Music and Culture Lecture Series
The Music and Culture Lecture Series are co-sponsored by the Department and Music and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. All events are free and open to the public.
Michael Marissen
Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 4 pm
Anti-Jewish Sentiment in Baroque Music
Clark Hall 206
Michael Marissen graduated from Calvin College and Brandeis University. He joined the Swarthmore College faculty in 1989 and since then has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University and the Oberlin Conservatory. His publications include The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton) and Lutheranism, anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion (Oxford). Current projects include a book of annotated translations of Bach's oratorio librettos, and a monograph on Christian triumphalism in Handel's Messiah.
Claudia Gorbman is Professor of Film Studies, and also Director of the Global Honors Program, at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She is the author of Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (1987), as well as 60 academic articles, many of which explore sound and music in film. She has translated several books from French, including four by the composer and critic Michel Chion.
Byron Adams
December 6, 2007 at 5 pm
The Far Country: Elgar, Proust and Constructions of Memory in the Fin-de-Siecle
Byron Adams is Professor of Composition and Musicology in the Music Department of the University of California, Riverside. He has published widely on English music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 2000, he was awarded the Philip Brett Award by the American Musicological Society for his work on British music. In 2007, Adams held the position of scholar-in-residence for the Bard Music Festival, "Elgar and His World," and edited "Edward Elgar and His World" for Princeton University Press. As a composer, Adams has had performances of his music in Europe, such as at the 26th "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music, the Leith Hill Festival in England, the Conservatoire Americain in Fontainebleau, France (where he taught in the summer of 1992), and the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra.
Lawrence Kramer
February 7, 2008 4 pm
Embracing Classical Music
Clark Hall 206
Lawrence Kramer is Professor of English and Music at Fordham University and the editor of the journal 19th-Century Music. He is the author of nine books, most recently including Why Classical Music Still Matters, Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss, and Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History. He has also edited or co-edited two volumes, including Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema, with Daniel Goldmark and Richard Leppert. Kramer is also a composer; extracts from his The Wanderer and his Shadow: Songs from Nietzsche's 'The Gay Science were performed in New York last spring at a conference held in his honor, and his Five Songs and an Epilogue from 'The Wings of the Dove was premiered in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival in August.
David Ake
March 27, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Marginalizing the Center: Jazz Historiography and Jazz Education
David Ake is Associate Professor in the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Nevada, Reno. He authored the book Jazz Cultures (University of California Press, 2002), and his articles have appeared in such publications as American Music, Jazz Perspectives, the Journal of Musicological Research, and the Cambridge Companion to Jazz. He remains active as a pianist and composer, and has performed alongside Charlie Haden, Ravi Coltrane, and Ralph Alessi and many other outstanding improvising musicians. Ake appears on a number of recordings, including his solo-piano CD, In Between (2005), and Bridges (2007), the latest release from The Collective.