s Chocolate Heads
The Chocolate Heads movement band had a banner year, by any measure. They collaborated with jazz great William Parker, workshopped with neuroscientists and synesthetes, staged an underground performance at Cantor Arts Center, dazzled an audience at Bing Concert Hall, partnered with the a cappella group Talisman on an original composition, and finished the year with a spring…
Visitations: Theotokia and The War Reporter, chamber operas by Jonathan Berger, and Landfall, a collaboration between Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet
Only a few months after the official opening, Bing Concert Hall has revealed itself to be a masterpiece of organic design ideally suited to intimate, classical performance in a modern setting. At the same time, the space encourages creative exploration and is able to support cutting-edge technology in a way that refocuses the timeless dialogue between…
Stanford students’ variations on a theme by Kotche
A Glenn Kotche performance is a physically impressive feat. Kotche is a percussionist – best known as the drummer for the rock band Wilco – renowned for his solo percussion shows. Without melodies and harmonies to hide behind, these concerts leave him with the task of making a seamless, full composition out of what seems…
The Stanford Arts Timeline unearths a vital legacy of tradition and transformation
On Friday, January 11, 2013 – nearly 121 years after Stanford convened its first class – Bing Concert Hall opened its doors. A culminating event for years of curricular and extracurricular arts activity on campus, this exciting moment has deep roots in over a century of Stanford arts – from one department focused on applied…
Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall opens to rave reviews
Early reviews of Bing Concert Hall from the press, performers and patrons are in, and they are glowing. The best of the bon mots include: “The sound popped like champagne,” “The hall exudes a serenely majestic air,” “The acoustics in the room and the intimacy of the space made performing an incredibly personal musical experience,”…
Finely Tuned
With the right lighting, the sturdy, fez-shaped building appears like something from another world, an outlier amid the sandstone-and-tiled architecture that dominates the Stanford landscape. And it would not be hyperbole to say there has never been anything like it on the Farm. After decades of yearning for a world-class performing arts venue, years of planning…
Students from across campus bring Beethoven to Bing
Alessandra Aquilanti is a fourth year PhD student in Italian whose thesis explores the humorist authors and magazines of fascist Italy. This is her fourth year as principal of the viola section of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and she also plays in the Stanford Philharmonia Orchestra. Student musicians representing nearly every academic major will perform…
Checking in with the Chocolate Heads, Stanford’s student “movement band”
Jazz visionary and Stanford visiting artist William Parker made a point of reminding the musicians in the Chocolate Heads movement band to “think about the dancers.” That insightful instruction is uniting the sound and movement of the Heads as never before, and on the evening of March 8 the genre-mashing collective will share the Bing…