Author: Liam Otten

Nejla Yatkin, the 2010 Marcus Artist in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences’ Dance Program, will present an informal concert of her work at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26. Yatkin — who was born and raised in Berlin but has Turkish roots — draws on a range of dance traditions to explore issues of memory, migration, identity and multiculturalism.

Hugh Macdonald, the Avis Blewett Professor of Music in Arts & Sciences, will conduct a concert of late works by Richard Strauss at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25, in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. The performance, which celebrates Macdonald’s 70th birthday, will feature musicians from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and from the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences.  

Washington University’s Eliot Trio will perform music of Robert Schumann, Antonín Dvořák and Germaine Tailleferre at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31, in Holmes Lounge. The trio consists of Seth Carlin, professor of music and director of the piano program in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences; violinist David Halen, concertmaster for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; and cellist Bjorn Ranheim, also with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will launch its spring Danforth University Center Chamber Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, with a performance by harpsichordist Maryse Carlin and members of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Allison Smith creates large-scale multimedia installations that critically engage popular forms of historical re-enactment — including sculpture, fabrics, ceramics and other traditional crafts — to redo, restage and refigure our sense of collective memory. Beginning Friday, Feb. 5, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will showcase the artist’s most recent project: the re-creation of European and American gas masks from World War I and World War II.

St. Louis philanthropist E. Desmond Lee — an alumnus and major benefactor to Washington University in St. Louis — died Jan. 12, 2010, at St. John’s Mercy Hospital in Creve Coeur, Mo., of complications from a stroke. He was 92.

Artillery shells crash, sewage pipes thump, a stack of vintage oil cans booms across the stage. Welcome to the world of ScrapArtsMusic, the outrageously kinetic percussion ensemble, which performs on hand-made instruments built entirely of salvaged and recycled materials. On Saturday, Jan. 23, ScrapArtsMusic will bring its unforgettable “action percussion” to Edison Theatre as part of the 2009-10 OVATIONS Series.

Jamie Adkins can walk on wire, stand atop unsupported ladders, do handstands off the back of a chair and juggle just about anything. But in Circus INcognitus, this internationally acclaimed clown, balancing artist and acrobat — a featured soloist with Cirque du Soleil and Montreal’s Cirque Éloize — must attempt the one thing he fears most: public speaking.

Photo by Mary ButkusEight women printmakers, all faculty or alumni from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, installed a series of artworks in the School of Law’s Anheuser-Busch Hall.

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was one of the great self-made men of 18th-century Europe. Trained as a watchmaker, he rose through the ranks of French nobility to become a successful inventor, businessman, publisher and diplomat, even supplying weapons and provisions to American revolutionaries. Yet Beaumarchais probably is best remembered for his semi-autobiographical Figaro plays, two […]