Alex Freeman, assistant professor of music, had his composition “Blueshift” performed in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Music Room by Ensemble 61 on February 16. Ensemble 61 is a Saint Paul based contemporary music group that brings new and experimental works to the public through concerts at traditional and non-traditional venues, web-based broadcasts, education/outreach programs and community engagement. The performance also features Matthew McCright, lecturer in piano, at Carleton. The program includes 20th century masterpieces by Olivier Messiaen and George Crumb.

Alex Freeman, assistant professor of music, will have his new composition work, “Aerial Voices (Variations on a Theme of Charles Fussell),” premiered in the new Helsinki Music Center in Helsinki, Finland on February 5. The music is inspired by the work of Charles Fussell – one of Freeman’s former teachers, a friend and a mentor. Freeman’s work is inspired the clarity, freshness, and emotional impact of Fussell’s music and includes twelve variations on a theme from the choral/symphonic work of Fussell’s, Specimen Days. Finnish pianist Salla Karakorpi will premiere the new work along with works by Bartók and Brahms to a sold-out hall in the new music center in Finland. The event will be live-streamed at the Weitz Center Cinema at 11:00 a.m.

Associate Professor of Theater David Wiles is a cast member of “Johnny Baseball” at Park Square Theater in St Paul. The new musical looks at life and love through the lens of America’s favorite pastime: baseball. The play is the story of Johnny O’Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Red Sox and traces the American institution of baseball from the “Curse of the Bambino” through the Red Sox 2004 World Series win. The playwrights have taken a few liberties with their story, bending history a bit in order to effectively tell a love story set in the backdrop of a racially integrating Major League Baseball League.

Each term, Carls shake, leap, and twirl to student-choreographed dances in the ever-popular Ebony II show. This winter brought more cheer-worthy dances and crazy costumes galore.

In conjunction with the popular Northfield Arts Guild Gallery exhibit “NRTHFLD: The Nirthfolde Visitors’ Bureau,” professor of art David Lefkowitz will unravel the mysteries of this “slightly askew” take on Northfield in a public lecture on Wednesday, Jan. 30 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Weitz Center for Creativity Cinema. Entitled “Quasi-Fictional Places: The Nirthfolde Visitors’ Bureau and Other Original Facsimilies,” Lefkowitz’s talk will introduce audiences to “Nirthfolde…a bucolic, yet bustling burg situated in a parallel universe that neatly overlaps Northfield, Minnesota, and that has existed relatively unnoticed for over a century and a half.”

Carleton College’s Weitz Center for Creativity will host a special screening of “Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa,” a film directed by Carleton professor Cherif Keita, which explores an early effort at resistance to white authority in South Africa and its little-known connection with Northfield. The screening, part of the College’s Humanities Center’s Perspectives in Public Humanities series, will take place on Thursday, Feb. 7 beginning at 7 p.m. in the Weitz Center Cinema. This event is free and open to the public.

Melinda Russell, Professor of Music, presented “Visualizing Music: Helping Undergraduate Non-Majors Show What They Hear,” in November at the College Music Society Meeting in San Diego.  The talk showed how an assignment where students draw a ‘map’ of a piece can help undergraduates demonstrate their understanding of the structure and features of a piece of music. The work grew out of a VIZ grant to explore musical mapping.

Student Director, Julian Pozniak and Production Coordinator, Lawrence Burnett presented a fully staged, all-student production of “La Serva Padrona” last weekend at the Weitz Center for Creativity.

The popular Ebony II dance show was as flashy and exciting as ever this fall with sparkles and spandex galore! Most of all, it was filled with impressive moves choreographed and danced entirely by students.

This year, homecoming weekend meant not only a plethora of athletic events, but also music, dancing, and great fun. Despite being under construction as a part of the Evans renovation, The Cave still provided great music, kicking off the weekend with a concert at the Grand in downtown Northfield.