Fall brings a full slate of arts offerings at W&M
The new semester brings with it a vast array of opportunities for people to enjoy the arts at William & Mary. For more events happening at William & Mary this semester, see the university's online calendar. - Ed.
Art
A mural project completed with visiting artist Steve Prince over the summer to kick off the yearlong commemoration of the 50th anniversary of W&M’s first African-American residential students will be unveiled this week and on permanent display in Swem Library.
The Muscarelle Museum of Art will host two exhibits as part of the 50th commemoration. Fred Eversley, 50 Years an Artist: Light & Space & Energy and Building on the Legacy: African American Art from the Permanent Collection will open Sept. 2 and run through Dec. 10 and Jan. 14, 2018, respectively. A career survey of 23 of Eversley’s sculptures will be shown.
Eversley, an African-American sculptor and innovator, was trained as an engineer. He began making his polyester resin sculptures with an aim to “create kinetic art without using kinetic elements such as mechanical movement or artificial light changes.” Eversley’s strong interest in energy has led to further creations that utilize wind current to create dynamic acrylic cast forms. Eversley embarked on his 50-year career as an artist in 1967, which was the year W&M’s first African-American residential students started at the university as freshmen.
The Muscarelle will host its Third Thursday Lecture Series, which is free and open to the public, on Sept. 21, Oct. 19 and Nov. 16.
The Department of Art and Art History’s Andrews Gallery will host No Man’s Land: A Collection of Works by Contemporary Female Artists from Sept. 7 through Oct. 3. It will feature numerous works on the first floor of the free gallery, located behind Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall. A reception, free and open to the public, will be held on Sept. 14 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Dance
Leah Glenn Dance Theatre and English Professor Hermine Pinson will perform two concerts as part of the opening activities for the 50th anniversary commemoration of W&M’s first African-American residential students. Performances, free but with tickets required, will be Sept. 2 at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Muscarelle Museum of Art and will feature choreography by Glenn, W&M associate professor and director of dance and artistic director of the company, and poetry by Pinson.
Orchesis Modern Dance Company will present DANCEVENT, original choreography by dance faculty members performed by faculty, students with Orchesis and guest artists, from Oct. 26 through Oct. 29. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $7-$15.
Ewell Concert Series
The music department will kick off the Ewell Concert Series with a free performance at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 29 in Ewell Hall featuring pianist Maria Yefimova, a music faculty member.
A competition prizewinner, the Russian-born Yefimova has established herself internationally as a recitalist, chamber musician and orchestra soloist, performing in Italy, Spain, England, Slovakia, Croatia, Russia and the U.S. She will give a solo performance of works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Debussy.
The series continues at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 6, in Ewell Hall, with the quartet Ayreheart. Led by lutentist Ronn McFarlane, the group performs Renaissance and folk music inspired by Renaissance and other pre-Baroque traditions. This historically informed program gives a glimpse into the lute’s past and the expressiveness that prompted Renaissance writers to call the lute “the prince of instruments.” Admission is $5.
On Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m. William & Mary welcomes the duo of Sahba Motallebi and Naghmeh Farahmand to Ewell Recital Hall in a free performance. The Iranian musicians perform classical Persian music for the tar—an Iranian long-necked, waisted instrument—and traditional Persian percussion instruments, the daf, which is a large frame drum, and the tonbak, a single-headed goblet drum.
The final fall performance of the Ewell Series will be Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m., with vocals and piano by Thomas Meglioranza and Reiko Uchida at Ewell Hall. Uchida is a classical pianist who has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras and has performed solo and chamber music concerts throughout the world, while operatic performer Meglioranza was dubbed “one of America’s finest young baritones” by The New Yorker. The pair will present a program of songs by Wolf, Fauré and Ives along with folk song arrangements by Beethoven, as well as various American parlor and cabaret favorites. Admission is $5 for the general public, free with W&M ID.
Music
Composer, performer and media artist Pamela Z will give a performance and artist’s talk at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 27 in Ewell Recital Hall as part 
of the American Studies symposium on Race, Memory and the Digital Humanities that is part of the 50th commemoration. Z works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound and video.
The music department has various concerts scheduled throughout the semester.
The W&M Orchestra will perform its Family Weekend Concert on Sept. 15 at 8 p.m. at Kaplan Arena featuring “The Wasps” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. General admission is $10; free for children, students with ID and veterans.
The Halloween Concert will be held at 8 p.m. on Oct. 27 in the Sadler Center and feature Dimitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 12,” Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Wasps” and Michael Mauldin’s “Petroglyphs.” General admission is $10, $3 for students and children.
The orchestra’s annual Fall Concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 8 in Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall and feature the U.S. premiere of “Lamento” by Max D’Ollone, George Bizet’s “L’Arlesienne,” selections from Suites No. 1 and No. 2, as well as “Fantasy on French Popular Themes, op.31” by Vincent D’Indy with faculty member Sherie Aguirrre as oboe soloist. General admission is $10; free for children, students with ID and veterans.
The 2017 Homecoming Concert, “A Look Back,” at 8 p.m. on Oct. 20 in the Sadler Center, features Adam Gorb’s “Summer Dances” as well as works by American composers Cindy McTee and Ulysses Kay performed by the W&M Wind Ensemble, plus a video montage of W&M bands past and present. Admission is $10 for the general public, free for students with ID.
The Wind Ensemble will present its Winter Concert “Dies Natalis” on Dec. 10 at 4 p.m. at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall. The program includes Howard Hanson’s “Dies Natalis” and Randol Alan Bass’s “The Night Before Christmas” narrated by W&M President Taylor Reveley. Admission is $10 for the general public, free for students with ID.
The free Computer Music Concert at Ewell Recital Hall on Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m., showcases the work of composers in the fall semester computer music class, ranging from abstract soundscapes and ambient music to plunderphonic collage, generative music and new techno.
The W&M Choral Ensembles will present their Winter Concert on Dec. 9 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall, featuring sacred and secular music from traditions around the world. Admission is $10 for the general public, $3 for children and students with ID, free for music faculty and staff.
Additional events may be found on the music calendar.
Theatre
W&M Theatre opens the semester Oct. 5 with “Our Lady of Kibeho,” written by Katori Hall and directed by Claire Pamment, assistant professor of world theatre. The play, chosen for the 50th commemoration, tells the story of a Rwandan village girl who in 1981 claims to see the Virgin Mary. She is denounced by her superiors and ostracized by her schoolmates until impossible happenings begin to appear to all. Skepticism gives way to fear, causing upheaval in the school community and beyond. Based on real events, the play is an exploration of faith, doubt and the power and consequences of both. The show runs Oct. 5 through Oct. 8 in Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday.
“Noises Off” by Michael Frayn runs Nov. 30 through Dec. 3. Considered one of the funniest farces ever written, it presents a manic menagerie as a cast of itinerant actors rehearses a flop called “Nothing’s On.” Doors slamming, on and offstage intrigue and an errant herring all figure in the plot of this hilarious and classically comic play. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sundays.
Writing
The Cloud Lecture series will host Trudier Harris, American literary historian and professor of English at the University of Alabama, at 5 p.m. on Sept. 28, in the Tucker Theatre. She is the author, editor or coeditor of 23 books, most recently The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South, South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature, and The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature.
As part of the 50th anniversary commemoration and Patrick Hayes Writers Festival, award-winning poet Brenda Marie Osbey will read from her own works, including a poem commissioned for the anniversary on Sept. 14 at 5 p.m. at the Tucker Theatre. Osbey, a New Orleans native, is an author of poetry and prose nonfiction in English and French. Her work focuses on narrative language, voice and placement; narrative and material texts of culture; and the place of New Orleans in Atlantic and inter-American spheres. She has a special interest in the history of poetry of the Americas of the precolonial and colonial eras.
The series continues at 5 p.m. on Oct. 5 in the Tucker Theatre, with poet, memoirist and fiction writer Shonda Buchanan, W&M’s writer in residence. Author of Who’s Afraid of Black Indians? and editor of Voices from Leimert Park, Buchana is an award-winning poet whose expertise includes narrative nonfiction; contemporary American, African-American, American Indian and women's literature; and comparative literature, as well as canonical texts. A culture and literary arts ambassador, her presentations, workshops and lectures demonstrate her passion for exploring gender, ethnicity, family, heritage, landscape, environment and ancestry.
Next in the series will be short story author Kelly Link speaking at 5 p.m. on Nov. 9 in the Tucker Theatre. Her short story collection Get in Trouble was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and she has written the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners and Pretty Monsters. Her stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.
