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Cultural Programs
Spring 2012 Schedule
FEBRUARY 14
Eric Reed, jazz
Fine Arts Concert Hall
"One of my favorite pianists"-Ahmad Jamal
Eric Reed grew up playing the piano in his father's storefront Baptist church in Philadelphia. When he was sent off to learn piano lessons, at the age of seven, he found it easier to listen to the teacher play a piece, and then play it back, note for note, than to bother learning it by reading the music. Word got out of his jazz talents; when he was at California State University in Northridge, he got a call from Wynton Marsalis, and joined Wynton's ensemble, which means Eric has been on our stage before. He left to pursue a solo career that included frequent collaborations, in recordings and TV, with such jazz legends as Cyrus Chestnut, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, Quincy Jones, Patti Labelle, and Natalie Cole. We are pleased to present Eric and his trio on the 14th, and then Eric will be featured in a UW Jazz Ensemble concert in A&S on the 16th.
Click here to listen to Eric Reed
General Public $20 / Students & Seniors $15
http://www.ericreed.net/news.php#
FEBRUARY 24
Take 6, a cappella
Arts & Sciences Auditorium
Take 6, founded at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, began as a gospel sextet, but evolved by integrating traditional gospel with R&B, jazz, and pop music, and their 2008 release, The Standard, is straight jazz. Winners of ten Grammy awards and one Soul Train award, Take 6 has collaborated with such artists as Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, Queen Latifah, Quincy Jones, and k. d. lang, has provided the sound track for Dick Tracy as well as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and Boyz n the Hood, and has performed at the White House for four presidents. We first heard the group on a Whoopie Goldberg TV special that also featured Rockapella (which we then booked) and the King's Singers (which we had booked often). It has taken awhile, but we're pleased to report that we finally were able to book Take 6. These guys are probably the jazziest a cappella group you'll ever hear.
Click here to listen to Take 6
General Public $27 / Students & Seniors $23
Free Admission for UW Students with valid student ID.
MARCH 2
Jan Lisiecki, piano
Discovery Concert
Fine Arts Concert Hall
"An unmannered virtuoso already with virile, and above all, irresistibly natural playing"-Diapason
Jan Lisiecki (pronounced "Lisiecki") has shared the stage with Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, and Pinchas Zukerman, has performed with the BBC Symphony, the Leipzig Radio Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, the Minneapolis and Montreal Symphonies, has been featured on CBC Canada, BBC, French, German, Austrian, Luxembourg, and Polish radio, and French television, has won seven international competitions, and has just released his a Deutsche Grammophon CD, of Chopin. Why have you never heard of him? Because he's only sixteen years old. We learned about him when Charles Hamlen, a member of the famed Gilmore Artist Award Committee, flew to Poland to persuade Lisiecki to join IMG management. It was from Hamlen that, many years ago, we first learned of the Emerson String Quartet, violinist Joshua Bell, flutist James Galway, and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. When Hamlen thinks an artist is promising, we pay real close attention.
Click here to listen to Jan Lisiecki
General Public $20 / Students & Seniors $15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POW-nMaKAp4&feature=related
MARCH 23
Aquila Theatre: The Importance of Being Earnest
Arts and Sciences Auditorium
Aquila is a classical theater company with an innovative flair, performing Much Ado in James Bond mode, setting Comedy of Errors in the Ottoman empire, with balloon gondolas. Aquila has been here before, performing Twelfth Night and The Invisible Man; the company returns with Oscar Wilde's most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). It's also a return for Oscar, who passed through Laramie in 1882 (and stepped out at the depot), on his way to deliver a lecture, on Benvenuto Cellini, to the silver miners in Leadville; in Oxford, from which Oscar graduated with "double firsts" in "Greats" (i.e., classics), he was known as a "three-bottle man"-he drank the miners under the table. Of all the quotable Wilde remarks, we've always been most deeply touched by his last words, spoken as he lay dying in a cheap Paris hotel: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death: one or the other of us has to go."
General Public $26 / Students & Seniors $23
APRIL 3
Béla Fleck & the Flecktones: The Original Lineup
Arts & Sciences Auditorium
We have in the past featured Béla Fleck with the Flecktones, then teamed up with Mike Marshall and double bassist Edgar Meyer, then with just Edgar Meyer, then with the revised Flecktones. And now, we're bringing him back, and after a break, he's reconstituted the original Flecktones, which includes harmonica player Howard Levy, bassist Victor Wooten, Roy "Futureman" Wooten, one of the few instrumentalists who invented his instrument, beginning with a guitar (he calls himself a "Drumitarist"). Hard to describe, but this music combines bluegrass, electric blues, Eastern European folk dance-they have five Grammys, but each in a different category. Béla has also ventured into African music, collaborating with musicians in Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Mali, South Africa, and Madagascar. We didn't mention Futureman's "Black Mozart" project, or Béla Fleck's all Bach CD, on the banjo, or his album, Spain, with Chick Corea. We are pleased to welcome back some highly eclectic, highly original, genre-busting old friends.
Click here to listen to Béla Fleck & the Flecktones
General Public $27 / Students & Seniors $23
Free Admission for UW Students with valid student ID.
APRIL 13
Brasil Guitar Duo
Fine Arts Concert Hall
"The maturity of musicianship and technical virtuosity . . . is simply outstanding"-Classical Guitar Magazine
Another fine discovery, and first-prize award winner, from Concert Artists Guild (see Calmus, above, but also, last year, the Amstel Saxophone Quartet, and before that the Quartet New Generation-all CAG winners), the Brasil Guitar Duo won us over with its sizzling interpretations of choro, samba, maxixe, and baião-Brazilian folk music genres that are quite jazzy-and with its performances of classical music by Debussy and Scarlatti, all of which we heard live. And then, we heard a wonderful CD set, with flutist Marina Piccinini, of the complete Bach sonatas for flute and . . . well, harpsichord, but before you complain about inauthenticity, bear in mind that guitars, like harpsichords, are plucked, so substituting one for the other actually works rather well. While here, the duo will also play a Castelnovo-Tedesco two-guitar concerto with Michael Griffith and the UW Symphony Orchestra, on April 12th.
Click here to listen to Brasil Guitar Duo
General Public $22 / Students & Seniors $18
http://www.concertartists.org/brasil_bio.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqMw_al5mCc&feature=related
All Performances Begin at 7:30 PM
Please Contact the Fine Arts Box Office for Individual or Season Tickets (307-766-6666)
Sponsors
 | University of Wyoming Cultural Programs is a division of the College of Arts & Sciences, assisting the College in its broad educational mission by presenting a rich, balanced program of music, theater, and dance, featuring performances by artists of national and international distinction. |
 | The Julie Fowlis performance and residency is sponsored, in part, by a grant from the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF). |
| The Eric Reed concert is cosponsored by UW's American Studies Department as part of its commitment to educating the community about the great variety and diversity of American art and culture. |
 | The Irish Chamber Orchestra concert is cosponsored by the Laramie Hilton Garden Inn & Convention Center. |
| The Take 6 concert is cosponsored by Friday Night Fever. |
| The Béla Fleck & the Flecktones concert is cosponsored by Student Activities Council. |
| The UW Cultural Programs performance series is generously supported by the office of the President at the University of Wyoming. |
 | The Jane Monheit concert is cosponsored by D&L Music. |
