Tag Archives: Center for the Arts

Unofficial Orientation Series 2016: Wesleyan’s Music Scene

This is an update of my post from last year. Q wrote about this in 2013 and 2014. Some things have changed, but the scene here is still ‘unique, zealous, and sweaty.’

Delilah Seligman '16, Chris Sailor '16, Daniel Pope '16, and Harim Jung '16 performing at Middle House as Evil Deceiver, 5/4/2016

Delilah Seligman ’16, Chris Sailor ’16, Daniel Pope ’16, and Harim Jung ’16 performing at Middle House as Evil Deceiver, 5/4/2016

This is part of our 2016 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

The more I talk to college kids at other schools, the more I realize how much the music scene at Wesleyan sets itself apart. Though we have them, we are not confined to house parties and bars — there’s music nearly every day, all week. Often, there’s so much music that you can’t possibly go to it all, but you try anyway.

Once things get going, there are 3-5 concerts every weekend, sometimes even multiple shows a night. I’ve seen more bands than I have the energy to count with more variety than I can quantify simply  by wandering around at Wesleyan on a given weekend. The folks who book shows at Wesleyan work very hard to bring in all kinds of groups, well-known or just emerging, from punk to dance, and usually put one or two solid student bands on the list.

Many student bands have gone on to greater things, like Overcoats, Heems (Himanshu Suri ’07) of Das Racist (Suri and Victor Vasquez ’06), Novelty Daughter, Amanda Palmer ’98the Rooks, Henry Hall ’14 of Grand Cousin (RIP), AND MORE.

Seriously. It’s very special. What’s even better is that 95% of this stuff is totally free.

Do you have questions like “How do I find out what’s going on?” or “How do I find people to play music with?” or “Where can I go to concerts?”, this is the post for you.

The Man Behind the CFA (Emails): An Interview with Andy Chatfield

“I just turned 39 over the weekend and I’m already planning my 40th birthday party. Next year I’m going to cover all of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack with my friends.”

andy 1

special thanks to Isaac Butler-Brown ’17 for this special foto of us

A couple years ago, we started noticing swaths of event submissions from someone named Andy Chatfield. After we’d open our staff inbox and see 20 or 30 unread emails all from this one guy, he became sort of a running joke at staff meetings, known to us only as that dude who submits arts stuff several months in advance, often in large batches, and frequently not including event pictures.

Turns out, he’s the Press and Marketing Director for the CFA, and since we talked about him so much at staff meetings, we thought we should meet him. kitab and I sat down with him last week at Red and Black to talk about his jazz and 80s cover bands, his kid who likes dinosaurs, and the inner workings of the Center for the Arts.

Would Andy rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? Does he think Wesleyan is really that weird? Read the full interview after the jump:

“This is It!” The Complete Piano Works of Neely Bruce, Part VIII

Neely BruceFrom the CFA:

John Spencer Camp Professor of Music Neely Bruce presents the eighth in a series of CD-length recitals of his piano music, featuring “Homage to Seb” (based on a fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach) and “Eight Friendly Fugues”—for Mary Klaaren, Kay Briggs, Peter Standaart, Morgan Powell, and others; plus fugues by two of Mr. Bruce’s friends, Gerald Shapiro and David Borden. Baritone Christopher Grundy will sing Mr. Bruce’s “Whitman Fragments,” a bird’s-eye view of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

Date: Sunday, February 28
Time: 3-4 PM
Place: Crowell Concert Hall

Music at the Russell House: Stan Scott

cfa stan scottFrom the CFA:

Private lessons teacher Stan Scott will be joined by a group of extraordinary musicians in a program of driving reels, lilting jigs, stately waltzes, and old and new songs of emigrants, soldiers, mystics, lovers, and laborers. Mr. Scott’s songs and instrumental compositions for guitar, mandolin, and banjo draw on rhythmic and melodic ideas he has gathered in four decades of travel and study in Europe, America, and South Asia.

Date: Sunday, February 21
Time: 3-4 PM
Place: Russell House

Richard S. Field: “Cutting Remarks II”

From the CFA:

Richard S. Field is Curator Emeritus of Prints and Drawings at the Yale University Art Gallery, and was Curator of the Davison Art Center in the 1970s. While at Wesleyan University, the exhibitions he created included those of prints by Armand Seguin, and the prints and paintings of Jasper Johns.

This talk will attempt to describe the intricacies and problems of the cutting techniques used in the 15th and 16th centuries. The snow date for this lecture is Thursday, February 18, 2016.

Date: Wednesday, February 17
Time: 5-6 PM
Place: CFA Hall

Kota Yamazai/Fluid hug-hug: “OQ”

kota yamazaki fluid hug-hug cfaFrom the CFA and the College of East Asian Studies:

Dancer/choreographer Kota Yamazaki founded Fluid hug-hug when he moved to New York in 2002. At Wesleyan, his “stellar cast” (The New York Times) will perform the New England premiere of “OQ” (2015), a stunning work inspired by renga, a collaboratively-written form of linked poetry, and named after the phonetic sound for the Japanese word “palace.” Five performers search for ways to communicate with one another playfully and freely on a mirage-like stage set, created by the architect collective SO-IL.

Date: Friday, February 12
Time: 8-10 PM
Place: CFA Theater
Cost: $25 general public; $23 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students, $6 Wesleyan students

More info here.

A Talk by Guillermo Calderon

Guillermo CalderonFrom the CFA:

Playwright and director Guillermo Calderon is one of Chile’s most successful contemporary theater artists, known for his deeply political work that unflinchingly confronts the dictatorship’s effects on the country and its people with astonishing formal precision, linguistic grace, and intellectual depth.

His works include “Neva,” “Diciembre,” and “Escuela;” and have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, and internationally in over 20 countries. An Outside the Box Theater Series event presented by the Theater Department and the Center for the Arts. Co-sponsored by Wesleyan’s Writing Certificate.

Date: Tuesday, February 9
Time: 7-8 PM
Place: Memorial Chapel

Gaida in Concert

cfa gaidaFrom the CFA:

Syrian vocalist and songwriter Gaida is one of the most “effusive and charming” (Timeout New York) singers on the world-music scene, delivering “entrancing and luscious” performances. With a voice described as “beyond perfect” by The New Yorker, for her Connecticut debut at Wesleyan she will be joined by the outstanding ensemble of pianist George Dulin, Zafer Tawil on oud (stringed instrument), percussionist Tony Devivo, and bassist Jennifer Vincent to perform original fusion compositions and traditional Syrian songs.

“[Gaida’s] plaintive, gauzy vocals effectively disarmed listeners, she improvised incantatory lines as an accomplished jazz vocalist might have done.” — Chicago Tribune

Date: Friday, February 5
Time: 8-9:30 PM
Place: Crowell Concert Hall
Cost: $19 general public; $17 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

David Davis: “Sax in the City”

cfa charmagne trippFrom the CFA:

R&B/jazz saxophonist and producer David Davis will be joined by Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Charmagne Tripp, who wrote and sang the hook for Eminem’s single “We Made You.” Mr. David and Ms. Tripp collaborated to create the album “This Christmas.” The duo will be performing new original songs from Mr. Davis’ upcoming release, as well as some of their favorite covers.

Date: Sunday, January 31
Time: 3-4:30 PM
Place: Russell House (350 High Street)