Events

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University will kick off a series of healthy cooking classes with Wholesome Chef Carolyn Gilles on August 28. The monthly class is offered to all Transylvania students for free and will be held in the university’s hospitality lab. Senior Eryn Hornberger, the food and dining committee chair for Transylvania’s Sustainability Council, is thrilled to help coordinate the event as the intern for the university’s sustainability office. “As a student, I understand, you want food that is cheap, easy, and fast. A lot of people put cooking off—it’s easy to go to Taco Bell,” Hornberger said. She believes these classes could change that.  “Working with The Wholesome Chef will hopefully encourage and provide the opportunity for Transylvania students to become acclimated with the culture of Lexington and to view the buy-local, eat-local movement as progressive change—not a trend, but a way of life.” Gilles was trained at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts and cooked at the famous Candle Café in New York. Later she founded The Wholesome Chef, a Lexington cooking school that focuses on teaching the connection between food and health. She will boil down her cooking techniques for students, using recipes that can be made in a dorm room, requiring only a cutting board and a knife. For Gilles, there’s a direct correlation between what we eat and quality of life. “Home Economics classes don’t exist anymore,” she says. “They were replaced with

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Kirk Whalum will perform at Transylvania University Saturday, Aug. 4 as part of the Lexus Smooth Jazz Fest. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the acclaimed event, which is presented by the African American Forum and will be held at Transylvania for the first time. The festival will be held outdoors on Old Morrison front lawn on Third Street between Broadway and Mill and will celebrate contemporary American jazz, with live music, food, and examples of Kentucky culture. Whalum won a Grammy Award for Best Gospel Song in 2011 for “Hello Fear” and is a successful solo player and collaborator, featured on hit songs including “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. His most recent album, Romance Language, debuted at number one on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart. The African American Forum is a non-profit organization based in Lexington that develops programs to support the artistic, cultural and educational achievements of African Americans in order to embrace diversity and create a greater, united culture. Net proceeds from the Lexus Smooth Jazz Fest will benefit the African American Forum Endowment Fund. Tickets start at $30 and are on sale now at AAFinc.com or by calling (859) 255-2653. Group rates are available.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University’s Theatre Guild offers up a Shakespearean action-adventure-fantasy with “Rough Magic,” in the Lucille C. Little Theater May 17-19 at 7:30 p.m. and May 20 at 2 p.m.   Transylvania senior Heather Porter directs the regional premiere of this play, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Transplanting characters from “The Tempest” to present-day New York, “Rough Magic” conjures a mythical, magical meta-universe in which the evil sorcerer Prospero is willing to do anything to recover his stolen book of magic, even if it means Manhattan’s destruction. Luckily, Manhattan’s defenders include a quartet of unlikely heroes: a plucky, raven-haired dramaturg named Melanie Porter, who has the ability to free characters from plays; Prospero’s hunky, though not-to-bright son, Caliban; a revenge-seeking Fury from ancient Greece named Tisiphone and Chet Baxter, a 17-year-old lifeguard from Coney Island. General admission tickets are $10 and may be reserved by calling the box office at (859) 281-3621, weekdays from 1-4 p.m. For more information, contact Sully White at swhite@transy.edu.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—On Wednesday, May 16, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Transylvania University will host a garden party to unveil new signage for Transylvania’s rain garden, one of the first in Lexington. A traditional sign has been created by Kayla Kidwell-Snider ’12 and Barbara Grinnell, Transylvania’s graphic designer. Kidwell-Snider has also created hand-painted interactive signage for the garden. These signs are blocks mounted on a threaded rod. Each side of the block has different information, such as a picture of the plant with the name, a picture of an animal that uses the plant, a fun fact about the plant and information on when the plant blooms or where to plant it. The party is free and open to the public and representatives from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government will attend. The garden signage is the final component of Transylvania’s nearly $4,900 Stormwater Quality Grant that the university received in December 2010 from the LFUCG. The grant was to fund education initiatives related to water quality, specifically, how people’s actions can impact water quality. With the grant money, which Transylvania matched at 50 percent, the sustainability office has held workshops on rain barrel making, rain gardens and environmentally friendly lawncare for faculty, staff and students. Last May term, the office also hosted Town Branch Tuesdays to increase stormwater quality awareness, including a progressive lunch garden party, a scavenger hunt, a water festival and storm drain painting. For more information, contact the public

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