1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Transylvania Boys A Cappella to give free concert May 3 at 7:30 p.m.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transy Boys A Cappella (TBA) will perform Sunday, May 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. The performance is free and open to the public. The show will feature a variety of styles from doo wop to pop, barbershop and spirituals. The set list will include “Stand By Me,” “Who Put the Bomp?” the theme song from “Gullah Gullah Island” and many other beloved songs. Transy Boys A Cappella, in its third year of existence, is entirely student directed and organized. The concert preludes the group’s trip with the Transylvania Choir on its European tour for May term the following week. The show will help cap an ambitious year for TBA.  This year has seen the group sing at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Lexington and the Woodsongs preshow at the Kentucky Theatre and participate in a master class with the Grammy Award-winning a cappella group Chanticleer last November. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120 or visit www.transy.edu/music/tba.htm.

Lost and Found: Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery closes season with senior exhibition, May 12-19

Clay: Play Time’s Over, 2007, Toy sculpture and shadow LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery ends the 2008-09 year with Lost and Found, an exhibition of work by three senior art majors. The work of Kaci Clay, David Kenton Kring and Corey Washburn opens May 12 and runs through May 19. A reception honoring the artists will be Thursday, May 14, from 6-8 p.m., with special musical guests “The Tillers.” The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Clay presents a variety of her most critical work, including ceramics, paintings, drawings and sculptures. Clay’s work gives a nod to the humorous, while addressing issues of contemporary importance. Kring: Angel Band, 2008, Ceramic with feathers Kring’s incarcerated ceramic figures soar through Morlan Gallery, buoyantly carrying the hope and the heaviness of Southern culture. Strongly influenced by Southern music, Kring says his hand-built and painted figures are created with surfaces that are extremely worked; often built up in layers, then stripped away and built back up again. Washburn’s room-sized installation is a mystery waiting to be solved. Cluttered with ephemera, furniture and the melancholy, compulsion leads to discovery in a room with a story. For more information go to: www.transy.edu/morlan/exh.asp?e=senior2009 or contact Morlan Gallery director Andrea Fisher at (859) 233-8142.

Juried student exhibition opens April 29 in Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery

LEXINGTON, Ky.—A juried student exhibition opens Wednesday, April 29, in Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery.  All students who made art during the 2008-09 academic year were invited to show their work in the Juried Student Exhibition, which runs through 2 p.m., May 6.   A public reception honoring the artists will be Friday, May 1, from 5-6 p.m., Jurors’ awards will be presented at 5:30 p.m. William Pollard, dean of the college, will select one piece to receive the Dean’s Purchase Award. The award-winning piece will become part of Transylvania’s permanent collection. Morlan Gallery is open weekdays, noon to 5 p.m., and the exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. For more information contact Morlan Gallery Director Andrea Fisher at (859) 233-8142.

Transylvania professor collaborates to bring Spanish writers to Kentucky Foreign Language Conference April 16-18

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C., have collaborated with Transylvania University and Davidson College to bring three Spanish writers to Lexington to participate in the 62nd annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference this week. Two conference sessions are dedicated to literature from the region of León, Spain. Authors from this area have received many prestigious national and international literary prizes. Essayist and journalist Pedro García Trapiello (Diario de León), journalist Susana Martín García (El Mundo) and poet/artist Juan Carlos Mestre will speak about contemporary Spanish literature and journalism at Transylvania’s Jazzman’s Café in the Glenn Building on Friday, April 17, at 11 a.m.  Transylvania received a generous gift from alumna Katie C. Bolin to help sponsor the event. At 7:30 p.m. the writers will conduct a roundtable discussion on literature and journalism by Leonese writers in the University of Kentucky’s Gaines Center, Bingham Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street. Both events are free and open to the public.Spanish professors Veronica Dean-Thacker (Transylvania University), Shelby Thacker (Asbury College) and Mary S. Vásquez (Davidson College) have organized these sessions to highlight the quality and variety of the literary production from Leonese writers, such as Andrés Trapiello (who, in 2004, published his sequel to Cervantes’ Spanish masterpiece, Don Quijote), Julio Llamazares, Josefina Aldecoa, José Maríá Merino, Margarita Merino, Luis Mateo Díéz, Antonio Gamoneda, Juan Carlos Mestre and Juan Pedro Aparicio. The Kentucky Foreign Language Conference is the

Professor Gregory Partain offers a piano and a cappella choir concert Sunday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m.; free and open to the public.

Gregory Partain LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University music professor Greg Partain will perform a solo piano and composition recital Sunday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater in the Mitchell Fine Arts Building, assisted by conductor Phylliss Jenness and the 26 singers of Musica Sacre Novissima, a group of professional musicians and other advanced singers from the Lexington area. The program will feature classic works for solo piano and the world premiere of Partain’s new a cappella choral piece, Stabat Mater Dolorosa. The program is free and open to the public. In his 21 years on the concert stage, Partain has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist throughout the United States, and has performed overseas in Poland, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Russia, Greece and Germany. In 1986, he was the national winner of the KMS Resident Artist Competition in Seattle, then won first prize in the Memphis Beethoven Piano Sonata Competition, second prize in the International Bartok-Kabalevsky Competition in Virginia and was a finalist in the Concert Artists Guild New York Competition. Partain’s wide-ranging repertoire spans music of four centuries.  His first solo CD (2001) contains works by William Byrd, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Ravel.  Partain’s second CD, released in 2007 under the MSR Classics label, contains works by Rachmaninoff, D. Scarlatti, Brahms, Beethoven, and Transylvania University professor Larry Barnes (Toccata: Act of War, composed for Partain). In 1998, Partain made his formal composing debut at the Kentucky Music Teachers