Arts & Culture

Celebrated jazz pianist, composer and arranger Linda Presgrave and her quintet will launch “Jazz in July,” a series of free summer concerts presented by Washington University’s Jazz at Holmes, from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, July 8. Subsequent performances will feature guitarist Tom Byrne and his quartet (July 15), drummer Maurice Carnes and friends (July 22) and guitarist Chris Burchett and his quartet (July 29).

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will launch its 47th season of free Sunday-evening concerts July 11 with “Music for the Night,” a program of works on nocturnal themes. The series will then continue July 18 with a concert titled “Bach to Basics: July 25 with “Gotta Dance” and Aug. 1 with “Souvenir of Moscow.”

Film and photography are in many ways defined by the tensions between them: narrative vs. static, still vs. moving images. This summer, in conjunction with the exhibition Focus on Photography, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present a pair of feature-length films, Andy Warhol and In the Land of the War Canoes, that highlight connections between the two media.

Internationally acclaimed silversmith Heikki Seppä, professor emeritus in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art’s College of Art, died Tuesday, May 18, at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash. He was 83. One of the most innovative and influential silversmiths of the latter 20th century, Seppä helped introduce the technique of reticulation to the United States while also developing and popularizing new methods for shaping sheet metal into three-dimensional shell structures.

Toronto architect Nevena Krilic has won Washington University’s 2010 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition. Sponsored by the College of Architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the biennial competition is open to young architects from around the world and carries a $30,000 first place award to support study and research abroad — the largest such award in the United States.  

Senior Daniel DuGoff (left) surrounds senior Eleanor Ryburn with his book at the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Studio for the Illustrated Book Open House May 4. The studio — where students learn hand-sewn bookbinding, traditional letterpress and alternative print processes, and publication design — is a collaboration between the College of Art and University Libraries.

St. Louis fashion lovers packed Holmes Lounge May 1 for Fashion & Flash, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ 81st Annual Fashion Design Show. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza featured dozens of models wearing scores of outfits — ranging from coats and cocktail dresses to sportswear, dress groups and ballgowns — by 13 junior and senior fashion majors.

The Washington University Opera will thread together nine famous musical endings for a concert titled Final Moments at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 7 and 8. “The idea is to perform a variety of pieces that all have something to do with conclusions and final moments,” says director Jolly Stewart, who is retiring at the end of the semester.

Over the last several years, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has built an exceptional collection of works by an international array of contemporary artists who both examine and expand the parameters of traditional photography. Beginning Friday, May 7, the museum will showcase this collection in Focus on Photography: Recent Acquisitions. The exhibition will include works by historical figures who helped define early photographic standards as well as by contemporary photographers working within what art historian George Baker has termed “photography’s expanded field.”

Darwin is a magical dinosaur, built from scratch in the workshop of kindly Professor Henslow. But Darwin is also a wild creature who must tame his primitive instincts by learning love and compassion. Welcome to Darwin, an inventive and heart-warming multi-media performance by CORBIAN Visual Arts and Dance, which will bring the show to Edison Theatre May 8 as part of the ovations for young people series.