Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Last weekend Lansing Middle School presented 'Disney's Beauty and the Beast Jr., with a cast of 113.  The Disney musical chronicles the story of Bell and a Beast, who is actually a young, handsome prince who has been turned into a beast by an enchantress.  If the Beast can learn to love and to be loved, the spell will be broken.  But he has to accomplish this before the petals fall from an enchanted rose.  Bell and the Beast gradually fall in love, but must profess their love before it is too late.

Major roles were double cast in last weekend's production, directed by Cynthia Howell and Lucas Hibbard and choreographed by Bella Micale.  These photos are from Friday's performance.

Darsono Hadiraharjo
The Cornell Gamelan Ensemble presents two days of Indonesian performances at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art with visiting guest artists from Java and Bali. On Thursday, November 21 at 7:00 pm, guest artists Gusti Sudarta (Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Denpasar) and Darsono Hadiraharjo (SEAP Visiting Critic) will perform excerpts of traditional wayang (shadow puppetry), providing audiences a rare opportunity to experience both Balinese and Javanese forms of this vital art form. They will be accompanied, respectively, by guest musicians Gusti Nyoman Darta and Bethany Collier, and the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble.

Then on Saturday, November 23 at 1:00 pm, Migrating Shadows, a multimedia production combining elements from Indonesian traditions of gamelan music, dance, and wayang with computer graphics, sound-oriented free-improvisation, and contemporary performance aesthetics takes the spotlight. The performers will literally migrate between different spaces in Cornell's Johnson Museum of Art, leading the audience on a journey through public spaces to virtual worlds. Thematically, the production draws upon the 14th-century Javanese story of Sutasoma, an incarnation of the Buddha, and his encounters with the human-eating King Kalmasapada. The production features guest artists Sudarta and Hadiraharjo joined by Christopher J. Miller, Kevin Ernste, and graduate student composers Sergio Cote Barco, Miles Jefferson Friday, and Piyawat Louilarpprasert, from Cornell's Department of Music.

'Night Noise' (2018-2019, acrylic gouache on paper on panel, 18x24”) by Siobhan McBride is one of the works in “The Strangeness of Structure,” a new exhibit opening Nov. 8, 2019 at Wells College’s String Room Gallery. Courtesy of Siobhan McBride
Aurora, NY - The String Room Gallery of Wells College is pleased to announce the opening of "The Strangeness of Structure," a group exhibition curated by Jonathan Duff. All are welcome to the Gallery for a public reception on Friday, Nov. 8, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.; the exhibition will remain on view until Friday, Dec. 6, 2019.

First staged at the University Center Gallery at Adelphi University, this exhibition features the work of New York-based artists Siobhan McBride, Laini Nemett, Anna Ortiz, Kate Stone and Virginia Wagner. The work in this exhibition cites imagery of built and variously collapsing structures, illuminating a fundamental concern for the ways built and constructed systems are shifting, perhaps to our collective detriment. Paintings by McBride and Nemett illustrate instances of collapse found in residential spaces, while Wagner's and Ortiz's paintings use vibrant, hazy palettes to render structures in various states of undoing in relation to their environmental surroundings. Stone's central sculpture skews familiar domestic materials such as wallpaper, carpet, studded walls and a framed photograph to create a tension between dilapidation and the familiar.

Art by Adam Baker
It is the year 2030 and parts of Ithaca are under water. The future is at stake as the ravages of climate change erode this community's way of life, leaving a city asking the questions: Who survives? Who decides?

"The Next Storm" (November 15–23, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts) is a community-based play by the Cornell University Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA), Ithaca-based theatre company Civic Ensemble, and playwright Thomas Dunn. Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., Civic Ensemble co–artistic director and PMA senior lecturer, directs this wry comedy.

To celebrate the bicentennial of Clara Schumann's birth, the conference "Performing Clara Schumann: Keyboard Legacies and Feminine Identities in the Long Romantic Tradition," November 16-17, 2019, will present a variety of interpretive frameworks for understanding the historical, cultural, and technological contexts surrounding the virtuosa's life and work. Conference events range from individual paper presentations, to lecture-recitals, to hands-on workshops, and will explore the feminist outlook surrounding the various keyboard networks of Clara Schumann's world and those inspired by her in subsequent times. In addition, this event not only celebrates the composer's historic achievements, but also rethinks her profound imprint on Romantic, post- (and ultra-) "Romantic" art culture.

On November 17, 2019 the Ithaca Gay Men’s Chorus (IGMC) will perform their Fall Concert, “True Colors” at 3:00 PM in the First Baptist Church, located in Ithaca’s historic Dewitt Park at 309 North Cayuga Street.

IGMC will perform a varied list of musical pieces including a new arrangement of TRUE COLORS, composed by Cyndi Lauper, two compositions using the poetry of William Blake and much more. Also appearing on our program will be AFAB4, a newly formed quartet composed of members of IGMC.

Madeleine Gray 20 and Faith Slaughter 20
In 2017, Madeleine Gray '20 conceived a solo performance piece in which she could combat stereotypes of mental illness and explore the question "Who, in the end, is really there for us?"

"I felt extremely frustrated with the representations of physical and mental health that I encountered both in my personal life and in the social spaces that surrounded me," says Gray

Over the next two years, Gray reworked her initial idea into her senior thesis: an original two-act mini-musical titled 'There For You,' which debuts at The Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts November 7–9, 2019.

David Borden
The Cornell Department of Music and Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company. Over the span of two concerts on Friday, November 8 at 7:00pm at Barnes Hall and Friday, November 15 at 7:00pm at the Johnson Museum, the fabled synthesizer group performs pieces from founder David Borden’s The Continuing Story of Counterpoint on vintage instruments that include original Moogs, Fender Rhodes pianos, and more.

Mother Mallard was the first live synthesizer ensemble in the world and came about through Borden’s work with Robert Moog in Trumansburg. Among the first minimalist composers, Borden also established Cornell’s digital music program. The Continuing Story of Counterpoint was begun in 1976 and completed in 1987 and is comprised of twelve sections. Borden composed parts for each performer that could stand alone as solos but take on a different synergy when combined as a whole.

Mwape Sokoni, Natasha Bratkovski, Rachel Lampert, and Benno Ressa in Aunt Mae Comes to Town. Photo by Lesley Greene
Martha eagerly awaits the arrival of her great Aunt Mae. Once a month, Aunt Mae makes the trip to Ithaca with a bag full of surprises and a photo album with a lifetime of photographs and "a story to go with every one of them!" Stories come to life and Aunt Mae and Martha get swept into all of them.

Fitz&Startz Production veterans (A Case for the Classics, Emmett & Ella:The Puppy Plot) Natasha Bratkovski, Benno Ressa, Mike Cyr and guest Eric Brooks* are quick-change artists playing numerous roles as they bring Aunt Mae's stories to life. Making her Fitz&Startz Productions debut is DeWitt Middle School student Mwape Sokoni (Martha). and writer/actor Rachel Lampert is on stage as Aunt Mae.

The Museum of the Earth is opening its doors on Tuesday evening, October 29, from 6 to 8 pm, to look at space in a spooky way with Cornell's Astronomy Graduate Network. Children of all ages will come dressed in costume and learn more about the universe. Graduate students from Cornell's Astronomy Department will have stations throughout the Museum dedicated to space and space exploration.

The Museum of the Earth's new "Bees! Diversity, Evolution and Conservation" exhibit will also be featured, and children will be offered candy treats as they visit the Astronomy Graduate Network's activities including the Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream and more!

Aurora, NY - 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee', with music and lyrics by William Finn, book by Rachel Sheinkin and conceived by Rebecca Feldman, will be presented on Friday, Oct. 25 and Saturday, Oct. 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Phipps Auditorium in Macmillan Hall on the Wells College campus. Admission is free and all are welcome; no reservations are required.

'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee' is an energetic, contemporary musical about six hopeful, quirky middle schoolers competing for first prize at their county spelling bee. Each character is searching for identity and purpose—including the three adults who run the event. These youths and adults are seeking to prove their worth to themselves and those around them, battling their inner insecurities and outside obstacles in order to climb up the ladder of success to discover their inner champion.

The Canaan Institute will host a performance by The Kate Lee & Forrest O’Connor Band. An intimate Thursday evening house concert will start at 7:00 pm Nov 7th 2019 with a jam session afterward.

Over the last three years, the duo has earned national recognition as the lead singers and primary songwriters of the Mark O’Connor Band, which features O’Connor’s father, seven-time CMA Award-winning violinist Mark O’Connor. Lee and O’Connor wrote the majority of the band’s first album, Coming Home, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Bluegrass Albums Chart and won a GRAMMY Award in 2017. The group spent the past summer opening for the Zac Brown Band, including two appearances at Fenway Park.