2006 Festival Program
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Light in Winter Library Art Show Opening
5:00-7:00 p.m., Tompkins County Public Library
"Deliberations and Drifts: A Useful Magnificent Language," The work of Samia A. Halaby
Halaby's art explores the language of color and form through paintings and free-form folded and stitched canvas assemblages.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Light in Winter Art Gallery Openings
5:00-7:00 p.m.
"The Warm Light of Memory," Inkjet Prints by Steve Poleskie
The Upstairs Gallery, Dewitt Building, 215 North Cayuga Street.
Poleskie uses only natural light to photograph and capture the lyrical qualities of the man-made and organic objects in each of his still lifes.
"Fractals," Watercolors by Leslie Eliet
Sola Gallery, Dewitt Building, 215 North Cayuga Street
Many examples of fractal patterns are hidden within this complex series of watercolor paintings called "Pond Studies."
"Natural Forces," Member Show
State of the Art Gallery, 120 West State Street
"Mostly Abstract"
The Ink Shop, 102 West State Street
Six artists are showcased in techniques from woodcut to monoprint and intaglio. The juxtaposition of their work, each using their own abstract language, will make for the public a joyful experience into abstract worlds.
"The Art of Fauna and Flora," Guild of Natural Science Illustrators of the Finger Lakes
Community School of Music and Arts, 330 East State Street
The Finger Lakes Chapter of the national organization of Guild of Natural Science Illustrators shows its work of flora and fauna, which are represented in color paintings of various media, black and white etching and scratchboard, and computer generated art.
The following are all at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell Campus
Japanese Surimono
January 14-March 19
Privately published woodblock prints commissioned by poetry clubs as gifts celebrating the lunar New Year in the early nineteenth century, resulting in a unique collaboration of poets, artists, calligraphers, and printing houses.
Cornell Department of Art Faculty Show
January 21-March 12
Cornell's artist-teachers' biennial exhibition.
Japonisme: European Artists and the Allure of Japan
January 21-March 19
This show examines the infiltration of Japanese aesthetics into nineteenth-century modern art, including works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, Gauguin, and others.
Yangtze Remembered: The River Beneath the Lake
January 21-March 26
Photographer Linda Butler documents China's Yangtze River Valley and its people before, during, and after the completion of the Three Gorges Dam.
Simon Shaheen, Qantara, and the Near Eastern Music Ensemble: Music of the Levant
7:30 p.m., State Theater
Sponsored by the Hilton Garden Inn Ithaca, Cornell Department of Near Eastern Studies, and Mansour Jewelers
Simon Shaheen, master of both the middle-eastern lute and the violin, has broken much new ground in his career. His newest work, Blue Flame, is rooted in Shaheen’s Arabic tradition, but melded with jazz, western classical, and Latin music. Shaheen will perform with both his more traditional Near Eastern Music Ensemble as well as members of his jazz-fusion group, Qantara. Shaheen will also give a pre-concert talk on how to listen to music of the Arab world.
with Opening Ballad
Tompkins County Poet Laureate Michelle Berry,
with Fe Nunn and Chris White
Late Night in Winter
After the show
Moosewood Café, 215 N. Cayuga St.
Richard Driscoll and Molly McMillan
Sponsored by The Bookery
Lost Dog Café, 106 South Cayuga St.
Trevor MacDonald & Silver Bird
Sponsored by David Kuckuk and Sheila Danko
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Middle-Eastern Music Workshop
10:00 a.m.–noon, Women’s Community Building
Sponsored by Ithaca World Arts Alliance.
Simon Shaheen will conduct a workshop on the intricacies of middle-eastern music. For example, the western octave has 13 notes, while Arabic classical music can have 17, 19, or 24 notes in an octave. The workshop will explore these differences as well as harmonies and microtonalities. Participants are welcome to bring their instruments.
Mario Livio: The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved
10:30-11:30 a.m., Statler Auditorium, Cornell
Sponsored by Carol and Mack Travis
Mario Livio, a senior astrophysicist (and former Head of the Science Division) at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, is brilliant at discussing science and mathematics in a clear, simple way to show how they relate to our everyday world. In his new book, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved, Livio explains the concept of symmetry and looks at whether symmetry is truly fundamental to the workings of the cosmos, or whether it’s just a bias in the human mind. There are similar symmetries to be found in the visual arts, music and even the laws of nature, says Livio. It plays a role in human perception, in our aesthetic sensibilities, and even in the selection of mates. Livio is the author of The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number. He has published over three hundred scientific papers and is a frequent public lecturer at such venues as the Smithsonian Institution and the Hayden Planetarium.
Ken Butler: Voices of Anxious Objects
1:30-2:30 pm, Statler Auditorium, Cornell
Sponsored by NYSEG
Unable to choose between a career in music or visual art, Brooklyn-based Ken Butler chose both. His hybrid musical instruments, performances, and interactive installations explore the transformation of common objects, sounds, and altered images. His works have been featured internationally and throughout the USA, including the Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this solo multimedia performance, the amplified hybrid string instruments made from household objects and tools are coaxed and coerced to sing for their supper as the artist/ musician pulls out all the stops (and pedals) alongside video projections and some electronic trickery.
Katy Payne, Alan Singer, and Karen Allaben-Confer: The Art of Birds
3:30-4:30 pm, Statler Auditorium, Cornell
Sponsored by Jennifer Engel-Young and Larry Young
How do you capture the beauty of birds on paper? One of the greatest bird artists of all time, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, is presented “as a person, as I learned about him from my mother” by his granddaughter, Cornell elephant expert Katy Payne, with excerpts from his travel letters. Alan Singer, professor in the School of Art at Rochester Institute of Technology and son of famed bird artist Arthur Singer, looks at Fuertes and John James Audubon by comparing nineteenth-century philosophy with twentieth-century modernity. Contemporary bird artist Karen Allaben-Confer demonstrates how she approaches creating her art.
Laurie Anderson: The End of the Moon
8 pm, State Theatre
Sponsored by Tompkins Trust Company
No wonder NASA chose performance artist Laurie Anderson as its first artist-in-residence. An intrepid multimedia pioneer long obsessed with our ever-changing romance with technology and how we think about ourselves in relation to the rest of the planet, Anderson weaves stories, music, songs, and words into epic portraits of American culture. Light in Winter 2006 will be the last American performance of The End of the Moon, the second in a series of intentionally low-tech solo works featuring her remarkable music for violin and electronics. The End of the Moon turns to the incisive power of words to convey how we feel about ourselves at this complex juncture. Drawing from her NASA-inspired travels and research, impression-packed journals, dreams, and theories, Anderson takes us on a music-theater journey that examines, among many other compelling themes, twentyfirst-century perceptions of beauty and time, and the stories we exchange to help us along the way.
In anticipation of Laurie Anderson's performance as part of the Light in Winter Festival, Cornell Cinema presents
Home of the Brave & Hidden Inside Mountains
Wednesday, January 18 & Friday, January 20 at 7:15pm in Willard Straight Theatre, Cornell Cinema
Admission: $6 general/$4.75 students & seniors/$4 CU grad students
For more info: http://cinema.cornell.edu or call (607) 255-3522In anticipation of Laurie Anderson's performance as part of the Light in Winter Festival on January 21, we present her directorial debut, Home of the Brave (1986, 90 mins). "Lensed in the New York area, largely in a studio and in part before a live audience, Home of the Brave is an eye-popping tapestry stitched with video, chaotic choreography, subtitles, and wild props such as dancing shirts and a so-called drum suit that turns the singer's entire body into a percussive instrument." (Variety) Tracks include "Excellent Birds," "Sharkey's Day," and "Language is a Virus." The feature, one of the most popular concert films of the late 80s, will be followed by Anderson's recent short, Hidden Inside Mountains (2005, 25 mins), which was commissioned for the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan. It comes complete with an intricately layered original score and Anderson's signature electronic sounds. The film plays out in twelve poetic segments musing on nature, artifice and dreams, foregoing narrative for a more free-associative, oneiric tone.
Late Night in Winter
After the show
Moosewood Café, 215 N. Cayuga St.
Margaret Wakeley and Molly McMillan
Sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited
Lost Dog Café, 106 South Cayuga St.
Crow Greenspun
Sponsored by Hickey's Music Center
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Winter Detective Tour
10:00 a.m.- noon, Cornell Plantations, free event!
Sponsored by Wegmans
Join expert guides and become a bud detective so you can identify trees in winter; investigate tracks, patterns, tunnels, galls, and other signs to detect what animals left their marks; become a skilled snow stumper as you decipher how the interesting patterns were made in snow by wind, sun, and people. Sign-ups will be taken for activities beginning at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, or 11:30. Contact (607) 255-2407 or go to http://www.plantations.cornell.edu.
Tom Schuch: Einstein: A Stage Portrait
1:30-2:30 pm, Statler Auditorium, Cornell
Sponsored by Jim and Terry Byrnes
Written by Willard Simms, Einstein: A Stage Portrait was voted Critics Choice, and received awards for writing, directing, and acting. The play brings to life the brilliant, dedicated, and sometimes controversial theoretical physicist, "a much too famous man whose reputation grew so out of proportion." The setting is 1946, the bomb has dropped, the world has forever changed, and Einstein has invited the audience over to his home to "set the record straight." As portrayed by award-winning actor Tom Schuch, this is the “consummate Einstein.” You'll walk away with an understanding of the man who solved many of the world's most difficult puzzles with astounding creativity and a delicious sense of humor.
Finale: Forces of Nature
4:00-5:30 pm, State Theatre
Sponsored by M&T Bank, Cornell University, and Ithaca College
With Jeff Claus, Judy Hyman, Rick Hansen, Chad Crumm, Jay
Olsa, Read Gainsford, Galumpha, Emily Goldman, Charles Trautmann, film by Insights International. Forces of nature are both awe-inspiring and frightening. View images of the most dramatic forces of nature in a film produced by Phil Wilde and Ann Michel of Insights International, accompanied live by Jeff Claus and Judy Hyman of The Horse Flies and Boy with a Fish; learn how seismic activity changes our world with everything from earthquakes to tsunamis, and how we are learning to live with these events, with Sciencenter Director and geologist Charles Trautmann. The finale ends with one of the twentieth-century’s most exciting musical interpretations of our relation with nature, a four-hand version of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with pianists Read Gainsford and Emily Goldman, with choreography and dance by Galumpha.
Food will be available for purchase at Statler events.
