Stanford’s fall quarter guest artists

AMERICAN BRASS QUINTET

Created in 1970, the venerable quintet hailed by Newsweek as “the high priests of brass” pays its first visit to Bing Concert Hall with a program devoted to the early days of the American republic. The quintet has dedicated itself to music originally written for brass, also commissioning new chamber works. American Brass is in residence at the Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival.

Concert Oct. 15

Hosted by Stanford Live

SÉVERINE BALLON

Séverine Ballon’s work focuses on regular performance of key works of the cello repertoire, as well as numerous collaborations with composers; in addition, her research as an improviser has helped her to extend the sonic and technical resources of her instrument. Ballon is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Her concert features works for cello and multichannel electronics, including new compositions by CCRMA’s Fernando Lopez-Lezcano and Eoin Callery.

Concert Nov. 29

Hosted by Department of Music, CCRMA

PERLA BATALLA

As a touring band member with the legendary Leonard Cohen, Perla Batalla knew there was much of Cohen’s body of work she still wanted to perform and record. And it was his passing in November 2016 that reaffirmed Batalla’s mission of sharing the lesser-known songs of Canada’s poet laureate. At her Bing concert, she reveals the timelessness of Cohen’s art, to convey her sincere respect and deep love for the music, the poetry and, most of all, her dear friend, Leonard Cohen.

Concert Oct. 7

Hosted by Stanford Live

SAMANTHA BEE

Meet America’s Canadian sweetheart, the only female comic to host her own network late-night show. Samantha Bee, who learned her craft as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, has become a sharp political commentator with a ribald voice that never loses its charm or its funny.

Conversation Nov. 10

Hosted by Stanford Live

MALCOLM BILSON

Malcolm Bilson has been in the forefront of the period instrument movement for more than 40 years. He has been a key contributor to the restoration of the early piano to the concert stage and fresh recordings of the mainstream repertory. Bilson’s presentation “Urtexts, Old Recordings, Taste” examines new ideas about taste in composition and especially in performance, with particular attention to evidence from historical recordings.

Colloquium Oct. 10

Hosted by Department of Music

ANDREW BIRD

Dubbed a “one-man orchestra of the imagination” by TED, Chicago-born Andrew Bird is a multi-instrumentalist who pays equal attention to his violin and guitar onstage, and an arcane lyricist who whistles full solos with blithe, perfect clarity. Before he became the indie-folk star he is today, Bird studied classical violin at Northwestern University’s prestigious school of music. Since releasing his first album in 1996, he has remained close to those roots with songs both swelling and orchestral, effortlessly alternating between pastoral and plucky, electronic and acoustic.

Concert Oct. 20

Hosted by Stanford Live

BETTY BUCKLEY

In an award-winning career that has encompassed TV, film, stage and concert work around the globe, Betty Buckley is probably best known as the quintessential musical theater actress with her legendary performances in 1776, Cats and Sunset Boulevard, to name a few. It’s no wonder she’s been dubbed the “Voice of Broadway.” At the Bing, the Tony Award winner will walk us through highlights from Broadway and beyond in her new album Story Songs.

Concert Dec. 1 & 2

Hosted by Stanford Live

JENNY Q CHAI

Based in both Shanghai and Paris, pianist Jenny Q Chai’s instinctive understanding of new music is complemented by a deep grounding in core repertoire with special affinity for Schumann, Scarlatti, Beethoven, Bach, Debussy and Ravel. She is a noted interpreter of 20th-century masters Cage, Messiaen and Ligeti, and her career is threaded through with strong relationships and close collaborations with a range of notable contemporary composers. An artist of singular vision, Chai is widely renowned for her ability to illuminate musical connections throughout the centuries. With radical joie de vivre and razor-sharp intention, she creates layered multimedia programs and events that explore and unite elements of science, nature, fashion and art.

Concert Nov. 2

Hosted by Department of Music, CCRMA

CHANTICLEER

It wouldn’t be December at Stanford without the annual concert of this beloved a cappella male choir filling Memorial Church with sound and hearts with joy. Since its 1978 founding in San Francisco by Louis Botto, Chanticleer has toured the world, winning bravos from the capitals of Europe to the greenways of Central Park, where the group has sung alongside the New York Philharmonic.

Concert Dec. 13

Hosted by Stanford Live

COLLISION STORIES

Collision Stories, a four-piece abstract sound brigade based in San Francisco, delivers high volume electronics. Its members are Jorge Bachmann, Bryan Day, Michael Gendreau and Mason Jones. Instruments may include analog and digital synthesizers, guitar, bass, turntables, percussion, theremin and handmade sound machines.

Concert Sept. 27

Hosted by Department of Music, CCRMA

ANI CHOYING DROLMA

Ani Choying Drolma was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, to Tibetan refugee parents in 1971. Her education and spiritual training were supervised by the renowned meditation master Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Well trained in Buddhist meditation, chants, rituals and ceremonies performance, she was quickly advanced to the position of chanting master in the nunnery. Her singing talent was first discovered by American guitarist Steve Tibbetts during his visit to Nagi Gompa nunnery. Thanks to Tibbetts, Choying Drolma’s first album Cho was launched in 1997. Since then, she has became a well-known name in the international world music scene.

Concert Nov. 11

Hosted by Department of Music, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Office for Religious Life, Department of Religious Studies, Center for South Asia, Center for East Asian Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

KAREN JOY FOWLER

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of three story collections and six novels, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award as well as the California Book Award for Fiction for 2013, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize the first year the prize was open to Americans. She is also the author of The Jane Austen Book Club, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for 19 weeks and was made into a major motion picture. In addition, her novel Sister Noon was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her speaking engagement is part of the Technology & Human Values series, where authors talk about their work in relation to ethics and science fiction.

Conversation Oct. 5

Hosted by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Creative Writing Program

BRENT FUNDERBURK

Pianist Brent Funderburk has garnered respect as a distinguished recitalist and vocal coach in New York City. His long-running collaboration with mezzo-soprano Naomi O’Connell has led to many recital appearances, as well as radio broadcasts. Funderburk recently acted as pianist and musical director of the Metropolitan Opera Rising Stars Concert Series, giving performances across the United States with a cast of acclaimed singers and also providing masterclasses and workshops for young singers from American universities and conservatories. His appearance with O’Connell is part of the Shenson Recital Series.

Concert Nov. 5

Hosted by Department of Music

HARRY GAMBOA JR.

Harry Gamboa Jr., director, performance artist and founding member of the influential Chicano performance art collective ASCO, discusses his work in an artist talk, “Urbanscape of Mirage,” part of the Vital Signs event series sponsored by the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. Curated by performance artist Cassils, Vital Signs pairs artists from different generations, assessing their approach to triaging the social body.

Talks Oct. 19 & 20

Hosted by Department of Theater and Performance Studies

JOHN GILL

John Gill is a participant in the symposium “The Red and the Black: Art and Science of Iron-Bearing Ceramic Surfaces,” which brings together artists, scientists and humanists for presentations and discussions on interdisciplinary topics related to spontaneous color development on ceramic surfaces in atmospheric firings.

Symposium Oct. 8

Hosted by CASC@Stanford University (Ceramic Art, Science and Culture)

GOLDEN THREAD PRODUCTIONS

Golden Thread Productions’ tour-de-force solo show Oh My Sweet Land is about a woman of Syrian-German heritage who recalls her encounter with Ashraf, a Syrian man in Paris, while preparing the Syrian delicacy kibbeh. When he disappears, she goes on a long journey in search of him that leads to stirring conversations with some of the 2 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. One part detective story, one part a woman’s reckoning with her heritage, Oh My Sweet Land complicates our understanding of the conflict in Syria and highlights the resilience of the Syrian people.

Performance Oct. 18

Hosted by The Markaz, WSD Handa Center for Human Rights & International Justice, Stanford Storytelling Project, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA), Haas Center for Public Service

HOT SARDINES

Dance ’til you drop to a yuletide blend of hot jazz, including swinging renditions of classics like The Nutcracker Suite and “White Christmas” and less traditional tunes like Ella Fitzgerald’s “Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney.” All this and the Hot Sardines, too, full of the brass and dazzle of their New York home and a year of sold-out engagements.

Concert Dec. 9

Hosted by Stanford Live

XANDRA IBARRA

This Oakland-based performance artist’s work hyperbolizes modes of racialization and sexualization to test the boundaries between her own body and coloniality, compulsory whiteness and Mexicanidad. Xandra Ibarra (aka La Chica Boom) performs her work Nude Laughing as part of the Vital Signs event series sponsored by the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. Curated by acclaimed performance artist Cassils, Vital Signs pairs artists from different generations, assessing their approach to triaging the social body.

Performance Oct. 20

Hosted by Department of Theater and Performance Studies

ASHA AND RAVI JAIN

Culture clash, Canadian-style, comes to life in A Brimful of Asha, a two-person play written by and starring mother and son Asha and Ravi Jain. The story is about a first-generation twentysomething who wants to connect with his Indian heritage – but not necessarily all of it. How will his family handle the conflict? A Brimful of Asha’s warm and complex story has captivated audiences throughout North America. Enjoy a samosa with Asha and Ravi around the kitchen table as mother and son recall their charming story.

Performances Oct. 18–22

Hosted by Stanford Live

ROB KAPILOW

The revered and longtime Stanford resident ensemble the St. Lawrence String Quartet joins Rob Kapilow to explore and appreciate Antonín Dvořák’s American Quartet, perhaps his most popular work. Formally titled Quartet No. 12 in F, it was written in 1893, when the composer was summering in Spillville, Iowa, an immigrant Czech community. It was the second piece he wrote in America; his first was the New World Symphony.

Concert Oct. 11

Hosted by Stanford Live

KASHŌKEN

Kashōken, an internationally renowned ensemble of Japanese Shingon priests, performs a Daihannya Tendoku, a “rolling reading” of the Great Sutra on the Perfection of Wisdom (Mahāprajñāpāramitā sūtra) at Memorial Church. The Daihannya Tendoku is one of the most important rituals of Japanese Buddhism. It features the Great Sutra on the Perfection of Wisdom, one of the central texts of Mahayana Buddhism, and with 600 fascicles also the longest text in the Buddhist canon. Since the early eighth century, rituals centered on a reading of this sutra have been performed in Japan.

Concert Nov. 10

Hosted by Department of Music, Humanities Center, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Office for Religious Life, Deptartment of Religious Studies, Center for South Asia, Center for East Asian Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

NINA KATCHADOURIAN

Brooklyn-based artist Nina Katchadourian discusses her artistic practice and the exhibition Nina Katchadourian: Curiouser on view in the Pigott Family Gallery at the Cantor Arts Center through Jan. 7, 2018. Curiouser explores several major bodies of the artist’s work, including video, photography, sculpture and sound art. The work reveals the creative potential, to use the artist’s words, that “lurks within the mundane.” Using ingenuity and humor, her practice encourages us to reinvigorate our own sense of curiosity and creativity, and to see our everyday surroundings as a site of discovery and possibility.

Talk Oct. 19

Hosted by Cantor Arts Center

AKRAM KHAN

Internationally renowned choreographer Akram Khan speaks with Professor Jisha Menon (Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Center for South Asia) about his varied career merging the classical Indian Kathak with contemporary dance forms, collaborating with an array of noted artists from Peter Brook to Kylie Minogue, and creating his current dance-theater work Until the Lions, adapted from the classical Indian epic The Mahabharata.

Akram Kahn Company – featuring Rianto, a remarkable dancer personally selected by Khan for the lead role, two female dancers and four musicians – performs Until the Lions in Memorial Auditorium.

Talk Oct. 16

Performance Oct. 27 & 28

Hosted by Stanford Live

Akram Khan Company

THE KLEZMATICS

Woody Guthrie and Hanukkah? Who knew? Almost nobody. But in 1998 his daughter Nora discovered a trove of songs that the celebrated folksinger wrote in the 1940s. The Grammy-winning Klezmatics riff off Guthrie’s original melodies and create new tunes in this unremittingly cheerful fusion of klezmer music and American sounds.

Concert Dec. 14

Hosted by Stanford Live

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Best-selling writer Chuck Klosterman (But What If We’re Wrong: Thinking about the Present as If It Were the Past) and Pitchfork music critic Simon Reynolds (Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past) discuss how nostalgia drives pop culture and the music industry and what that means for the way that we look at ourselves.

Conversation Nov. 1

Hosted by Stanford Live

YOUNG JEAN LEE

Playwright and director Young Jean Lee is this year’s Visiting Artist in Playwriting with the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. Lee has been called “hands down, the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times.

2017-18

Hosted by Department of Theater and Performance Studies

NICOLA LÓPEZ

Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Nicola López lives and works in Brooklyn and teaches at Columbia University in New York City. Through her work in installation, drawing and printmaking, López  describes and reconfigures our contemporary – primarily urban – landscape. Her focus on describing “place” stems from an interest in urban planning, architecture and anthropology and it has been fueled by time spent working and traveling in different landscapes. She is the first of three guest artists invited this year to partake in the Studio Lecture Series, and her visit includes a public lecture and private one-on-one MFA graduate student studio visits.

Lecture Nov. 16

Hosted by Department of Art and Art History

Artwork by Nicola López

TAYLOR MAC

Taylor Mac is the American theater’s most beloved maximalist. Creating extravagant performances with jester-like charm, Mac’s work reflects the vast mosaic of the American imagination. Mac performs an abridged version of his epic 24-hour performance art concert, which decodes the social history of the United States – all 240 years and counting – through popular songs ranging from “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to disco. The show is a dazzling, community-building experience that reflects our nation’s diverse and sometimes dysfunctional story in order to reinvigorate a distinctively American sense of possibility. In partnership with Stanford Live, the entirety of A 24-Decade History was performed in four parts at the Curran in San Francisco.

Performance Sept. 27

Hosted by Stanford Live

MARIZA

The voice, the composition and the interpretation. Mariza returns to the Bing with longtime friends as part of her latest project Raizes (“roots”). Of both Portuguese and African descent, Mariza has come to be known as the embodiment of modern fado, Lisbon’s emotion-filled folk music. Her soulful voice expresses the essence of this melancholy art form, a song style dating back to the early 19th century and imbued with themes of longing, separation and reconnection.

Concert Oct. 25

Hosted by Stanford Live

JASON MORAN

Jazz virtuoso Jason Moran, winner of a MacArthur Foundation “genius award” and currently the Kennedy Center’s artistic director for jazz, took up piano because of Thelonious Monk. Moran, who is reimagining Monk’s historic 1959 Town Hall concert at the Bing, says Monk is “the most important musician, period. In all the world, period.” In this centenary year of Monk’s birth, Moran evokes the concert’s breakaway excitement via an in-depth media show, and with his 10-piece Big Bandwagon he explores Monk’s roots and impact.

Concert Nov. 11

Hosted by Stanford Live

MoVE

This year’s Daniel Pearl World Music Days Concert features the premiere of Stanford composer Jonathan Berger’s Death by Drowning performed by violinist-collaborators MoVE.

Concert Oct. 26

Hosted by Department of Music, Stanford Live, Office for Religious Life

DANIEL MURPHY

Dan Murphy is a participant in the symposium “The Red and the Black: Art and Science of Iron-Bearing Ceramic Surfaces,” which brings together artists, scientists and humanists for presentations and discussions on interdisciplinary topics related to spontaneous color development on ceramic surfaces in atmospheric firings.

Symposium Oct. 8

Hosted by CASC@Stanford University (Ceramic Art, Science and Culture)

TED NEAL

Ted Neal is a participant in the symposium “The Red and the Black: Art and Science of Iron-Bearing Ceramic Surfaces,” which brings together artists, scientists and humanists for presentations and discussions on interdisciplinary topics related to spontaneous color development on ceramic surfaces in atmospheric firings.

Symposium Oct. 8

Hosted by CASC@Stanford University (Ceramic Art, Science and Culture)

NAOMI LOUISA O’CONNELL

Naomi Louisa O’Connell, mezzo-soprano, performs works by Zilcher, Honegger, Copland, Wolf, Ives and Bolcom with with pianist Brent Funderburk. Her appearance is part of the Shenson Recital Series.

Concert Nov. 5

Hosted by Department of Music

RANDY OLSON

Randy Olson has been working for National Geographic magazine for more than 20 years, covering stories on environmental issues, overpopulation and disappearing cultures. His work has also been published in Life, GEO and Smithsonian magazines. He is on campus to deliver a lecture and screen his photographs.

Lecture Oct. 5

Hosted by Continuing Studies

PATRICIA BARBER TRIO

The resident jazz pianist and vocalist from Chicago’s legendary Green Mill brings her trio to the Bing Studio. Possessed of a supple, hauntingly evocative voice and an expressive, idiosyncratic piano style, Patricia Barber draws the listener into her unique musical world. Add to that a keen ear for melody and a poet’s way with wordplay, and rarely have so many musical gifts found expression in a single soul.

Concerts Nov. 11

Hosted by Stanford Live

ADAM PENDLETON

Adam Pendleton is a conceptual artist known for his multidisciplinary practice, which moves fluidly between painting, publishing, photographic collage, video and performance. His work centers on an engagement with language, in both the figurative and literal senses, and the re-contextualization of history through appropriated imagery to establish alternative interpretations of the present and, as the artist has explained, “a future dynamic where new historical narratives and meanings can exist.” He is on campus for an artists talk in collaboration with Pace Gallery.

Talk Nov. 16

Hosted by Anderson Collection

PENNY ARCADE

Penny Arcade’s hilariously iconoclastic monologue, created by one of Andy Warhol’s underground superstars, addresses perennially political issues of class and gender and everyday woes like gentrification. To Arcade (née Susana Ventura), the Big Apple has become the Big Cupcake: a New York City of fluff, with no affordable places for artists and no place to buy a broom or get your shoes repaired or your clothes washed.

Performances Nov. 3 & 4

Hosted by Stanford Live

DAVID PETERS

David Peters is a participant in the symposium “The Red and the Black: Art and Science of Iron-Bearing Ceramic Surfaces,” which brings together artists, scientists and humanists for presentations and discussions on interdisciplinary topics related to spontaneous color development on ceramic surfaces in atmospheric firings.

Symposium Oct. 8

Hosted by CASC@Stanford University (Ceramic Art, Science and Culture)

PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA

Nicholas McGegan and a cast of international stars give the U.S. premiere of a groundbreaking new work written for the Philharmonia’s period instruments and voices. In The Judas Passion, Scottish composer Sally Beamish and librettist David Harsent explore Judas in a more sympathetic light – offering a different perspective on the Last Supper and Jesus’ betrayer: from Judas’ sin to forgiveness and redemption. This provocative new Passion is accompanied by Telemann’s Tafelmusik.

Concert Oct. 4

Hosted by Stanford Live

PENINSULA SYMPHONY

The festive annual collaboration between the Stanford Symphonic Chorus and the Peninsula Symphony reaches its 25th anniversary in an all-English program of grand and gorgeous music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar, directed by Mitchell Sardou Klein and Stephen M. Sano.

Concert Nov. 17 & 19

Hosted by Department of Music

ROLSTON STRING QUARTET

Rising Canadian stars the Rolston Quartet (Luri Lee, violin; Jeffrey Dyrda, violin; Hezekiah Leung, viola; and Jonathan Lo, cello) came together in Banff in 2013, eventually winning first prize at the prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2016. That same year, the ensemble won the John Lad Prize, which brings it to the Stanford Live stage. On the program: works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Canadian composer and educator R. Murray Schafer.

Concert Dec. 3

Hosted by Stanford Live

RONNIE BURKETT THEATRE OF MARIONETTES

Don’t bring the kiddies to puppeteer Ronnie Burkett’s rather ribald, thoroughly entertaining Daisy Theatre. Burkett, who hails from Alberta, Canada, became interested in puppets as a child, when he picked up Volume P of the World Book and it fell open at “puppets.” Burkett is a one-man show, improvising on the spot. His marionettes – a rotating cast of 40 characters – include ventriloquist Meyer Lemon, actress Lillian Lunkhead and Edna Rural. Advisory: chance of puppet nudity.

Performances Nov. 15–19

Hosted by Stanford Live

SACHEL ENSEMBLE

The Golden Era of Lollywood in Lahore, Pakistan, peaked in the 1960s and ’70s, until the enforcement of Islamic Sharia law in 1977 led to a steep decline in the arts. As work dried up for studio musicians, producer Izzat Majeed secretly gathered these intrepid players at his Sachal Studios, where they recorded a hit version of Dave Brubeck’s iconic “Take Five” – with a South Asian twist. Wynton Marsalis invited the Sachal Ensemble to perform with his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, leading to an album, an acclaimed documentary (directed by Stanford alums Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Andy Schocken) and invitations to perform around the world.

Concert Nov. 15

Hosted by Stanford Live

SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE

Founded in 2004 in San Francisco, this award-winning octet celebrates legendary jazz artists by performing their masterworks and by creating new music expanding on those influences. This year it’s Miles Davis’ turn. The octet – Miguel Zenón, alto sax; David Sánchez, tenor sax; Warren Wolf, vibraphone; Sean Jones, trumpet; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Edward Simon, piano; Matt Penman, bass;  and Obed Calvaire, drums – explores the Miles of myth and reality and his blues/jazz connections.

Concert Oct. 21

Hosted by Stanford Live

TRACY K. SMITH

Tracy K. Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015) and three books of poetry. Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. In 2014, the Academy of American Poets awarded Smith with the Academy Fellowship, awarded to one poet each year to recognize distinguished poetic achievement. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities and director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Her appearance on campus is part of the Lane Lecture Series.

Lecture Oct. 30

Hosted by Creative Writing Program

LARA ST. JOHN

Canadian violinist Lara St. John, with the help of a live orchestra featuring members of the Stanford Philharmonia, will perform the score at a screening of The Red Violin, a classic film about an antique instrument made in Cremona, Italy. The story follows this violin’s odyssey from Europe to modern Montreal, tracing its path through four centuries and five countries and bringing ill fortune to all who play it.

Concert Dec. 8

Hosted by Stanford Live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KKvqRawRsSQ

SAINT MICHAEL TRIO

Russell Hancock, piano; Michel Flexer, cello; and Robin Sharp, violin, lecturer in the Department of Music, are the Saint Michael Trio. The genius of Czech master Antonín Dvořák is explored in this “informance” utilizing slides, demonstrations and extensive commentary. Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 3 in F minor, Op. 65, is featured.

Informance Oct. 6

Hosted by Department of Music

STRADIVARIUS ENSEMBLE OF THE MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA

The Mariinsky Orchestra’s Stradivarius Ensemble, an elite group of string musicians led by conductor extraordinaire Valery Gergiev, plays on priceless period instruments (like the one played by the famous cellist Pablo Casals). Young virtuoso Behzod Abduraimov, acclaimed for the precision, tenderness and fire of his interpretations, plays Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Also on the bill: Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.

Concert Oct. 29

Hosted by Stanford Live

TESLA QUARTET

Praised for their “superb capacity to find the inner heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style or technical demand” (International Review of Music), the Tesla Quartet brings refinement and prowess to both new and established repertoire. The Tesla Quartet was recently announced as the winner of this year’s John Lad Prize, presented annually by the St. Lawrence String Quartet to exceptional emerging chamber ensembles.

Concert Dec. 6

Hosted by Department of Music, School of Humanities and Sciences, Humanities and Arts Initiatives

MADS TOLLING

Two-time Grammy Award winner Mads Tolling is celebrating the music of the 1960s “Mad Men” era with his own distinctive style and flair. With an exciting show that touches on the nostalgic with timeless Hollywood themes and celebrated songs ranging from “Mission Impossible,” “The Pink Panther” and “Meet the Flintstones” to “Georgia on My Mind” and “A Taste of Honey,” Tolling will take us places we didn’t know a violin could go. Joining him on this journey through the ’60s are world-class musicians Colin Hogan on piano and accordion, Josh Thurston-Milgrom on bass, Eric Garland on drums and guest vocalist Kenny Washington.

Concert Oct. 6

Hosted by Stanford Live

ELIZABETH TURK

Elizabeth Turk is a participant in the symposium “The Red and the Black: Art and Science of Iron-Bearing Ceramic Surfaces,” which brings together artists, scientists and humanists for presentations and discussions on interdisciplinary topics related to spontaneous color development on ceramic surfaces in atmospheric firings.

Symposium Oct. 8

Hosted by CASC@Stanford University (Ceramic Art, Science and Culture)

ALICE WALKER

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than 15 million copies. Walker has been an activist all of her adult life, and believes that learning to extend the range of our compassion is activity and work available to all. She has a deep meditation practice. She is a staunch defender not only of human rights, but of the rights of all living beings. She is one of the world’s most prolific writers, yet continues to travel the world to literally stand on the side of the poor and the economically, spiritually and politically oppressed. Walker also stands on the side of the revolutionaries, teachers and leaders who seek change and transformation of the world.

Lecture Nov. 8

Hosted by Office for Religious Life, Stanford Storytelling Project, Health Improvement Program, BeWell

MARY WEATHERFORD

Mary Weatherford is one of the most sought-after contemporary painters of our time. The Flashe and neon on linen black painting, from the 2016-17 suite of paintings called “like the land loves the sea,” was a gift to the Anderson Collection from Debra and Steven Wisch, ’83, building donors and art collectors, in honor of the Anderson family. Weatherford gives a public talk in the Denning Family Resource Center at the Anderson Collection.

Talk Nov. 30

Hosted by Anderson Collection

EMILE YX

South African hip-hop pioneer and educator Emile YX (Heal the Hood Project/Black Noise) delivers the keynote address at “The 5th Element: The Future and Promise of Hip Hop Pedagogy,” a daylong symposium designed for hip-hop educators, community arts advocates, teaching artists and those interested in the liberatory possibilities of hip-hop.

Symposium Nov. 8

Hosted by Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA)