Author: Liam Otten

Maurice Ravel’s Trio in A minor is among the most technically difficult works in the piano trio repertoire, demanding virtuosity on the part of all three players. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Trio in B-flat major, opus 97 — the “Archduke Trio” — is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of the form. At 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan 22, Washington University’s Eliot Trio will present both works, along with Alexander Zemlinsky Trio in D minor, opus 3, for an intimate concert in Holmes Lounge.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Public Lecture Series presents free weekly lectures by nationally and internationally recognized artists, architects, historians and critics. This spring, the Public Lecture Series — which begins Jan. 20 — will feature talks by Hungarian installation artist Balázs Kicsiny and by architect Craig Dykers, whose firm, Snøhetta, designed the National 911 Memorial Pavillion in New York. Other highlights will include lectures by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, New York illustrator Jessica Hische and art historian Susan Laxton.

Edison Theatre at Washington University in St. Louis has received a prestigious Challenge America Fast-Track grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). A repeat recipient in the Challenge America category, Edison will use the $10,000 award to support Algo Nuevo (Something New), a series of free activities to be held in March exploring the history and aesthetics of Hispanic dance and traditional costuming.

The army, the circus and the restaurant: three diverse institutions, each embodying distinct ideas about the nature of service. In Killing Time, Hungarian installation artist Balázs Kicsiny both investigates and conflates these institutions and their raisons d’être: to protect or kill, to entertain, and to feed. Beginning Friday, Jan. 27, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Killing Time, Kicsiny’s newest work and his first U.S. museum exhibition, developed while in residence with the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts as the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson took the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers and changed baseball forever. Now, imagine traveling back in time to witness Robinson’s historic season first-hand. In Jackie and Me, young Joey Stoshack does exactly that, when a rare baseball card transports the headstrong Little Leaguer to Ebbets Field.

With the delicacy of a spider web and the rigorous logic of a chain reaction, three miles of sky blue cord stretch outward from the stage and into the seats, enveloping dancers and audience alike. Choreographer Brian Brooks is known for creating works defined by their cheeky wit, audacious visuals and superhuman endurance. In January, the Brian Brooks Moving Company will present Motor, a major new piece exploring notions of time, entropy and perpetual movement, as part of the Edison Ovations Series.

There is an undeniable romanticism to the sculpture of Patrick Dougherty. Working with the simplest of materials — sticks, branches and saplings — the North Carolina-based artist creates playful architectural forms that variously suggest nests, primitive shelters and fairy-tale castles. This fall, Dougherty enlisted dozens of students to help construct Double or Nothing, a new commission for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Opera on the Kansas plains? Picnic, a recent work by American composer Forrest Pierce, centers on a handsome drifter whose arrival in small Midwestern town spells both liberation and catastrophe. At 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Dec. 15 and 16, the Washington University Opera Workshop will present excerpts from Picnic, which features a libretto by WUSTL’s Tim Ocel, and four other operas in the 560 Music Center Ballroom Theater.

In a culture defined by an indiscriminate onslaught of images, John Stezaker’s work conveys both a fascination with their lure and a critique of their seductive power. Using classic movie stills, vintage postcards, book illustrations and other found materials, the contemporary British artist brings new meanings to old pictures, adjusting, inverting and slicing them together to create collages that are at once captivating and unsettling, eerie and elegant, nostalgic and absurd. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will provide the only U.S. venue for John Stezaker, the artist’s first major solo museum exhibition.

Nicole Aldrich will make her public debut as director of both the Washington University Concert Choir and the new Washington University Chamber Choir in a free performance at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 9, in Graham Chapel. Titled “Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind: Music for Fall and Winter,” the program will include works by Johann Kuhnau, Giovanni Gabrieli, Gustav Holst and Johannes Brahms, among others.