Artist-in-Residence Cristina Pato and Renowned Composer Osvaldo Golijov to Lead Concert and Panel Discussion

'Time, Memory & Identity' theme to be explored; musicians from Boston-based ensemble 'A Far Cry' to perform

Arts Transcending Borders theme, a new initiative at the College designed to infuse the fine and performing arts in students’ academic lives and create new opportunities throughout the curriculum.  The event is free and open to the public.

Joining Pato and Golijov will be renowned clarinetist Todd Palmer, Silk Road Ensemble member and percussionist Shane Shanahan, and musicians from the Boston-based ensemble “A Far Cry,” an exciting new generation in classical music. According to the New York Times, the self-conducted orchestra “brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied.”

The program includes Pato’s “My Lethe Story, The River of Forgetfulness,” composed in response to her mother’s memory loss, and Golijov’s “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind.” Pato weaves her native Galicia and the mythical Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness, into a powerful story on a loved one’s memory loss. It was commissioned by Silkroad and first performed at Harvard University in 2013. Inspired by the great Kabbalist rabbi Isaac the Blind, Golijov’s “Dreams and Prayers” is a meditation on life, Judaism, and music – the primordial human expression “with the power to build castles of sound in our memories.”

The panel will include faculty from the “CreateLab” class, a team taught course with eight faculty members across disciplines and 70 students from more than a dozen different majors. Operating free from the constraints of a traditional classroom, students participating in CreateLab work cooperatively to produce imaginative projects, which are designed to teach students to be risk-takers, use resourceful thinking, and collaborate on creative work.

Panelists include: Renée Beard, associate professor of sociology; Mark Freeman, professor and chair of the psychology department; and Charles S. Weiss, director of Strategic Initiatives and Corporate and Foundation Relations.

Arts Transcending Borders is supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.