Conservatory

Thursday, Feb. 27 | 8-9 p.m.
Harper Hall

Kenji Bunch writes music that looks for commonalities between musical styles, for understandings that transcend cultural or generational barriers, and for empathic connections with his listeners. Drawing on vernacular musical traditions, an interest in highlighting historical injustices and inaccuracies, and techniques from his classical training, Bunch creates music with a unique personal vocabulary that appeals to performers, audiences, and critics alike.

With his work frequently performed worldwide and recorded numerous times, Bunch considers his current mission the search for and celebration of shared emotional truths about the human experience from the profound to the absurd, to help facilitate connection and healing through entertainment, vulnerability, humor, and joy. Bunch is widely recognized for performing his own groundbreaking works for viola. He currently serves as Artistic Director of the new music group Fear No Music and is deeply committed to music education in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.

Admission is free and open to all!

Sunday, March 2 | 7:30 p.m.
Harper Hall

The Lawrence University New Music Ensemble will perform Ralph’s Old Records, Summer Hours, and Alpha Dog by composer Kenji Bunch.

Saturday, Feb. 22 | 7:30 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Matt Wilson, a jazz luminary, boasts thirteen albums as a leader and over 400 collaborations with jazz icons like Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny. Named 2018 Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, his album Honey And Salt clinched the Album of the Year Award. With consecutive 5-star reviews from Downbeat for Honey And Salt and Beginning of a Memory, Wilson’s mastery shines. Beyond drumming, he’s a revered educator, dedicated to bridging music and people. Passionate about jazz’s outreach, he strives to inspire individuality and creativity in students, fostering a vibrant connection between audiences and music.

Get your tickets today!

• Adult: $25-30
• Senior: $20-25
• Lawrence faculty & staff: $9-10 (only available in-person at the Box Office)
• Lawrence and non-Lawrence students with valid ID – FREE (only available in-person at the Box Office)

Saturday, Feb. 22 | 3:30 p.m.
Harper Hall

Lawrence faculty will perform works by Mozart, Ruby Fulton, Betty Jackson King, Florence Price, Undine Smith Moore, Honegger, Gregory Wanamaker, Schubert, Debussy, and Lori Laitman.

• Estelí Gomez (voice)
• Steven Paul Spears (voice)
• Jenny Snedeker (flute)
• Andy Hudson (clarinet)
• Brigit Fitzgerald (bassoon)
• Joseph Connor (saxophone)
• Jenny Snyder Kozoroz (viola)
• Catherine Kautsky (piano)
• Kristin Roach (piano)

Free and open to the public!

Can’t make it in person? Catch the live webcast.

Monday, Feb. 17 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Guest marimbist Nancy Zeltsman presents “Drinking Water,” featuring works by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, Joep Straesser, Fred Hersch, Gunther Schuller, Paul Simon, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Manuel M. Ponce.

Free and open to the public!

Monday, Feb. 10 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Lawrence faculty Andy Hudson (clarinet), Jenny Snyder Kozoroz (viola), and Catherine Kautsky (piano) perform works by Brahms, John Harmon ’57, and Mozart.

Free and open to the public!

Can’t make it to the Lawrence Memorial Chapel? Catch the live webcast.

Friday, Feb. 7 | 7:30 p.m.
Lawrence Memorial Chapel

Adrian Steele & Phoenix Avalon (violin)
Devin Moore (viola)
Joshua McClendon (cello)

Formed in 2019, the Isidore String Quartet, winners of the 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, aims to refresh classical repertoire. Influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet, they approach music with a fresh perspective. Originating from the Juilliard School, they regrouped at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in 2021 under Joel Krosnick’s mentorship. The quartet received coaching from luminaries including Joseph Lin, Astrid Schween, and Miriam Fried. Committed to revitalizing established works and embracing innovation, they bring a dynamic energy to their performances, embodying their ethos of treating tradition with innovation and the new with reverence.

General Admission

• Adult: $25-30
• Senior: $20-25
• Students with a valid ID: FREE (only available in-person at the Box Office)

Wednesday, Jan. 29 | 8-10 p.m.
Harper Hall

This dynamic duo is composed of Larry Bellorín of Monagas, Venezuela, a legend of Llanera music, and Joe Troop, a Grammy-nominated bluegrass musician from North Carolina. The two fell into step together when the pandemic sent Troop back home to The Tarheel State after ten years in South America, the same state where Bellorín happened to end up as an asylum seeker. Their unique blend of Venezuelan and Appalachian folk on the harp, banjo, cuatro, fiddle, guitar, maracas, and whatever else fits in the van unites their own unique cultures and traditions while bringing music to the forefront of social movements.

General admission tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for seniors. Students with a valid ID get in for free!

Saturday, Jan. 25 | 8 p.m.
Harper Hall

This concert will feature Conservatory faculty Brigit Fitzgerald (bassoon), Ann Ellsworth (horn), Zach Marley (tuba), Kivie Cahn-Lipman (cello), Andy Hudson (clarinet), and Cayla Rosché (voice), joined by eight students and narrator Marcia Bjornerud, Walter Schober Professor of Environmental Studies and professor of geosciences.

Saturday, Jan. 18

Open Community Workshop in Contact Improvisation

12-2 p.m. | Warch 225 – Esch Hurvis

Elise Knudson and rebeca medina will join to share their body-mind practices of listening to the pull of the earth and to each other. This class will start with a detailed warm-up of the spine and will move into exploring states of touch and movement. This will develop into a dance where the focus will be on discovering new challenges in the specific excavation of pouring weight. 

No registration is required. Some understanding or knowledge of Contact Improvisation appreciated/expected. 

Email Margaret Paek with questions (margaret.s.paek@lawrence.edu).

U.F.O., an Improvisational Performance

7 p.m. | Warch 225 – Esch Hurvis

U.F.O. (Uncharted Forms of the Occasion) is an improvisational performance practice bringing together musicians and movers to spontaneously compose for an audience. Inspired by a lineage of improvisational group performance formats such as Hyperlocal MKE and Lower Left’s Available Space in San Diego, U.F.O. is a site for artists to gather and create—relying on their years of individual improvisational research and practices to support this delightful and sometimes precarious community endeavor.

This iteration of U.F.O. is directed by special Dance Series artists Elise Knudson + rebeca medina and collaboratively and improvisationally created and performed by Elise Knudson, rebeca medina, Greg Riss, Jean Carlo Ureña Gonzalez, Loren Kiyoshi Dempster, Margaret Sunghe Paek, Matt Turner, Mauriah Donegan Kraker, and Tim Albright.