In this Humanities Forum talk, Nicole R. Fleetwood emerges from her current book project, Between the River and the Railroad Tracks, part memoir and part cultural history of growing up in Hamilton, Ohio. Her exploration of her hometown is a lens to meditate on the cultural life and labor of the Black Midwest through its music, art, and community practices.
The Department of Visual Arts presents a talk by multimedia artist, educator, and cultural organizer Ada Pinkston: The Aesthetics of Truth in a Post Truth Science Fiction or Remixing Public Memory Towards the End of the Anthropocene, inspired by musical selections including Triptych by Max Roach.
Inscape, praised by The New York Times as "brilliant," performs a program featuring works by Steven Stucky's Ad Parnassum, Joan Tower's Into the Night, and other works. Originally commissioned by the group Eighth Blackbird, Tower says Into the Night commemorates the treasured final months she and her late husband had together.
The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) hosts an Exploratory Research Residency that invites artists and interdisciplinary collaborators to take advantage of scholarly resources and to build partnerships at UMBC and in the Baltimore region. In 2025, CADVC hosts Tomashi Jackson’s “Pedagogy Study Hall” project as part of this program, which, in collaboration with policy analyst and economic advocate Nia Evans, will host a series of intermedia series of public discussions about investment and disinvestment in the arts and humanities, looking to Baltimore as a critical case study in grassroots organizing in a system of gross structural inequity. The event will be a conversation on education history and policy with Davarian Baldwin and Matt Cregor.
Amber N. Mitchell will discuss the unique intersections of Black history, preservation, and memory that have presented opportunities and challenges in her career as a public historian and museum worker and look toward the future of African American storytelling in American public spaces.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Wind Ensemble under the direction of Brian Kaufman in Love Notes, a program of music inspired by love. The event will feature critically acclaimed multi-instrumentalist improviser Rob Flax and the UMBC String Chamber Orchestra directed by Philip Mann.
The Department of Music presents RUCKUS, the contemporary music ensemble in residence at UMBC, in a program of works by Pierre Boulez, Julius Eastman, Salina Fisher, Alexandra Gardner, Elainie Lillios, Emma O'Halloran, and Vicki Ray.
In conjunction with a concert on Wednesday evening, April 23 — Celebrating Charles Ives at 150 — pianist Joel Sachs will give an informal talk about Ives (1874–1954) and his remarkable creative output.
Podcasts are the latest in a long list of media formats hailed as "empathy machines," technologies that will, by dint of their reach and affective force, compel us to care about one another. Radio, films, novels, and telegrams have all been previously designated as such. In the United States, public radio has, over the last 60 years, staked out a special claim for its capacity for empathy. This talk will explore the migration of the public radio structure of feeling as it migrated into narrative podcasting over the last two decades.
Pianist Joel Sachs performs masterworks by Charles Ives, one of America’s greatest composers and one of the greatest modernists of the early 20th century. His rarely heard Piano Sonata No. 1 will be preceded by “The Alcotts” and “Thoreau,” the third and fourth movements of his more famous second Sonata, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” a tribute to the literary giants of that little town. Taken together, these compositions offer an unforgettable view of Ives’s unique vision of music that is both universal and deeply American.
The Social Sciences Forum presents the annual Eckert Lecture on Heath & Inequality, with a panel discussion on Recovering from the Opioid Epidemic in Baltimore and Beyond. This year’s lecture centers on the multifaceted nature of the opioid epidemic with an emphasis on recovery efforts in Baltimore City and other Maryland communities. Panelists will weigh in on the nature and impact of the local opioid crisis, understanding and treating opioid addiction, and efforts to prevent opioid misuse.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Collegium Musicum under the direction of Lindsay Johnson. The Collegium Musicum explores and performs vocal and instrumental music from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, sampling musical repertoires created between 800 and 1750.
The U.S. Army Blues, a component of the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own,” will perform a free concert at UMBC in honor of Jazz Appreciation Month. This special event will feature the 2023 Collegiate and High School solo competition winners from the Army Blues Young Artist Competition, alongside Naptown Jazz Kids, the premier jazz organization for young people in Annapolis.
Cellist Juan Sebastián Delgado teams up with pianist Kristhyan Benitez in a program of original music for cello and piano from Latin America, featuring works by Astor Piazzolla, Mario Lavista, Francisco Mignone, Carlos Chavez, and Manuel Ponce. First-prize winner at the 2008 Latin-American Cello Festival, Delgado is active in the creation and dissemination of new works that explore the cello in innovative ways. Grammy award winning pianist Kristhyan Benitez is exciting audiences worldwide with his vivid and passionate concerts, presenting both Classical and Latin American repertoire with depth, passion and charisma.
In a discussion presented by the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), composer and sound artist Sam Pluta, visual artist Brea Souders, and video artist and writer Eryk Salvaggio each use and interact with AI in their artistic practice. They will introduce us to their work, reflecting on their experiences, doubts, and breakthroughs creating works using these technologies. This will be followed by a discussion moderated by UMBC assistant professor of art Eric Millikin.
