Arts season offers tradition and innovation

Events range from longstanding Leonard Bernstein Festival to the new FiddleDEIS

Genkin Philharmonic Orchestra kicks off the arts season Jan. 25.

Ed Ruscha's work will be on exhibit at The Rose Art Museum beginning Feb. 13.

A new three-day festival, FiddleDEIS, will happen on campus March 15 to 17.

From longstanding traditions like the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts to the brand new FiddleDEIS festival, the spring semester will bring a variety of arts to campus stages and galleries.

The season kicks off on Jan. 25 at 8 p.m. in the Slosberg Music Center with a performance by Genkin Philharmonic Orchestra: Icons of Rock, which fuses genres including rock, jazz and classical. The critically acclaimed 10-piece electro-acoustic orchestra performs virtuosic arrangements of songs by Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson and Frank Zappa. The event is sponsored by the Brandeis Arts Council.

As part of DEIS Impact, between Feb. 7 and 10, the Brandeis Theater Company will perform “In the Heart of America,” the story of a young Palestinian woman searching for her brother, a soldier who served in Iraq. In the production, playwright Naomi Wallace explores the intersection of violence and police, racism and patriotism.

Beginning Feb. 13, Ed Ruscha’s and Walead Beshty’s exhibits will transform the Rose Art Museum. Ruscha’s art depicts everyday objects – gas stations, streets signs, billboards – and triggers reflection on the relationship between words, things and ideas. Beshty will create a mirrored, multilayered glass floor that appears to crack as visitors walk over it, turning the spectator into a creator.

The Brandeis Theater Company will perform “Heaven and Hell/Light and Dark,” a collection of original dance-theater inspired by the symbolism and composition of paintings from medieval to contemporary, on March 9 and 10 in the Spingold Theater Center. A collaboration with the Beshty exhibit at the Rose Art Museum is also planned.

FiddleDEIS, a new three-day festival celebrating the progression of the violin in performance across diverse cultural traditions throughout history, will take place March 15 to 17. Distinguished guest artists from around the globe will join faculty members in performances in the Slosberg Music Center.

On April 6 at 8 p.m. (with a preconcert talk at 7 p.m.), the Lydian String Quartet, Brandeis’ resident professional quartet, will play a program at Slosberg that includes Mozart’s Quartet in A Major, K. 464; a new string quartet by Kurt Rohde, winner of the 2012 Lydian String Quartet Commission Prize; and Beethoven: Op. 130.

The Brandeis University Chorus and Choir will perform songs from the Great American Songbook in Slosberg on April 13 at 8 p.m. James Olesen will direct the chorus in renditions of 20th-century classics fro Broadway and Tinpan Alley.

Brandeis students will be exhibiting their art in the Dreitzer Gallery several times this spring. On April 3 and 17, from 5 to 7 p.m., Prospect I and II: Post-Baccalaureate Exhibitions will be on display, and on May 1, from 5 to 7 p.m., the gallery will host a senior studio exhibition.

The annual Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts will be held on April 25 to 28, when visitors will experience the unexpected. For the first time, Bernstein’s daughter, Jamie Bernstein, will host “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein,” with Bernstein’s protégé George Steel of the New York City Opera on April 16 at 9 p.m. in Slosberg. The recital, which debuted last year at Lincoln Center, features soprano Amy Burton and pianists John Musto, Michael Barrett and Michael Boriskin, who will perform the maestro’s favorite music, including works by Copland, Confrey, Coward, Schubert and Chopin.

Faculty member Eric Hill will direct the Brandeis Theater Company in “Visions of an Ancient Dreamer,” a new adaptation of “Orestes” and “Iphigenia at Tauris,” on April 25 to 28 in the Spingold Theater Center. The haunting classical tragedies of Orestes and Iphigenia will be reimagined as twin visions of an ancient storyteller through this yearlong collaboration between the Theater Arts and Classical Studies departments.

For more information on arts events happening this spring, check State of the Arts.

Categories: Arts

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