Arts & Culture

In its 43rd season of summer shows, the orchestra will highlight composers and young artists from Missouri and Illinois.

James RichardsThe Gateway Festival Orchestra will begin its 43rd season of free summer concerts with “Midwest Musical Masters,” highlighting composers and young artists from Missouri and Illinois, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 9, in Washington University’s Brookings Quadrangle. The orchestra is conducted by James Richards, professor of orchestral studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Subsequent concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 16 and 23 in Brookings Quadrangle. The season concludes Sunday, July 30, in Graham Chapel.

Paul VertucioShapiro & Smith DanceEach year, the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series highlights music, theatre and dance by a variety of nationally and internationally acclaimed performing artists. The 2006-07 season — the Edison’s 34th — will include more than a dozen events, ranging from returning favorites to St. Louis and world premiers to the popular ovations! for young people series, which offers specially priced Saturday matinees for audiences of all ages.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo ServicesCatharina ManchandaCatharina Manchanda, Ph.D., has been appointed curator of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Manchanda succeeds Sabine Eckmann, Ph.D., who was named director of the Kemper Art Museum last year. Her appointment comes at a critical time for the museum, which will open a new 65,000-square-foot facility, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, in the fall.

He’s on the faculty of Rome’s Santa Cecilia Music Conservatory and is director of the Officina Musicale Dell’Altipiano Delle Rocche.

The Washington University Chamber Choir and the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will present the show at 3 p.m. April 30 in Graham Chapel.

The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza will feature more than 50 professional and volunteer models wearing close to 130 outfits.

Warner Bros. Entertainment*Duma*Washington University’s Center for the Humanities and Program in Film and Media Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will host a two-day symposium on Children’s Films and their audiences. Presented in conjunction with Cinema St. Louis, the event will feature a keynote address by Nicholas Sammond, author of Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930-1960 (2005), as well as screenings of the films Duma (2005) and Saving Shiloh (2006), the latter of which was shot in St. Louis last year.

The performance combines many of Baker’s signature songs with French and American Jazz Age repertoire, archival film footage and original music.

Max PucciarielloGiuseppe ScoteseRenowned Italian pianist Giuseppe Scotese will present a piano recital featuring the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) at 8 p.m. Monday, May 1, in Graham Chapel. The program will juxtapose parallel works by Bach and Busoni, the latter of whom is probably best known for his grand transcriptions of Bach’s organ music for the modern piano. (Vladimir Horowitz and other great 20th century pianists regularly included Busoni’s transcriptions in their concert repertoire.)