FALL 2014 / WINTER 2015 ARTS IN CONTEXT: UMS IN THE CLASSROOM SUPPORTED BY: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation TABLE OF CONTENTS 03 Welcome 36 Bob James 72 The Campbell Brothers: A Sacred Steel Love Supreme 04 Bringing Students to UMS Performances 38 Jake Shimabukuro, ukulele 74 Trisha Brown Dance Company 05 New Archive Resource: UMS Rewind 40 Yuja Wang, piano, and Leonidas Kavakos, violin 76 A Bill Frisell Americana Celebration 06 Itzhak Perlman, violin 42 Handel’s Messiah 78 Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion. 08 Royal Shakespeare Company Live: 44 Spotlight: Seeking the Sacred 80 Chicago Pro Musica Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona 45 Rossini’s William Tell: 82 Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Jeremy Denk, piano 10 Emerson String Quartet Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra and Chorus 84 Gilberto Gil 12 National Theatre Live: Euripides’ Medea 47 Helen & Edgar 86 Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester 14 Charleroi Danses: Kiss & Cry 49 eighth blackbird 88 Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea 16 Spotlight: Performing Technologies 51 Compagnie Marie Chouinard 90 Oliver Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits 17 Gregory Porter 53 Spotlight: Dance and Visual Arts 92 Artemis Quartet 19 An Evening with Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer 54 Mariinsky Orchestra 94 Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra 21 Belcea Quartet 56 Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia 96 Lyon Opera Ballet: Cinderella 23 Théâtre de la Ville: 58 Tomasz Stańko, trumpet 98 Richard Goode, piano Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author 60 Jennifer Koh, violin 100 About UMS 25 superposition: Ryoji Ikeda 62 Compagnie Non Nova: 101 Credits and Sponsors 27 The Big Squeeze: An Accordion Summit Prelude to the Afternoon of a Foehn 29 Apollo’s Fire and Apollo’s Singers: 64 Spotlight: Object Performance/Performers as Objects Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 65 UMS Choral Union: Mendelssohn’s Elijah 31 Quatuor Ébène 67 Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 33 Spotlight: New Chamber Music 69 Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra 34 San Francisco Symphony 71 Spotlight: Piano Virtuosos, At Every Stage 2 WELCOME JIM LEIJA Welcome to the 2014-2015 edition of “Arts in In this guide, you will find the following resources Director of Education and Community Engagement Context: UMS in the Classroom.” This guide is for each of the performances in our 2014-2015 designed to encourage faculty members from a season: suggested curricular connections by SHANNON FITZSIMONS broad range of disciplines to include the performing discipline and subject/theme; contextual materials Campus Engagement Specialist arts in their classrooms, by suggesting explicit links from both online and print media; and prompts between our performances in music, theater, and for classroom discussion. This year, we have also dance and the many areas of academic inquiry here added a new feature called “Spotlights,” which on campus. It is one of the signature initiatives of highlights themes or formal features shared by the UMS Mellon Initiative, in partnership with the several of our performances this year and point out College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts at the ways that clustering multiple performances for use University of Michigan. in the classroom might prove illuminating for you and your students. As we enter into the second year of the Initiative, we are proud of the strides we’ve made over The material contained in this guide is merely the past twelve months to infuse the performing a starting point, a springboard for your own arts across the curriculum. In the Winter 2014 insights and creativity as leaders in the classroom. semester, we launched “Engaging Performance,” UMS Campus Engagement Specialist Shannon a course team-taught by LSA and SMTD faculty; Fitzsimons is available for one-on-one the class introduced students from all class years consultations with interested faculty to advise and academic disciplines to the performing arts on individualized plans to incorporate our through the lens of UMS programming. This fall, performances and arts-based learning activities we are collaborating with the Honors Program and into classes across the disciplines. She can be the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program to launch two reached at [email protected] or 734.764.3903. As additional classes with UMS performances at their always, we welcome your feedback and ideas on core. We are also working closely with faculty from how we can continue to improve this resource to across campus through our Faculty Insight Group, better meet your needs as scholars and educators. and this summer, we welcomed our first cohort of fellows into the UMS Mellon Faculty Institute on Thank you for reading. We look forward to seeing Arts-Academic Integration. you at a performance soon! 3 BRINGING STUDENTS TO PERFORMANCES UMS STRIVES TO MAKE To that end, we have created a number of programs to Arts at Michigan provides grants of up to $500 for faculty, reduce the cost for students to attend UMS performances. staff, or graduate student instructors to incorporate OUR PERFORMANCES You can view our student ticket policies here. arts-based learning activities into their courses. These ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE funds may be used to buy tickets for students to attend We also offer group sales discounts for groups of 10 or a performance. Please visit the Arts at Michigan site IN OUR COMMUNITY. more. More information can be found here. for application information, as well as to learn about additional faculty funding opportunities for arts- integrative learning. 4 SEARCH For the past several years, UMS has collaborated with the Ann Arbor District Library to digitize performance records from our rich 135-year history. Artist and repertory information, program books, and photographs are now available online in our new, searchable archive: UMS Rewind. This accessible, interactive portal allows University of Michigan scholars and students and the public to investigate Ann Arbor’s vibrant cultural history. We encourage you to explore! WWW.UMSREWIND.ORG 5 SEP 14 ITZHAK PERLMAN, VIOLIN John Root, piano Sunday, September 14, 6 pm Hill Auditorium Itzhak Perlman is treasured by audiences throughout the world who respond not only to his remarkable artistry but also to his irrepressible joy for making music. Born in Israel in 1945, Perlman came to New York as a teenager and was propelled to national recognition with an appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” in 1958. He subsequently attended The Juilliard School and over the past 50 years has established himself as a cultural icon and a household name in classical music. Over the past decade, he has become increasingly devoted to both conducting and to music education, but it is as a recitalist that Ann Arbor audiences know him best. 6 CONNECT EXPLORE REFLECT This performance intersects meaningfully with Compare Perlman’s performance on the What relationship do you see among the pieces that courses in these programs/departments: Ed Sullivan Show as a 13-year old prodigy to this Perlman chose for his recital? Were there thematic, • Judaic Studies later performance of Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E to view stylistic, or historical similarities? Was there a • Sociology his evolution as a performer. progression among the pieces? • Music Education • Music Theory Explore Perlman’s career within the context of How would you describe Perlman’s playing style? • Musicology other modern masters in Henry Roth’s book Violin How does he interact with the audience? How does • Strings Virtuosos: From Paganini to the Twenty-First he introduce/contextualize the pieces he plays? Century (California Classic Books, 1999). That engage these topics/themes: • Violin repertoire • Jewish and Yiddish performance traditions • Disability studies • Celebrity and virtuosity 7 SEP 21 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY LIVE IN HD: SHAKESPEARE’S THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA Sunday, September 21, 7 pm Michigan Theater Valentine and Proteus are best friends, until they fall in love with the same girl. Having travelled to Milan in search of adventure, they both fall for the Duke’s daughter Silvia. But Proteus is already sworn to his sweetheart, Julia, at home in Verona, and the Duke thinks Valentine is not good enough for his Silvia. With friendship forgotten, the rivals’ affections quickly get out of hand as the four young lovers find themselves on a wild chase through the woods, confused by mistaken identity and threatened by fierce outlaws before they find a path to reconciliation. 8 CONNECT EXPLORE REFLECT This performance intersects meaningfully with Critic Charles Nicholl explores “Why Shakespeare’s This production of Two Gentlemen uses a courses in these programs/departments: Two Gentlemen of Verona is as flawed as it is contemporary setting. How does that choice impact • English Language and Literature fascinating” in this preview piece for the production the way you interpret the play and the relationships • Comparative Literature in the Guardian. among the core characters? • History • Romance Languages and Literature Legendary Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom How would you describe the acting styles used in • Screen Arts and Cultures provides a psychological critique of the characters the production? How do they differ between the • Women’s Studies in Two Gentlemen (and the rest of Shakespeare’s characters speaking primarily in verse, and those • Center for World Performance Studies canon) in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of speaking primarily in prose? • Theatre & Drama the Human (Riverhead, 1999). • Musical Theatre • Performing Arts Technology That engage these topics/themes: • Shakespeare • Adaptation • Live performance on film • 16th-century depictions of women and courtship 9 SEP 27 EMERSON STRING QUARTET Saturday, September 27, 8 pm Rackham Auditorium With the arrival of cellist Paul Watkins in May 2013, the Emerson Quartet has embarked on a remarkable new journey. Watkins, who also serves as the music director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, is the first new member of the group since its founding in 1976.