CREEES "Sounds of Eurasia" Performance Series receives $23,300 SICA grant.
July 8, 2008
The Stanford Initiative for Creativity and the Arts (SICA) awarded a Major Grant to
the "Sounds of Eurasia" Performance Series for 2008-09. The "Sounds of
Eurasia" series was launched in March 2008 by Izaly Zemtsovsky, Visiting
Professor of Music and Slavic, and Alma Kunanbaeva, Lecturer in
Anthropology, in an effort to bring leading exponents of Eurasian musical
traditions to the Stanford campus for concerts and educational workshops.
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| Faik Chelebi, a leading exponent of the Azeri eleven-string tar, performing traditional mughams in the first concert of the "Sounds of Eurasia" performance series in March 2008. |
In 2008-09 the CREEES "Sounds of Eurasia" series will feature artists representing the musical traditions of the Republic of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Watch the CREEES website for more information about these concerts as plans are finalized this summer.
In March 2008, the "Sounds of Eurasia" featured Faik Chelebi, Professor of Music at the Herzen Pedagogic Institute in St. Petersburg and one of the world's leading players of the the eleven-string Azeri tar. Chelebi played a solo concert composed exclusively of the repertoire of traditional Azeri mughams in the Campbell Recital Hall in the Braun Music Center. On the following evening, Zemtsovsky lectured on the art and history of the musical tradition of the mugham while Chelebi demonstrated technical aspects of performaing on the Azeri eleven-string tar.
In April 2008, the "Sounds of Eurasia" featured Marjana Sadowska, Fulbright Scholar at the Pennsylvania State University, musical historian and preservationist. Sadowska has traveled extensively in the Ukrainian countryside collecting folktunes and ancient songs which she sings while accompanying herself on the harmonium. Her Stanford concert "Boarderlands: Songs from Ancient Ukraine" took place in the Campbell Recital Hall.
In addition to the SICA Major Grant, the CREEES "Sounds of Eurasia" series will be co-sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center, The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Special Languages Program, the Institute of Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies at UC Berkeley, the U.S. Department of Education (Title VI grant), and the Silk Road House in Berkeley.
The Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts, established in 2006, acts as the initiative's nerve center, leading the development of new undergraduate arts programs; hosting artists in residence; administering new multidisciplinary graduate degree programs; awarding grants for multidisciplinary arts research and teaching; incubating collaborative performances and exhibitions with campus partners and other institutions; and providing centralized communication for Stanford arts events and programs (http://sica.stanford.edu).