The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents the exhibition Sonya Clark: Hair/Craft, on display from October 31 through March 12. Clark's multidisciplinary work explores issues of identity, race, cultural heritage, and collective memory. This exhibition presents five works in which Clark applies fiber-art techniques to the medium of hair, a material laden with cultural and metaphorical significance.
The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents the exhibition Aaron Siskind: Formations, on display from October 31 through March 12. Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) was one of the most influential figures in the development of photography as an art form during the twentieth century. This exhibition, drawn from UMBC’s Photography Collections, traces the formation of this artist’s unique photographic vision from early documentary works made in Harlem as a member of the New York Film and Photo League in the 1930s to his breakthrough explorations of abstraction in the 1940s and 1950s, which led to a sustained investigation of the camera’s capacity to frame new visual forms.
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents Tahir Hemphill: Rap Research Lab, opening on January 31 and continuing through March 18. The exhibition, which fosters experimentation and learning through visual and material explorations of geographies of hip hop, showcases an artist who occupies a hybrid space that intersects art, technology, social engagement, and interdisciplinary research.
What does a musician become without their instrument? Living up to their name, Chicago-based collective ensemble Beyond This Point explores this question in a concert that both breaks and expands what it means to be a musician and a performer. The musicians’ “instruments” run the gamut from a loose jack cable, to sheets of bubble wrap, to an IKEA desk lamp, to their own bodies and voices.
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents a conversation with multimedia artist Tomashi Jackson and CADVC director Rebecca Uchill. During the 2022–23 academic year, Jackson is undertaking a research-based artist residency with the CADVC, focused on the history of and advocacy for alternative art spaces, building on Jackson’s existing research that she calls the “Pedagogy Study Hall” project.
The Department of Music presents Pianorama! UMBC piano faculty Audrey Andrist, Hui-Chuan Chen and Daniel Pesca join forces with student performers Nicole Johnson and Dave Warshaw to present an evening of dynamic 20th-century music for two pianos and piano four hands. The program features works by Aaron Copland, George Walker, John Adams, Samuel Barber, and Witold Lutosławski.
In two performances on February 10 and 11, Baltimore Dance Project returns to the stage for its annual appearance at UMBC's Proscenium Theatre. The company's visually stunning program features three premieres by company choreographers Shaness D. Kemp and Sandra Lacy, and two works by guest soloists Sarah J. Ewing and Ryan Bailey.
The Voyager Ensemble returns to UMBC for the 7th installment of the “armchair traveler” series, this time featuring music of Great Britain with music by Benjamin Britten, Sir Edward Elgar, and Philip Sawyers.
Flutist Lori Kesner and pianist María José Parker present Daydreams of the Flute, which takes the audience on a musical journey of the flute fantasia repertoire. The program includes a broad range of styles in this free-form genre, including the Baroque Fantasies of Telemann, the gypsy-inspired Airs Valaques, the dance-themed Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Rodrigo) and Tango Fantasia (Gade), as well as a favorite from the opera cannon: Fantaisie brillante sur ‘Carmen.’
Sterling Elliott, a recipient of the 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the youngest ever winner of the National Sphinx Competition, makes his Baltimore debut with award winning pianist Elliot Wuu in this presentation by the Shriver Hall Concert Series. Opening with Bach’s Cello Suite No. 6, the recital features Mendelssohn’s Second Cello Sonata, an ebullient work inspired in part by Bach, as well as works by Luigi Dallapiccola and William Grant Still.
Maryland Winds is a professional concert band based in Howard County that exists to bring world-class wind band music to the residents of Maryland. In this performance, the ensemble presents the premiere of a work by Jim Stephenson, in addition to music Sousa, Clifton Williams, Grantham, and Holst.
In conjunction with the exhibition Tahir Hemphill: Rap Research Lab, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents a conversation between Foad Hamidi, assistant professor in information systems and a specialist in human-centered computing, and Tahir Hemphill, who will discuss their shared interests in participatory digital research of media and cultural systems.
The Humanities Forum presents Sami Schalk, associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will speak on 504 & Beyond: Disability Politics and the Black Panther Party. Drawing from the book Black Disability Politics, this talk will detail the Black Panther Party’s involvement in the 1977 504 Sit-in, in which protesters around the country picketed and occupied government offices to urge passage of delayed regulations related to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
The Social Sciences Forum presents the Geography & Environmental Systems Distinguished Lecture, featuring Katherine McKittrick, who will speak on Black Methodologies, Still. McKittrick will offer a confession and a reflection about geography, geographic knowledge, and race, considering how alternative spatial practices and black geographies are obscured by prevailing knowledge systems, and will also exploreher ongoing preoccupation with methodology and how radical methodologies are connected to practices of liberation, highlighting what black studies teaches us about sharing and creating ideas.
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Faculty Jazz Ensemble in concert, performing modern interpretations of classic and recent jazz compositions. The ensemble features trumpeter Tom Williams, saxophonist Matt Belzer, guitarist Tom Lagana, pianist Harry Appelman, bassist Tom Baldwin, and drummer Mark Merella.
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents When Public Art Is More Than Sculpture, a discussion between four leading voices in the Baltimore arts community — painter and environmental engineer Se Jong Cho; poet and educator Sylvia Jones; public artist Graham Coreil-Allen; and Teri Henderson, arts and culture editor of Baltimore Beat, facilitated by Rahne Alexander, MFA ’21.
The Maryland Music Educators Association presents the All State Senior Jazz Band Concert, featuring students selected by audition to present their creative work. The ensemble will be directed by Matt Belzer, director of jazz studies at UMBC.
Harpsichordist Paula Maust will perform selections from Elizabeth Turner’s 1756 Lessons for Harpsichord, one of the earliest published collections of music by an Englishwoman. Be part of one of the first audiences to hear these pieces in the 21st century!
The Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents The Amish Project: International Collaboration During the Pandemic, in which Lou Binder, Nikki Hartman, and Adam Mendelson will discuss the unique collaborative process that unfolded while working on a production of Jessica Dickey’s The Amish Project, in Munich, Germany, during the pandemic years 2020–22.
The Human Context of Science and Technology Program presents Mary Fissell, professor, Department of the History of Medicine, with appointments in the History of Science and the History Departments, Johns Hopkins University , who will speak on Abortion & the Reformation: Women, Witchcraft, & Repression.
The Department of Music presents the annual Brass Bash, featuring internationally acclaimed tuba soloist Velvet Brown. The evening will include a solo set by Brown, faculty and student chamber music, and Brown displaying some of her virtuosity as soloist and collaborator with a large UMBC student/faculty brass ensemble.
The Department of Music presents alumna Sarah Kane, a Philadelphia-based, self-taught artist who seamlessly combines art and music, giving audiences the opportunity to see her artwork unfold while listening to music she has written and performed. She is fond of calling this process the delivery of an “art bomb.”
The Department of Music presents the UMBC Jazz Ensemble with Jonathan Barber, and international recording artist, composer, educator and bandleader who was voted the #1 Up-and-Coming Drummer of 2018 in Modern Drummer magazine.
The Inscape Chamber Orchestra returns to UMBC to perform works by Olivier Messiaen — the Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), written while the composer was held in a prisoner of war camp in 1941 — and by Arnold Schoenberg.
