Chamber Music Maryland presents cellist Nicolas Altstaedt in concert with pianist/composer Fazil Say. Their program will feature Say's masterpiece Four Cities, in addition to works by Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, and Johannes Brahms.
The Baltimore Classical Guitar Society presents Gabriel Bianco, who has earned first prize in multiple international competitions in Austria (Vienna), Germany (Koblenz), France (Ile de Ré and Barbezieux), Poland (Tychy) and Portugal (Sernancelhe). His most recent win at the 2008 Guitar Foundation of America Competition has earned him the coveted 50-concert tour in the United States, Mexico, and Canada with additional concerts in China, Colombia, and Brazil. Bianco has already performed in over 30 music festivals across the world, in France, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, and Thaïland.
In this lecture, entitled The Importance of Financial Literacy: Lessons From Many Years of Data, Annamaria Lusardi will present data from the Big Three (three questions to measure financial literacy), the Personal Finance Index (twenty-eight questions to measure financial literacy), and new information from the Consumer Expectations Survey from the European Central Bank to document very low levels of financial literacy in the United States and around the world.
The Department of Music presents Maryland Winds, a professional concert band based in Howard County that exists to bring world-class wind band music to the residents of Maryland. Their program, entitled Dances Around the World, will be guest conducted by Michael Votta, Jr., and will feature a cornucopia of dance music by Julie Giroux, Jodi Blackshaw, Philip Sparke, Jim Colonna, Kevin Day, Michael Gandolfi, a work by Vincent Youmans arranged by Dmitri Shostakovich, and a work by Basemeny Jaxx arranged by Brian Sadler.
Baltimore Dance Project presents a thrilling program that displays an eclectic range of work and performances by invited regional dance makers, including new choreography by Ryan Bailey and Ann Sofie Clemmensen, the re-staging of Merce Cunningham's 50 Looks by UMBC's Jill Vasbinder, and performances by guest artists Human Landscape Dance.
Australian percussionist Rebecca Lloyd-Jones and UMBC percussion faculty Dustin Donahue present the enigmatic work of Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925–2000). A renowned composer for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Dlugoszewski spent a lifetime searching for radical new ways of making sound, inventing hundreds of percussion instruments designed to create delicate and colorful textures of sound. By the time of her death, Dlugoszewski’s music was largely unpublished and unrecorded, and her invented instruments in disrepair. In this event, Lloyd-Jones and Donahue will share their reconstructive process, having rebuilt both her scores and her instruments in order to bring this historic and evocative music to life again.
The Andrist-Stern-Honigberg Trio, featuring pianist Audrey Andrist, violinist James Stern, and cellist Steven Honigberg, will present a program of works by Rebecca Clarke, Kent Holliday, and Robert Schumann. The trio was described as “a remarkably successful meeting of musical talent ... It’s a performance that is both elegant and emotionally searching” by Fanfare magazine in a review of their 2022 debut recording of Dvorák and Fauré.
The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents Archive 192: Abstract Photographs by Women, featuring works by Sara Angelucci, Claudia Fáhrenkemper, Jennifer Garza Cuen, Sage Lewis, Claire A. Warden, and others. This exhibition presents a selection of objects from Archive 192, an independent archive dedicated to preserving and celebrating abstractionist works by women photographers. The prints on view survey the array of photographic processes and diverse techniques of abstraction employed by photographers over the past century. Related ephemera, including publications, artist books, and posters document the evolution of abstractionism in photography and political movements that impact women working within the medium.
The Department of Visual Arts presents a lecture by Kei Ito, an interdisciplinary artist whose work is centered around utilizing the conceptual framework of photography to visualize the invisible. Mainly employing camera-less photographic techniques, performance, and installation, Ito creates large-scale installations and a variety of photographic projects that excavate hidden histories.
Established in 2024, the Smithsonian Academy Orchestra brings together top early music specialists to perform classical works on period instruments under the direction of Kenneth Slowik. The ensemble will present a program of works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn.
The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture launches its 2025 program with Conflux: Variation (2025) by Baltimore-region artist collective Collis Donadio. This public video art projection, showing nightly in the Fine Arts Building Amphitheatre, explores the intersections of industry and the environment in Baltimore, where water meets land.
The Department of Music presents Rachel Beetz, Julie Herndon, and Berglind María Tómasdóttir, in a program entitled Pareidolia Memories: Imagined faces in noises of sounds remembered. This collection of works and improvisations shared between the three musicians explores memory, recognition, time, places, people, and relationships between humans and non-humans. The works are intertwined with videos and sound interludes by Berglind Tómasdóttir reflecting on the theme in various ways.
In the spirit of armchair travelers everywhere, the Voyager Ensemble explores a new culture each year by combining standard repertoire along with a contemporary work by composers from the region, including Antonîn Dvořák, Jan Kučera, and Bedřich Smetana. This year’s concert focuses on the Czech Republic with directors Airi Yoshioka (violin) and David Yang (viola) joined by eminent musicians Li-Mei Liang (violin) and Summer Hu (cello).
Jelani Cobb’s riveting, hopeful keynotes are up-to-the-moment meditations and breakdowns of the complex dynamics of race and racism in America. Whether speaking on Black Lives Matter and activism, the battle zones of Ferguson or Baltimore, the legacy of a black presidency, or the implications of the Trump era — or, more generally, on the history of civil rights, violence, and inequality in employment, housing, or incarceration in the US — Cobb speaks with the surety and articulate passion of only our best journalists.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Jazz Faculty Ensemble, featuring trumpeter Brent Madsen, saxophonist Matt Belzer, pianist Harry Appelman, bassist Tom Baldwin, and drummer Mark Merella. The ensemble will perform modern interpretations of classic and recent jazz compositions.