Temple Arts in the Media

Singing is believing for this opera singer

By William Kenny

Temple students John McCarthy, Lauren Pollock and Hilary Bucell star in A Month in the Country.

Times Staff Writer

Lauren Pollock must be losing her touch in her old age.

In 2003, when she was 15 and a student at George Washington High School, Pollock had the perfect gig. As a talented young rock ‘n’ roll singer, she made the Paul Green School of Music All-Stars and toured Europe, even performing at a Frank Zappa festival in Germany.

But now, the Temple University senior has really hit rock bottom. She’s the lead female vocalist in – of all things – her school’s forthcoming operatic production, A Month in the Country.

Bummer!

Seriously, though, Pollock’s seemingly unlikely transition from aspiring pop music idol to apprentice soprano has absolutely nothing to do with a case of degenerative hipness. Rather, it’s the realization that, provided she receives the right guidance and employs the required dedication, Pollock may have the pipes to sing herself all the way into the big time in classical music.

It’s to be a long and fiercely competitive journey to be sure, but at least the soon-to-graduate vocal performance major still has plenty of time on her side.

She will appear as Natalia in A Month in the Country at Temple’s Tomlinson Theater, 13th and Norris streets, on Friday. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. A second performance featuring Youna Jang in the role will be on Sunday at 3 p.m.

Read full story at here.

Curtain up

Each year, college campuses around the country hold productions of Eve Enslers’ The Vagina Monologues, a series of first person monologues delivered by women that focus on a wide variety of topics – love, sexuality, abuse – and has inspired something of a grassroots movement in V-Day, an event held in early February to raise awareness of violence against women.

 This year, Temple is hosting its own production, and I’ll be a part of it.  My name is Renee Cree, and I’m a writer in Temple’s communications department.  I have not been on stage in almost 10 years, and that was as a nun in the Sound of Music.  Now I’ll be portraying a Bosnian rape victim, who talks about her attacks at the hands of invading soldiers.

A bit of a switch, I’ll admit.  But I’ll be documenting it here on CherryTArts.  Feel free to follow along as I navigate my way through the theatrical process for the first time in a decade, and try to become a person I know nothing about.

First rehersal is this Sunday night.  Wish me luck!

~ Renee

Student Composer wins Marshall Scholarship

William Dougherty will study music composition at the Royal College of Music

William Dougherty, a Boyer College of Music and Dance composition major and Honors student, has been awarded a Marshall Scholarship to study music composition at the Royal College of Music, London.

Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a degree in the United Kingdom. Up to 40 scholars are selected each year to study at the graduate level at a UK institution.

“William demonstrates an exceptional love of music, and an unusually broad knowledge of music literature,” said professor of music theory Jan Krzywicki. “From Arvo Pärt to Prokofiev to Bach to Brahms to Wolfgang Rihm, he is always listening to new literature — exploring and absorbing.

Hailing from Ellicott City, Md. Dougherty began his studies of piano at the age of 5 and composition at 16. In his senior year of high school, he was mentored in music composition by Eric Stewart, a student at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

An avid reader, Dougherty uses current world events to influence his compositions. While studying abroad in Vienna, Austria, Dougherty composed a work for cello and soprano set to a poem by Iraq War Veteran Brian Turner. “Eulogy” tells the story of a young solider, overcome by the horrors of war, who commits suicide. It was premiered in the Palais Corbelli in Vienna, Austria in December 2008.

Visit the Temple Newsroom for full story.

Event : “Puerto Rican Art Now” with Antonio Martorell

“Puerto Rican Art Now” with Antonio Martorell:

7-8:30 p.m.

Tyler School of Art, room B004.

Antonio Martorell, regarded as one of Puerto Rico’s most important cultural figures, will present a travelogue through 20 years of culturally poignant Puerto Rican art.

About the Artist…

Martorell was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico and has been involved in the arts ever since to justify his birth and postpone his death. This urge has taken him to work closely with a number of collaborators including the public in many countries. In a great variety of media, he has communicated in unpredictable but engaging ways, the quest for that something else that becomes a bonding agent which leads to some sort of discovery. Martorell has exhibited and performed, created installations, engaged in workshops, and lectured in Latin America, North America, the Caribbean, and Europe, and participated in international collective exhibitions on all five continents. He has received numerous awards and held many individual exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Two-hour tour exposes challenge of Germantown’s treasures

It’s a problem that has dogged Philadelphia’s Germantown section for decades: traveling by in their cars, precious few tourists take time to stop and admire the 18th-century mansions and historic landmarks that dot this mixed urban landscape. Why? To answer that question and more, two Temple professors took their American Studies classes on the road. In what was billed as a “windshield tour” of Germantown, 25 students viewed nine historic sites from the windows of their bus. According to Seth Bruggeman, assistant professor of history and director of Temple’s Public History Program, the two-hour tour was meant to impress upon the students the sheer size and scope of the challenges faced by house museums in this part of the city — in particular their distance from Center City Philadelphia’s historic district.

Temple University Jazz Band

 

Jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson

Temple University Jazz Band
Featuring jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson

Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m.

Kimmel Center, Perelman Theater

Allyson knows what jazz singing is all about…sometimes tender, sometimes tough, (she) always strikes the right chord. � Associated Press

The stuff that shivers are made of, both innocent, sexy and world weary. � Washington Post

The award winning Temple University Jazz Band has performed at major festivals and concert venues with internationally renowned artists and has made regular appearances at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and the Kimmel Center.

Crowdscapes

Sherrie Nickol

Crowdscapes

Sept. 3 — Dec. 18, 2009
CHAT Gallery
10th floor of Gladfelter Hall
M-F, 10 am — 4 pm

Sherrie Nickol searches for the interconnection between groups of people and their surroundings. The emotional interaction among the subjects that populate these places is central to this body of work. Nickol’s insightful photographs lead her viewers to a larger understanding of the meaning of ‘crowds.’

The Secret Life of Plants

CHAT distinguished faculty lectures

Oliver Gaycken, English

Thus., October 22

12:30-1:50 p.m.
CHAT Lounge, 10th Floor, Gladfelter Hall

The understanding of plant life was changing at the end of the nineteenth century, transforming from an Aristotelian conception that separated plants from animals absolutely to a more Darwinian conception where the

Oliver Gaycken

boundary between the animal and vegetable kingdoms was less definite. Probably no other visual medium supported this transformation more powerfully than time-lapse cinema. Film’s ability to compress time and thereby visualize plant movement created moving images that became touchstones for both avant-garde movements, especially Surrealism, as well as for a variety of other audiences, ranging from the first time-lapse plant film made for a non-scientific audience, Percy Smith’s The Birth of a Flower (1910), to the psychobotanical documentary The Secret Life of Plants (1978). This talk will present an overview of this intriguing cinematic sub-genre that hovers somewhere between science, art, and magic.

FILM : Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur Pour L’echafaud)

Wolgin Prize Finalist Sanford Biggers selected films to be screened in conjunction with his Temple Gallery exhibition.  This week’s film is:

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur Pour L’echafaud), 1957 (92 minutes)
Wednesday, October 14, 7pm

Tyler School of Art, 12th and Norris Streets, Lower Level, B004
Cohosted by STOOP, Tyler School of Art

Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows is a “film noir” suspense thriller set to a Miles Davis soundtrack. A man who has fallen in love with his boss’ wife plans a murder to look like suicide so he can be with his love, but nothing goes as planned.

Everything but the coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks

What are we drinking and what does it say about who we are?

That’s the question Temple historian Bryant Simon contemplated one day five years ago while sitting in a Starbucks. And it’s one he addresses in his new book, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks (University of California Press, October 2009).

But, Everything but the Coffee is not just about Starbucks. It’s about what Starbucks’ success and recent downturn says about America, Americans and our search for meaning, community, justice and relevance in the 21^st century.

photo courtesy of Kelly & Massa Photography

For the book, Simon visited and revisited more than 400 Starbucks in ten countries — purposely dropping in on the same stores at different times of the day and positioning himself differently each time, at a table or near the counter. He invited linguists, branders, colorologists and teenagers to join him and “tell him what they saw” and once even surreptitiously ran off with a bag of Starbucks’ trash.

What he learned was that at its peak Starbucks thrived by giving Americans what they thought they wanted, which wasn’t coffee. It was predictability, class standing, a sense of community, more natural and authentic products, and a sense of themselves as caring and more benevolent individuals.

“You rent out space for work or a meeting or pay for a chair for twenty minutes of relaxation, or maybe you use it as a place to show off your good taste. Go to this place with art on the walls and jazz flowing out the speakers and you become sophisticated, arty, eco-friendly and cosmopolitan.  But this isn’t necessarily who you are; this is an image you pay a premium to display,” said Simon. 

According to Simon, Starbucks’ skyrocketing success demonstrates how deeply consumption has steeped into our lives—how much energy, emotion and time we invest in what we buy as a representation of who we are.

“As our sense of association and communalism has rolled back, buying has seeped into more and more aspects of daily life,” said Simon. “Starbucks used that retreat in public life to sell us what we want.”

Bryant Simon is Professor of History and Director of American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts, and author of Boardwalk of Dreams:  Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America.