The George and Joyce Wein Chair
These are valedictory days for George Wein. The internationally renowned jazz impresario, now 77, creator of the Newport jazz and folk festivals, the JVC Jazz Festival — New York, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and a plethora of other festivals around the world, last month published his long-awaited memoir, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music (Da Capo). Now Wein and his wife, Joyce, are donating $1 million to Boston University to create an endowment that will underwrite the George and Joyce Wein Chair in African-American Studies.
In Myself Among Others, Wein chronicles his early years as a self-described middle-class Jewish boy from Newton attending BU, hanging out in the city’s jazz clubs, getting his own start as a professional jazz pianist, launching the Boston club Storyville and, eventually, the Newport Jazz Festival. Along the way he falls in love with Joyce Alexander, a sharp, pretty, Simmons College student of worldly sophistication. As well as a valued history of post-war jazz and popular music, Myself Among Others is a love story — Wein’s love for African-American culture in general and his love for a particular woman who happens to be African-American. His role in integrating stuffy 1950s Newport and the stand he took against segregation when asked to direct the New Orleans festival are just a couple of the book’s highlights.
At a press conference scheduled for 5 p.m. this afternoon, June 12, at Boston University, Chancellor John Silber will accept the endowment from the Weins, and Professor Allison Blakely, author of Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (1994) and Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (1986), will be announced as the first occupant of the Wein Chair. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Professor Blakely taught for 30 years at Howard University before joining the BU faculty in 2001.
Respond II
The locally produced fundraising CD Respond II (Signature Sounds) has been awarded a $50,000 grand prize by the non-profit groups Social Stimulus and the Keiretsu Forum Charitable Foundation in their annual National Non-Profit Funding Competition. Respond II was the 2002 follow-up to 1999’s Respond, both compilations created to raise funds for the Somerville-based domestic-violence service organization Respond Inc. and the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which is based in Jamaica Plain. The first Respond CD was a strictly local affair, with the likes of Juliana Hatfield, Patty Larkin, and Mary Lou Lord contributing songs; It raised $125,000. Respond II included locals Mili Bermejo, Kay Hanley, and Susan Tedeschi but also Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls, Sarah McLachlan, Dolly Parton, Sleater-Kinney, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Suzanne Vega. The CD was widely praised as an artistic success as well as a philanthropic one. For more information, visit www.respondproject.org.
Celebrating the Phoenix
You are, of course, free to celebrate this newspaper any time you like, but the Phoenix that the Harvard Book Store will be applauding next Friday night, June 20, is the new Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The book goes on sale at midnight, but at 11 p.m., you’re invited to show up dressed as your favorite Harry Potter character. The store is promising "refreshments, a Harry Potter Trivia Contest, face painting, and more," plus a free Harvard Book Store booklight for the first 100 persons who buy the book. Payment vouchers will be given out beginning at 11 p.m., so you’ll be able to collect your copy on the stroke of midnight. And at 12:15 a.m., there’ll be a raffle for 10 official Harry Potter baseball caps. The Harvard Book Store is at 1256 Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square; call (617) 661-1515.
Odd man out
For its production this month of The Odd Couple, Stoneham Theatre came up with a truly odd pair: Pat Morita, of Happy Days and The Karate Kid, as Felix Unger, and Sherman Hemsley, of The Jeffersons, as Oscar Madison. Unfortunately, an arthritic hip has forced Morita to drop out and return home to Las Vegas for treatment. He’s been replaced by Elliot Norton Award winner Michael Allosso, who has directed the Stoneham productions of As Bees in Honey Drown and Sunrise, Sunset: Songs of Sheldon Harnick and appeared in the Huntington Theatre’s Marty.
The Odd Couple runs through June 29. Stoneham Theatre is at 395 Main Street in Stoneham; call (781) 279-2200.
Monadnock Music Festival
The Monadnock Music Festival, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, is one of the best quick-trip excursions from Boston on the summer classical music circuit. Here’s this year’s line-up:
July 6 at 4 p.m.: the New Zealand String Quartet performs three Beethoven quartets: Opus 18 No. 2, Opus 74, and Opus 59 No.1.
July 12 at 5 p.m.: (double concert with picnic dinner) the New Zealand Quartet and Alan Feinberg present Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3, Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 3, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 4, Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4, and Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor.
July 17 at 8 p.m.: master class with pianist Russell Sherman and students plus Wha-Kyung Byun.
July 18 at 8 p.m.: HeaJung Sho performs Ligeti’s Two Études and Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor, and Minsoo Sohn performs Schumann’s Carnaval and Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka.
July 20 at 4 p.m.: Russell Sherman performs Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat D.960, three Debussy Préludes from Book II, and Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini I and II and two Intermezzi, Opus 116 No. 4 and Opus 118 No. 6.
July 26 at 8 p.m.: La Luna Ensemble featuring soprano Susan Narucki and tenor Steven Tharpa present a Bach concert.
July 27 at 4 p.m.: soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Sergey Schepkin perform chansons by Chabrier and Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben.
August 2 at 5 p.m.: Scott Metcalfe directs Handel’s Amadigi in a concert performance with dinner break, with countertenor Jeffrey Gall, sopranos Sharon Baker and Susan Narucki, and contralto Meg Bragle.
August 9 at 8 p.m.: the Ciompi Quartet with violist Daniel Panner and cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer presents Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 (K.590), Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13, and Dvo<t-60>ˇ<t$>rák’s Sextet for Strings.
August 16 at 8 p.m.: the Ciompi Quartet with violinist Nurit Pacht and pianist Konstantin Lifschitz presents Bartók’s String Quartet No. 6, a violin sonata by Mozart, Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Janá<t-60>ˇ<t$>cek’s Mladi.
August 17 at 4 p.m.: soprano Susan Narucki, cellist Fred Sherry, and pianist Konstantin Lifschitz present the East Coast premiere of Elliott Carter’s Cello Concerto, On Rewaking, from a text by William Carlos Williams, the world premiere of James Bolle’s Piano Concerto, and Enescu’s Dixtuor.
August 23 at 4 p.m.: Konstantin Lifschitz performs Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy.
August 31 at 4 p.m. Virginia Eskin performs Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor; Ullmann’s Piano Sonata No. 2, (Variations on a Czech Folk Song); Beach’s Balkan Variations; Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie; Albright’s Fantasy Rag; and Brahms’s Fantasies Opus 116.
September 13 at 8 p.m.: "Opera Gala," a special evening of opera favorites with winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions and the Monadnock Festival Orchestra conducted by James Bolle.
All events take place at the Peterborough Town House, 1 Grove Street in downtown Peterborough. Tickets are $15, $20, and $28; call (800) 868-9613.
