Vinci and Friends to Perform

Senior Artist-in-Residence Jan Vinci, along with a talented line-up of faculty colleagues, will perform a campus recital on Sunday, Feb. 29. Vinci, along with Mark Vinci, Charles Joseph, and Patricia Hadfield, will present an eclectic program of music that includes the world premier of a new piece by composer Hseuh-Yung Shen, who will attend the performance.

The concert gets under way at 7 p.m. in Filene Recital Hall. Admission is free. A preview of the event can be heard this Wednesday, Feb. 25, on WAMC-FM's morning Roundtable program. Vinci will be a studio guest on the program at about 11 a.m. WAMC is at 90.3 on the radio or can be heard online at www.wamc.org.

Luce Lecturer to Offer Illustrated Talk

"Globalization, Tourism, and the Invention of Nature in China and Taiwan," an illustrated talk by Boston University Professor of Anthropology Robert P. Weller, gets under way at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Weller received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including Unities and Diversities in Chinese Religion (1987); Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen (1994); Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China (editor, with Meir Shahar; 1996); and Alternate Civilities: Chinese Culture and the Prospects for Democracy (1999). His most recent research deals with nature tourism in China and Taiwan and issues of globalization.

Part of the Luce Guest Speakers Series at the College, the lecture was coordinated by Adam Chau, Luce Assistant Professor of Asian Studies. Co-sponsors are the Environmental Studies Program and the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work.

Alumnus to Share View of the World

Alumnus Paul Hockenos '85, an author and journalist living in Berlin, will discuss "Diaspora Activism and the Balkan Wars" and will read from his new book, Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars (2003, Cornell University Press) when he returns to the campus in March.

His talk, scheduled at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 3, will be in Emerson Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. To read more about Hockenos and his work, visit Scope online.

In the News

Gerald Erchak, professor of anthropology, was a commentator on Taboo 2 on Jan. 26. The episode, airing on National Geographic TV, was titled "Blood Bonds."

Mary Zeiss Stange, associate professor of women's studies and religion, had an essay titled "Society's Sex-Criminal Dilemma" published in the Feb. 22 issue of The Los Angeles Times. (Read the essay) In addition, she is the author of "When Animals Stalk Humans, Hunters Should Shoot Back" published in the Feb. 16 issue of USA Today. (Read the essay)

Stern, Fulbright Award-Winning Author, to Give Reading

Professor of English Steve Stern will read from his work beginning at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 2, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Skidmore's English Department is hosting the reading as a celebration of Stern's return to campus following an extended leave and in recognition of his winning a Fulbright Award for the fall 2004 semester. Stern will spend the fall at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel, teaching graduate students in the school's newly inaugurated creative writing in English program.

Bar Ilan invited Stern to teach following his participation in a conference at the university last spring. The conference was energizing, he explained. "There was the collective sense of some bold experiment, as if, in such a troubled and even perilous context, the literary enterprise might be a redemptive activity…. It was as humbling as it was thrilling to encounter at Bar Ilan the complex energies of the Israeli students and writers, and their acute awareness of their charged moment in history," he said.

Stern characterizes his fiction as "radical nostalgia," adding, "I often invoke elements of folklore in order to subvert finite reality with the timelessness of myth; I try to revive the essence of traditional communities in the hope of infecting deracinated contemporary landscapes with a lost integrity.'

Stern has written short story collections, novellas, and several books for children. His works include The Wedding Jester (1999), Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (1986), and Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter (1983), all story collections; Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground (1991) and The Moon & Ruben Shein (1984), novels; A Plague of Dreamers (1994), novellas; and Hershel and the Beast (1987) and Mickey and the Golem (1986), children's books. His forthcoming novel is titled The Angel of Forgetfulness, due next year from Viking Penguin.

His stories have been included in the O. Henry Prize Anthology, Pushcart Prize Anthology, and the Oxford Book of Jewish Stories, among others.

In addition to the Fulbright, Stern's honors include the National Jewish Book Award (2000), the Pushcart Prize (1997 and 1999), the Pushcart Writer's Choice Award (1984), and several fellowships to the MacDowell Colony. In 2002, Stern was Moss Professor of Excellence in Literature at the University of Memphis.

Stern joined the Skidmore faculty in 1988.

Musical Weekend Planned at Filene Recital Hall

A rich array of music will be available on campus during the first weekend of March, with special events scheduled Friday through Sunday, March 5 through 7. The Filene Concert Artists Series will present performances March 5 and 7, and a Sterne Virtuoso Series Concert is planned for March 6.

At 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 5, pianist Sara Davis Buechner, a Filene Concert Series artist, and cellist Ann Alton will present a program of works by Ranjbaran, Martinu, Piazzolla and Rachmaninoff. Kristin Bacchiocchi-Stewart will provide flute accompaniment. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 6, pianist Robert Weirich will present Copland's Piano Fantasy, Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze, and the Fantasy in F sharp minor by CPE Bach. At 3 p.m. Sunday March 7, "Witches, Watchers, & Wives: An Afternoon with Wagner's Women," will feature performances by Wagnerian mezzo-soprano Carla Rae Cook, Filene Concert Series artist, accompanied by pianist Carrie Ann Matheson. Thomas Denny, associate professor of music, will provide dramatic and historical commentary.

All events will take place in Filene Recital Hall. Admission on Friday and Sunday is free; tickets to the Saturday event (available at the door) are $5 for the general public and $2 for students and senior citizens.

Background on March 5 recital
A participant in many of the world's most prestigious international piano competitions — Reine Elisabeth of Belgium, Leeds, Salzburg, Sydney and Vienna — Sara Davis Buechner established her early career by winning the gold medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was bronze medallist at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow.

With an active repertoire of nearly 100 piano concertos ranging from Bach to Wuorinen, she has appeared as soloist with America's most prominent orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Saint Louis and San Francisco symphony orchestras; and abroad with the Japan Philharmonic, the BBC Philharmonic, Kuopio (Finland) Philharmonic, and the Slovak Philharmonic, among others. She was a featured artist at the Piano 2000 gala concerts in the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony, and recently made her debut at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival. In addition to her frequent North American concert appearances and radio broadcasts, she tours widely throughout the Far East on a yearly basis.

In 2003 Buechner was appointed assistant professor of piano at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Called an "outstanding artist" by the Albany Times Union, Alton has appeared as an orchestra soloist and in recital throughout the United States and Europe. She has been featured on American and German public television as well as National Public Radio. Alton has won awards from the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Koussevitsky Foundation, the National Arts Club, the National Music Teachers Association, and the Wooley Foundation. She is a member of Tritonis and is principal cellist of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta. Her recordings are available on the VOX and Albany labels.

Alton received bachelor's and master's degrees in music at the Juilliard School, and a D.M.A. from the Manhattan School of Music. In addition to Skidmore, she also teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard Pre-College Division. She is active as an adjudicator and clinician, and is a performing faculty member for the Killington Festival and the Villars International Festival.

Bacchiocchi-Stewart is on the faculty of Schenectady County Community College, where she teaches flute and music fundamental classes. Her awards include second prize at the 2002 National Flute Association's Young Artist Competition and first prize at the 2000 NFA Master Class Performers Competition. She also is a member of Tritonis and performs with the Albany Symphony Orchestra and the Schenectady County Community College faculty Woodwind Quintet.

Bacchiocchi-Stewart earned a B.M. degree at Ithaca College and an M.M. degree at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.

Background on Sterne Virtuoso Artist
Robert Weirich is active as a pianist, teacher, author, composer, and artistic director.
As a pianist he has performed in musical centers throughout the country, including Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, and such summer festivals as Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Marlboro. He received a solo recitalist fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1990 and was one of the first winners of the Pope Foundation Music Awards in 1992.

In 1998 Weirich joined the faculty of the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, where he holds the Jack Strandberg Missouri Professor of Piano. Last year he became president of the College Music Society, a professional organization of nearly 9,000 college, conservatory, and university music teachers. UMKC recently awarded him a Trustees' Faculty Fellowship, the N.T. Veatch Prize for distinguished research and creative activity, and in 2003, he received the first Murieal McBrien Kaufmann Artistry/Scholarship Ward.

Although fairly new to composition, Weirich has seen several of his works receive multiple performances. In 1996 the Syracuse Society for New Music and WCNY-FM commissioned his A Flurry of Fanfares for Music in celebration of their joint 25th anniversaries. In 1998, three new works received their premieres and his collection for student pianists, A Child's Piano Book, will be published by Carl Fischer, Inc.

An avid chamber musician, Weirich was artistic director of the Skaneateles Festival in New York's Finger Lakes District from 1991 to 1999. Under his leadership the festival received three Adventuresome Programming Awards from ASCAP and Chamber Music America. The festival also earned other honors during his tenure, including a SAMMY award (voted by his peers) from the Syracuse Area Music Awards program.

Weirich earned a D.M.A. degree in 1981 from Yale University and received a distinguished alumnus award from Yale in 1989.

Background on Wagner's Women
Some of Wagner's best-known female characters will come alive for the audience during the March 7 event, which will feature excerpts from the composer's "Ring" cycle: Die Walküre, Das Rheingold, and Götterdämmerung; along with Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal.

Carla Rae Cook began performing Wagnerian roles with the Metropolitan Opera and was with the Seattle Opera when she started to perform leading Wagner roles. She has sung Waltraute, Flosshilde, and Siegrune in Seattle's "Ring" cycle productions. After singing the role of Venus in a new production of Tannhäuser with the Bremen Opera conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, she was hailed as "one of the world's great upcoming Wagnerians."

Cook performed Rossweisse in Wagner's Die Walküre performed by the San Francisco Opera, and role of Kundry in Parsifal with the Chicago Lyric Opera. She recently performed with Placido Domingo in the Washington Opera's presentation of Die Walküre. Cook has appeared with many of the world's major orchestras and conductors, as well as on public radio and TV. She has performed oratorio and song cycle throughout the world.

A native of Salt Lake City, Cook began her music career at the age of five with piano lessons and youth choir. She holds a B.M. degree from the University of Utah, and a M.M. degree in vocal performance from Boston University. She has done post-graduate study at the Manhattan School of Music and received full scholarships to study at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Music Academy of the West, and the Zurich Opera Studios.

Cook currently is the artistic director of the opera program at George Mason University and also teaches privately.

Carrie-Ann Matheson, currently assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, also is on the coaching staff of the company's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She has collaborated with some of the world's most prominent artists, including Marilyn Horne, and made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2000, joining soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian in the Maryilyn Horne Foundation's New York Recital

This summer, Matheson will join the International Vocal Arts Institute for its summer festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

SEFCU Elects Leadership

The Skidmore Employees Federal Credit Union elected officers and committee members at its Feb. 18 annual meeting.

New officers are Barbara Opitz, president; David Eyman, vice president; Erik Smith, treasurer; Denise Hughes, secretary; and Melody Beecroft-Durgin, Leslie Mecham, and Phylise Banner, board members. Michael Arnush was elected security officer. New members of the Credit Committee are Daniel Matrazzo, Karen Garnsey, and Katri Oska. Supervisory Committee members elected were Roberta Chramoff and Lorraine Bittel.

Door prizes winners were Stanley McGaughey, David Eyman, and Michael Hughes.

Currently SEFCU membership totals 992 and assets are $6.97 million. Membership is open to all members of the Skidmore community. Click here for information about SEFCU services and membership.

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