Arts & Culture

The method is strange at first, disconcerting, but new rules and rhythms are quickly internalized. Soon the machines seem almost to speak. In “Telegraph,” recent alumnus Will Jacobs — winner of the 2014 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition at Washington University in St. Louis — explores the wonder and shortcomings of communication technology.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will recognize seven outstanding alumni and friends of the school at its seventh annual Awards for Distinction dinner April 9.

Soprano Kate Reimann, a cofounder of Gateway Opera, and tenor Keith Boyer, named Best Male Opera Singer for 2014 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, will join the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Choirs for the annual Chancellor’s Concert April 12.

In a career spanning more than 40 years and nearly 50 albums, John Abercrombie has established himself as one the masters of jazz guitar. At 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, the John Abercrombie Quartet will perform as part of the Jazz at Holmes Series at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis has received a major donation of more than 50 contemporary artworks from Peter Norton, the prominent collector, philanthropist and founder of Peter Norton Computing. The company is perhaps best known for its namesake software utilities program.

Artist Mariam Ghani, the Sam Fox School’s 2014-15 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow, discusses post-Ferguson St. Louis, her new exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum and the importance of making space to listen.

Dancer Samantha Gaitsch is a familiar face to campus audiences. Over the next two weekends, Gaitsch will perform with The Slaughter Project, company-in-residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, and will co-direct “Step, Turn, Leap!,” the 2015 Student Dance Showcase.

Heather Corcoran, director of the College & Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses data visualization, the importance of design to health care and art directing the Portland Trail Blazers.

Music industry insiders, including Sean Douglas, songwriter and 2005 alum, shared advice with Washington University students during a March 27 panel discussion “Making It in the Music Industry” at the Danforth University Center.

In 1972, a group of 20 New York artists founded the A.I.R. Gallery, the first not-for-profit cooperative exhibition space for women artists in the United States. On Tuesday, March 31, former A.I.R. director Kat Griefen will serve as keynote speaker for “A.I.R. Refreshed: Women in the Art World from the 1970s to Today” at Olin Library on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.