The University of Toledo College of Visual and Performing Arts and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra have partnered to present a diverse series of events this month.
This arts and humanities collaboration is the first of its kind between the symphony and the college. Highlights include a film screening, performances and historical lectures.
“The amazing faculty at The University of Toledo have prepared a wonderful array of events that perfectly contextualize the way artists deal with the pain of wartime,” said Toledo Symphony President and CEO Kathleen Carroll. “This is truly a gift to the community.”
The festival theme centers on the poignant concert that the symphony will perform Friday and Saturday, April 27 and 28, at 8 p.m. in the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle Theater. This same program was performed at the 2011 Spring for Music Festival in New York City (alongside the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut). The Toledo Symphony wanted to bring back a postcard from the festival to share with Toledo audiences. Works by Ives, Adams and Britten will be performed continuously with no applause to heighten the emotional in the first half. The concert will conclude with Vaughan-Williams’ haunting Fourth Symphony.
Tickets for the concert start at $15 and can be purchased by calling 419.246.8000 or visiting www.ToledoSymphony.com.
Four free, public events remain that are part of the Wartime Reflections Festival. Listed by date, they are:
• Wednesday, April 18 — “Rage and Remembrance: The British Musical Response to the Great War” with Dr. Christopher Williams, UT visiting assistant professor of music, at 7:30 p.m. in Libbey Hall. He will discuss how the First World War and the loss of many young promising artists affected Ralph Vaughan Williams, who wrote his Fourth Symphony, and Benjamin Britten, who was a fierce pacifist his entire career.
• Friday, April 20 — Film Screening of Derek Jarman’s “War Requiem” with Tammy Kinsey, UT associate professor of film, at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for the Visual Arts Haigh Auditorium on UT’s Toledo Museum of Art Camps. She will introduce this screening of Jarman’s controversial visualization of Britten’s score. Utilizing no dialogue, the film alternates between original dramatic scenes and archival footage of World War I. The film is set to Britten’s own 1963 rendition of the music and is also notable for containing the last performance on stage or screen of Sir Laurence Olivier.
• Sunday, April 22 — “Cabaret!” with Dr. Denise Ritter Bernardini and Dr. Michael Boyd of the UT Department of Music at 3 p.m. in the Toledo Museum of Art Great Gallery. This fun, educational concert will focus on the origins of the cabaret. Take a musical adventure that begins in Paris on the streets of Montmartre during the late 19th century. Then travel to war-torn Munich and Berlin to tour the Kabaretts, complete with bawdy satire to amuse and entertain. The concert will culminate with a modern look at American cabaret, introducing some new music by Benjamin Moore.
• Thursday, April 26 — “Remembering the Civil War: Photographs and Monuments” with Dr. Richard Putney, UT associate professor of art, at 7:30 p.m. in Libbey Hall. He will give an illustrated lecture devoted to memories of the Civil War provided by photographs and memorials, with emphasis on Alexander Gardiner’s Sketchbook of the Civil War (1866) and monuments dedicated at Gettysburg in the 1880s and 1890s.
