JCFA ~ a community of artists. A community of artists preparing for careers as performers, professionals, scholars and teachers. With programs in arts administration, dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts, the Jordan College of Fine Arts combines nationally recognized conservatory-style programs with a curriculum rich in the liberal arts. As a cultural leader in Indianapolis, the Jordan College of Fine Arts collaborates with professional programs and companies both nationally and internationally.
Mahler Project – Germanic Creative Expression
Butler University and numerous Indianapolis arts and community organizations will present a series of events throughout 2009-2010 to honor the 150th anniversary of the birth of composer Gustav Mahler, commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and celebrate Germanic creative expression.
The University, the American Pianists Association, the German Consulate, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis Opera, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Max Kade Center at IUPUI and WFYI-FM (90.1) all will participate in presenting performances, lectures, broadcasts and other programs, many of which will be free and open to the public.
The full range of commemorative events is still being planned for the 2009-2010 school year but it is scheduled to include the following. Questions? Call 317/940-9231.
September 10, 2009
Leadership through the Art Forum: Alessandra Comini
"The Two Gustavs: Mahler, Klimt, and Vienna's Golden Decade, 1897-1907."
7:30pm EDRH Free
Awarded the Grand Decoration of Honor by the Republic of Austria for contributions to Germanic culture, and voted "outstanding professor" nineteen times by her students at Columbia and Southern Methodist Universities, Dr. Alessandra Comini has published eight books in the fields of art history and musical iconography, concentrating on 19th and 20th century Vienna. Her publications range from Egon Schiele's Portraits (nominated for a National Book Award) to The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking. This evening's lecture focuses on the hurdles and prickly reception imperial Vienna afforded the works of its leading composer and painter and explores the interlocking history of both men with the aspiring composer Alma Schindler Mahler.
September 12, 2009
Rehearsal: Laban Movement Choir
TBA Football field on hold
To participate, contact Cynthia Pratt at 317/940-9345. Ms. Pratt hopes that 1,000 people will participate.
September 19, 2009
Laban Movement Choir Performance
Time TBA Butler Bowl (football field) Free
In addition to the analysis of movement and his dance experimentations, Rudolf Laban was also a proponent of dance for the masses. Toward this end, Laban developed the art of "movement choir", wherein large numbers of people move together in some choreographed manner, but that can include personal expression. Cynthia Pratt, coordinator of this event, hopes that 1,000 people will participate.
September 20, 2009
School of Music Ensemble Showcase Concert
3:00pm CMH Free
The Butler University opens the 2009-2010 season in the School of Music Showcase concert with the spectacular Festive Overture by Dmitri Shostakovich. Our first contribution to the yearlong Mahler Project is a performance of Mahler’s only work for Wind Ensemble, Um Mitternacht. One of the Rückert songs we feature Butler faculty member Nancy Davis Booth as soprano soloist. We close our portion of the program with the unique Country Band March, by the American icon, Charles Ives.
September 24, 2009
Poetry Reading by Norbert Krapf, Indiana Poet Laureate
Sept. 24. Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: Robertson Hall Johnson Room.
Admission: Free.
Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf will recite his German roots poems and his American English translations of early Rainer Maria Rilke poems to the accompaniment of original and traditional music, including jazz, by his pianist collaborator Monika Herzig and Friends. Claudia Grossmann, like Monika, a native of Southern Germany, will read the Rilke poems in the original German.
September 30, 2009
Indianapolis Opera Dress Rehearsal for student groups only: Ariadne auf Naxos
7:00pm CMH $7; must pre-register
Music by Richard Strauss; Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Performed in German with English supertitles. With singers Angela Brown, Jane Dutton, Rachele Gilmore and Arnold Rawls accompanied by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Caraher.
October 2 and 4, 2009
Indianapolis Opera presents Ariadne auf Naxos
10/2 at 8pm, 10/4 at 2pm CMH $
Music by Richard Strauss; Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Performed in German with English supertitles. With singers Angela Brown, Jane Dutton, Rachele Gilmore and Arnold Rawls accompanied by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Caraher. Part of the Mahler Project: Germanic Creative Expression. Pre-performance lecture begins at 7:15 / 1:15 in the Krannert Room.
October 3 and 23, 2009
Film at the IMA: The Rape of Europa
7:00pm Tobias Theatre at the IMA $9 Public/ $5 IMA Member/ Free Butler Students with ID.
Purchase tickets at www.imamuseum.org, by calling 317-955-2339 or at the door. Regardless of cost, a ticket is required for admission to the films.
The Rape of Europa (2006, dir. Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham, 117 min, NR)
October 7-11, 2009
Butler Theater presents Bertolt Brecht's "The Caucausian Chalk Circle" ("Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis")
8 p.m. Oct. 7-10, 2 p.m. Oct. 10-11. Location: Lilly Hall Studio Theatre.
Directed by Owen Schaub.
October 11, 2009
Butler Symphony Orchestra plays Mahler Symphony No. 4
3:00pm CMH Free
The BSO will be joined by Butler soprano, Nancy Davis Booth, for a performance of one of Mahler’s most celebrated and subtle works, the Fourth Symphony. The last movement musically depicts a child’s vision of heaven, yet with dark overtones. Rounding out the program will be the beautiful Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony, the composer’s only composition for strings and harp.
October 29, 2009
Film at the IMA: Nosferatu
7:00pm Tobias Theatre at the IMA $9 Public/ $5 IMA Member/ Free Butler Students with ID.
Purchase tickets at www.imamuseum.org, by calling 317-955-2339 or at the door. Regardless of cost, a ticket is required for admission to the films.
Nosferatu Eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horrors) [1922]. (94 mins, NR)
Directed by Friedrich William Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, this film is loosely based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Murnau introduces the element of the supernatural to film and contributes to the notion of film as an art form- not pure entertainment. Although Nosferatu is not usually classified as "Expressionist", it does contain elements of the genre. The film demonstrates a clear emphasis on stylization as opposed to photographic imitation of reality.
November 5, 2009
Film at the IMA: Metropolis
7:00pm Tobias Theatre at the IMA $9 Public/ $5 IMA Member/ Free Butler Students with ID.
Purchase tickets at www.imamuseum.org, by calling 317-955-2339 or at the door. Regardless of cost, a ticket is required for admission to the films.
Metropolis (1927, 153 mins, NR) Directed by Fritz Lang and written by his wife, Thea Von Harbou.
Metropolis is a science fiction film set in the fictional dystopia and grapples with mechanization and the ongoing conflict between workers and capitalists. The film was produced near Potsdam in the Babelsberg Studios by Universum Film A.G. (UFA). It was released in 1927 during a stable period of the Weimar Republic. Metropolis was a true commercial release, complete with a full-blown marketing campaign. It was the most expensive film to date, costing approximately 7 million Reichsmark to make. Metropolis features special effects and set designs that still impress modern audiences with their visual impact. Although not a German Expressionist film per se, it contains some expressionist elements. The architecture as portrayed in the film appears based on contemporary Modernism and Art Deco. Art Deco had not reached mass production in Europe as yet and was considered an emblem of the bourgeois class, and similarly associated with the ruling class in the film.
November 8, 2009
Butler Symphony Orchestra plays Mahler Symphony No. 2
3:00pm CMH Free
With the Butler Chorale, University Choir and Nancy Davis Booth, soprano. magnificent Second Symphony, the Resurrection, a musical tribute to the rebirth of hope. The Butler Chorale, University Choir, and Nancy Davis Booth will collaborate. The first movement represents a funeral and asks, “Is there life after death?” The second movement is a remembrance of happy times, whereas the third presents a nihilistic view of life. The short fourth movement, a contralto solo, prepares the way for the immense final movement, with its message of fervent hope for everlasting, transcendent renewal. To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Nov 9), people who were present at the event will discuss the experience in a pre-concert Panel Discussion.
November 9, 2009
20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
November 19, 2009
Piano Recital
7:30pm EDRH Free
February 12-13, 2010
Butler Ballet presents the Annual Midwinter Festival
8:00pm CMH $ TBA
Butler Ballet’s annual mixed repertoire concert will include Dark Elegies, choreographed by Antony Tudor. Dark Elegies was first produced by the Ballet Rambert at the Duchess Theatre, London, February 19, 1937. Choreography by Antony Tudor and set to Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (“Songs of Childhood Death”), the first presentation of the work in the U.S. was by Ballet Theatre at the Center Theatre, New York, January 24, 1940. The setting is somber, rough, jagged, with lowering clouds over water and mountains and trees that seem to have been lashed relentlessly by the wind. As the music laments over a disaster that has befallen a group of villagers, the expression and gesture of the dancers follows Mahler’s songs as the audience perceives the unfolding of desperate grief to mourning, to resignation and, finally, a tentative hope. Along with Gala Performance, Dark Elegies is widely recognized as one of Tudor’s seminal works that had a great influence on all contemporary ballet.
February 24-28, 2010
Butler Theatre presents “The Cherry Orchard”
2/24-27 at 8pm, 2/27-28 at 2pm LH168 TBA
Written by Anton Chekhov, translation by Paul Schmidt. Directed by Elaina Artemiev.
April 11, 2010
Butler Wind Ensemble Concert
3:00pm CMH Free
We close our season with our contribution to the Mahler Project. In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day we present a concert of Entartete Musik, the so-called Decadent Music that was banned by the Nazis. In a huge exposition of propaganda, the Nazis vilified any music written by Jews, Blacks, Slavs, and anything that smacked of jazz or jazz influences. Under the brutal regime of the Third Reich, composers of Jewish heritage had to flee for their lives, and in some cases died at the hands of the Nazis. We present a program of music by these composers, including A Little Threepenny Music by Kurt Weill; the Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Ensemble by Ervin Schulhoff; La Creation du Monde by Darius Milhaud; Intrada by Berthold Goldschmidt; and the Symphony in Bb by Paul Hindemith. Join us in this special tribute to the triumph of art over evil.
July 7, 2010
150th Anniversary of the Birth of Gustav Mahler
July 7, 1860 - May 18, 1911
DATE TBA
Lecture: “German Immigrants and their Contributions to Cultural Life in Indianapolis”
Time TBA Location TBA Free
During the second half of the 19th century, many immigrants from German speaking countries arrived in Indianapolis. Families such as the Vonneguts, Liebers and Frenzels contributed much to the economic growth of the city. Furthermore, the German immigrants had a significant and lasting impact on the cultural landscape and civic life of Indianapolis. Claudia Grossmann, IUPUI Max Kade German-American Center and German Program Director, will be highlighting some of the contributions of German immigrants on the city prior to WWI.