Professor Peter Child, head of the music and theater arts section, is one of 10 composers who have been awarded commissions in 1998 from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University. Through the Fromm Commissions, which are reviewed on an annual basis, the foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public.
Meanwhile, Professor Child's previous compositions have been recorded and performed at large. A recording of Child's Play, released on Neuma Compact Disc, includes performances by the Lydian String Quartet, the Boston Musica Viva and MIT graduate students Grant Ho, violin; Asher Davison, clarinet; and Elaine Chew, piano.
In September, Professor Child participated in an International Festival of Symphonic Music in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where the National Orchestra of Uzbekistan performed the world premiere of his Sinfonietta for string orchestra. His Emily Dickinson Songs were performed by Jane Bryden, soprano, and Sally Pinkas, piano, as part of the Septemberfest Concert Series at the Longy School of Music and in November, at Smith College.
In January, the Cantata Singers will perform his oratorio, Estrella, which they will also record for a major label.
The Boston Phoenix has named the MIT Museum the "Most Intriguing Lunchtime Getaway" in its November 6 "The Best" issue. The quick run-down of the current exhibitions pronounces them "very cool stuff" and even suggests a visit to the Museum Shop to "pick up a Levitron antigravity top for the folks at work." The Boston Globe's December 3 Calendar also singled out the MIT Museum Shop as a "haven for the [holiday] shopping-averse." While noting that the museum's exhibitions are "spectacular," Cate McQuaid writes that while shopping there, "you'll find technological toys, books, calendars and gifts that handle all that MIT brain power with a sense of humor."
"Though it has a reputation as the nation's oldest and most expensive egghead jamboree, MIT actually has a huge arts community," wrote Paul Hoffman for a Cambridge Tab article on "Free Cambridge" (October 13-19). "Even if you have only gum and pocket change on you, feel free to��������������������������� saunter over to the university: 97 percent of events are free and open to the public."
Mark Harvey, lecturer in music, recently participated in a master class on improvisation at Berklee College of Music and conducted his own compositions with Aardvark at the University of Maine at Augusta. He also gave two lectures on jazz in the Roaring Twenties, tying the music of the Jazz Age to other developments in American culture as part of the Creative Mind Humanities Series at Amarillo College in Texas.
Ceramicist Elaine Yoneoka, artist-in-residence with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is half of a two-person show at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester. Different Sensibilities: Commentaries on Our Lives will run until Wednesday, Dec. 16.
In a show that art critic Charles Giuliano said "may be the most ambitious and provocative exhibition ever mounted by the DeCordova," more than 60 holograms by former Center for Advanced Visual Studies Fellow Harriet Casdin-Silver are presented in the first major retrospective of her work. Ms. Casdin-Silver, a pioneer in the use of holography as an art form, began as a painter but moved to holography in the 1960s. She was the first artist to develop frontal-projection holograms, the first to explore white light transmission multi-colored holograms and the first to exhibit outdoor, solar-tracked holograms. She was at the CAVS from 1976-1985. Harriet Casdin-Silver: The Art of Holography runs at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln through January 3. The artist will lead a tour of her exhibition on Saturday, Dec. 12 at 3pm. For more information, call (781) 259-8355.
The editors of the Boston Phoenix selected Architecture Research Fellow Ritsuko Taho's Multicultural Manifestoes project in Central Square as "Best Redundant Use of Public Funds for Inspirational Outdoor Art." The project incorporates the written dreams of the diverse communities of Central Square, inscribed on scroll-like cylindrical towers. "Who'd have thought a construct of metal and glass could speak with so many voices?" asked the Phoenix.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 9, 1998.
