Press Releases

APPLETON, WIS. — In the absence of God, are all human lives meaningless and no action considered morally wrong or obligatory?

Erik Wielenberg, associate professor of philosophy at DePauw University, examines the relationship between God and human virtue in the Lawrence University address “God and the Distortion of Morality” Monday, April 30 at 7 p.m. in Riverview Lounge. A question-and-answer session will follow the talk, which is free and open to the public.

According to Wielenberg, attempts to provide a theistic foundation for objective morality “are flawed in that they tend to distort morality in various ways and suggest that objective morality does not require an external foundation at all.” The absence of God, Wielenberg argues, “does not entail the absence of genuine values and moral obligations.”

A scholar in ethical theory and the philosophy of religion, Wielenberg is the author of the 2005 book “Virtue and Value in a Godless Universe” and the forthcoming book “God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell,” which is scheduled to be published later this year.

A 1994 graduate of Lawrence, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Wielenberg holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He joined the faculty at DePauw in 1999.

Wielenberg’s appearance is sponsored by the Lawrence Philosophy Club.

APPLETON, WIS. — Four separate choirs and two renowned guest soloists, all backed by the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, will combine talents in a tour de force performance of Johannes Brahms’ musical masterpiece “A German Requiem” Saturday, April 28 at 8 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

The concert will include performances by the Lawrence Concert Choir, Cantala and Viking Chorale as well the community-based White Heron Chorale. In addition, baritone William McGraw and soprano Winifred Faix Brown will be featured as guest soloists.

Rick Bjella, director of choral studies at Lawrence, will conduct the 220 voices singing the work as well as the orchestra playing it.

Tickets for the concert, at $10 for adults and $5 for senior citizens/students, are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton, or by phone at 920-832-6749. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the box office beginning one hour before the concert.

Completed in 1868 after the German composer had spent 11 years working on it, “A German Requiem” was performed publicly for the first time on Good Friday of that year, with Brahms himself conducting. It is considered by many music scholars to be his “magnum opus.”

“There is not a choral orchestral work from the 19th-century that is more popular than Brahms’ ‘A German Requiem,'” said Bjella. “Next to Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ this is the most performed choral orchestral work today.”

Unlike the traditional Catholic Church requiem service for the dead, Brahm’s requiem offers comfort and hope for the living as well as remembering the departed. According to Bjella, Brahms once wrote that he wished he had the courage to call his work a “Human” Requiem, rather than a German Requiem.

“Brahms indicated that this was not intended to be a liturgical presentation of a theological argument but a human, non-dogmatic, personal document,” said Bjella. “He clearly revealed that his intent was to write for all humankind.”

McGraw, who will be making his first appearance as Lawrence, is a professor of vocal studies at the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati. He has performed nationally and internationally, singing with the Greater Miami Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Boston Opera and Opera of Maracaibo, Venezuela, among others. He also has performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall in conjunction with the New York Choral Society. His extensive list of roles include Figaro in “The Barber of Seville,” Marcello in “La Boheme,” the title role in “Rigoletto,” and John Proctor in “The Crucible.”

Brown, who performed as a guest soloist in Lawrence’s production of Verdi’s “Requiem” several years ago, is an internationally acclaimed soprano who has performed throughout Europe, North, Central and South America since the age of 17. She has been guest artist of the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera, as well as theatres in Berlin, Paris and Rome. She performs as soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brown also founded and serves as artistic director of CandleOpera and N.O.V.A. — the New Organization for Vocal Artistry in Chicago.

In addition to their performances in “German Requiem,” McGraw and Brown both will conduct master classes at Lawrence. McGraw will teach Thursday, April 26 at 11:10 a.m. in Harper Hall, while Brown will lead a class Friday, April 27 at 3:10 p.m. in Shattuck Hall, Room 163.

APPLETON, WIS. — Objectivist author Craig Biddle discusses the principles of “rational egoism” and why those principles provide the cornerstone to personal happiness and social harmony in an address at Lawrence University.

Biddle presents “Ayn Rand’s Morality of Selfishness: An Introduction to Objectivist Ethics” Friday, April 27 at 7 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event, rescheduled from a previously announced March appearance, is free and open to the public.

A Russian-born novelist and philosopher, Rand, in the 1960s, began outlining a life doctrine she called Objectivism. According to Rand, morality of selfishness — rational egoism — is the only moral code that provides a system of principles to guide an individual’s choices and actions in pursuit of life-serving goals and values. It also provides a foundation for the protection of individual rights and ultimately the establishment and maintenance of a free and civilized society.

The address will examine the tenets of rational egoism, provide real-life examples of it and explain why it should be embraced by anyone who wants to live happily and freely.

Biddle is the author of the 2002 book “Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It.” He also serves as the editor and publisher of The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics. In addition to lecturing on ethical and epistemological issues from an Objectivist perspective, he is working on a second book that examines the principles of rational thinking and the fallacies that are violations of those principles.

His appearance is sponsored by the Lawrence University Objectivist Club.

APPLETON, WIS. — The Lawrence University student organization Greenfire pays homage to Mother Earth with its ninth annual Earth Day Festival Saturday, April 21.

The day-long event includes a variety of volunteer activities, educational opportunities and live music, beginning with a pancake breakfast at 8:30 a.m. in the Sustainable Lawrence University Garden (SLUG) at the bottom of Union Hill, followed by a debris clean-up along the banks of the Fox River.

From 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., the Main Hall Green will host a variety of child-oriented activities (face painting, climbing wall, tie-dying, “solar oven” cookoff) and earth-friendly information booths from student and community environmental organizations, including the Wind River Animal Rehabilitation Center and The Fire, a local paint-your own pottery and mosaic studio.

Associate Professor of Biology Bart De Stasio will provide information on research he is conducting on invasive species in the Fox River and representatives from the Fox River Navigational System Authority will be on hand to discuss the reopening of the historic Fox River locks system.

Interested participants are encouraged to volunteer from 1-4 p.m. in the SLUG, helping prepare it for spring planting.

Live music provided by several Lawrence University student bands will perform throughout the afternoon. The festival concludes with an Earth Night Dance in the trees on Main Hall Green beginning at 9 p.m.

APPLETON, WIS. — One of the country’s leading scholars on the history of environmentalism examines the movement’s “development as a secular faith” in an address at Lawrence University.

Thomas Dunlap, professor of history at Texas A & M University, presents, “Environmentalism as Reform and Religion” Tuesday, April 24 at 4:30 p.m. in Lawrence’s Science Hall, Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.

Providing a historical context to the rise in environmental awareness 40 years ago, Dunlap will discuss how environmentalism went beyond mere reform, seeking to change people’s hearts as well as society. According to Dunlap, as environmentalism attempted to provide answers to ultimate questions of human existence — what are humans, what is this world around us and how are we related to it — it ventured into religious territory, not in terms of churches, denominations and creeds but as humans’ attempts to find their right relation to the universe.

Dunlap has written widely on environmental issues and is the author of four books, including 2004’s “Faith in Nature,” in which he makes the argument that environmentalism is a form of religion. Among his other works are “Saving America’s Wildlife” and “Nature and the English Diaspora.” He’s been a three-time recipient of the Forest History Society’s annual Theodore Blegen Award for the best article in forest and conservation history.

A 1965 graduate of Lawrence, where he earned a degree in chemistry, Dunlap joined the faculty of Texas A & M in 1975 after completing his Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin.

APPLETON, WIS. — The works of two aspiring student composers highlight the Lawrence Academy of Music Girl Choir spring concert “Phenomenal Woman” Sunday, April 22 in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. Two performances will be staged at 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Tickets, at $10 for adults, $7 for students and seniors, are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

Allison Shinnick, a junior at Fox Valley Lutheran High School, will perform her work, “Colors of the Land,” a composition she wrote for piano and violin. A member of the Bel Canto choir as well as a pianist, Shinnick has been writing music since the age of seven. She will be accompanied by violinist Yuliya Smead.

Appleton North High School senior Hillary Reynolds, will give both a solo singing and playing performance of her piano composition “Lost for Hours,” a work that seeks to capture the excitement of a summer romance. The piano evokes the “butterflies in the stomach” feeling while the lyrics stir memories and emotions of a summer love.

Reynolds, who will attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass., this fall, spent eight years in the Girl Choir program prior to the 2007 semester.

In addition to Shinnick’s and Reynolds’ compositions, the concert will feature music written by women spanning both centuries and the globe, including a medieval French troubadour song, a piece by Clara Schumann, wife of German composer Robert Schumann, a work by American composer and pianist Amy Beach, a song written by Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani, a Ukrainian folk song frequently sung by farm women as well as several works by contemporary composers.

“‘Phenomenal Woman’ is a celebration of women composers, young women singers, women who are mentors and the women who wrote the texts for many of the songs,” said Karen Bruno, director of the Cantibile and Bel Canto choirs. “This concert commemorates all the compositions and life stories of the ‘phenomenal women’ in music.”

The concert will feature performances of all five choirs of the Lawrence Academy of Music Girl Choir: Primo, Allegretto, Intermezzo, Cantabile and Bel Canto. The Girl Choir program includes 270 girls representing more than 50 Fox Valley schools, from Oshkosh to Green Bay and Waupaca to Brillion.

APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University sophomore Kyle Traska will reprise his winning performance Sunday, April 22 for Wisconsin Public Radio’s Neale-Silva Concert of Young Musicians at Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art after earning first-place honors in the recent 12th edition of the annual competition.

The concert will be broadcast live statewide as a special edition of “Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen” from 12:30 – 2 p.m. on the WPR’s classical music network.

Traska, a percussionist from Oregon, Wis., was named one of five winners in the WPR-sponsored competition. Finals were conducted Saturday, March 31 in Madison. It was the seventh time in the past nine years that a Lawrence student has won or shared top honors in the event.

The competition is open to instrumentalists and vocal performers 17-26 years of age who are either from Wisconsin or attend a Wisconsin college. This year’s competition attracted 25 soloists and ensembles. Eleven individuals and one ensemble were invited to perform as finalists.

Playing the marimba, Traska performed Aldir Guinga’s “Unha & Carne” and “Melodia Branca,” Federico Chueca’s “Los Paraguas,” and “Mvt. 1” by Toshimitsu Tanaka in the competition finals. He is a student of Associate Professor of Music Dane Richeson. In addition to the radio broadcast, Traska received $300 for his winning performance.

Seven other Lawrence musicians joined Traska in the competition finals. Sophomore pianist Jestin Pieper advanced as did sophomore Garth Neustadter, who competed in two categories, violin and voice. The Lawrence wind quintet of juniors Sheri Muneno (flute) and David Meichle (horn) and sophomores Charles Ging (clarinet), Robert Furlong (bassoon) and Cayden Milton (oboe) also qualified as finalists.

Joining Traska as 2007 first-place winners were percussionist Daniel Paul Pingrey, UW-Madison, vocalist Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie, Manhattan School of Music, pianist Erik Saunders, UW-Madison and Shorewood High School student Yisha Chen, who plays the Chinese guzheng.

The Neale-Silva Young Artists’ Competition was established to recognize young Wisconsin performers of classical music who demonstrate an exceptionally high level of artistry. It is supported by a grant from the estate of the late University of Wisconsin Madison professor Eduardo Neale-Silva, a classical music enthusiast who was born in Talca, Chile and came to the United States in 1925.

APPLETON, WIS. — Award-winning poet and fiction writer Alan Parker will conduct a reading of his works Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in Lawrence University’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. A book signing and reception with the author will follow the reading.

Prior to his reading, Parker will discuss his writing in an open forum Tuesday, April 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Lawrence’s Main Hall, Room 104. Both events are free and open to the public.

The author of five collections of poems, Parker is perhaps best known for “Love Song with Motor Vehicles,” in which he uses wit and irony to explore music in places poetry seldom visits. The collection earned “Notable Book of the Year” honors from the National Book Critics Circle in 2003. One of the poems from the collection, “The Cat,” was awarded the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

The National Book Critics Circle also recognized his first collection of poems, “Days Like Prose,” as a “Notable Book of 1997.”

His most recent work, 2005’s “Cry Uncle,” is a novel of small-town politics, racism and love in which a man discovers what really matters in life.

The recipient of a prestigous Pushcart Prize, Parker recently was named a finalist for the 2007 Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize, a $40,000 biennial prize that honors a visionary creative work in process.

His poems have been published widely, appearing in The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among others. He serves as editor of The Imaginary Poets, co-editor of The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse and editor for North America of Who’s Who in 20th Century World Poetry.

Parker teaches at Davidson College, where he is professor of English and director of creative writing. He also holds a faculty appointment at Queens University.

His appearance is sponsored by the Mia T. Paul Poetry Fund. Established in 1998, the endowed fund brings distinguished poets to campus for public readings and to work with students on writing poetry and verse.

APPLETON, WIS. – The world premiere of the commissioned work “The Dark Hours” highlights a concert by award-winning bassoonist Peter Kolkay Saturday, April 21 in the final artist series concert of the 2006-07 “Performing Arts at Lawrence.”

Kolkay, with accompaniment by pianist Alexandra Nguyen, performs at 8 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, 510 E. College Ave., Appleton. Tickets for the concert are $22 and $20 for adults, $19 and $17 for senior citizens and $17 and $15 for students. Tickets are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

As the recipient of the Peter and Carlos Surinach Prize, awarded by the BMI Foundation and Concert Artists Guild, Kolkay was able to commission a new work specifically for himself. Composer Judah Adashi’s “The Dark Hours” takes its title and inspiration from an early poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. According to Adashi, the poem’s encapsulation of Rilke’s sensibilities is both “an apt metaphor for the creative process and a natural fit for the rich, dark sound world of the bassoon.”

A 1998 graduate of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, Kolkay has quickly established himself as one of the leading musicians of his generation. In 2002, he became the first solo bassoonist awarded First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in the 51-year history of the competition. Two years later he became the first artist on his instrument to receive the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

He has toured nationally as a featured guest of the chamber ensemble Concertante and has performed at numerous chamber music events including the Savannah Music Festival and La Musica Festival of Sarasota, Fla. He appeared in the New York premiere of Harold Meltzer’s “Likes and Unlikes” and performed a “Concerto for two Bassoons and Strings” with the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin.

The San Francisco Classical Voice hailed Kolkay as “star ascendant”…His reputation is blossoming at a remarkable rate, perhaps not so surprisingly considering his many virtues.”

His career highlights also include his solo debut recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, “Peter and the Wolf” at New York’s 92nd Street ‘Y’, as well as recitals presented by Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series and the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY.

Kolkay has appeared as guest soloist with numerous orchestras around the country, among them the Rochester Philharmonic, Green Bay Symphony, Flint Symphony, the Southwest Michigan Symphony and his alma mater’s own Lawrence Symphony Orchestra.

A native of Naperville, Ill., Kolkay joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina in 2006 as an assistant professor of bassoon. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence, he earned a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music and completed his doctoral studies at Yale University.

APPLETON, WIS. — A scholar and historian of American musical theatre shares insights from his distinguished career as an “insider” on the current and future state of the art form Tuesday, April 17 in a Lawrence University convocation.

Ted Chapin, president and executive director of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, presents “A Life in the Musical Theatre…and the Lawrence Connection that Mattered” at 11:10 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. He also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union. Both events are free and open to the public.

Since 1981, Chapin has been affiliated with the New York City-based Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. Founded by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to protect a variety of entertainment copyrights, including those for such musical classics as “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma,” the organization has come to represent and promote the works of more than 100 songwriters and authors, including such luminaries as Jerome Kern, Andrew Lloyd Webber and W. Somerset Maugham, dozens of stage musicals and concert works and more than 3,000 songs.

As R & H president and executive director, Chapin oversees all the divisions within R & H, including Williamson Music, the Irving Berlin Music Company, R & H Theatricals and the R & H Concert Library.

Chapin’s influence on American musical theatre extends well beyond his affiliation with R & H. He a member of the Tony Award Administration Committee, serving as a Tony Awards nominator, and has been chair of the advisory committee of the “Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert” series at New York’s City Center since its inception, a series he helped create.

Lawrence played a role in launching Chapin’s career in theatre. As a first-year student at Lawrence in the late 1960s, Chapin participated in the last production of LU theatre professor Ted Cloak’s legendary career before his retirement.

Chapin went on to complete his bachelor’s degree at Connecticut College, where as a 20-year-old undergraduate, he landed a job as a production assistant on the set of the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical smash “Follies.”

While working behind the scenes on “Follies,” Chapin kept a journal of his experiences. Thirty years later, Chapin used those firsthand observations on how a Broadway musical comes to life as the basis for the 2003 book “Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies.'” In it, he chronicles agonizing casting decisions, tumultuous rehearsals and the thrill of an opening night on Broadway.

Early career highlights also include working as a production or directorial assistant on Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at the Kennedy Center, “Candide” at the Los Angeles and San Francisco Civic Light Operas, “The Rothchilds” in New York and serving as musical director for the National Theatre of the Deaf’s production of “Four Saints in Three Acts.”