OSU Alumni Association
2009 Spring Term
Arts Strand
Mini Reviews
Tuesday, March 31, 9:30
This session will be an experimental variation on our popular Spring time Mini Review Program. Today we will explore some early responses to Darwinism in several different realms of thought and context.
Host: Brookes Spencer
Carmina! A Medieval Feast for All Times
Tuesday, April 7, 9:30
After Carl Orff composed Carmina in 1937, he demanded that his publisher withdraw and destroy all of his previously published works, such was his conviction that he had truly found his compositional voice. Dr. Steven Zielke, Director of Choral Studies at OSU, will present a preview of the Corvallis-OSU Symphony Orchestra performance with the Corvallis Repertory Singers and combined OSU choirs of Orff's remarkable work. He will include an introduction of the musical material as well as the remarkable 13th-century poetry that forms the text.
Host: Lois Courtney
Anticipating Ashland: Sarah and the Boys
Tuesday, April 14, 9:30
This season, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival includes three American shows: a musical, a long-neglected drama, and a comedy by one of our hottest young playwrights. Robert Leff, director and American theater historian, will share background and insight for The Music Man by Meredith Wilson, Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets, and Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. He will do the same for the Italian comedy on the bill, The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, a play he directed 36 years ago. He will review the productions based on his recent trip to Ashland.
Host: Lois Courtney
Contemporary Glass
Tuesday, April 21, 9:30
Bill Siebler, retired LBCC teacher and administrator, will present an illustrated overview of the Contemporary Glass movement that began in the 1960s. He will cover the technical and artistic aspects of the movement, which has profoundly affected art, architecture, design, and style. A collector for more than 30 years, Bill will display a number of pieces and discuss the formats, styles, and techniques of the leading glass artists.
Host: Art Bervin
Writing as Partners
Tuesday, April 28, 9:30
Sandy and Peter Jensen, published poets and writing instructors at LBCC, talk about their writing life together. They will offer an interactive presentation, alternating reading of short poems and prose pieces.
Host: Art Bervin
Art, Artists, Galleries, and Frames
Tuesday, May 5, 9:30
Bill Shumway--painter, printmaker, restorer, framer, curator, and Pegasus Gallery owner, earned an MA in painting at UMass in Amherst and operated galleries in Amherst, Northampton, and Martha's Vineyard before moving from his native Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. Though rooted in abstract expressionism, Bill will cover all the perspectives and styles he employs, providing a rare overview in how art functions.
Host: Glenn Theodore
Finding Your Artistic Eye
or How a Bulldozer Driver Can Influence Your Photography
Tuesday, May 12, 9:30
Terry Tallis's lifelong love of art and photography have led to award-winning entries in juried shows. He will challenge participants to experiment with the camera and to discover the creative “eye” that produces great photographs.
Host: Glenn Theodore
Music in the Twentieth Century: New Directions III- Nationalism
Tuesday, May 19, 9:30
David Eiseman, OSU Professor Emeritus of Music. The turn into the 1900s through the following few decades denoted change and new directions of all sorts: expressionism, primitivism, nationalism, along with other isms. Culminating this year's survey of new directions, we will consider what constitutes nationalism in music, the means and intent in evoking nationhood, with reference to examples from the works of composer Hungarian Bela Bartok, and Americans Charles Ives and Aaron Copland.
Host: Brookes Spencer
Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon: Successful in Poetry and Marriage
Tuesday, May 26, 9:30
Some have not. But Donald Hall (U. S. Poet Laureate in 2004) and Jane Kenyon (New Hampshire's Poet Laureate until her death in 1995 and translator of Russian poetry) succeeded. Marjorie Goss, retired English professor from Cottey College in Missouri, will explore how they managed to be poetically productive and happily married, with illustrative poems of each writer.
Host: Art Bervin
Public Art: A Guided Art Stroll along Madison Avenue
Tuesday, June 2, 9:30
Hester Coucke, an art historian and a former art docent at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, is currently the curator at The Corvallis Arts Center. She will lead us on a tour to discover the hidden public art treasures in downtown Corvallis. Meet at the Corvallis Arts Center, 700 SW Madison. c
Host: Erica Schoell