Fall 2018 lectures
Admission is free and open to the public
From the East Side to the West Side: The Jewish West Side Story
A lecture by Elizabeth A. Wells
Dean of Arts and Pickard-Bell Chair in Music, Mount Allison University
with an introduction by Sarah Day-O’Connell
Associate Professor of Music, Skidmore College
Thursday, October 25
7 PM, Arthur Zankel Music Center, Helen Filene Ladd Hall
West Side Story is an iconic musical that galvanized its first audience in 1957. Although the work is about juvenile delinquency in the streets of Manhattan between Puerto Ricans and so-called "Americans," the original story surrounded Catholics and Jews fighting on New York's streets. This presentation investigates the ways in which Jewish music and values continued to infuse the work through its transition to the West Side Story that we all know and love.
Elizabeth A. Wells completed her doctorate in musicology at the Eastman School of Music and is now Dean of Arts and Pickard-Bell Chair in Music at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Her book on West Side Story was published won the AMS Music in American Culture Award. She has won national teaching awards and has presented over 20 papers on pedagogy. Her research interests include Leonard Bernstein, musical theatre at mid-century, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
This presentation is part of the Jacob Perlow Event Series sponsored by the Office of Special Programs and is the Fall 2018 the Tsou Lecture presented by the Music Department. Funding is also provided by endowments established by Jacob Perlow and by Beatrice Troupin.
About the Jacob Perlow Series: A generous grant from the estate of Jacob Perlow - an immigrant to the United States in the 1920s, a successful business man deeply interested in religion and philosophy, and a man who was committed to furthering Jewish education - supports annual lectures and presentations to the College and Capital District community on issues broadly related to Jews and Judaism.