Articles

By Anne Hartman Raether These days, Browne’s family and friends are embracing her newfound interest, and she is enjoying learning basic techniques from the fellow UChicago students who make up the guild. These 10 students take weekly lessons from University Carillonneur Joey Brink. Each year, the guild welcomes interested students who can read music to take six lessons from guild members on Rockefeller’s electronic practice carillons before auditioning to become guild members themselves. This year, 27 students are vying for five spots. For Browne, who was a member of her high school orchestra and has studied the cello for nine years, learning the carillon felt like a natural way to live...

By Maya Dukmasova Some 1,600 people packed the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel Wednesday evening to hear a lecture by legendary radical feminist and academic Angela Davis. The one-time Black Panther leader urged the rapt audience to move beyond mourning and embrace grassroots political organizing in the face of the impending presidency of Donald Trump. Seventy-two-year-old Davis looked regal, her grey-gold Afro in a halo around her face, her gap-toothed smile and lilting voice as captivating as it was 50 years ago. She was depicted in the media as a dangerous terrorist then. In the early 70s she was placed on the FBI's most wanted list, then tried and acquitted on charges of...

By Howard Reich The rolling rhythms and rumbling, right-hand octaves he delivers in his "Blues for Senegal," the sonorous mid-register lyricism he conjures in his "Berkshire Blues" and the mystical gestures and complex harmonies he coaxes from the piano's stratosphere in his "The Healers" point to a pianist with a pervasively orchestral concept. He tips his hat to Chicago with a piano-solo version of "African Sunrise," which the Chicago Jazz Festival commissioned him to create for trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and orchestra in 1984. Weston's all-over-the-keys manner evokes the sound of many instruments, each given voice under his remarkably nimble fingertips. Published in the Chicago Tribune...

By Kerry Cardoza Heavy Traffic Ahead! “Recipe for Instant Art Work: Take a Cadillac, Add Cement,” reads a Chicago Tribune headline from January 17, 1970. The reporter was referring to the German artist Wolf Vostell’s “Concrete Traffic,” a 1957 Cadillac encased almost entirely in cement. The piece, the largest Fluxus art object in existence, is about to receive a new life. The University of Chicago has been working to restore the sixteen-ton sculpture since 2012. On September 30 the repaired work will be unveiled and a series of events, aptly titled “Concrete Happenings,” are planned throughout the coming academic year. “Concrete Traffic” was initially conceived for a two-person show in...

For full information about the Ear Taxi Festival, go to the festival website. For information about Joey Brink's performance on the carillon on Thursday October 6, 2016, at 12 noon, see Rockefeller Chapel's home page! Joey's performance is free, and no tickets are needed. He will be playing three world premieres: . . . the way nets cannot hold water (2016) by Iddo Aharony; Invention—An Ascent (2016) by Tomas I. Gueglio Saccone; his own Letters from the Sky (2016); and two further compositions of his own, Capriccio (2015) and Invocation (2016).

By Bob Gendron If slow and steady wins the race, then Godspeed You! Black Emperor took first place in the equivalent of a long-distance marathon Saturday at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago. Optimizing tonal contrast and cinematic sweep, the instrumental collective spoke volumes without expressing a single word during its 105-minute set. The Montreal-based octet, in town for a two-night stand, had the foresight to utilize the cathedral's premium acoustics as a secret weapon. At typical venues, sound simply projects outward. Here, it seemed to climb up the gothic arches and pool beneath the vaulted ceiling. The sonic effect heightened the impact of the group's subtle...

This interview was conducted at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, in the playing cabin at the top of the bell tower. It took place on September 30, 2015, the day before Mr. Crawford retired. Topics include: Mr. Crawford's background and career, the history of bell towers and carillon playing, and the carillon at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Hyde Park, Chicago. Mr. Crawford is currently the President of the World Carillon Federation. https://youtu.be/fTlxnU0Pk-8

When four female singers gathered in New York in 1986 for informal readings of a cappella Medieval chant, little could they have envisioned a three-decade career brimming with countless performances around the globe and 20 recordings with 20 million copies sold. An impressively large crowd gathered to hear Anonymous 4 Sunday in Hyde Park, grateful to be chosen as the locale for their last local touring date, in the University of Chicago Presents series. No doubt many of their devoted fans in the gargantuan Rockefeller Chapel hoped that the quartet would reconsider its decision to disband. But with other projects in the pipeline for each member, it appears that the end has indeed come, even...

Buzzfeed features Joey Brink taking requests on the carillon! In 1932, John D. Rockefeller gifted a 72-bell, 100-ton bronze carillon to the University of Chicago. In 2015, the University Carillonneur performed Drake’s Hotline Bling at lunchtime on a Friday. To reach the carillon, we climbed 271 steps to the top of the tower. In the immortal words of Drizzy, “Started from the bottom, now we here.” You have to see this [see the article for the awesome pictures!]

By Hedy Weiss Shakespeare 400 Chicago – the yearlong international festival that will run throughout 2016, and is designed to commemorate the four hundred years since Shakespeare’s death in 1616 – has announced the events planned for January through March, 2016. The full line-up of the year’s productions and other events will be announced in January. + From RUSSIA: Cheek by Jowl & Moscow Drama Pushkin Theater in “Measure for Measure,” by William Shakespeare. Directed by Declan Donnellan presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater in CST’s Courtyard Theater, Jan. 27–31, 2016. Performed in Russian with projected English translation. Tickets: $68–$78; Call (312) 595-5600;...