BGSU’s New Music fest kicks off today
10/16/2012BOWLING GREEN — Collaboration among colleges and departments is nothing new at Bowling Green State University, and this year's New Music Festival offers a good example of how a few faculty with a great idea can reach across borders to assemble an extraordinary program.
Titled Music and the Physical World, the multimedia event that runs today through Saturday at the Moore Musical Arts and Wolfe Arts centers — plus events in the Clazel Theater downtown — will bring leading lights in nature-inspired music, literature, and visual arts together.
This year's festival started with conversations between Kurt Doles, who manages BGSU's MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, an offshoot of the College of Musical Arts which now produces the festival, and composer John Luther Adams, featured guest this week.
Adams, who creates his ethereal music with inspiration from the Pacific Northwest, where he now lives, and other natural environments, mentioned he had worked in theater with Barry Lopez, a National Book Award-winning author with a strong penchant for drawing his stories from the land.
Doles and his planning team reached out to the BGSU English and creative writing departments, the department for environment and sustainability, the honors college, and the School of Art.
As a result, Lopez also will be on campus to lecture and present, along with gallery artist Marina Rosenfeld. Also on the Festival roster will be ecomusicologist Aaron Allen, percussionist Doug Perkins, and the popular Jack Quartet, a string quartet devoted to the latest classical compositions and hybrids.
Highlights of this four-day gathering will include:
● Scholar talk by Allen: Ecomusicology and the Challenges of Sustainability. 3:30 p.m. today, Bryan Recital Hall of the Moore.
●"White Lines," Rosenfeld's installation at the Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery of the School of Art, opening at 5 p.m. today.
●Composer talk by Luther Adams: Music and the Physical World. 1 p.m. Thursday, Bryan.
●Author talk by Lopez: The Writer and Social Responsibility. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Donnell Theatre in Wolfe.
●Cold Blue Music: a Retrospective, a concert of music from the eponymous new music recording label, with works by Luther Adams, Rick Cox, Jon Fink, James Tenney, and others, featuring the Jack Quartet. 9:30 p.m. Thursday at the Clazel Theater, 127 North Main St.
●Artist talk by Rosenfeld. Noon Friday in Bryan.
●Inuksuit, Luther Adams' notable percussion piece, 4:30 p.m. Friday outside the Bowen-Thomsen Student Union, with Perkins and other drummers.
●Luther Adams and Lopez in conversation and performance. 8 p.m. Friday, Kobacker Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center.
●BGSU Wind Symphony performing works by Luther Adams, Mason Bates, Ursula Mamlok and others. 8 p.m. Saturday, Kobacker.
With the exception of the final concert, all events are free to the public. For more information, check bit.ly/QA3s26.