eInside Events

Sharing the Heart of Kent State

Kent State University President Beverly
Warren will share information gathered
from her listening tour with the university
community on Feb. 3.

Kent State University President Beverly Warren will share information gathered from her listening tour with the university community. Kent State faculty and staff are invited to hear Warren share a summary of what she learned about the heart of Kent State on Feb. 3 at 3 p.m. Faculty and staff can listen to Warren address the Kent State community at designated locations on each campus, or they can choose to join a live webcast at www.kent.edu/listeningtour.

Warren attended more than 50 events in 14 cities during the Presidential Listening Tour, where more than 5,000 participants shared their thoughts, ideas, concerns and suggestions about the university.

“Last July, I eagerly joined this vibrant community and felt it was important to listen and learn from so many who care deeply about Kent State,” Warren says. “The answers to the question ‘What is the heart of Kent State?’ were as varied as the individuals who voiced them. However, some common themes emerged from the comments shared both in person and in written form. I look forward to sharing this information with you, as well as our next steps, as we integrate these findings into our plans for the bright future of Kent State.”

Kent Keyboard Series Continues With Collaboration Between Pianist Donna Lee and Cellist Keith Robinson

Steinway artist Donna Lee will
perform on Feb. 8 at a Kent
Keyboard Series concert that will
take place in Ludwig Recital Hall.

Kent State University's Kent Keyboard Series continues its 2014-2015 season with a concert featuring Steinway artist and Kent State Associate Professor of Music Donna Lee on Sunday, Feb. 8, at 5 p.m. in Ludwig Recital Hall. Ludwig Recital Hall is located in the Center for the Performing Arts at 1325 Theatre Drive on the Kent Campus.

Artist-in-residence at Kent State and cellist Keith Robinson joins Lee in another anticipated program featuring the sublime beauty and architectural genius of Johann Sebastian Bach in his suites and sonatas. This all-Bach program includes “Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009;” “Partita No. 1 in B-flat major, BWV 825;” and “Sonata in D major, BWV 1028.”

Lee earned a doctorate from Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, a master’s from The Juilliard School and a bachelor of music degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. Critics have described Lee’s performances as elegant and refined, engaging and brilliant. In 2011, Lee released a recording on the Blue Griffin label of Felix Mendelssohn’s complete works for cello and piano with Robinson.

Artist-in-residence at Kent State
and cellist Keith Robinson will
perform on Feb. 8 at Ludwig
Recital Hall.

Robinson is a founding member of the Miami String Quartet and has been active as chamber musician, recitalist and soloist since his graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music. Robinson has had multiple solo appearances with orchestras, including the New World Symphony, the American Sinfonietta and the Miami Chamber Symphony. Robinson plays a Giovanni Grancino cello made in Milan and dated 1690.

Tickets for the performance are $15 for adults; $13 for seniors and Kent State faculty and staff; $10 for groups of 10 or more patrons; $8 for non-Kent State students; $5 for children and free for full-time Kent Campus undergraduate students.

Tickets are available weekdays noon to 5 p.m. at the Performing Arts Box Office, located in the lobby of the Roe Green Center in the Center for the Performing Arts at 1325 Theatre Drive on the Kent Campus. The Performing Arts Box Office accepts Visa, MasterCard and Discover, in addition to cash and checks.

The Ludwig Recital Hall Box Office will open one hour prior to the performance for walk-up sales and will accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover. Tickets and more information are available by calling 330-672-ARTS (2787) or visiting www.kent.edu/music.

Kent State Jewish Studies Program Marks 40th Anniversary

2015 celebration to include tribute to acclaimed director, speaker series

Herbert Hochhauser, Ph.D., former
director of the Jewish Studies Program
at Kent State from 1980-1999, will be
honored at a dinner celebrating the
program's 40th anniversary on May 17.

Kent State University’s Jewish Studies Program, which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, is celebrating 40 years of educational and cultural programming serving Jewish and non-Jewish students, faculty and community members. The Jewish Studies Program has announced a schedule of 2015 anniversary events that includes a speaker series and a dinner honoring Herbert Hochhauser, Ph.D., who won a number of Emmy Awards for films documenting the Jewish experience and was the director of the program from 1980-1999.

The dinner, which is open to alumni of the Jewish Studies/Heritage Studies program, as well to the larger community, will raise funds to create the Dr. Herbert Hochhauser Endowed Fund for Jewish Studies. The event is scheduled for May 17 at the Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center in revitalized downtown Kent. Details about the dinner will be announced soon.

Prior to 1975, Kent State courses related to Jewish Studies were offered as “heritage studies” classes and included courses in Hebrew language and Yiddish stories and theatre. A distinct Jewish Studies Program was founded in 1975 with a grant from the Jewish Services Center-Five Communities Board of Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Kent and Youngstown.

Alumni who have taken classes in Jewish Studies (or Heritage Studies) are invited to share their memories and reconnect with former classmates and faculty on the Jewish Studies Facebook page. Please also contact the Jewish Studies Program at jsp@kent.edu to receive an invitation to the dinner and other events.

As part of the Jewish Studies Program’s 40th anniversary celebration, several nationally renowned scholars will visit the Kent Campus to present free, public presentations, including:

• Sean Martin, Ph.D., associate curator of Jewish history, Western Reserve Historical Society, will present “Yiddish Lives! The Importance of Yiddish Then and Now” on Feb. 16.
• Gary Phillips, Ph.D., Edgar H. Evans Professor of Religion at Wabash College, will address the topic “Representing the Irreparable: The Holocaust and Art of Samuel Bak” on March 2.
• Gary Shtyengart, acclaimed Russian-born, American writer and teacher, will appear in conjunction with the Guest of Honor Artist/Lecture Series collaboration with Kent State’s Honors College on March 12.
  

Kent State University’s Jewish Studies Program, which is
part of the College of Arts and Sciences, is celebrating 40
years of educational and cultural programming.

Since its inception, Kent State’s Jewish Studies Program has served Kent State and all of Northeast Ohio with quality academic and cultural programs, activities and outreach, including:

• A minor in Jewish Studies;
• Student scholarships and internships;
• An annual bus trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum;
• Education-abroad trips to Israel and Poland
• Academic ties with Israel;
• Participation in and hosting of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association Conference; and
• Offering a wide range of speakers to students and the greater community.
  

For more information about Kent State’s Jewish Studies Program and details about 40th anniversary events, visit www.kent.edu/cas/jewishstudiesprogram or contact Program Director Chaya Kessler at 330-672-8926 or jsp@kent.edu.

Kent State Museum to Host Musical and Dramatic WWI Presentation

This olive wool coat with fur trim is one
of the garments on display in the Kent
State University Museum's "The Great
War" exhibit.

(Photo credit: Joanne Arnett)

The Kent State University Museum, along with Kent State’s School of Music, will present Dear Mother: Words and Music of the Great War, a dramatic and musical performance informed by the rich history of the First World War. Dear Mother will be presented on Saturday, Feb. 7, at 3 p.m. in the museum’s Murphy Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, and admission to the museum also will be free for those attending Dear Mother.

The performance is built around an extended monologue from the play Dear Mother and All by Kent-based playwright Sandra Perlman. Dear Mother and All is based on an actual correspondence between a 19-year-old soldier stationed in France in 1918 and his family and friends in Massillon, Ohio.

Complementing the monologue will be a series of topical songs dating from the World War I era, sung by students of Jane Dressler, D.M.A., professor of voice at Kent State’s Hugh A. Glauser School of Music. Marla Berg, Kent State assistant professor of voice, will deliver the central monologue, while Cathy Poremba will serve as piano accompanist.

Dear Mother is appearing in conjunction with the museum’s acclaimed current exhibit “The Great War: Women and Fashion in a World at War, 1912-1922,” which runs through July 5. That exhibit traces the war’s lasting impact on the way women dressed, as women were increasingly called to work and serve the war effort, and includes a wide array of historical garments, accessories and printed materials.

For museum hours and guest information, visit the museum’s website at www.kent.edu/museum.

Kent State Orchestra Concert Will Feature Dvořák’s New World Symphony Alongside Concerto Competition Winners

Graduate flute performance major
Matthew Watkins will perform
on Feb. 15 at the University
Auditorium at Cartwright Hall.

The Kent State University Hugh A. Glauser School of Music Orchestra continues its 2014-2015 season with a performance on Sunday, Feb. 15, at 3 p.m. in the University Auditorium at Cartwright Hall. Cartwright Hall is located at 650 Hilltop Drive, with free parking located off Terrace Drive.

The concert will start with a premiere of Kevin Krumenauer’s “Aeonian Pulse.” Graduate flute performance major Matthew Watkins will debut with Carl Nielsen’s “Concerto for Flute,” and undergraduate piano performance major Liyue Yin will perform Maurice Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G major.” The evening will end with a performance of Dvořák’s spirited “New World Symphony.”

Such a diverse program will transport the audience through various composition styles, including those of local composer Krumenauer, who has made Cleveland his home since 2000 when he studied composition with Margaret Brouwer at the Cleveland Institute of Music; Scandinavian composer Nielsen in his late neoclassical flute concerto; Ravel’s jazz-inspired piano concerto; and Dvořák’s heavily American-influenced “Symphony No. 9, From the New World.”

Piano performance major Liyue
Yin will perform on Feb. 15 at
the University Auditorium at
Cartwright Hall.

Winners of the concerto competition are Watkins and Yin. A native of the Pittsburgh area, Watkins is currently studying with Diane McCloskey. Yin, a native of China, is a senior piano performance major studying with Jerry Wong at Kent State’s School of Music.

Tickets for the performance are $15 for adults, $13 for seniors and Kent State faculty and staff, $10 for groups of 10 or more patrons, $8 for non-Kent State students, $5 for children and free for full-time Kent Campus undergraduate students.

Tickets are available weekdays noon to 5 p.m. at the Performing Arts Box Office, located in the lobby of the Roe Green Center in the Center for the Performing Arts at 1325 Theatre Drive on the Kent Campus. The Performing Arts Box Office accepts Visa, MasterCard and Discover, in addition to cash and checks.

The Cartwright Hall Box Office will open one hour prior to the performance for walk-up sales and will accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover. Tickets and more information are available by calling 330-672-ARTS (2787) or visiting www.kent.edu/music.

Designer Geoffrey Beene Subject of New Exhibit at Kent State University Museum

Pictured is a dress from Geoffrey
Beene's spring/summer 1987 collection
that is on display at the Kent State
University Museum.

On Jan. 29, the Kent State University Museum unveiled a new exhibit dedicated to the career of legendary American designer Geoffrey Beene. The exhibit, “Geoffrey Beene: American Ingenuity,” will run through Aug. 30 in the museum’s Broadbent Gallery. Garments from the museum’s collection will span the entirety of Beene’s 40-year career.

Beene (1927–2004) was respected throughout the American fashion industry for the highly technical quality of his work and his innovative, modernist designs. Although his collections were very fashionable, they avoided the trap of mere trendiness and displayed fervent originality. He took an artist’s approach to turning two-dimensional fabric into a three-dimensional shape and was considered a designer’s designer.

On Feb. 11, from 2–4 p.m., Kent State Museum Director Jean Druesedow will give a talk on Beene’s work, innovations and legacy, with refreshments to follow. The event will be held in the museum’s Murphy Auditorium. Tickets are $15 and may be reserved through Feb. 6 by calling 330-672-0300.

The Kent State Museum is located at 515 Hilltop Drive, at the corner of East Main and South Lincoln streets in Kent. The museum is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday. Hours are 10 a.m. - 4:45 p.m., Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. - 8:45 p.m., Thursday; and noon - 4:45 p.m., Sunday. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $3 for children under 18. The museum is free with a Kent State ID and free to the public on Sunday. Parking is free.

For more information, call 330-672-3450 or visit www.kent.edu/museum.