Additional Elements-Related Events
BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO
September 20—December 6 @ University Museum of Contemporary Art
The artist Courtney M. Leonard, a citizen of the Shinnecock Nation of Long Island, explores marine biology, Indigenous food sovereignty, migration, and human environmental impact through visual logbooks that investigate the multiple definitions of the term "breach.”
Her exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art is the result of a multi-year artist residency hosted by the UMCA and the UMass College of Natural Sciences. Leonard researched within UMass’ expansive Natural History Collections and selected objects to inspire her newest body of work. BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO, includes paintings, sculptures, and video based on the life and kinship ties of Staccato, a North Atlantic Right Whale killed by a ship strike in 1999, whose remains are housed in the UMass collections.
Earth & Its Elements
November 16—3:00PM @ First Church Amherst
This concert by the UMass Chamber Choir and University Chorale, led by Lindsay Pope and Stephen Paparo, will feature several works about the elements: Water (Henk Badings's La nuit en mer; Francis Poulenc's O magnum mysterium), Earth (Qanuri, a Georgian work song from the Imereti region; Pavel Chesnokov's Spaseniye sodelal); Air (Rosephayne Powell's To Sit and Dream; Mia Makaroff's Butterfly; Amy Beach's Peace I Leave With You); Fire (Andrea Ramsey's Stomp on the Fire; Reena Esmail's Tuttarana).
Rachel Portman's Tipping Points (Mary Lyon Concert)
December 7—8:00PM @ Abbey Memorial Chapel
The Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra, led by Tianhui Ng, celebrates the works and work of women in its annual Mary Lyon Concert, named after founder and first president of the College. In addition to musical works by Maria Theresia von Paradis and Louise Farrenc, the MHSO will perform Rachel Portman's Tipping Points (2022), a work for violin, text (with poems by Nick Drake), and orchestra, which seeks "to acknowledge and map out those painful, difficult things, but above all to recall and celebrate the powers and beauties of the natural world and the life-giving wonders of the elements. The spacious beauty of the music holds the darker matter of the poems in its harmonic world. The two have a necessary, symbiotic relationship. Ultimately, we hope the whole work embodies and inspires a sense of wonder, creative hope and imaginative agency in the listener." For Portman, "The elements are in constant metamorphosis, an endless flux of dynamic change. Nothing is certain. Let’s remember, ‘tipping points’ can also be transformative in positive, creative ways. Change is the perpetual driver of life."
Art + Music: Voice of the Whale
September 19—7:00PM @ Bezanson Recital Hall
Faculty chamber music concert curated by Ayano Kataoka and Steven Beck, inspired by the exhibition "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato" by Courtney M. Leonard at the University Museum of Contemporary Art.
Featuring Ayano Kataoka, percussion/marimba; Steven Beck, piano; Cobus du Toit, flute; Edward Arron, cello.
Music by George Crumb: Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), Toru Takemitsu: Towards the Sea, Russell Wharton: Phylogenesis, Angelica Negron: Espacios, objetos, sonidos y tiempo and Luigi Nono: ...sofferte onde serene...