News and Events
"A Russian Night," music for piano and voice by St. Petersburg composer Georgy Firtich, September 25, 2009
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY-One of Russia's most prominent contemporary composers, Georgy Firtich, will be featured in the concert, "A Russian Night: Music for Piano and Voice by St. Petersburg composer Georgy Firtich," on Friday, September 25. Free and open to the public, the program will begin at 8pm in the Martel Recital Hall in the Skinner Hall of Music at Vassar College.
Composer and pianist Firtich will perform his music inspired by the poems of Paul Verlaine, the Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, as well as some other works, with soprano Olga Vorobiyova, a leading soloist of St. Petersburg Opera Theatre. Both Firtich and Vorobiyova are traveling from St. Petersburg, Russia, to the United States for this program.
Georgy Firtich has visited Vassar on two previous occasions. The first occasion was in 2003 during the celebration of St. Petersburg's tercentennial; the second in 2007, when he composed a new version of the lost score for the legendary Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun (1913).
Nikolai Firtich, associate professor of Russian Studies, noted that, "The Vassar production of the Victory Over the Sun was phenomenally successful and attracted a large and enthusiastic audience. It was also in the center of attention of two international academic conferences (one held at Vassar, another in St. Petersburg)." A bilingual collection of scholarly articles based on these conferences was recently published in New York; and is supplemented with a DVD recording of the production.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Georgy Firtich is one of Russia's most prominent contemporary composers. He is the president of St. Petersburg's Contemporary Music Association and has been for many years among the leading avant-garde composers in Russia. He is also a professor of composition at St. Petersburg's Herzen University. Firtich also composes music for films, having written soundtracks to over 70 films, several of them being major blockbusters.
Soprano Olga Vorobiyova, a leading soloist of St. Petersburg Opera Theatre, is the winner of several international competitions and a versatile singer whose repertoire ranges from major classical operas to Jewish folk songs and contemporary music.
The Department of Russian Studies and the Department of Music are co-sponsors of the concert, with additional support from Office of International Programs and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.
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.
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.
© Vassar College/ Will Faller
Press Contact
Emily Darrow
Media Relations Associate
(845) 437-7690
emdarrow@vassar.edu