Peabody cellist among musicians chosen for YouTube Symphony

Peabody graduate student Rachel Hsieh is one of 90 musicians from around the world chosen by video audition to perform at Carnegie Hall on April 15. For Hsieh to join what is billed as the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, her video had to be plucked by top orchestral players from a pool of 3,000. Then a tally of online votes by YouTube visitors produced the final roster, which was announced last week.

Hsieh, a cellist from Michigan, is a master of music candidate studying with Alan Stepansky. "I had lobbied my parents for a new laptop, and I figured this was one way I could show them I was using it," she told Tim Smith of The Baltimore Sun.

Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, will conduct the Carnegie Hall concert, including the world premiere of Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica. Would-be YouTube Symphony members downloaded and recorded their parts of this four-minute piece by Academy Award-winning composer Tan Dun. YouTube will post a mash-up video of the winning audition performances on April 16.

To view all the audition videos, go to: www.youtube.com/symphony.

 

On TV this week: A cameo appearance with a JHU pedigree

This Friday night's episode of CBS's Numb3rs offers a bit of business for Johns Hopkins trivia experts.

In the episode, Charlie (a mathematician) and Larry (a physicist) are going to be coaching a basketball game at the fictional CalSci. Charlie holds up a copy of a book called The Physics of Basketball and tells Larry, "All aspects of the game are controlled by forces." The book is a Johns Hopkins University Press title, published in 2006.

(An interesting fact from the John J. Fonatella book: "The NCAA collegiate career record for free-throw shooting percentage is held by Andy Enfield of Division III Johns Hopkins University who compiled an astounding career free-throw shooting percentage of 92.5 percent having made 431 out of 466 over 108 games.")

 

Laure Drogoul brings 'The 14Karat Cabaret' to Evergreen

Baltimore-based interdisciplinary artist and self-described "cultural crackpot and cabaretist" Laure Drogoul brings her performance, music, dance, film and video series, The 14Karat Cabaret, to the Bakst Theatre at Johns Hopkins' Evergreen Museum & Library at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 13.

The night features the world premiere of Nancy Andrews' On a Phantom Limb, a film that explores the postmodern condition through the metaphor of a bird-woman cyborg, and composer Dick Turner giving a theatrical performance of unique songs, self-accompanied on trombone. Drogoul, in her signature role of "La Hostess," will serve as mistress of ceremonies, along with Paul Baroody on keyboards. Doors open at 7 p.m., and a cash bar will be open prior to the concert and during intermission.

Co-sponsored by Evergreen and the Maryland Institute College of Art, the cabaret is an accompanying program to the retrospective exhibition Follies, Predicaments and Other Conundrums: The Works of Laure Drogoul, on view through Sunday, March 15, in MICA's Decker and Meyerhoff galleries.

Tickets are $10, $5 for Evergreen members, with limited free student tickets. Reservations are required; call 410-516-0341.

 

Robert Kagan to speak at Foreign Affairs Symposium

Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the award-winning Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World From Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century, is the next speaker in the 2009 Foreign Affairs Symposium.

His talk is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 11, in the Glass Pavilion on the Homewood campus.

From 1984 to 1988, Kagan worked at the State Department as a member of the policy planning staff. He served as the principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Schultz and as a deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He specializes in U.S. national security and foreign policy, the European Union and NATO expansion.

A graduate of Yale and of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Kagan received his doctorate in American history from American University. In 1997, he founded with William Kristol the nonprofit Project for a New American Century, where he is now project director. He also writes a column on foreign affairs for The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard and The New Republic.

 

Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins hosts James Mann of SAIS

James Mann, author in residence at SAIS and a former Washington reporter, columnist and foreign correspondent for The Los Angles Times, will discuss and sign his latest book at Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins at 7 p.m. today, March 9.

In The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, Mann — drawing on new interviews and previously unavailable documents — assesses what Reagan did, and did not, do to help bring America's four-decade conflict with the Soviet Union to a close.

GO TO MARCH 9, 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GO TO THE GAZETTE FRONT PAGE.