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…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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Group of choral singers

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…

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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…

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Stanford Live Executive Director Wiley Hausam will oversee programming for the Bing Concert Hall for the first time in the 2013-14 season.

Stanford Live’s Executive Director Wiley Hausam looks forward to 2013-14 and beyond

Wiley Hausam came to Stanford in 2012 as the executive director of Bing Concert Hall with a healthy performing arts portfolio under his arm. He was a Broadway producer, a presenter of classical theater and musicals, and the former executive director of two university performing arts centers where he excelled at developing younger audiences with…

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Chocolate Heads dancers Madeline Hawes and Katrina Wisdom perform in 'Xocolatl: Food of the Gods' at Bing Concert Hall on March 8, 2013.

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…

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Stanford Live Announces 2013-14 Season

Highlights include Season-Opening concert with Itzhak Perlman and the Perlman Music Program, evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin and recitals by violinist Joshua Bell, sopranos Deborah Voigt and Angela Brown, and pianist Richard Goode World premiere of Linked Verse, a collaboration between Stanford assistant professor of music Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and artistic collective OpenEndedGroup, features…

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Jay Blakesberg

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…

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Sophomore Kenneth Qin and Junior Tina Miller experiment with the use of a violin bow on the bars of the vibraphone.

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…

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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…

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Actor, author and former Stanford faculty member Anna Deavere Smith introduces the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Friday.

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,”…

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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…

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Mark & Tracy Photography

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…

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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…

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