2011-12 Special Performances
Each year, the staff of the UAlbany Performing Arts Center selects several professional touring artists to perform at our facility to augment and complement the offerings presented by the Departments of Music and Theatre. Often these companies are on campus for several days offering performances and other activities which share their artistic work and vision. We are proud of the multicultural and multi-discipline artists who will be with us this season and graciously thank our partners who have enabled us to make their presence here a possibility.
Alicia Svigals' Klezmer
Fiddle Express
Thursday, September 15 at 7:30pm
Recital Hall
$15 / $12 faculty-staff & seniors / $10 students
The renowned violinist, a founder of the Klezmatics and the world’s foremost klezmer fiddler presents a program of ecstatic Jewish melodies accompanied by Patrick Farrell on accordion and Jim Whitney on bass. “She is without question the greatest living exponent of the klezmer fiddle…” ~ The Klezmer Express MORE INFO
Artist website
The American Place Theatre in Down These Mean Streets
THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO SCHEDULING DIFFICULTIES
Thursday, October 13 at 7:30pm
Pre-show discussion at 7pm
$15 / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students
Piri Thomas’s lacerating, lyrical memoir tells of his coming of age as a Puerto Rican on the streets of Spanish Harlem – a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old was sent to prison for shooting a cop. Utilizing the irrepressible rhythm of the author’s voice, this stage adaptation recounts his plunge into the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting and armed robbery by following him from adolescence in El Barrio to a lock-up in Sing Sing to the freedom that comes of self-acceptance, faith and inner confidence.
Artist website
Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the New York State Writers Institute. Support provided by the Office of Multicultural Student Success, University Auxiliary Services and Holiday Inn Express.
Pick Up Performance Co(s) in
Dancing Henry Five
Friday, October 28 at 8pm
Main Theatre
$20 / $15 faculty-staff & seniors / $10 students
Directed, choreographed and designed by Obie & Bessie award winner and Guggenheim fellow David Gordon, this imaginative whirlwind reduction of Shakespeare’s Henry V is told through an innovative mélange of movement, theatre, narration, music by William Walton from the 1940s film and the voices of Laurence Olivier and Christopher Plummer. “Gordon has condensed Shakespeare’s sprawling historical epic into a layered novella of marvelous stagecraft, economical movement and emotional subtlety.” ~ Star Tribune MORE INFO
Artist website
Photos this page: Tina Chaden, Jennifer Barnette, Paula Court
Truth Values:
One Girl’s Romp
Through
M.I.T.’s
Male Math Maze
Wednesday, February 8 at 7:30pm
Recital Hall
$15 / $12 faculty-staff & seniors / $10 students
Writer, performer and “recovering mathematician” Gioia De Cari relates a humorous, scathing, insightful and ultimately uplifting true-life tale of the challenges of being a professional woman in a male-dominated field. Winner of the Overall Excellence Award for Best Solo Show in the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival, De Cari brings to life more than 30 characters in a hilarious and deeply touching performance. MORE INFO
Artist website
Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.. Support provided by University Auxiliary Services and Holiday Inn Express
Oswego Jazz Project
Wednesday, February 22 at 7:30pm
Recital Hall
$12 / $10 seniors & faculty-staff / $8 students
Striving to let audiences explore and appreciate the genre, this quartet’s repertoire features a wide array of jazz styles from originals to standards. The group has been featured on National Public Radio, has performed residencies throughout North American and debuted in New York City at the esteemed "jazz church" of Saint Peter's. Members include Robert Auler on keyboards, Eric Schmitz on drums, Trevor Jorgensen on saxophone and Max McKee on bass. MORE INFO
Presented by the Performing Arts Center through an artist-in-residence exchange program with SUNY Oswego. Support provided by University Auxiliary Services and Holiday Inn Express.
Core Ensemble in Ain’t I a Woman!
Thursday, March 29 at 7:30pm
Recital Hall - $15 / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students
With a musical score drawn from the heartfelt spirituals and blues of the Deep South, the urban vitality of the Jazz Age and contemporary concert music by African Americans, this chamber music theatre work for actress and trio (cello, piano & percussion) celebrates the life and times of four passionate and accomplished African American women: renowned novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, ex-slave and fiery abolitionist Sojourner Truth, exuberant folk artist Clementine Hunter and fervent civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. MORE INFO
Artist website
The American Place Theatre in The Kite Runner
Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30pm ~
Pre-show discussion at 7pm
Recital Hall - $15 / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students
Khaled Hosseini’s story is one of guilt and redemption, brutality and kindness, sin and forgiveness. It portrays the doomed relationship of two boys - a privileged Pashtun and a Hazara servant - one rich, one poor, one flawed, the other pure. This award-winning stage adaptation based on the first half of the best selling contemporary novel takes audiences on a heartbreaking journey of friendship and betrayal in a society of severe class division against a backdrop of 1970s Afghanistan in turmoil. MORE INFO
Artist website
Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the New York State Writers Institute. Support provided by the University at Albany Foundation, Office of International Education, Office of Multicultural Student Success, University Auxiliary Services and Holiday Inn Express.
Photos this page: John Olsen, Colin Nekritz, Jennifer Barnette
