Arts And Culture

DOMINICK REUTER/GETTY Daniel Bernard Roumain, BMus’93, (right, with the production’s assistant director and choreographer Bill T. Jones, center), composed the music for the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, which was named by The New York Times in December as one of the best classical music performances of… Read More

Above: The Cultures in Clay exhibit includes the Man and Beast seal (Arno Poebel Collection); below, left, a statue of Osiris, mythological father of the Egyptian god Horus, from the private collection of emeritus professor Douglas Knight; and, below right, the Drehem tablet (James Stevenson Collection). Clay… Read More

Rocky Boyer’s War: An Unvarnished History of the Air Blitz that Won the War in the Southwest Pacific (2017, Naval Institute Press) by Allen D. Boyer, BA’78 In Rocky Boyer’s War, Allen Boyer offers a wry, keen-eyed, and occasionally disgruntled counterpoint history of the hard-fought, brilliant campaign that won World… Read More

Lee Conell (photo by Susan Urmy) Lee Conell, MFA’15, is not the sort of writer who cultivates a high profile. While she’s excited about the upcoming launch of her first story collection, Subcortical, she finds the public role of author far removed from the drive that compels her… Read More

Will the Count be caught cheating? Will Cherubino really be voted off? And who, exactly, will marry Figaro? Vanderbilt Opera Theatre cast members were filmed by students from the Department of Cinema and Media Arts for webisodes to preface VOT’s Marriage of Figaro, produced at Blair in November as a… Read More

Alphabet card, France, early 19th century; from the George Clulow–U.S. Playing Card Co. Gaming Collection, Vanderbilt University Special Collections The George Clulow and United States Playing Card Co. Gaming Collection—one of the world’s premier collections of books about card games, games of chance, playing cards and chess—has been acquired… Read More

Michael Kurek, associate professor of composition, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Album chart this summer with The Sea Knows, an album that continues his transition to more traditionally melodious music. The Sea Knows, on the Navona label, features a lush, gorgeous sound in the traditional… Read More

With all that we have been taught, all that we have learned, just what have we wrought with all that we’ve burned? (oil on canvas, 2015) is featured in Morgan Craig’s solo exhibit With all that we have been taught …, on display through Nov. 30 at Sarratt… Read More

Visual artist Mel Chin, BA’75, was named this year’s Peabody College Distinguished Alumnus. (Courtesy Mel Chin) Visionary artist Mel Chin, BA’75, was honored during Commencement May 12 by Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development with the 2017 Distinguished Alumnus Award. Born in Houston in… Read More

Mark L. Schoenfield, professor of English, is among 173 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada to be awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Arts Jonathan Rattner’s film The Interior won the Michael Moore Award for… Read More

The program cover for the Verlaine celebration featured this watercolor illustration by artist László Barta(1902–1961) under the name of Brutus, for a 1936 edition of a collection of Verlaine’s poems titled “Hombres.” Poet Paul Verlaine rocketed between emotional highs and lows, between a life of complete freedom… Read More

James Berkenstock (top right) and his wife, Jean, co-founded the Midsummer’s Music Festival in Door County, Wisconsin, dedicated to the chamber repertoire. (Courtesy Midsummer’s Music Festival) Some people believe the life of a musician is nomadic, traveling the world and playing in all kinds of venues. However, James… Read More

Inspired by last year’s flooding in Louisiana, Chris Lowry wrote his winning composition, which premieres in June in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Christopher Lowry In August 2016 much of southern Louisiana lay underwater, flooded by more than 7.1 trillion gallons of rainfall. It was, meteorologists said, a… Read More

Lucy Mensah is completing a prestigious fellowship at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lucy Mensah, MA’12, PhD’16, who graduated with a doctorate in English, is drawing on her humanities training to take a path less traveled. Mensah started graduate school in 2011 with the goal of… Read More

Soprano Kelsey Onwuzuruigbo sings at Nashville’s inaugural Opera on Tap event, held at Harpeth Brewing Co. in September 2016. Photo by Nduka Onwuzuruigbo Nashville is known for its live music scene. Some nights you can drink a beer and enjoy country, blues, bluegrass, opera … no, not opry, opera—complete… Read More

“Day Boy Night Girl” by Sarah E. Vaughn is on view at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center exhibit “Breaking Ground” through June. Whether we realize it or not, we often silence individuals who have intellectual and developmental disabilities because of our own inability to communicate with those unlike ourselves. Read More

• The Blair Big Band, directed by Ryan Middagh, director of jazz studies, was invited to play the recent annual conference of the Jazz Education Network, the professional organization for jazz musicians and jazz educators, in New Orleans. The conference features the finest professional and educational jazz musicians and… Read More

Polar, by a 26-year-old male diagnosed with schizophrenia, reflects how he presents himself to the world (right side) compared to how he feels (left side) An exhibit during the fall at Vanderbilt’s Department of Art displayed the works of clients from an outpatient mental health program in The… Read More

Sabrina Bradford (violin), Antonia Rohlfing (piano) and Blake Kitayama (cello) rehearse their chamber music piece at the Blair School. Photo by Anne Rayner Musicians learn not only how to play an instrument, but how to play in a group, be it a full orchestra or a quartet. Learning to… Read More

Painting 1909: Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Henri Bergson, Comics, Albert Einstein, and Anarchy (2017, Yale University Press) by Leonard Folgarait, professor of history of art In 1909, renowned artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) embarked on a series of stylistic experiments that had a dramatic effect on modern art. The book examines… Read More