Author: Liam Otten

Three musicians from the St. Louis Symphony will join baritone Keith Boyer, a master’s candidate in vocal performance, and pianist Amanda Kirkpatrick, teacher of applied music in Arts & Sciences, for a free performance Feb. 21. Sponsored by the Department of Music and the symphony’s Community Partnership Program, the concert will feature music of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt.

Do you understand what the IT guy is talking about? Really? Neither do The Water Coolers. Like a Seinfeld episode set to music, or a Dilbert cartoon sprung to life, this New York-based sketch comedy troupe both celebrates and eviscerates modern corporate culture in all its fast-talking, slow-moving absurdity.

Scaphocephalus. The word refers to a condition in which the shape of the skull is markedly long and narrow. At the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, the word is tattooed onto a 19th-century exemplar, neat cursive script fading into aged bone. Over the past several years, Patricia Olynyk, director of the Graduate School of Art, has both detailed and interrogated the Mutter exhibits through a series of large lightbox photographs.

Cheat on your wife. Betray your colleagues. The moral thing to do is whatever makes you feel good. When a beloved radio talk-show host dies, his son highjacks the station’s memorial broadcast to preach an inflammatory reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance. So begins Radio Free Emerson, a loose adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck by contemporary playwright Paul Grellong.

Puppets and marionettes are among the world’s oldest entertainments. Though today often associated with humorous children’s programming, they are equally capable of evoking the tender and moving. This month, master puppeteer Joseph Cashore and his Cashore Marionettes will present Simple Gifts — a series of quiet, everyday vignettes set to classical music — as part of Edison’s ovations for young people series.

Internationally acclaimed architect Craig Dykers, whose recent projects include the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the former World Trade Center site in New York, will chair the jury for Washington University’s 2012 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition. Sponsored biennially by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the competition is open to young architects from around the world and carries a first-place award of $50,000 — one of the largest competition prizes in the United States.

Amanda Walther and Sheila Carabine have come a long way in a short time. Since meeting as high school students in 2002, the two best friends — who perform together as folk-pop duo Dala — have crisscrossed their native Canada, emerging as sharp songwriters and soulful performers in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Tom Cochrane. Next month, Dala will present an intimate evening of folk classics and original songs as part of the Edison Ovations series.

Described as “a force of nature” by The New York Times, dancer Kirstie Simson is internationally renowned for creating virtuoso improvisational performances. On Tuesday, Feb. 7, Simson — the 2012 Marcus Artist in Arts & Sciences — will present a free, informal concert in WUSTL’s Annelise Mertz Dance Studio. The event will include a performance of Simson’s solo Somewhere and excerpts from the documentary Force of Nature as well as a new improvisational work created in collaboration with dance professor David Marchant.

The husband-and-wife team of Roger Kaza, principal horn of the St. Louis Symphony, and pianist Patti Wolf will launch the Danforth University Center’s spring Chamber Music Series with a free performance at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31. Sponsored by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and the Danforth University Center, the performance is the first of five scheduled for the spring semester.

Dancer Melinda Myers, praised for her “emphatic muscularity” by The Village Voice, will present an informal lecture/performance Jan. 30. Myers, a former member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, will be on campus as the 2013 Marcus Residency Dance Artist in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.