News and Events
Chart-topping German pop star Sebastian Krumbiegel in concert, September 22, 2009
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY—Sebastian Krumbiegel, the chart-topping German singer and musician now touring the East Coast of the U.S., will perform at Vassar College on Tuesday, September 22. The concert, co-sponsored by the German Studies Department and the Department of Music, is free and open to the public and will begin at 7pm in the Villard Room (located on the second floor of the College Center, in Vassar’s historic Main Building).
Krumbiegel is a member of the pop band Die Prinzen (The Princes), one of the most popular bands in Germany. Die Prinzen has sold more than five million recordings, with 14 gold and six platinum records total and which has toured in Germany, Republic of Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg City.
“Krumbiegel is part of the post-new-German wave, from the 80’s, and still performs in this tradition, producing German-speaking pop music,” said Peggy Piesche, a visiting instructor of the German Studies Department. She added that Krumbiegel’s songs also have a “very open but also subtle irony on German contemporary politics.”
According to Jeffrey Schneider, associate professor and chair of the German Studies Department, German teachers and classes in local high schools along with German faculty at local colleges are invited to the concert. “We also hope that a lot of Germans who now live and work in the Hudson Valley will also want to attend,” Schneider stated.
ABOUT SEBASTIAN KRUMBIEGEL
Born in 1966 in Leipzig, Germany, Sebastian Krumbiegel with his classmate Wolfgang Lenk founded a band named Phoenix 1981, while attending the Thomasschule Leipzig, a boarding school in Germany that has taught acclaimed composers such as Richard Wagner and Carl Philip Emanuel Bach.
While studying at Musikhochschule Leipzig (Leipzig Music Conservatory), Krumbiegel founded the band Die Herzbuben, whose members were Wolfgang Lenk, Jens Sembdner, and Henri Schmidt. The name of this band was eventually changed to “Die Prinzen” Tobias Künzel joined the group later on in 1991. The band has released 19 albums and a greater number of singles since 1991.
In addition to work with Die Prinzen, the German musician released his first solo album Krumbiegel – Kamma mache nix in 1998. His second solo album Geradeaus abgebogen was released in 2004. Krumbiegel’s songs reflect the superior classical voice training of the musician, although his style is pop rock. He may also be familiar to audiences from the movie Mulan (Walt Disney Feature animation, 1998), when he sang the part of Chien-Po, or as Axel in the 2005 film Max und Moritz Reloaded.
Krumbiegel’s East Coast tour is made possible by Kulturbuero.US, the German Consulate in New York, The Goethe Institute Boston, AATG, and the Gershwin Hotel in Manhattan.
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations at Vassar should contact the Office of Campus Activities at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available. Directions to the Vassar campus are available online at www.vassar.edu/directions.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
Posted by College Relations Monday, September 14, 2009
About the Arts
Powerhouse Theater
The Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College. It is dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. During an intense eight-week summer residency on the Vassar campus, up to twenty different projects are publicly presented, typically engaging more than 200 professional artists and theater students. Plays, musicals, and screenplays are presented in a variety of forms: readings, workshops, and fully staged productions. Since the first Powerhouse Theater season in 1985, New York Stage and Film and Vassar have served more than 2,000 artists and over 175,000 audience members through the development and production of artistically exceptional and affordably priced performances.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Located just inside Vassar's Main Gate, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center houses the college's permanent collection, over 18,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and glass and ceramic wares, charting the history of art from antiquity to the present. The Permanent Collection Galleries feature 350 works, ranging from the sculpted Head of Viceroy Merymose from His Outer Sarcophagus (Egyptian, c 1375 BCE) in the Antiquities Gallery to Marsden Hartley's oil on canvas Indian Composition (1914-15) in the Twentieth Century Gallery. For information on current and upcoming special exhibitions, self-guided and curriculum-based tours, and group visits, please visit the website. The art center is open to the public, and admission is free.
James W. Palmer Gallery
Located in the College Center in Main Building, the James W. Palmer III '90 Gallery presents eight shows annually, including exhibitions by renowned artists and photographers, studio art faculty and students, and local arts organizations. Recent highlights included Andrea Baldeck’s black-and-white photo exhibit, Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn, organized by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Vassar Haiti Project’s annual exhibition and auction of imported arts and handcrafts; and Design Inside, showcasing the work of Vassar’s College Relations design team. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. For information on upcoming exhibitions, visit the website or call (845) 437-5370.
Music Department
Located in the Belle Skinner Hall of Music, the Martel Recital Hall is wonderfully suited, both acoustically and aesthetically, to music performance. With seating for 500, the Martel is home to the Vassar College Orchestra, Choir, Women's Chorus, Madrigal Singers, and numerous chamber groups and ensembles. The Martel concert schedule routinely includes distinguished guest artists, faculty recitals, senior recitals, and special musical events, such as last year's series of organ recitals celebrating the installation and dedication of the college's superb pipe organ, designed by masterbuilder Paul Fritts. For information on upcoming concerts and events (which are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted), please visit the website.
Dance Department
The Department of Dance sponsors several public performances each year. Among those, the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre (VRDT) has a series of Works in Progress showings in the fall, a winter Modfest performance in conjunction with the The Department of Music, winter galas at the 1869 Bardavon Opera House, and two All Parents Weekend performances in the spring. The department's Master Class program annually invites at least one ballet and one modern expert to campus in addition to two people in other areas of dance. Public performances and lectures are often associated with these renowned visitors. Guest artists in the past have included: Irina Kolpokova, Arthur Mitchell, Helene Alexopoulos, Gregory Hines, Anna Kisselgoff, Donald Byrd, Edward Villella, Ronald K. Brown, Irene Dowd, Allegra Kent, Gelsey Kirkland, Pilobolus w/Adam Battlestein, Suzanne Farrell, Mummenschantz, Eldar Aliev, Deborah Jowitt, Bill T. Jones, Pascal Rioult, Clinton Luckett of ABT, Bill Irwin, and Donald McKayle. Many of the department's dance performances are in the Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, located in Kenyon Hall.
Sebastian Krumbiegel
Press Contact
Emily Darrow
Media Relations Associate
(845) 437-7690
emdarrow@vassar.edu