The Clarice Curricular Connections Guide - Spring 2023

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Welcome!

The 2022–23 performing arts season at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is now on sale! In this integrated arts laboratory you can experience stunning works live on stage by student, faculty and touring artists who share untold stories, break boundaries and breathe fresh perspectives into your favorite classics. With more than 100 events across music, theater and dance, there is truly something in store for everyone!

This season also plays a key role in the campuswide Arts for All initiative, which leverages the power of the arts, technology and social justice to address the grand challenges of our time. Our performances aim to elevate marginalized voices and audiences are invited to participate in the process through panels, residencies, open rehearsals, lectures, masterclasses and more.

We are excited to continue pay what you wish pricing this year for faculty, staff and campus partners as we experiment with ways to increase access to the arts. As you choose your own price, remember that all ticket revenue helps bring these events directly to you, our audience. When you select your tickets, you will have the option to choose how much you wish to pay, with a $5 minimum per ticket. Whether you want to pay $5, $100 or something in between is ultimately up to you! As always, UMD student tickets are free!

Events in this Guide The UMD School of Music offers a vibrant lineup of performances that explore the intersection between traditional masterworks and marginalized works by composers of diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

The UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ productions tell stories from various global perspectives and arise from interdisciplinary collaborations. On stage, you will see dance that defies conventional storytelling and theater that explores issues of race, gender and class in a variety of historical and contemporary settings.

The Visiting Artist Series features regional, national and international artists who visit campus for performances and other activities. Beyond the stunning work these artists bring to the stage, they are also committed to extensive engagement that creates exciting connections with students and the community.

These interactions happen through class visits, masterclasses, shared meals and conversations.

Free and Discounted Tickets!

All University of Maryland students receive FREE tickets to events in this guide.

Faculty/Staff tickets are Pay What You Wish with a $5 minimum.

How to Use This Guide Step 1 Browse through our events by date.

Step 2 If your course matches an event's “Who Connects” section, you can: Bring your class to the event!

Email tickets-theclarice@umd.edu or call 301.405.ARTS (2787) to book your group’s tickets Incorporate the performance into your curricular plans Performance visits on syllabi, performance attendance for extra credit, etc.

If you are interested in having the artist visit your class: Contact Jane Hirshberg at janeh22@umd.edu or 301.405.8172 to create a custom experience for your students

February Visiting Artist Series

ACTNow: (Re)Generate: Beginning with Risk Tues, Feb 7, 2023 • 5:30PM Gildenhorn Recital Hall

"When the dream was slaughtered and all that love and labor seemed to have come to nothing, we scattered... We knew where we had been, what we tried to do, who had cracked, gone mad, died, or been murdered around us... Not everything is lost.

Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again."

-James Baldwin An esteemed panel of arts practitioners, scholars, and thought leaders reckons with risk & necessity being essential components in activating the transformation of failing systems. During such unprecedented times, what will we risk in order to create again?

Who Connects?

American Studies, Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, Government and Politics, Health, Philosophy, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

BlackLight

BlackLight Summit Thu, Feb 9-11 Various Venues, The Clarice We need some R&R! Not rest & relaxation, but risk and regeneration. Perhaps even rage & repair. There is no returning to what came before, so how can we fall into new possibilities, realities and ways of being? In the 2022-23 Season, how do we hold that "if no one goes first, how can anyone follow?" BlackLight 2023 is taking the leap into risking wrong, risking right, risking being loved and seen. In order to take these steps, how are we recovering and regenerating?

We have lost so much. How can we find who we are and who we want to be? Join us for some much needed R&R. The Clarice’s BlackLight Summit aims to activate the unimagined possibilities in dance–it is a convening that envisions dance as a conduit to galvanize resilience and inventiveness. Throughout the 2022–23 season, the BlackLight Summit will continue to foster community connection by facilitating a series of mentoring and professional development opportunities, conversations and performances.

Who Connects? African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, Dance, Health, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Maryland Opera Studio

Proving Up Sat, Feb 18 • 8PM Dekelboum Concert Hall, The Clarice Based on a 2013 short story by Karen Russell, Proving Up, is a surreal and haunting commentary on the American dream as experienced by the Zegners, a fictional family of 1860s homesteaders. This narrative feels newly relevant at this fraught moment in the nation’s history, when people are examining and reevaluating the achievability of the American Dream. The Zegners are a family that does everything “right” and are still undermined by forces beyond their control. These characters have parallels in our contemporary world: a mother who tries to maintain control through domestic order, a father who turns to the bottle under the pressures of supporting a family, children forced to take on responsibilities beyond their years and a lone, deranged man who resorts to violence and destruction. Pushed to the edge by poverty and ultimately undermined by fate, the Zegners’ fixation on “proving up” never wanes.

Who Connects?

American Studies, Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, English, Family Science, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Visiting Artist Series

Lugano Percussion Ensemble Sat, Feb 18 • 8PM Dance Theatre, The Clarice Acclaimed in Europe’s contemporary music scene, Lugano Percussion Ensemble is based in its namesake city in Switzerland’s only majority-Italian-speaking Canton. Its first members were students at the Swiss Italian Conservatory (CSI/Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana) led by Professor Mircea Ardeleanu. It focused on contemporary music with a particular attention to the fusion of musical and theatrical language elements and a continuous sound research. The current ensemble includes one principal conductor, six percussionists and is often accompanied by an assortment of solo instrumentalists.

The ensemble makes their Clarice debut with a program of world and U.S. premiere works by Chris Shultis, UMD composition professor Thomas Delio, Mathias Steinauer, Lars Heusser, Luca Steffelbach, Giacomo Platini and a pair of works

by William Thomas McKinley, including the world premiere of Again the Distant Bells featuring vibist/marimbist Joe Locke.

Who Connects?

Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance

Visiting Artist Series

Baye and Asa: HotHouse Wed, Feb 22 • 8PM Thurs, Feb 23 • 8PM Kogod Theatre, The Clarice

Directed by Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington and Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt, Baye & Asa is a company creating movement art projects. The duo met when they were six years old––their long friendship giving them the freedom and safety to constantly disagree and expand each other’s artistic capacity. Their brotherhood nourishes the evolution of their work and the physical aggression in their choreography is a representation of their political rage and a yearning to personally implicate themselves. Hip-hop and African dance languages are the foundation of their technique. With it, they build theatrical metaphors, interrogate systemic inequities and contemporize ancient allegories.

Coming to The Clarice in 2022-23 is the duo’s new work HotHouse. ​HotHouse is a commentary on confinement, a dance/theater performance, a durational installation and an exploration of how our failed response to COVID-19 has unmasked the greater systemic failures of America. It interrogates how and why inequities that predated the pandemic–in healthcare, housing, education, incarceration–erupted at the center of our political discourse.

Who Connects?

African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Dance, Health, Psychology, Sociology, Public Health

School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies

The Book Club

Fri, Feb 24 • 7:30PM Sat, Feb 25 • 7:30PM Thurs, Mar 2 • 7:30PM Fri, Mar 3 • 7:30PM Sat, Mar 4 • 2PM Kay Theatre, The Clarice Literature and laughter take center stage! What happens when the devout members of a book club become the focus of a documentary film? Karen Zacarias' witty comedy focuses on books and those who love them––and the quirky dynamics between them. By the end, you’ll feel like you’re a member of the book club yourself!

Who Connects?

Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, English, Sociology, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Theatre, Latina/o Studies, Women’s Studies

School of Music

UMD Symphony Orchestra: Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Erich Stem’s Kayak Sat, Feb 25 • 8PM Dekelboum Concert Hall, The Clarice

Inspired by Shakespeare's play, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture is a beautiful and lush musical rendition of the tragic love story beloved by romantics.

Experience the world premiere of Kayak by UMD composition alum Erich Stem D.M.A. ’03. As part of a commitment to new work, the UMD Symphony Orchestra has commissioned this piece in partnership with UMD Lecturer Scott Christian as the percussion soloist. In addition to his role on the UMD School of Music faculty, Christian also serves as assistant principal timpanist and section percussionist with the National Symphony Orchestra and is an avid kayaker and nature enthusiast. “Kayak invites listeners to imagine a kayak run, such as the peaceful world of calm waters, exhilaration created by the occasional rough rapids, and moments of rest and relief when one hits the open water,” wrote Stem on the inspiration for his composition.

The concert will also include William Grant Still’s sweeping Serenade for Orchestra, which incorporates idioms of American folk music, and Ottorino Respighi’s tone poem Fountains of Rome, which paints the architectural landscape of four notable Roman fountains: Valle Giulia, Triton, Trevi and Villa Medici.

Who Connects?

African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, English, Italian, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance, Visiting Artist Series

Visiting Artist Series

Flutronix & Third Coast Percussion: Rubix Sun, Feb 26 • 3PM Kogod Theatre, The Clarice Two ensembles who are redefining classical music for the 21st century join forces for a special double-bill performance.

Flutronix (critically acclaimed flutists and composers Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull) and the Grammy Award–winning Third Coast Percussion (Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore) collaboratively composed a new work called Rubix, inspired by musical games that tie the sound worlds of these performers and composers together. The matinee program features solo sets by each ensemble in addition to their new co-created work.

Who Connects?

African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Women’s Studies

March Visiting Artist Series

American Brass Quintet

Sun, Mar 5 • 3PM Gildenhorn Recital Hall, The Clarice Internationally recognized as one of the premier chamber music ensembles of our time, American Brass Quintet has been hailed by Newsweek as “the high priests of brass.” ABQ's rich history includes performances in Asia, Australia, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and all 50 of the United States; a discography of nearly 60 recordings; and the premieres of more than 150 contemporary brass works.

Committed to the promotion of brass chamber music through education, the American Brass Quintet has been in residence at The Juilliard School since 1987 and the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1970.

For this matinee concert, ABQ brings a program that features a new work by acclaimed American composer Jennifer Higdon and, of course, large brass works.

Who Connects?

American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance

Visiting Artist Series

Jazz Jam with the Hall CP ft. Walter Smith III Wed, Mar 8 • 7:30PM The Hall CP Kick off your spring with this new monthly jazz jam session led

by D.C.-based saxophonist Elijah Balbed! The house band will play a set starting at 7:30PM. Bring your instrument! After enjoying their set, you’ll have a chance to call a tune!

Participation in our jazz jams is free–no tickets required and all levels welcome. This month features Clarice visiting artist Walter Smith III on saxophone.

Who Connects?

African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance Visiting Artist Series

Walter Smith III: TWIO Thurs, Mar 9 • 7PM Thurs, Mar 9 • 9PM Kogod Theatre, The Clarice The New York Times describes tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III's work as "fabulous," while jazz legend Jimmy Heath calls Smith “a perfect example of what my mentor Dizzy Gillespie said: ‘You have to have one foot in the past and one foot in the future.’” He has performed all over the world, participating in virtually every international festival as well as famed venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Village Vanguard and The Kennedy Center.

2022 brought Walter Smith III to new heights with his most compelling and reflective album to date, “In Common III,” released in March and featuring some of the most important and talked-about artists on the scene, including Matt Stevens, Kris Davis, Dave Holland and Terri Lyne Carrington.

Downbeat calls it “one of the coolest projects you’ll hear this year” and “a wondrous listen from start to finish.”

Who Connects?

African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance Visiting Artist Series

Work-in-progress reading: Lemon Anderson: When Aliens Fall From the Sky Fri, Mar 31 • 7PM Dance Theatre, The Clarice When Aliens Fall from the Sky is the long-awaited return to the stage of Tony Award winning poet and performance artist Lemon Andersen. Prepared for the Latinx diaspora, Anderson speaks truth to power of the unidentified and undocumented.

He spits searing, insightful rhymes about the communities that are the bone marrow of our nation. A one-man show influenced by the autobiographical monologues of Spalding Gray, When Aliens Fall from the Sky is a rally cry for the melting pot of Latinidad to speak and act on the identity crisis in America and join in a collective path forward. Brown fisted, black skinned.

Who Connects?

American Studies, Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, English, Psychology, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Sociology, Spanish, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Theatre, Latina/o Studies

April Visiting Artist Series

Awadagin Pratt

Sun, Apr 2 • 3PM Dekelboum Concert Hall, The Clarice Among his generation of concert artists, awarding-winning pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras. The Washington Post has praised him for “forceful, imaginative” performances while the Pittsburgh Post Gazette has hailed his playing as “arresting, with finessed passagework, quick dynamic changes from loud to soft, and accents in places that caught my ear by surprise, a delightful sensation.”

He appears here in recital with a program featuring classic and modern masterworks for the piano. They include selections from Philip Glass’ Glassworks, Couperin’s Les Baricades Mystériuses, Pēteris Vasks’s Castillo Interior, Fred Hersch’s Nocturne for Left Hand Alone from Three Character Studies, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in D major, Chopin’s Nocturne in B major, Tchaikovsky’s Intermezzo from The Nutcracker arranged by Pletnev, and Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor.

Who Connects?

African American Studies, American Studies, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance

Visiting Artist Series

Moonlight Benjamin Fri, Apr 14 • 8PM Dance Theatre, The Clarice

The Haitian-raised, French-based priestess of voodoo blues rock pulls no punches in her latest single, epi, with a straight-for-the-jugular, guitar-licked homage to Haiti evoking an Afro-energized Black Keys meets Dr. John. Singing in Haitian Creole and French, UK’s The Guardian says, “Benjamin sounds thrilling, thoughtful, and, at times, downright spooky... like a Caribbean Patti Smith.”

She grew up in a protestant orphanage in Port-au-Prince, learning how to sing at church. But she quickly left church songs and gospel behind to pursue her original culture. After experimenting with jazz and world music, she finally found her own unique musical style: a powerful and original fusion between Caribbean voodoo melodies and rhythms and 70's blues rock.

Who Connects?

Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, French, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Women’s Studies

School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies

The Late Wedding

Fri, Apr 21 • 7:30PM Sat, Apr 22 • 2PM Sat, Apr 22 • 7:30PM Wed, Apr 26 • 7:30PM Thurs, Apr 27 • 7:30PM Fri, Apr 28 • 7:30PM Kogod Theatre, The Clarice Inspired by the writings of Italian writer Italo Calvino, Christopher Chen presents a series of interconnected love stories that take place in a dialogue, a memory, a honeymoon, an interview, a rebellion, a spy hunt and a boat traveling through space. Revolving around a strange tribal custom for marriage, The Late Wedding leads audiences through an unpredictable, surprising and whimsical theatre experience.

Who Connects?

American Studies, Anthropology, Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, English, Family Science, Philosophy, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Theatre, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies

UMoves: Undergraduate Dance Concert Fri, Apr 28 • 7:30PM Sat, Apr 29 • 11AM Sat, Apr 29 • 2PM Sun, Apr 30 • 3PM Dance Theatre, The Clarice

In this varied, vibrant and celebratory dance presentation, the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies offers new works of art in motion! Stay tuned for more information about this season’s choreographers!

Who Connects?

Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Dance, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, Theatre

May Visiting Artist Series

RUBBERBAND: Ever So Slightly Thurs, May 4 • 8PM Kay Theatre, The Clarice Founded in 2002 by Victor Quijada, RUBBERBAND immediately imposed itself in Canada and abroad as an explosive one-of-a-kind dance troupe. In their very first year of activity, RUBBERBAND brought well-honed forms that deconstructed several principles of urban dance to the stage.

In Victor Quijada’s Ever So Slightly, 10 dancer-athletes in top form explore the behavioral mechanisms and reflexes we develop against the ceaseless flow of irritants that bombard us in our daily lives. Most of us long for calm and resilience, but how do we get to a zone where noise and aggressivity no longer have a place? Simultaneously delivering delicacy, brutality, finesse and high-voltage action, the choreographer conveys all the energy contained in urgency, revolt, chaos and flight.

Who Connects?

American Studies, Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, Dance, Kinesiology, Psychology, Sociology, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Latina/o Studies

School of Music

UMD Symphony Orchestra: Bartók & Strauss Fri, May 5 • 8PM Dekelboum Concert Hall, The Clarice The UMD Symphony Orchestra presents its season finale concert featuring Johann Strauss, Jr.’s, Overture to Die Fledermaus (The Bat), Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and a third musical selection to be determined.

Pulled from one of his most notable operettas, Strauss’ Overture is a soaring work that encompasses the best of the batty opera’s melodies all packed into eight minutes of farcical delight.

Over the short span of two months in 1943, Bartók composed his Concerto for Orchestra by the request of Serge Koussevitzky in memory of his late wife. While writing, Bartók was fighting a mysterious illness that ended up being leukemia, which sadly proved to be fatal. As the title implies, various instruments within the symphony orchestra are pulled out as soloists throughout the work.

Who Connects?

Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Germanic Studies, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance

School of Music

UMD Wind Orchestra: Mozart’s “Gran Partita” and Lash’s In Pieces Sat, May 6 • 8PM Dekelboum Concert Hall, The Clarice The UMD Wind Orchestra concludes its season with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s beloved “Gran Partita” and a vibrant new work by Hannah Lash. Mozart’s tenth Serenade, the “Gran Partita” roughly translates to “big wind symphony.”

Filled with melodic ornamentation, Mozart wrote this light-hearted piece for entertainment at social gatherings and dinner parties. While this informal practice has caused many serenades from that time period to be lost, luckily many of Mozart’s survived and his “Gran Partita” has become widely recognized as one of the most notable works for wind band.

Shrouded in mystery and composed over 200 years ago, this serenade leaves quite a bit up to musical interpretation, which leads to the masterwork’s elusive and ever-evolving nature.

Composed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and premiered in April of 2022, In Pieces “was written during a time of deep unrest,” Lash wrote in the program note. “My mind was batting around, my life adrift. I was writing music that seemed to me simultaneously to be the most earnest possible expression of raw emotion while at the same a cuttingly ironic jab at the world.”

Who Connects?

American Studies, Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance, Psychology, Sociology, Women’s Studies

Visiting Artist Series

Tesla Quartet

Sun, May 7 • 3PM Kogod Theatre, The Clarice Praised for their “superb capacity to find the inner heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style, or technical demand” (The International Review of Music), the Tesla Quartet brings refinement and prowess to both new and established repertoire. Dubbed “technically superb” by The Strad, the Tesla Quartet has won top prizes in numerous international competitions and performs regularly across North America and Europe.

Formed in 2008 at The Juilliard School, the Tesla Quartet released its debut album in 2018 of Haydn, Ravel, and Stravinsky quartets on the Orchid Classics label to critical acclaim. BBC Music Magazine awarded the disc a double 5-star rating and featured it as the “Chamber Choice” for the month of December.

Who Connects?

Arts and Humanities, College Park Scholars-Arts, Music Education, School of Music, Music Performance