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(04/10/06 4:41am)
He has released two albums, starred in three major Broadway productions, appeared in the movies "SLC Punk!" and "School of Rock" and played the role of Roger Davis in the hit movie "Rent." But tonight could prove his biggest challenge yet.\nAdam Pascal will perform an intimate solo concert for the Bloomington audience at 9 p.m. tonight at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. He has been doing a college and local venue tour, and this will be his only performance in Indiana. \nIn a telephone interview last week, Pascal explained why he has chose to do a college tour. \n"The college audience is very much my sort of demographic, in terms of the age of people who would be interested in coming to see me, and people who know me from 'Rent,' or anything else I might have done," he said. "It also seems like the right sort of venue situation for the type of music that I am doing right now."\nPascal will be performing with a pianist and he will be singing songs from "Rent," "Aida" -- a musical produced by Elton John and Tim Rice -- and from his two albums, "Civilian" and "Model Prisoner." \n"What I am doing right now, quite frankly, is the most challenging thing I have done. You are the most exposed in a situation like this," Pascal said. "When you perform in a film or a theater project, you have the luxury of hiding behind someone else's material."\nHe explained that if the material is awful, he does the best job that he can possibly do and takes comfort in the fact that he didn't write it.\n"You don't have that when you are performing your own music," he said. "There is nothing to hide behind. You are baring your soul within your music."\nPascal said he considers himself as much an actor as a singer, so it is fitting that he is best known for his role in "Rent." He was a member of the original Broadway cast in 1991. He played the role of Roger, the washed-out rock star who wants to write one more good song before he dies of AIDS. He falls in love with his neighbor Mimi, whom he finds out also has AIDS. \nThe movie, produced by Chris Columbus, was released in November. It spent six weeks in the box office top 60 and made almost $30 million. \nWhen asked about 'Rent's' success, Pascal said, "Aside from being great material, I think that the timing of that show was perfect. Everything that was going on in the country at the time was ripe for that type of material and that show." \nPascal said he never could have envisioned his current success 10 years ago. \n"I had no idea what was about to come or what sort of career I was about to embark on," he said.\nHe said that music has always remained a constant in his projects. He said he has not modeled his career on any one person but he said, "I look at someone like Will Smith who's been able to keep great success in both music and film and uses one to help the other. It is inspiring to see that it can be done. It motivates me."\nPascal denied rumors that he is starring in a new movie, "NFL Dad," but he did say that he is working on a new album with his piano player. He is moving to Los Angeles with his family to wait for the right project on Broadway to come. He also said that he had a hidden talent for cartoon voices and that he would like to be in an animated feature.\nTickets to his concert are $7 for students and $10 for general admission. Allison Diercks, the art director for Union Board -- the group sponsoring the event -- said that she chose to bring Pascal to Bloomington because she loves "Rent." \n"I wanted to bring someone who would attract a niche audience, but a faithful audience," Diercks said.\nShe explained that the Union Board worked really hard to keep the ticket prices low. \n"It was as close to a free concert as we could get with our budget," she said.\nPascal said that he is very excited about the concert. \n"I think that most of your inhibitions lie within yourself," he said. "I think that the best way to (lose them) is to get up there and be yourself"
(04/07/06 10:17pm)
James E. Mumford has brought joy and hope to his students at IU for the past 23 years, but Sunday will be their last performance with him. The African American Choral Ensemble will celebrate its 30th anniversary and Mumford's retirement with a black-tie gala beginning at 6 p.m. at the Bloomington Convention Center on Saturday night. \n"Your singing is healing. It gives people joy. It gives people hope. Remember this weekend that every song that we sing touches somebody," Mumford said to his ensemble at its rehearsal on Tuesday.\nHe lifted his hands, pursed his lips and looked around at all of the diverse faces in the room. They varied in color and in age, but when his hands fell in the first beat, every face lit up with their love for the music and Mumford.\nDoctoral student Carmund White has been Mumford's assistant for the past three years. Though he has never actually sang in Mumford's choir, he still considers himself one of his students. White said that he has learned about music and life. He told about a concert in the auditorium last year. Mumford's pants fell down, mid-performance, but his costume was designed in a way that no one in the audience could tell. Mumford continued conducting, and White said that the choir "sat there in horror." \nMumford came to IU at the suggestion of his close friend, and worked as an associate instructor under Portia Maultsby. In the same year that Maultsby had to step down from her position as the director of Soul Revue, the African American Arts Institute also lost its choral ensemble director. Mumford reluctantly said "yes" to both positions for one year. \n"I must have been out of my mind," he said, "I made it, but just barely."\nThe institute eventually found a director for the Soul Revue, so Mumford was asked to work solely with the Choral Ensemble. \nMumford said that the group always felt more like a family than a class. He describes himself as a very student-oriented professor, and said that his grandmother taught him that observation is often better than education. \n"It is amazing how little things open the avenue between students and teachers," he said.\nRachel Becker, one of Mumford's former students, now teaches high school music in Lebanon, Ind. \n"Doc was never too busy for any student, no matter how tired he was, or how much stuff he had to do," Becker said. \nShe told a story about how he once came to a rehearsal of a play she was directing, to help with the music. \n"In just a half hour, he really connected with my students," she said.\nMumford attended a convention in 1990 and was asked to demonstrate his method of "transformative teaching." He was given the challenge of teaching a group of professors without musical backgrounds how to sing gospel music in three days. His highly successful experiment was made into the movie, "What's a Teacher For?" which is now used in teacher conferences across the country.\nMumford is inspired by many different sources.\nHe told White that when he recently went to see "You Got Served," he was the only one in the theater. He was so taken in by the music and dancing in the movie, he got up and starting dancing in the aisles himself.\nIn his retirement, Mumford plans on staying in Bloomington to compose an opera and music for the choir. He also wants to complete his series of five cantatas about his "she-roes," African-American women who he admires. He also wants to pursue his other hobbies of cooking and cultivating bonsai trees.\n"I will miss my students," Mumford, a teacher of 52 years, said, "but I look forward to this new beginning in my life." \nFollowing the retirement gala, the choir will perform at 8 p.m. at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. A brunch will be held 10 a.m. Sunday morning at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center.\nTickets to the events can be purchased in Suite 310 of the NMBCC or at the doors. Tickets to the gala are $35, tickets to the concert are $10 for students and tickets to the brunch are $20.
(04/06/06 4:18am)
A urinal with Marcel Duchamp's signature painted on the side started it all. He wanted to challenge the assumption that art required an artist, so in 1917, Duchamp submitted the otherwise untouched bathroom fixture for exhibition and revolutionized art. \nHis ideology has been adopted and practiced by today's "modern" artists. From Jackson Pollack's random paint splatterings to Ad Reinhardt's "Black Painting," which is just that, artists seem to be removing themselves from their art more and more. The artwork of today seems to require less talent and more drug usage. Quite frankly, it sucks.\nIt would be perfectly understandable for the art lover to fret about the future of art with its recent downward spiral towards the dumpster, but I am not worried. By examining history and the transitions between each artistic period, you can see that new art is always the antithesis of the old. \nAfter the French Revolution of 1789, the "classical principles of reason and clarity were challenged by the new Romantic enthusiasm for the primacy of feeling," according to "The Illustrated History of Art."\nFrancisco de Goya was a forerunner in the Romantic Movement. Instead of the idyllic, happy and heroic subjects of the Greek, Roman and medieval societies, Goya focused his art on madness, war and death. He painted the gorier and less popular scenes of mythology, like one of Saturn devouring his own children. \nSir John Everett Millais rebelled against the same era as Goya, but he did so by painting tender scenes of every day life. He received criticism for his 1850 work, "Christ in the House of His Parents," which portrayed a young Jesus in a messy carpenter's shop. This new style came to be called Realism.\nThe Impressionists, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and others, disliked the Realists' posed scenes. The invention of the camera in the 1860s inspired a fascination with capturing moments as they were seen. They often set up easels outdoors and made multiple studies of the same subject. In fact, Monet submitted 20 different views of the same cathedral with different lighting for exhibition.\nThe Impressionists painted the beautiful as well as the ugly. Their goal was to provide snapshots of life at the time. Many of their paintings were scenes of industry. The Symbolists were discouraged by this dirty and corrupt world they found themselves in, and reverted back to mystic and fanciful subjects. Gustave Moreau painted scenes of classical mythology and unicorns.\nIn a style reminiscent of Goya's, Edvard Munch painted such works as, "The Scream" and "Self-Portrait in Hell." He was disgusted by Symbolism and in a notebook entry dated 1890 wrote, "no longer should you paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. These must be human beings who breathe and feel and love and suffer." But Munch's passion has been sucked out of "modern" art. The artist is no longer even a part of the creation.\nThe art that our great-great grandchildren will dream up will have to be breathtakingly beautiful to oppose the trash that the past few generations have created. I look forward to the next revolution.
(03/30/06 6:10am)
In a small rehearsal room in the Musical Arts Center Tuesday night, a group of seven strangely-clad people met to practice their arias and dance steps for their upcoming performance. They wore a mixture of street clothes, dance shoes and bits of fancy petticoats and headdresses. The elaborate costumes, lilting melodies and fluid motions are all parts of baroque period culture.\nThis Sunday, thanks to a grant from IU's New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities program, the Early Music Institute will be sponsoring a performance featuring the IU Baroque \nOrchestra and the New York \nBaroque Dance Company. The production will be at 8 p.m. at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater and admission is free.\nThe first half of the program will showcase the New York Baroque Dance Company with two dance numbers, and the second half will feature several IU students in the baroque opera "Pygmalion." The IU Baroque Orchestra will provide the music for the entire show, said Catherine Turocy, co-founder and artistic director of the \nNYBDC.\nIt will be the culmination of a two-week Bloomington visit for the NYBDC. During their time here, Turocy and the other dancers held workshops and gave lectures about the period and its performing arts.\n"It was a very interesting time," Turocy said. "It was the time of the American and Haitian revolutions, a time of great change. It was the birth of Western theatre as we know it today. \n"I like being able to introduce this period to young artists. It is so removed from our current culture that it is a shock."\nIU students said they learned a lot from Turocy and the other NYBD performers and look forward to performing with the group.\n"I'm really excited," said graduate student Angelique Zuluaga, who is portraying "Amour," the opera's personification of love. "This is the first time that I have really had costumes and dancers and guidance from Catherine and her group. They have so much experience, and we get more and more from her every day."\nTurocy said she also gained valuable insight from working with students. \n"Every time I introduce the style to the students, there is something that I learn about the material, because they are so fresh at looking at, they remind me again of how shocking it really is," she said. "It is shockingly beautiful."\nShe said that the company was very excited to be in Bloomington because IU has one of the best early music programs in the United States. \n"A lot of the musicians that we have been working with over the years have come from this department, so it is fun to go to the source of it," she said.\nMichael McCraw, the director of the Early Music Institute said he was very happy to have the NYBDC here and said the show would most likely be sold out, so those interested should reserve their tickets now. The performance will be free, but reservations for seats can be made by calling 323-3020 from noon to 5 p.m.\n"You don't get to see these things very often," Zuluaga said. "This is a musical opportunity that you might never get again"
(03/30/06 6:09am)
They have to be requested from the librarians at the Fine Arts Library. You can only look at two at a time and only in their reading room. Their pages are full of sexually explicit and implicit paintings, sketches and photographs that range from the highly amusing to the intensely arousing. No, I'm not talking about Hustler, Penthouse or Playboy. The pages I perused earlier this week belonged to the books of IU's erotic art collection. \nSo what is the difference between our modern concept of pornography and "erotic art?" People have always been fascinated by sex, but why?\nI was absolutely shocked by the sheer amount and diversity of sexual art. It spans millennia and oceans. Nigel Cawthorne's book, "Secrets of Love: The Erotic Arts through the Ages" said, "Artists and painters have struggled to depict the human sex experience. For in sex we are most truly human -- at once both animal and god-like."\nWhat fascinated me the most, however, was the propensity for culture-specific fetishes. \nThe Indians are best known for the Kama Sutra, a picture book of intricate sexual positions. Flexibility was most likely a desirable trait. \nThe ancient Greeks and Romans, from the looks of it, lived up to their reputations as wild and crazy partiers. Several vases and frescoes found in Pompeii feature mad orgies. \nThe English, known for their insufferable priggishness, have little to add to the erotic art world. The only painting that I came across that was attributed to the English was of several soldiers, fully clothed, spanking each other. \nThe ancient Chinese valued the well-endowed. Men were shown with larger-than-life phalluses. In fact, one screen painting actually shows a comparison contest between several of these "gifted" men. \nThe French, however, take the cake for the most nympho-maniacal culture that I encountered. From misty-eyed, plump young girls lounging on divans to transvestites to examples of bestiality and the first examples of inter-racial copulation; it is no wonder why Paris is known as the city of love.\nI was amazed at how every medium for expression, every genre of art and every world culture had something to contribute to this erotica. I wondered what our culture and our world will contribute, and I came to the conclusion that our modern concept of pornography is what will one day become antiquated. Our great-great grandchildren will one day giggle about what makes us blush. \nWhat is the difference between a naked woman in oil paint versus a naked woman on glossy paper or the television screen? Nothing. The sexual content is just as potent, only the medium varies.\nPeople are often offended by what they consider to be "pornography." Some of whom, have no problem viewing "good art" that depicts nudes. Because there is a difference between "naked" and "nude."\nI am not suggesting that these people rush out to buy this month's issue of Playboy for its artistic value, but as Norman Shapiro, a "pornographic artist" who spoke at IU's Kinsey Institute in 2001, said, "Around me, people differentiate between 'porn' and 'erotica' one being the less respectable, acceptable than the other ... to me, what I do is pornographic. Is it for that not art? I don't think so. 'Porn' is my genre -- what I call my access to making art."\nArt mirrors the society in which it is created.
(03/23/06 5:35am)
Greece had them first, but Britain is screaming, "finders, keepers!" It's like two children bickering over their favorite toys. There are a lot of tears and hurt feelings, but the solution is really quite simple. \nThe ownership of the Elgin Marbles has been debated for almost 200 years. \nThe Elgin Marbles is a collection of statues and pieces of the frieze, the panel that once surrounded the top of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Most of the surviving pieces are divided between the museums in Athens and Britain, with others spread throughout eight of Europe's greatest art museums. Athens wants them all for its own museum, which is being constructed with the hope that it will be completed in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics.\nI was taken aback by what I perceived as their stinginess until I spoke to Dru McGill, a graduate student in the anthropology department. He is on a track called "Archaeology in Social Context" within the department. He described it as "living people's interaction with archaeology."\nHe explained that when it comes to the contested ownership of ancient artifacts, there are two opposing viewpoints. Relativists believe the artifacts should remain in the countries in which they were excavated. Universalists believe the artifacts should be dispersed to museums throughout the world to be of greater benefit to all of humanity. Like so many other arguments, the middle road always seems to be the best solution.\nThe Greeks want their statues back because they belonged to their ancestors and they are a representation of their current culture and values. \n"After the Greek war of independence, Greek national identity started becoming more and more founded on the ruins and on the national pride of an archaeological past, this wonderful civilization right where they grew up ... in their own backyard," McGill said. "People can identify with them much more in Greece."\nLord Elgin collected the sculptures between 1801 and 1805. He was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, to which Athens belonged. Though his methods of acquisition inspire debate in themselves, the British Museum legally purchased the sculptures from him in 1816. \n"Just because the Greeks were incapable of protecting them, didn't give British the right to take them," McGill said. "By keeping the marbles, the message that they are sending is that 'we value them more and they are more important here and you don't deserve to have them.' That is not a good message to be sending from country to country."\nThe British position on this debate can be found at www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk. \nThey state that they can better present the artifacts because they can juxtapose them with their influences and contributions and say they feel the Greeks will only concentrate on the local history of the sculptures. \nMcGill pointed out the shortcomings of many art museums, including the British Museum that houses the sculptures. \n"If museums are truly concerned about people seeing these objects and learning from them, then they would do a much better job of telling the story of artifacts and trying to learn everything there is about them," he said. "The Greeks can better tell the story because (the marbles) are a part of their culture. The easiest way to solve a problem of this nature is just to take turns."\n"Traveling exhibits are a great option," McGill said. "The fact that museums only display a fraction of their collection is a real problem. What they should do is open up their collections for smaller museums to be able to have things on loan." \nMcGill made an example of the Egyptian government, whose King Tut exhibit is coming to the United States again very soon. \n"It is a way for them to make money, but also a way to showcase what their nation has and what they are proud of."\nMcGill pointed out what we all learn in kindergarten.\n"I don't think that the British government should hoard ownership and the Greek government shouldn't hoard ownership," he said. "Everyone should share"
(03/20/06 9:21pm)
Andres Serrano mixed blood, urine and a crucifix in a vat and concocted a controversy. In 1987, he photographed his creation, called it "Piss Christ" and was given a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. At a Senate meeting in 1989, Alfonse M. D'Amato, R-N.Y., and Jesse Helms R-N.D., expressed their outrage. \n"This so-called piece of art is a deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity," D'Amato said in a congressional report.\nI sat down for a chat with Anthony Fargo, one of three communications law professors at IU to discuss this case and obscenity law as it pertains to visual arts today. Fargo has been writing about the First Amendment for the past nine years. \n"The way the law has been enforced, you can almost always find a redeeming social, artistic or literary value, particularly in fine art," Fargo said.\nThe current law, born out of the Supreme Court ruling of Miller v. California in 1973, asks whether the "average person applying contemporary standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest." \nFargo explained that the law is meant to be used as a shield and not as a sword. \n"It restricts what the government can do to you, but it doesn't make the government do anything for you," he said.\nAnd this is where the senators got pissed about "Piss Christ." According to its Web site, the National Endowment for the Arts' vision is to create "a nation in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported and available to all." It does so by accepting government funding that comes from federal tax money. \n"This is not a question of free speech. This is a question of abuse of taxpayers' money ... This is an outrage, and our people's tax dollars should not support this trash," D'Amato said.\nHelms took a less eloquent approach, but still made his point. \n"I do not know Mr. Andres Serrano, and I hope I never meet him. Because he is not an artist; he is a jerk," he said. "That is all right for him to be a jerk, but let him be a jerk on his own time and with his own resources. I also resent the National Endowment for the Arts spending the taxpayers' money to honor this guy."\nSerrano might have had good reasons for his creation, and if he didn't, then it was his prerogative as an artist. However, the debate could have been completely avoided if the government stayed away from the arts in general. Let the government function solely as a shield. \nThe National Endowment for the Arts should be dissolved. By supporting the arts and setting its own parameters, the government is creating problems. Leave financial backing to private persons and institutions. Requiring people to pay for art works invites their opinions on the works themselves.\n"There is a difference between something being obscene and being tasteless," Fargo said. "As far as law is concerned, tasteless is protected, unless it crosses that boundary. The debates over what is or is not obscene are usually whether or not it is in good taste, and taste is in the eye of the beholder."\nJust don't make the beholder pay for it.
(03/03/06 4:22am)
A spotlight shot down from the ceiling to the back of the IU Musical Arts Center and the entire audience turned. Figaro, the self-confident and self-loving Barber of Seville, strutted down the aisle distributing fliers and proclaiming his fortune in a booming baritone voice. He literally sang his own praises as he told of his wealth and assured the crowd that he was the most loved citizen of the town.\nThis egotistical façade contrasted sharply with the true character of Jason Plourde, a fourth-year graduate student, who just moments before had been questioning his own sanity. \n"I would stand out in the lobby every night asking myself why I'm doing this," Plourde said. "Figaro was the highest (vocal) role I have done in a while, and I was panicking that I would miss that 'A' in the aria. But then I get out there and I just forget the nerves. It is the adrenaline rush that makes it so intoxicating. It is better than any drug I could ever imagine taking." \nMusic and drama have always been a huge part of his life. He has been singing since he was in a kindergarten choir. He acted with his community theater program at home in Maine and originally wanted to go to college to become a pianist. \n"I had progressed so fast that I had never learned my scales, which is kind of required for applying for a piano degree," Plourde said one afternoon between his multiple performances and auditions. "My piano teacher at the time said that I had a great voice. So I took a few lessons and went to the University of Southern Maine."\nHis plan was to audition for the vocal program, learn his scales and then transition into the piano program. \n"I got there and started really singing," he said. "I took some serious lessons and I forgot about piano."\nAt this point in his career, Plourde was still uninterested in opera. He wanted to sing in musical theater or a jazz choir. \nHis sight-singing instructor at the University of Southern Maine was the course master of the Portland Opera Repertory Theater, a summer festival in Maine, and she urged him to audition. \nPlourde needed to work on his degree and earn some money, and he didn't want to go home for the summer, so he agreed. \nTheir first production was La Traviata.\n"It was literally love at first sound," he said. "Between them and the opera that my school did every four years, I really came to love it and really throw myself into it."\nHe came to IU for his graduate study because of the music school's reputation, the number of performances the school puts on each year, which is more than most professional companies, and for Tim Noble, his voice instructor. \n"He's a pleasure to work with and he has worked very, very hard over the last couple of years and he has made an enormous amount of progress," Noble said.\nBesides performing in the IU operas, Plourde keeps busy by practicing, attending classes and teaching his own vocal students. He explained that teaching is a singer's retirement plan. \n"I'm not going to be able to sing forever," he said. "It is nice too, because when you get to a certain age you want to be able to pass the torch to the next generation." \nPlourde's ultimate goal is to sing for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.\n"A lot of singers try to say that they don't care about the Met," he said. "I can't say that. Even though there is a lot of hype behind it, it really is the place that if you make it there, you've really made it."\nOn Feb. 26, Plourde had an audition for the young artist's program at the Metropolitan Opera. If he is accepted, he will go on to be an apprentice at the house, and take the next step in his career. \nHe explained his love for opera: "Opera is a lot like a movie, except it's alive. Anything can happen. There is something more tangible about it, something more real"
(02/14/06 4:23am)
Eight Jacobs School of Music students will perform for the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage Conservatory Project tonight at 6 p.m.. The event will be held in the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center in Washington, D.C. \nPianist Ayako Toba, baritone Christopher Bolduc, soprano Jing Zhang, violinist Frederieke Saeijs and the Kuttner quartet, which includes violinists Sarah Kim and Robin Scott, violist Yoo-jin Cho and cellist Ana Kim, will showcase their skills.\nThe event is an initiative of the Performing Arts for Everyone project that schedules 365 free performances, one for every day of the year, for the Millennium Stage. The Conservatory Project gives college students a chance to perform in front of a large audience. The audience mostly comprises middle- and high school-aged students who are interested in pursuing music in college.\nThe performances give students the chance to see what different schools can offer and the benefits of continuing their musical studies. Sarah Kim said she hopes that her performance will inspire younger students.\nThe eight IU students left for Washington, D.C. Monday and they will return to campus Wednesday. They were very excited about the opportunity to perform and to take the trip, Scott said.\nThe performance can be viewed on a live Web stream. Visit www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/.
(02/10/06 4:37am)
He was vulgar. He was a womanizer. He struggled to make his financial ends meet. He was eccentric. He was extravagant. He was a genius.\nThis weekend several IU programs will celebrate Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday, who was born Jan. 27, 1756. Various conferences and concerts will be held around campus, and the Lilly Library has prepared a special display in his honor.\nDaniel R. Melamed, the local chair of the American Mozart Society and associate professor of musicology, explained that his organization is playing host to the events in conjunction with the IU Choral Department. His organization aims to be a collection point for a Mozart scholarship. \nThey have planned four sessions of discussions of Mozart's personality and music, in particular, his choral works. \nOne such piece is Requiem in D minor, which is used in a Catholic mass for the dead.\nMelamed said that it was Mozart's most famous and problematic composition. \nHe explained that the piece was written on Mozart's deathbed and was left unfinished. Many have attempted to complete the Requiem. \n"You have to pick the version you are performing very carefully," he said. He explained that sometimes the other composers stray from what might have been Mozart's intent. \nSeveral ensembles on campus, including the University Singers, the University Orchestra, the Classical Orchestra, the Pro Arte Singers and the University Chorale will be performing Mass in C minor and Requiem this weekend both on and off campus. \nSenior Colleen Hughes, a first soprano in the University Singers, described a typical practice. She said the biggest challenges of singing Requiem are the faster segments and the tight harmonies. She said she feels an incredible sense of accomplishment because she is able to perform this complex piece.\n"To be able to work so closely with the school of music and people who are so dedicated to it is a really rewarding experience," Hughes said.\nAnother partner in the festivities is the Lilly Library. It currently has a display in its Lincoln room that features several original editions of Mozart's pieces, first editions of some of his librettos and a few miniature books that tell about his life and work. \nBecky Cape, the head of reference and public services at the Lilly Library, said the library has many rare materials and is happy to provide a chance for students to see them. \nMelamed described why Mozart is such an important historical figure. \n"He was a colorful character and he was one of the first musicians in Western Europe to have a go at being an independent creative artist in the big city," he said. "There is not a genre of music from the later 18th century that you can look at without discovering that some of the most influential pieces are by Mozart."\nInformation about the events can be found by visiting www.mypage.iu.edu/~dmelamed/MSA/program.htm.
(01/13/06 4:38am)
With the beginning of the new semester, students typically spend several hundred dollars on textbooks. While many students might dread this task, not all members of society, like prisoners, have the opportunity to learn through literature. \nThe local non-profit bookstore Boxcar Books and Community Center, Inc., 310 S. Washington St., has a solution. It supports the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project which sends books to prisoners around the United States.\nFor more than 10 years, Pages to Prisoners has helped rehabilitate hundreds of prisoners by processing their requests for educational reading material and shipping them donated books, free of charge. \nTo celebrate its fourth year in business, Boxcar Books and Encore Café will hold a silent auction starting Saturday in the entrance of Encore Café, 316 W. Sixth St. \nProceeds will benefit both the Pages to Prisoners Project and Boxcar Books, which is run entirely by volunteers.\nEach item, including gift certificates for local businesses and local artists' pieces, will be accompanied by a sign-up and bid sheet. At the end of the bid period Feb. 14, the item will go to the highest bidder. Encore Café will donate 10 percent of its Tuesdays' sales through Feb. 14 to Boxcar Books' Pages to Prisoners endeavor. \nAli Haimson, the co-founder of Boxcar Books, said the store has three main goals: It provides books for the Bloomington community that might be difficult to locate elsewhere; it provides a free meeting space for community and literary groups; and it also provides space, funding and volunteers for the Pages to Prisoners Project.\nVolunteer Geoff Hing said the cooperation of the two organizations is important because the donations Boxcar Books receive in the auction go directly to the prisoners. Its volunteers solicit donations and community involvement for Pages to Prisoners. \n"Boxcar is able to reach a part of the community that isn't coming into the stores," he said of the prisoners who benefit. "It requires a lot of outreach and a lot of thinking to break down those barriers." \nMegan Selby, an IU advocate for community engagement, works with the Pages to Prisoners Program, helping students to get involved.\n"When you're doing volunteer work, you rarely get to see the impact that you're having," she said. "At Pages to Prisoners, we get so many letters of thanks and explanations of exactly how the books have helped them through a rough time or how the books helped their studies. Some of them might be enrolled in classes within their prisons and the books really help them out with that." \nBoth Boxcar Books and Pages to Prisoners always welcome donations and new volunteers. The Pages to Prisoners Program meets three times per week: from 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays, from 7 to 11 p.m. Thursdays and from 2 to 5 p.m. Sundays at Boxcar Books. \nVolunteers meet, read letters, match requests to donations, write personal letters to each prisoner and ship the packages. Selby said feedback from prisoners comes through thank-you letters from them she keeps in a binder.\nA letter from a prisoner in Carlisle, Ind., wrote: "I would like to say thank you very much for the knowledge you have bestowed upon me. Also I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for acknowledging us in prison. Reading is just one of the many keys we need in finding ourselves, so we can give back what we took from society"
