JCA Signature Series

DCONSTRUCTION ARTS

Love Is… Iteration #101, Saturday, September 10, 2022, 7:30 pm, Lilly Hall Studio Theatre

The concept of Love Is… is the original creation of DConstruction Arts that through movement (aerial and dance), video projection, and sound design explores the various ways that people define and experience love.

Love Is… Iteration #101 is a two-person experimental aerial, dance and theatrical performance that examines love from the perspective of artists. Tavi Stutz and Jane Rose McKeever interpret postmodern choreography on five different traditional and non-traditional aerial apparatus to a soundscape of artist voices gathered from 2016 to present. The juxtaposition of movement, voice, and projected video – featuring performers from around the world – weaves together an experience that invites the audience to discover for themselves how the elements support each other. Throughout the evening, Stutz and Rose McKeever continually break the 4th wall, appearing on stage as the audience enters, inviting the audience to contribute a definition of love that will later be read as a part of the evening, and directly addressing the audience through monologue and movement. Stutz and Rose McKeever ground their work through their own personal experiences. That, mixed up with the tapestry of artists’ voices and video, allows the audience to contemplate how they support each other and even discover themselves and their ideals in the various expressions of love.

DConstruction Arts was founded in 2014 by Tavi Stutz and Jane Rose McKeever. Prior to and in addition to his work with DConstruction Arts, Tavi Stutz has performed with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Berzerk, and Circus Vargas. In addition to this he has directed and choreographed productions in and around the greater Los Angeles area including the Loft Ensemble Theater and Sacred Fools. Jane Rose McKeever has worked in audio and visual design for theater, film, and television, including work with Walt Disney Imagineering and the HBO show The Nevers. She is also a tenured professor and the Head of Production in the Department of Television, Film, and Media Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.

Drawing upon their individual professional backgrounds, Stutz and Rose McKeever have conceptualized and produced many multimedia-infused productions, including the multiple award-winning two-person show Definition of Man (Ovation nominated for Best Stunt Choreography, LA Fringe winner for Best in Dance/Choreography), collaboration on Dreya Weber’s one-woman show Witch Piece/Hexen, and many different productions of Love Is… between 2016 and 2022, most recently completing a collaboration with Donald Byrd and Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle WA.

CRISTINA PATO, gaita (Galician bagpipes)

Public Lecture-Recital: “The Inbetweener: An Artist’s Journey to Cultural Sustainability,” Thursday, September 15, 2022, 7:30 pm, Schrott

“The Inbetweener” is a journey navigating across the musical worlds I learned through my instruments and a journey through the different ways of understanding the role of culture in society. As a professional bagpiper (Galician bagpipes), and as a classical pianist (collaborative piano), I learned how to appreciate the beauty and importance of difference by living in between popular and classical music. As a teacher, I focused my practice in creating collaborative bridges between the sciences and the humanities through the arts. And as an immigrant, I’m constantly learning what it means to belong to a particular community. This lecture explores the questions that arise from that unique space, in between, inviting us to reflect about the role of artists in society.

Musician, writer, educator and producer, Cristina Pato has been hailed as “a virtuosic burst of energy” by The New York Times. Her professional career is focused on exploring the role of the arts in society through teaching and producing.

Cristina has served as artist-in-residence at New York University (NYU), Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition, she collaborated for over fifteen years with The Silkroad Project, the non-profit organization founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Since 2017, Cristina writes a weekly column titled “The Art of Restlessness” for Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia for which she was awarded the XVII Afundación Journalism Prize: Fernández del Riego.

Cristina divides her time between New York City and Galicia and shares her life with photographer Xan Padrón.

HEATHER SHIREY, art historian

Public Lecture: “Street Art and the Art of Protest,” Thursday, October 6, 2022, 7:30 pm, EDRH

Heather Shirey, PhD, is a Professor of Art History at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her teaching and research focus on race and identity, migrations and diasporas, and monuments, memorials, and street art in relation to public space and communities. Together with the Urban Art Mapping research team, she created and maintains the George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art Database, the Covid-19 Street Art Database, and other street art archives. These activist archives are driven by our understanding that it is crucial to document and analyze street art not only because of its ephemerality, but also because it captures the complexity of the experiences shaping the world today. Areas of inquiry include a study of creating, curating, and archiving as a form of activism and healing, and monuments and street art as modes of critical engagement in shared space. Dr. Shirey has published research on monuments in Brazil (African Arts, 2009) and in Great Britain (Open Cultural Studies, 2019). The Urban Art Mapping team’s latest research on street art is available in Urban Creativity Scientific Journal (2020), Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape (edited by Tijen Tunali, May 2021), NUART (May 2021), and the Journal of Folklore Research (forthcoming, 2023).

BARDIN-NISKALA DUO, cello and piano

“Celebrating Identity Through Music,” Tuesday, October 18, 2022, 7:30 pm, EDRH

The Bardin-Niskala Duo (cello and piano) uses contemporary music to explore identity, fight racism, promote cultural awareness, and celebrate humanity during this time of division and racial violence. Exploring themes common across all humanity – including innocence, identity, homeland, loss, mourning, hope, and healing – we commission ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American) composers to write pieces incorporating the folksongs and children’s songs of the composer’s (and our) particular cultures. These commissioned works are performed alongside additional works by ALAANA composers that explore a sense of identity, as well as more-traditional works.

Described as “stunning” by the New York Times, cellist An-Lin Bardin currently freelances and teaches both music and math in the greater NYC area. As the cellist of the Vinca Quartet, she performed extensively throughout Europe and the US, including Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Aspen, and Vilar Performing Arts Center. Bardin’s performances have been broadcast on Deutschlandradio and WNYC. She is a laureate of several international quartet competitions, including the Paolo Borciani Quartet Competitions in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and the Fischoff, the Plowman, the Yellow Springs, Chesapeake, and the International Chamber Music Ensemble Competitions in the United States. A recipient of a DAAD fellowship which enabled her to work with the Vogler String Quartet in Stuttgart, Germany, Bardin also studied extensively with Gunter Pichler and Valentin Erben of the Alban Berg Quartet, Walter Levine, Heime Mueller, and the Artemis String Quartet under the auspices of the ProQuartet program in Paris, France, and with the Emerson String Quartet through the Carnegie Hall Chamber Music Workshops. She was a graduate assistant to the Takacs Quartet at the University of Colorado at Boulder for two years as part of the graduate quartet residency program. A strong proponent of music education, Bardin was a founding member of Music Haven, an intensive mentorship program serving youth from low-income neighborhoods in New Haven, Connecticut. She also founded two ongoing music educational programs in rural Washington State through the Gorgeous Sounds Residency Program. Raised in California by two nuclear physicists, Bardin began her cello studies at the age of eight with Irene Sharp. She holds a B.S. from Yale University in Geology and Geophysics, and an M.M. from the Yale School of

Music, where she studied with Aldo Parisot and was a member of the Grammy-Award-winning Yale Cellos.

A soloist and chamber musician who has appeared in Europe, North America, Russia, Israel, Thailand, and Japan, pianist Naomi Niskala’s performances have been broadcast on BBC Radio, Deutschlandradio, RTV Germany, and NPR’s Performance Today. Niskala performs regularly with Spectrum Concerts Berlin, one of Germany’s leading chamber organizations, and has also recorded two discs with them. Recent performance highlights include the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Series at Davies Symphony Hall, soloist with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic of Russia, and solo and chamber performances with Spectrum Concerts Berlinin the Philharmonie Kammermusiksaal of Berlin, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, in Thailand, and in Kosovo. Her release of the only complete recordings of American composer Robert Helps’s solo piano works on two discs

with Albany Records in 2007 was met with high acclaim, and she has also recorded piano chamber works of Robert Helps and Ursula Mamlok with Spectrum Concerts Berlin for two discs on Naxos, as well as the world premiere of Mamlok’s 2015 quintet “Breezes” for Bridge Records. Niskala is featured in the 2013 German rbb television documentary entitled “ Sehnsucht Musik” (Searching for Music), documenting the work of four members of Spectrum Concerts Berlin towards improving the harsh conditions for young musicians at a music school located in Prizren, Kosovo. Born to Japanese/Finnish-American parents, she began studying piano at the age of three, raised in Rochester, New York and then later in Tokyo, Japan. Niskala holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, Stony Brook University, and the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Claude Frank, Gilbert Kalish, and Patricia Zander. She also worked with pianists Leon Fleisher, Menahem Pressler, Peter Serkin, and Maria Louisa Faini, and violinists Louis Krasner and Eugene Lehner. Niskala is currently Associate Professor of Music at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, where she teaches piano and theory, and leads a summer chamber music exchange program to Japan.

BERNARDO REY RENGIFO, Christel DeHaan Visiting International Theatre Artist

Bernardo Rey is a theatre director from Colombia, specializing in social theatre, actor training, stage design, and in the construction and the use of masks. He studied Theatre at the National School of Dramatic Art in Bogota; participated at the Third Session of ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology), directed by Eugenio Barba; and he worked for three years with actors of the Laboratory Theatre and Theatre of Sources directed by Jerzy Grotowski.

He is a founding member of the Labyrinthe Théâtre directed by Ryzard Cieslak, Paris, 1987.

For 30 years, he has devoted his work to the research and application of visual arts, set design, and multimedia in the performing arts, creating and realizing installations, sceneries, masks, theatrical objects, and machines, sculptures, and posters for different groups around the world.

He has taught in different institutions like La Mama Symposium for Directors of Ellen Steward, Spoleto, Italyl International School of Biodrama, Villa de Leiva; Institut International de la Marionnette (together with Donato Sartori), Charleville; Werkstatt of Dusseldorf, Germany; Academia Silvio D’Amico, Rome; Escuela de Formacion de Actores Teatro Libre, Bogota; Fort Lewis College, Colorado, USA; and Butler University, Indianapolis, and he continuously gives workshops around Europe, USA, Africa, and South America.

In 1992,  he founded, with Nube Sandoval, the Teatro CENIT (Centre of Theatre Research), creating their own performances, as well as Theatre as Bridge methodology, creating programs for social rehabilitation using art as an instrument for pacification and the resolution of conflicts in zones of war, public schools, jails, and centres of assistance for children of the street.

For ten years, he directed, with Nube Sandoval, the theatre project of the Italian Council for Refugees Victims of Torture in Rome, winning the Fourth Edition of the International Biennale of Theatre and Psychiatry of Padua.

In 2016 he received the Ellen Stewart International Award, NY, and in 2017, the “Catarsi-Teatri della Diversitá” Award given by the National Association of Italian Critics. In 2021-22, he codirected the project DEVELACIONES, Un Canto a los Cuatro Vientos, for the Commission of Truth of Colombia.

He has his centre of work in the jungle of the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

JEANNE DUNNING, photographer

Public Lecture: “Recent Work,” Monday, November 14, 2022, 7:30 pm, EDRH

Jeanne Dunning’s photographic, sculptural, and video work explores our relationship to our own physicality, looking at the strange and unfamiliar in the body, gender, ideas about normalcy, and, most recently, death. Her work has been shown extensively throughout the United States and Europe since the mid-1980s. It has been included in major group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, the Sydney Biennale, and the Venice Biennale. She has had one-person shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Konstmuseet in Malmö, Sweden, The Wattis Institute in San Francisco, and The Berkeley Art Museum, as well as at numerous commercial and not-for-profit galleries throughout the world. She is currently a professor in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

THE BIG MUDDY DANCE COMPANY

Public Performance: Friday, February 3, 2023, 7:30 pm, Schrott Center for the Arts

JOEL FULLER, installation and animation artist

Public Lecture: “Journey into Afrofuturism,” Thursday, February 23, 2023, 7:30 pm, EDRH

Joel Fuller is an artist with a background in digital illustration, digital media, and virtual reality. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art + Design from Butler University and an M.F.A in Digital Art from Indiana University Bloomington. He currently is a Digital Art Instructor at the University of Alabama.

​Fuller was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, a city known for its history of degradation and dehumanization of black people during the Civil Rights Movement. He is the nephew of Audrey Faye Hendricks, the youngest child arrested in the Civil Rights Movement at eight years old. His family not only participated in the movement but risked their bodies, economic security, and lives fighting for equal rights. His aunt is no longer here, but he controls the memory of her, and she told him to never let our struggle fade into history.

WILLIAM CHAPMAN NYAHO, piano

Public Recital: Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 7:30 pm, EDRH

Dr. William Chapman Nyaho earned his degrees from St. Peter’s College, Oxford University, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Texas at Austin. He also studied at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, Switzerland. He currently serves on the piano faculty at Pacific Lutheran University as well as on the summer faculty of Interlochen Center for the Arts. He also has his private piano studio in Seattle, Washington and teaches students of all levels and ages. His students have been prizewinners at competitions and have been well-placed in universities and colleges.

Chapman Nyaho’s professional experience includes being a North Carolina Visiting Artist and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he held the Heymann Endowed Professorship and was the recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award. He has served as Visiting Professor of Piano at Colby College, Maine; Artist-in-Residence at Willamette University, Oregon; and piano professor at Adamant Music School, Vermont.

He is an active solo recitalist, duo pianist and chamber musician, giving recitals and concerts in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean and in cities across the United States where he advocates music by composers of African descent. He actively serves as a regular guest clinician at colleges and universities around the United States. He is also an adjudicator for several national and international piano competitions. He has served on national committees for the College Music Society, Music Teachers’ National Association, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

As an advocate for music of Africa and its diaspora, Chapman Nyaho’s publications include a five-volume anthology Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora published by Oxford University Press. His recordings include Aaron Copland: Music for Two Pianos; Senku: Piano Music by Composers of African Descent; and Asa: Piano Music by Composers of African Descent. His soon-to-be-released new CD will include recordings of piano music from volumes 1 and 2 of his anthology.

JANE CHU, former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts

Public Lecture: “The Arts – A Common Language That Is Right on Time,” Thursday, March 2, 2023, 7:30 pm, EDRH

The arts provide a common language to honor our multiple ethnicities. As the daughter of Chinese immigrants, Jane Chu will examine ways people were engaged in the arts in the US then versus now, and how the arts play an important role in the cross-cultural understanding of diversity in the lives of others as well as her own.

Jane Chu combines her academic research and professional practice in the arts, philanthropy, and business administration. In 2014, she was appointed to serve as the eleventh chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, completing her term in June 2018. A practicing visual artist, Chu is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

During Chu’s four-year tenure at the National Endowment for the Arts, Chu traveled to 50 US states and four countries, 200 communities, and made more than 400 site visits to meet with artists and arts leaders, government and civic leaders, philanthropists, and the general public. The NEA awarded $430 million over the four years to support the arts in 16,000 communities covering 50 states, US jurisdictions, and in every Congressional District. In 2016, the NEA was ranked number one in the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government for small agencies.

Prior to coming to the National Endowment for the Arts, Chu served as the founding president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, overseeing a $413 million campaign to construct and open the performing arts center in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

Jane Chu straddles multiple cultures, having been born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and raised in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She received bachelor’s degrees in piano performance and music education from Ouachita Baptist University, as well as a master’s degree in piano pedagogy from Southern Methodist University. Additionally, Chu holds an associate degree in visual arts from Nebraska Wesleyan University, an MBA from Rockhurst University, a Ph.D. in philanthropic studies from Indiana University, and six honorary doctorate degrees.

Chu lives in New York. Her artwork can be found at https://janechuart.com

CANDY CHANG, artist

Public Lecture: “Making Space for Creativity and Innovation,” Tuesday, April 4, 2023, 7:30 pm, Shelton Auditorium

Through the activation of public spaces around the world, Taiwanese-American artist Candy Chang creates work that envisions the future of communal ritual in an increasingly alienating world. Her practice includes participatory public art installations of anonymous, handwritten reflections, as well as reproductions of these reflections through video and mixed media. She is interested in the future of ritual in public life and merging traditional Asian arts with the modern psyche. She is caretaker of over one million handwritten anxieties, hopes, pains, and moments of grace in the early 21st century.

She is most known for her 2011 participatory public artwork Before I Die, which reimagines how the walls of our cities can help us grapple with mortality and meaning as a community today. Over 5,000 Before I Die walls have been created by communities in over 75 counties, and The Atlantic called it “one of the most creative community projects ever.” In the early 2000s, she co-founded a record label, which spurred her to wheatpaste artwork of their music around downtown New York. While studying architecture and urban planning, she used the tactics of street art to create participatory art with communities around the world to reflect on the state of our neighborhoods. After struggling with grief and depression, she used this medium to reflect on the state of our psyches. She has created a monument of over 50,000 anxieties and hopes, secular spaces for confessions, and electrified shrines on emotional barriers. Her ritual on loss was a 2021 New York Times Critic’s Pick. She has worked with organizations including Art Production Fund, the Rubin Museum of Art, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and the Annenberg Foundation. She often collaborates with James A. Reeves and their work can be found at Ritual Fields.

She is a TED Senior Fellow, Urban Innovation Fellow, and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She is a recipient of the Tony Goldman Visionary Artist Award, EPIC Impact Society Artist Award, and was named a “Live Your Best Life” Local Hero by Oprah Magazine, as well as one of the Top 100 Leaders in Public Interest Design. She is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, Hemera Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has lived in New Orleans, Helsinki, and New York, and is currently a 2022 Innovator-in-Residence at the American School in London.

CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT, jazz vocalist

In concert with the Butler University Jazz Ensemble, Thursday, April 6, 2023, 7:30 pm, Schrott

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings.” Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for three consecutive albums, The Window, Dreams and Daggers, and For One to Love, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album WomanChild. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Nonesuch Records released Ghost Song in March 2022.

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager. Salvant received a bachelor’s degree in French law from the Université Pierre-Mendes France in Grenoble while also studying baroque music and jazz at the Darius Milhaud Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) and Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.

Salvant makes large-scale textile drawings. Her visual art can now be found at Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY.

JCA SIGNATURE MASTER CLASS AND LECTURE SERIES

JAMES GRYMES, author of VIOLINS of HOPE: Violins of the Holocaust—Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour – Saturday, August 27, 2022, 7:30 pm, Schrott In collaboration with the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis

JOHN HARBISON, composer – Thursday, September 15, 5:30 pm, EDRH In collaboration with the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis

EAST COAST CHAMBER ORCHESTRA – Friday, September 23, 2022

• Side-by-side of Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings: 10:00-11:30 am, Schrott
• Individual string master classes: 11:45 am-1:00 pm, various locations

   In collaboration with the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR – Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 2:30-4:00 pm, Schrott

BARTHOLD KUIJKEN, flute – Tuesday, November 1, 7:30 pm, EDRH

JULIA BULLOCK, soprano – Thursday, January 12, 4:30-6:30 pm, EDRH

BELLA HRISTOVA, violin – Friday, January 27, 12:00-1:00 pm

HÅKAN HARDENBERGER, trumpet – Thursday, March 16, 6:30-8:30 pm, EDRH

LEAH NANAKO WINKLER, playwright – Friday, March 31, 2023, 10:00 am-12:30 pm, LH 328

DEMARRE MCGILL, flute – Thursday, April 13, 7:00-9:00 pm, EDRH

Hello Gold Mountain, A requiem for lost possibilities of the Jewish community of Shanghai

with composer Wu Fei performing on guzheng, Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz performing on oud, and the chatterbird ensemble

Hello Gold Mountain is a requiem for lost possibilities of the Jewish community of Shanghai.

The piece is inspired by stories of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from Europe during World War II. From 1933 until the end of the war, Shanghai was often the only port at which Jewish refugees fleeing Europe could disembark without a visa. In the early 1940s, more than 20,000 Jews lived in Shanghai and contributed to its cultural and civic life.

But the Jews could not stay. As China’s bloody civil war came to a close in 1949, most fled. Many emigrated to the US, often arriving at the port of San Francisco, or Old Gold Mountain.

What musical possibilities were lost because the times did not allow neighbors from these different cultures to grow old together, sharing songs and stories? Similarly, what artistic creations will be lost if Europe and the United States close the door to refugees and migrants from lands in chaos?

Public performance: Thursday, September 9, 7:30 pm, Schrott
Residency Activities TBA

Mikeal Burke directs We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Nambia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, written by Jackie Sibblies Drury

Mikael Burke is a Chicago-based director, deviser, and educator. A Princess Grace Award-winner in Theatre, Jeff Award-nominated director, and proud Butler Theatre grad (‘09), Mikael’s worked with Victory Gardens Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Jackalope Theatre Company, Windy City Playhouse, About Face Theatre, First Floor Theater, American Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, and The Story Theatre in Chicago, and regionally with Geva Theatre Center, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Asolo Repertory Theatre, and Phoenix Theatre. Mikael serves as Associate Artistic Director at About Face Theatre in Chicago, is Head of the Directing Concentration of the Summer High School Training Program of the Theatre School, and is an adjunct faculty member there as well as in the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Recent directing credits include we are continuous by Harrison David Rivers; Kill Move Paradise by James Ijames; The Agitators by Mat Smart; Sugar in Our Wounds by Donja R. Love; At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen by Terry Guest. mklburke.com

Jackie Sibblies Drury’s plays include Marys Seacole (OBIE Award), Fairview (2019 Pulitzer Prize), Really, Social Creatures, and We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915. The presenters of her plays include Young Vic, Lincoln Center Theatre, Soho Rep., Berkeley Rep, New York City Players & Abrons Arts Center, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Company One, and The Bush Theatre. Drury has developed her work at Sundance , Bellagio Center, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, Bushwick Starr, LARK, and MacDowell Colony, among others. She has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a Jerome Fellowship at The LARK, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, and a Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama. 

Public performances: Wednesday-Sunday, October 6-10, 2021, Lilly Hall Studio Theatre
Workshop for theatre students, faculty, and staff with Ms. Drury: Friday, October 10, 2021, 1:00-3:00 pm
Post-show Q and A with Ms. Drury: Friday, October 10, 2021

Abigail Smithson

Abigail Smithson is a multi-media artist who has exhibited work in the United States and internationally. She received her Bachelor of Studio Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University. Her art practice is rooted in the appreciation, translation, and act of archiving objects that record their surroundings. She challenges the traditional ideas of representation and works to create photographs as documents, in a both nuanced and abstract way. The game of basketball has been a longtime muse for her and she follows and believes firmly in the New Craft Artists in Action collective motto, which is Participation vs. Spectatorship when it comes to sports. Through her podcast Dear Adam Silver as well as her other work, she questions the current narrative around sports and art and how the two cultural entities overlap and live side by side. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Art at Lyon College, located in Batesville, AR.

Public lecture: Monday, October 25, 2021, 7:30 pm, EDRH: Breathe in an Alley-Oop
Workshops with art students TBD

Phil Chan

Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact. He is currently a ‘21/’22 Visiting Scholar at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, and the Manhattan School of Music’s ‘21/’22 Citizen Artist. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post. He was the founding General Manager of the Buck Hill Skytop Music Festival, and was the General Manager for Armitage Gone! Dance. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance. He serves on the International Council for the Parsons Dance Company, the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine, and was a 2020 New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellow. His next project, the “Ballet des Porcelaines,” will premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2021.

Public lecture: Monday, November 8, 2021, 7:30 pm, EDRH: The Multiracial Future of the Arts

Final Bow for Yellowface co-founder Phil Chan takes us through a history of orientalism in the Western performing arts, and explains why preserving a Eurocentric view of “exotic” people and places on our stages isn’t doing us any favors when serving a multiracial audience. How do we navigate conversations around race and tradition in art? How do we depict other cultures on stage without cultural appropriation? How do we become more inclusive and find new ways to innovate while upholding the traditions that are the foundation of our art forms?

The Cassatt Quartet and Lydia Artymiw, presented in partnership with Ensemble Music Society

The Cassatt String Quartet was formed in 1985 and was chosen the first quartet for Juilliard’s Young Artists Quartet Program. Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the Manhattan based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East, with appearances in London for the Sapphire Jubilee Celebration of Queen Elizabeth II, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Theater, the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Theatre des Champs – in Paris and Maeda Hall in Tokyo. The Quartet has been presented on major radio stations such as National Public Radio’s Performance Today, Boston’s WGBH, New York’s WQXR and WNYC, and on Canada’s CBC Radio and Radio France. The Cassatt has recorded for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik and Albany labels and is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Lydia Artymiw is Emerita Distinguished McKnight Professor of Piano at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where she taught from 1989- 2020. The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Prize, Philadelphia-born Lydia Artymiw has performed with over one hundred orchestras world-wide including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Thursday, November 11, 2021
School of Music Convocation, 1:00-1:50 pm, EDRH
Piano Master Class with Lydia Artymiw, 2:00-3:30 pm, EDRH
Composition Seminar with Victoria Bond, 5:30-6:30 pm, LH 145
Public performance on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, 7:30, Indiana History Center: 19th Amendment Centennial Plus One

Culture Clash

Culture Clash is a performance troupe that currently comprises writer-comedians Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Sigüenza. Their work is of a satirical nature.

Culture Clash was founded on May 5, 1984 at the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District, by the writers José Antonio Burciaga, Marga Gómez, Monica Palacios, Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Siguenza. The founding date is significant due to the importance of Cinco de Mayo to Mexican-Americans, the shared ethnicity of the majority of collaborators. Montoya and Sigüenza had both been involved in the Chicano art scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, Montoya being the son of Chicano poet, artist, and activist José Montoya, and Sigüenza having been involved in the art collective La Raza Graphics, which created works of graphic art to support campaigns of the Chicano Movement.

Culture Clash’s works range from comedic sketches to full-length plays and screenplays, all of which feature political satire and social satire. The troupe’s members have appeared separately and together in several films and received numerous awards, commissions and grants. In 1993 they filmed 30 episodes of a sketch comedy television series, also called Culture Clash. Several episodes were aired on Fox affiliates. In 2006 they premiered two new full-length plays, the comedy Zorro in Hell and “SF: The Mexican Bus Mission Tour with CC!” Their works have been collected in two volumes, Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy and Culture Clash in AmeriCCa: Four Plays. Their papers are housed at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN) Oviatt Library Special Collections and Archives

Public performance: Wednesday, January 12, 2022, 7:30 pm, Schrott
Residency Activities TBA

Dayton’s Contemporary Dance Company

Rooted in the African-American experience, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company is a culturally diverse contemporary dance company committed to reaching the broadest audience though exceptional performance and arts-integrated education. Dayton Contemporary Dance Company was founded in 1968 to create performance opportunities for dancers of color. Five decades later, the 10th largest modern contemporary dance company in the nation remains rooted in the African-American experience and committed to the development of diverse movement artists on the global stage.

A co-recipient of one of the dance world’s highest honors, the 2016 Bessie Award for Outstanding Revival, DCDC has been presented by American Dance Festival, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and supported by National Endowment for the Arts and New England Foundation for the Arts among others.

Public performance: Friday, February 4, 2022, 7:30 pm, Schrott
Residency Activities TBA

Julie Tourtillotte

Julie W. Tourtillotte is a Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana where she teaches drawing, fibers, and video art.  Julie received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and BFA from Saint Mary’s College and has exhibited her art work throughout the United States, including Stark Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, Kent State University Art Gallery, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and The National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.  She has received Indiana Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts grants in recognition of her work which incorporates natural dyes, handmade felt, shibori resist dyeing, screen printing, and embroidery. Julie and her family maintain 20 organic acres and an art studio adjacent to Potato Creek State Park in South Bend, Indiana.

Public lecture: Monday, February 28, 2022, 7:30 pm, EDRH: Growing Color: Natural Dyes and Sustainable Textiles
Workshops with art students TBD
Exhibition: March 1-3, 2022: Growing Color, with reception on Wednesday, March 2, 5:00-6:30 pm, JC Annex

Alash Ensemble

ALASH are masters of Tuvan throat singing (xöömei), a remarkable technique for singing multiple pitches at the same time. What distinguishes this gifted trio from earlier generations of Tuvan throat singers is the subtle infusion of modern influences into their traditional music. One can find complex harmonies, western instruments, and contemporary song forms in Alash’s music, but its overall sound and spirit remain decidedly Tuvan.

Trained in traditional Tuvan music since childhood, the Alash musicians studied at Kyzyl Arts College just as Tuva was beginning to open up to the West. They formed a traditional ensemble and won multiple awards for traditional throat singing in international xöömei competitions, both as an ensemble and as individuals. At the same time, they paid close attention to new trends coming out of the West. They have borrowed new ideas that mesh well with the sound and feel of traditional Tuvan music, but they have never sacrificed the integrity of their own heritage in an effort to make their music more hip.

Alash first toured the U.S. under the sponsorship of the Open World Leadership program of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since then they have returned many times, to the delight of American audiences. The Washington Post described their music as “utterly stunning,” quipping that after the performance “audience members picked their jaws up off the floor.”

Alash enjoys collaborating with musicians of all stripes. Since their early partnership with the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, they have joined forces with musicians across the spectrum—from country to classical to jazz to beatboxing. Alash appeared as guest artists on Béla Fleck & the Flecktones’ Grammy-winning holiday CD Jingle All the Way (2008). They joined Chicago’s innovative Fifth House Ensemble in a groundbreaking concert series called Sonic Meditations. Most recently, they were part of the “global jam band” which recorded the soundtrack for the videogame The Pathless.

Beyond performing, Alash has a passion for teaching and promoting understanding between cultures. Their tours often include workshops in which they introduce Tuvan music to students in primary, middle and high schools, colleges, universities, and music conservatories. Children as young as 8 and 9 have learned to throat-sing. As one student exclaimed, “Alash opened my eyes to a whole new world!”

Alash albums: Alash Live at the Enchanted Garden (2006), Alash (2007), Buura (2011), Achai (2015, re-released on Smithsonian Folkways in 2017), and Meni Mana (2020, digital only). The members of Alash are:

Bady-Dorzhu Ondar: vocals, igil, guitar. Kyzyl Arts College, East Siberia State Academy of Culture and Art. Best soloist, 2005 All-Russian Festival of traditional ensembles and orchestras. Best in Maxim Dakpai xöömei competition, 2006. People’s Xöömeizhi, 2007. Grand prize, International Xöömei Symposium, 2008.

Ayan-ool Sam: vocals, doshpuluur, igil, guitar. Republic School of the Arts, Kyzyl Arts College, Moscow State Pedagogical University. First prize, International Xöömei Symposium, 2008. People’s Xöömeizhi, 2015.

Ayan Shirizhik: vocals, kengirge, shyngyrash, shoor, murgu, xomus. Kyzyl Arts College, East Siberia State Academy of Culture and Art. Second prize, International Xöömei Symposium, 2008. Distinguished Artist of Tuva, 2009.

Sean Quirk: interpreter and manager. Studied music in Tuva on a Fulbright fellowship. Distinguished Artist of Tuva, 2008.

www.alashensemble.com

Public performance: Thursday, March 17, 7:30 pm, Schrott
Residency Activities:
Wednesday, March 16, 12:30-1:50 pm: Workshop with Butler choral students
Wednesday, March 16: time TBD: Meet with a class of arts administration students
Thursday, March 17, 1:00-1:50 pm: School of Music Convocation

LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier was born in 1982 in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Her artistic practice spans a range of media, including photography, video, performance, installation art and books, and centers on the nexus of social justice, cultural change, and commentary on the American experience. In various interconnected bodies of work, Frazier uses collaborative storytelling with the people who appear in her artwork to address topics of industrialism, Rust Belt revitalization, environmental justice, access to healthcare, access to clean water, Workers’ Rights, Human Rights, family, and communal history. This builds on her commitment to the legacy of 1930s social documentary work and 1960s and ’70s conceptual photography that address urgent social and political issues of everyday life.

Frazier’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions in the US and Europe, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Musée des Arts Contemporains, Grand-Hornu, Belgium; CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France; Carré d’Art – musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, France; The Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; The August Wilson Center, Pittsburgh; The Frost Art Museum, Miami; The Musée d’art Moderne, Luxembourg; and The Newcomb Museum at Tulane University, New Orleans.

In 2015, her first book about how she, her mother and grandmother survived environmental racism in historic steel mill town Braddock Pennsylvania, The Notion of Family (Aperture, 2014) received the International Center for Photography Infinity Award. In 2017 Frazier published And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise which expanded on her collaboration with a historic coalmining village in Borinage Belgium at Musée des Arts Contemporains, Grand-Hornu, Belgium. In 2020 Frazier received the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award for her eponymous book published by Mousse publishing and MUDAM Luxembourg, which expanded on her exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean and that same year Frazier published The Last Cruze, which expanded upon a 2019 exhibition at the Renaissance Society about her collaboration with autoworkers in historic labor union UAW Local 1112 in Lordstown, OH. That same year, Frazier was named the inaugural recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book prize for her book Flint Is Family In Three Acts about how working-class families survived the man-made water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Her work is held in numerous public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Brooklyn Museum; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles; Seattle Art Museum; Dallas Art Museum; Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; Nasher Museum of Art; Princeton Art Museum; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and many others.

Frazier is the recipient of many honors and awards including an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Edinboro University (2019); an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute (2017); fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s MacArthur Fellows Program (2015), TED Fellows (2015), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2014); and the Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize from the Seattle Art Museum (2013). In 2015, the Allegheny County Council, Pennsylvania, awarded Frazier a Proclamation thanking her for “examining race, class, gender and citizenship in our society and inspiring a vision for the future that offers inclusion, equity and justice to all.”

LaToya Ruby Frazier is an Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she currently lives and works. She is represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York City and Brussels Belgium, and Sant’Andrea de Scaphis in Rome.

Public lecture: Monday, March 21, 2022, 7:30 pm, Schrott
Workshop with art students: Monday, March 21, 2022, 2:30-4:30 pm, JC Annex

Ms. Zennetta S. Drew

Zenetta Drew joined Dallas Black Dance Theatre in 1987 and has seen the company develop from an annual operating budget of $175,000 to over $4.9 million. The company’s yearly services have grown from 30 to over 600 with national and international venues, and audience growth has increased from 20,000 to 150,000 annually. To date, the company has performed in 31 states, 15 countries and on 5 continents and at two Cultural Olympiads.

Prior to joining DBDT, Ms. Drew’s professional background included 11 years of accounting and management experience at ARCO Oil and Gas Co. During this time, she held ten positions of increasing management responsibility. Most notable were her assignments managing offshore oil platform projects in the Gulf of Mexico and as Oil Revenue accounting manager where she was responsible for 50% of corporate revenue.

Ms. Drew has previously served on more than 40 arts organization boards/advisory boards/committees that include Americans for the Arts and SMU/Data Arts and previously served as Board Treasurer for the Cultural Data Project and Treasurer for the Dallas Development Fund. Ms. Drew is a graduate of The National Arts Strategies-Chief Executive Program and is currently Vice-Chair of the Dallas Arts District, a Board member with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and held a position of Adjunct Professor for three years in SMU’s M.A./M.B.A. Arts Management Program where she taught Strategic Planning in the Arts.

A 2016 Distinguished Alumna from Texas A&M University–Commerce, she also received the 2016 Influential Leaders Award from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. She was awarded the 2016 Obelisk Award for Outstanding Leadership Arts Alumnus from the Business Council for the Arts and the 2017 International Association of Blacks in Dance-Excellence in Arts Management Award, and the 2018 Dallas Historical Society Arts Leadership Award. Ms. Drew was also named to DCEO Dallas500 as “One of the Most Powerful Businesses Leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth.” Most recently, she has received Dance/USA’s 2021 Ernie Award and was a nominee for The William Dawson Award – Association of Performing Arts Professionals.

Ms. Drew was the commencement speaker for TAMU-Commerce in August 2014. She has guest lectured on fundraising, accounting, ethics and arts leadership at SMU, TAMU-Commerce, and Syracuse University. Ms. Drew also held a position of Adjunct Professor in SMU’s M.A./M.B.A. Arts Management Program for three years.

Ms. Drew is a graduate of Leadership Arts (1989), Leadership Dallas (1991), Leadership Texas (2010), and Leadership International (2013). She holds a B.B.A. in Accounting from Texas A&M University-Commerce, a Management Certificate in Non-Profit Leadership from Brookhaven College. Ms. Drew is a graduate from the National Arts Strategies Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School (2016) and the University of Michigan-Ross School of Business (2017).

Public lecture: Thursday, March 24, 2022, 7:30 pm, EDRH: DEI:Change! Change! Change!
Classes with arts administration students TBD

John Clayton, jazz bass, with the Butler University Jazz Ensemble

John Clayton is a natural born multitasker. The multiple roles in which he excels — composer, arranger, conductor, producer, educator, and yes, extraordinary bassist — garner him a number of challenging assignments and commissions. With a Grammy on his shelf and nine additional nominations, artists such as Diana Krall, Paul McCartney, Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah, and Charles Aznavour vie for a spot on his crowded calendar.

He began his bass career in elementary school playing in strings class, junior orchestra, high school jazz band, orchestra, and soul/R&B groups. In 1969, at the age of 16, he enrolled in bassist Ray Brown’s jazz class at UCLA, beginning a close relationship that lasted more than three decades. After graduating from Indiana University’s School of Music with a degree in bass performance in 1975, he toured with the Monty Alexander Trio (1975-77), the Count Basie Orchestra (1977-79), and settled in as principal bassist with the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in Amsterdam, Netherlands (1980-85). He was also a bass instructor at The Royal Conservatory, The Hague, Holland from 1980-83.

In 1985 he returned to California, co-founded the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra in 1986, rekindled The Clayton Brothers Quintet, and taught part-time bass at Cal State Long Beach, UCLA and USC. In 1988 he joined the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he taught until 2009. Now, in addition to individual clinics, workshops, and private students as schedule permits, John also directs the educational components associated with Centrum, The Port Townsend Jazz Festival, and Vail Jazz Workshop.

Career highlights include arranging the ‘Star Spangled Banner” for Whitney Houston’s performance at Super Bowl 1990 (the recording went platinum), playing bass on Paul McCartney’s CD “Kisses On The Bottom,” arranging and playing bass with Yo-Yo Ma and Friends on “Songs of Joy and Peace,” and arranging playing and conducting the  CD “Charles Aznavour With the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra,” and numerous recordings with Diana Krall, the Clayton Brothers, the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz, Orchestra, Milt Jackson, Monty Alexander and many others.

In 2013 John launched a new album series titled The John Clayton Parlor Series – a collection of rare duo collaborations with musical friends, released through ArtistShare.  Those recordings include a release with his son Gerald which has already been released, and yet to be released recordings with Mulgrew Miller and Hank Jones.

Website: http://www.johnclaytonjazz.com

Public performance: Thursday, April 7, 7:30 pm, Schrott
Residency Activities:
 Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Time and location TBA – bass master class
5:00-8:00 pm – Rehearsal with the Butler University Jazz Ensemble, LH 112
Thursday, April 7, 2022
10:30 am-noon – Jazz Improvisation master class, room TBA
1:00-1:50 pm – School of Music Convocation, LH 112
7:30 pm – Performance with the Butler University Jazz Ensemble, Schrott Center for the Arts

SUPAMAN, Native American dancer and hip-hop artist – September 18, 2020

MUSEUMS ARE NOT NEUTRAL, panel discussion – September 30, 2020

MONUMENT(AL) CRISIS, panel discussion – October 12, 2020

NICOLE BREWER: The Movement for Anti-Racist Practices and Its Impact on Theatre and The TETRA – October 16, 2020

DONALD BYRD, Spectrum Dance Theater: Social Justice and Just Causes – November 20, 2020

BLACK VIOLIN – January 2021

LADAMA – February 19, 2021

KIRSTEN LEENAARS, visual artist: (Re)Housing the American Dream and the Politics of Imagination – February 24, 2021

RACHEL CHAVKIN: Upstage: Fusing Avant-Garde and Commercial Theater – March 4, 2021

RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE Dance Company: ‘Mercy’ – March 15, 2021

MELISSA ALDANA, jazz saxophone – April 9, 2021

INNOSANTO NAGARA, graphic artist: Innosanto Nagara: Will Design for Change – April 12, 2021

DOROTHY MOSS, art historian – September 18-19, 2019

ALEXIS BLACK, theatre artist – September 20-21, 2019 and October 11-12, 2019

DELANNA STUDI, theatre artist – October 21, 2019

SANDEEP DAS, tabla virtuoso – October 22-24, 2019

CANADIAN BRASS – November 18-19, 2019

LOUISVILLE BALLET – January 29-31, 2020

MICHAEL ABELS, composer, and PATRICK DE BANA, choreographer – February 5-9, 2020

FRANCES JACOBUS-PARKER, art historian – February 26-27, 2020

EAST COAST CHAMBER ORCHESTRA – September 12-14, 2018

ERIC LUBRICK, visual artist – November 6, 2018

ROOMFUL OF TEETH – October 18-20, 2018

ZACHARY DEPUE, VIOLIN, and AUSTIN HUNTINGTON, CELLO – October 21, 2018

MARCO LULY, Christel DeHaan VITA theatre artist – Fall Semester

A PRESIDENTIAL SALUTE TO LEONARD BERNSTEIN, with soloists from “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band – November 15, 2018

LAURA STENNETT, visual artist – January 23, 2019

TOD MACHOVER, composer – January 24-25, 2019

PERIDANCE CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY – February 6-8, 2019

SITI COMPANY – March 25-27, 2019

STEFON HARRIS, jazz vibraphone – April 3-4, 2019

KEVIN JAMES WILSON, visual artist– October 9, 2017

SANDEEP DAS, tabla virtuoso – October 25-26, 2017

KING’S SINGERS – November 8, 2017

GIORDANO DANCE CHICAGO – November 2-4, 2017

TIM MILLER, theatre artist – November 14-15, 2017

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY – February 8-9, 2018

SAMUEL VAZQUEZ, visual artist – March 20, 2018

BENNY GOLSON, jazz legend – April 4-5, 2018