Handel's Messiah

Dr. Joel Neves directs the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra, Concert Choir and soloists.

General $15, Children age 18 and under $7. BUY TICKETS ONLINE Free to MTU students with ID.

Friday
November 13
Rozsa Center
7:30 pm

Vaster Than Empires
stories by Ursula LeGuin

The TechTheatre Company presents something literally fantastic this week as Visual and Performing Arts stages “Vaster Than Empires,” four stories by Ursula Le Guin.

TechTheatre creates Le Guin’s fantasy worlds with technical wizardry and an acting company directed by Roger Held. It’s a high-wire act for everyone involved, from the actors to the sound and lighting technicians whose cues come thick and fast. “This is stylistically a different kind of theatre than folks are used to,” Held says. “It’s first of all a reading of short stories adapted for stage, but each story has a complete soundscape that provides not just sound effects but a whole experience for the audience, like a movie soundtrack.”

Plus the visuals. As in making movies, the actors appear in front of projected landscapes. In this case, many were painted for the show by Michigan Tech artists including Mary Ann Beckwith and Edith Wiard.

Kenny Stahl, a Michigan Tech junior in Audio Design, wrote original music that sets the stage for Le Guin's imaginative worlds and also demonstrates how the actors, designers and builders feel about the play. Stahl improvised the piece on a keyboard during a break from his duties as sound technician, trying to capture the mystery and excitement he’d watched the actors create. Held heard him improvising and said, “That’s it—that’s exactly what we want.” Stahl dedicated a few days to refining, then recorded and edited his music to be incorporated in the play’s soundscape. “It was an amazing experience,” he says. “It just happened.”

Generations of college students have become ardent Le Guin fans, partly because the stories deal with recognizable issues in real life while bringing fascinating scientific ideas and engaging characters into play. Le Guin’s fantasies comes in two varieties , those founded strictly on science, and those which take scientific ideas to a far-out conclusion, asking “what if,” both filtered through a unique poetic mind. Naturally she uses sci fi worlds to make trenchant observations about human behavior—what we do when we’re confronted with the unexpected, or with hard or impossible choices. It’s easy to show how people really deal with one another if she puts them in strange new worlds first. The four stories which compose “Vaster Than Empires” are among her best.

For Michigan Tech’s whiz kids in TechTheatre, the stories fascinate on many levels, and particularly as a chance to show off their own best stuff.

Ursula LeGuin portrait copyright © by Marian Wood Kolisch.

General $10, Children age 18 and under $5. TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR Free to MTU students with ID.

Friday
October 30
Saturday
October 31
McArdle Theatre
7:30 pm

Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra
200th Anniversary of Mendelssohn

Dr. Joel Neves will conduct his first concert as Music Director of the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, October 17, at 7:30 pm, in the Rozsa Center, with a welcoming reception to follow in the Rozsa Lobby. The concert honors Felix Mendelssohn’s 200th birthday with his magical “Suite for A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” plus music of Liszt and Stravinsky. Portage Health is the sponsor for this first concert of the KSO’s 2009-10 season.

Joel Neves comes to Michigan Tech from Utah, where he conducted the Orchestra of Southern Utah and Cedar High Orchestra. He earned a doctorate in orchestral conducting from Arizona State University, and his B.A. and M.M degrees from Brigham Young University. As Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Orchestras at Michigan Tech, he will teach music theory and history in addition to his conducting duties.

“We’re excited to have such a dynamic teacher and musician join us,” says Roger Held, chair of Visual and Performing Arts. “Joel has impressed everyone with his energy and enthusiasm, and of course his outstanding musicianship. We expect great things from the KSO this year, and look forward to expanding the orchestra’s repertoire to take advantage of Joel’s special interests in opera and musical theatre, too.”

Neves, the KSO’s seventh conductor, inherits an accomplished university-community orchestra and an audience who have regarded the KSO as a community treasure for nearly 40 years. The orchestra’s prior conductors—Grover Wilkins III, John Clark, Michael Griffith, Jeffrey Bell-Hanson, Alton Thompson, and Milton Olsson—molded a group of 60-70 musicians (accomplished Michigan Tech students along with musicians from a wide area of the western U.P.) into an ensemble known widely for its excellence, and brought nationally-recognized soloists to play with them.

Neves says the orchestra’s strong support from the community, and from community-minded corporations such as Portage Health, were key factors in his accepting the position here. He hopes the four Rozsa concerts this year will attract newcomers who would like to see what the KSO’s concerts are like, and please old friends at the same time.

In addition to the October 17 “Mendelssohn” celebration, the KSO joins the Michigan Tech Concert Choir to present Handel’s “Messiah” on December 5, sponsored by Copper Range Abstract & Title Agency, then presents “A Night at the Opera” on February 20, and a multi-media tribute to Leonard Bernstein, “The Bernstein Beat,” on April 17, narrated by the composer’s daughter Jamie, co-sponsored by MTU’s Rozsa Mosaics Series.

General $15, Children age 18 and under $7. BUY TICKETS ONLINE Free to MTU students with ID.

Thursday-Friday
October 15-16
Thursday-Saturday
October 22-24
McArdle Theatre
7:30 pm

Turn on the Heat

Houghton Turn On the Heat is a benefit concert to raise additional money for heat assistance for Copper Country residents in need.

The visual and performing arts department is sponsoring this benefit concert for the Turn on the Heat campaign of Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly and St. Vincent DePaul.

Music and entertainment will be provided by Cheap Therapy, Greenstone, the Outlaws and Misbehavin’ with Gail English and her swing cats. All proceeds will go towards Little Brothers to provide firewood to elderly people to keep warm this winter. The concert will also help St. Vincent De Paul provide financial help to people who need assistance with their fuel bills.

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General $10. BUY TICKETS ONLINE

Friday
October 2
Rozsa Center
7:30 pm