Events

The Wake Forest University Symphony Orchestra welcomes our new Orchestra Director Dr. J. Aaron Hardwick to the podium and features award-winning faculty pianist Larry Weng performing Clara Schumann’s powerful Concerto in A minor. The WFUSO will close the evening with Beethoven’s iconic and moving Symphony No. 5 in C minor. 

Wake Forest University Symphony Orchestra’s “Paving the Way” project is a collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Arts Center and the Departments of German and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies to magnify underrepresented composers and musicians and provide a platform for current and continued exploration, research, and performance  into their life and work. The symphony program is the culmination of a series of events, listed below. Admission is free.

FILM

Tuesday, October 18, (a)perture cinema, 7-9:30pm 
Film showing of “Song of Love” (1947) featuring Katharine Hepburn as Clara Schumann.

LECTURE

Friday, October 21, 6:30-7:00pm, Scales M201
Pre-concert lecture with Megan Francisco, Larry Weng, and J. Aaron Hardwick.

CONCERT

Friday, October 21, 7:30pm, Brendle Hall
Concert featuring an all German program. Reception for all those involved, musicians, and audience.

Tuesday, September 27, 5:30pm
Scales Fine Arts Center Room 102

Ammar Basha will screen his documentary and host a premiere script reading of his new screenplay. Ammar Basha is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residence at Wake Forest University. The Artist Protection Fund (APF) is an initiative of the Institute of International Education, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. The APF makes fellowship grants to threatened artists from any field of practice, and places them at host institutions in safe countries where they can continue their work and plan for their futures.

Tuesday, September 27, 5:30pm
Scales Fine Arts Center Room 102

Saturday, September 17, 9:30-11pm
Ring Theatre

In collaboration with the Department of Theatre and Dance, the LGBTQ+ Center and Wake the Arts, Will Nolan (’94) brings Leola, a 72-year-old redneck lesbian who loves Jesus, Kelly Clarkson, and casseroles, to Wake this Homecoming Weekend to celebrate 10 years of the LGBTQ+ Center at Wake Forest.

September 8-10, 2022

Sones de México Ensemble is the country’s premier folk music organization specializing in Mexican ‘son’, including the regional styles of huapango, gustos, chilenas, son jarocho, and more.

Brendle Recital Hall, Wake Forest University
Thursday, September 8, 7:30pm

Musical performance and lecture presentation on “Music Geography of Mexico,” with reception to follow.

UNC-Chapel Hill
Friday, September 9

Musical performance and lecture presentation on “Music Geography of Mexico,” with reception to follow.

FIESTA ’22  – 30th Anniversary Latin Street Festival presented by Hispanic League
Saturday, September 10

Performances at FIESTA Event on Ritmos (2:00pm) and Encanto (3:30pm) stages. Downtown Winston-Salem Parking lots in front of Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts.

Thursday, August 11 – 7:30 p.m.
SECCA Auditorium
$26 General Admission

An Evening of Dance and music with choreographers Elizabeth Clendinning, Janice Lancaster, and Monet Beatty, return to SECCA for an evening of dance and music. Music for the performance features violinist Ruth Kelly, a jazz trio with Matt Kendrick on bass, Michael Kinchen on saxophone, and Kassem Williams on drums, and the music ensemble Gamelan Giri Murti, featuring traditional music for Balinese gamelan as well as a new composition by K.C. Pyle, directed by Elizabeth Clendinning. Produced by Christina Soriano.

May 5, 2022, Hanes Gallery

As a culmination of the interdisciplinary readings and discussions in the Humanities Institute’s Interdisciplinary Faculty Seminar on Precarity, seminar convener Lucy Alford brought poet-scholar Edgar Garcia (English and Creative Writing, University of Chicago) to Wake Forest for two events. First, a performance/talk open to the WFU community entitled “Migrant Horizons: Poetry and Storytelling in Scenes of Crisis,” in which Garcia combined story, poetry, and audio-video recordings from his ethnomusicological research in the Southwest. Second, a workshop the following day took place with the Interdisciplinary Faculty Seminar on Precarity, featuring Garcia’s poetry and translations as well as his just-released volume of lyrical prose, Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis.

April 28, 2022, Starling Hall Patio

In conjunction with the Program for Leadership and Character, the IAC hosted our Student Advisory Committee, AY 21-22 grant recipients, and students and faculty involved in the production of Performing Character, from Stage to Page. An informal final meeting with our Student Advisory Committee kicked off a beautiful afternoon of fellowship while listening to student performers/writers present select essays from the Performing Character publication.

Spring 2022, Benson Hall

Following a field trip to Happy Hills Association and a tour of the surrounding Winston-Salem neighborhood, students created art pieces to be displayed in Benson Hall. The exhibition “Silence” showed what they had learned in the class; it was a huge success. Over those three days, the students took turns sharing their art with the Wake Forest community on rotating shifts, which depicted the history of Wake Forest, the Confederate flag, and Winston-Salem city neighborhoods.

March 24, 2022

Cornelio Campos, an important pillar of the regional Latinx arts scene for more than 15 years, shares his work during with the WFU community. His work thematizes immigrant experiences and transnational social struggles often combined with traditional cultural imagery. His paintings have been shown at many local galleries throughout the state, including exhibitions at the UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, and NC State. He has also exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian. His murals have been commissioned by several community organizations, universities, and the NC Museum of Art. In 2019, he was featured on MUSE, PBS North Carolina’s local arts showcase.

March 22, 2022, 5 – 8 pm, Scales Fine Arts Center (SFAC)

Join us for the public launch of the Lynn Book Projects Archive – an online portal to some 2000 digitized artifacts from the artist’s 45-year corpus of experimental projects and research at the intersection of arts, culture, change. Free and open to everyone, this event is co-sponsored by Wake Forest’s Interdisciplinary Arts Center. For more info, contact Lynn Book.

March 18, 2022 at 5 pm, Benson 401B

Experience an evening with Sona Jobarteh, a griot from the West African nation of Gambia, on Friday, March 18 from 5-6 pm. As a griot, Sona is a highly-trained instrumentalist who performs on the kora and whose music and musical acumen
has garnered extensive international acclaim. As a griot, Sona is also a repository of vast historical and cultural knowledge about the Mande world. Finally, as the first recognized female griot in Mande culture, Sona is an educational advocate and activist with a dynamic vision for social change. Join students from the African Studies Minor for this unique musical experience.

March 17, 2022 at 6 pm, The Lam Museum of Anthropology

The Lam Museum welcomes I Gde Made Indra Sadguna, a musicology doctoral candidate specializing in Balinese gamelan, and Made Ayu Desiari, who specializes in Balinese dance. Indra will speak about the many ways of life in Bali and what it means to be Balinese from various perspectives including sociological, anthropological, religious, and performance. The presentation will include demonstrations of dancing, singing, and traditional costumes by Ayu. Attendees will be invited to participate in a hands-on activity making traditional Balinese offerings. Co-sponsored by Wake Forest’s Interdisciplinary Arts Center, this event is organized in part by Professor Elizabeth Clendinning, who also recently published a book about gamelan performance.

Learn more

February 24, 2022, 6 pm, Brendle Hall

On February 24, the Secrest Artists Series will host Dawn Upshaw and the Brentano String Quartet for a night of compositions inspired by Dido, the mythic queen of Carthage and key figure in Vergil’s Aeneid, the most world-influential Roman poem.

The Department of Classics is collaborating with Secrest to stage a free pre-concert event consisting of readings from Vergil’s poem — including some excerpts in a translation by Wake Forest poet & classicists Allen Mandelbaum — and performances of two compositions by Professor T. H. M. Gellar-Goad that set texts from Aeneid.

Learn more

February 4, 2022, Brendle Hall

A Creative Writing and Musical Performance Collaboration. Claire Chase presents “Grace.” Vocalizing texts written by her grandmother (edited in collaboration with Pauline Oliveros), Chase is joined by Levy Lorenzo controlling Oliveros’ Expanded Instrument System (EIS).

Join students from Creative Writing and Theatre/Dance as they mix—along with students in the Music Department—in the audience and participate in the interactions with visiting artists.

The evening will be hosted by Laura Mullen, Kenan Chair in the Humanities, Department of English, and Lynn Book, Teaching Professor, Department of Theatre and Dance. A lively discussion with the artists and reception will follow.

February 2022, stArt Gallery

stArt partnered with the WFU Black Student Alliance in honor of Black History Month, 2022. The exhibition featured work by Black creators on campus, including both students and alumni. The exhibition was in conjunction with the BSA annual Celebration of Black Arts, this year, emphasizing the theme of Black joy and expression in both community and individual environments. The exhibition featured work in diverse media, including documentary film, short form writing, visual arts, and more. The Celebration of the Black Arts has been a reoccurring event that celebrates the art created by Black Artists in the Winston-Salem area, further heightening the visibility of Black creatives to proliferate their art around campus.

Collaborators: WFU Black Student Alliance, stArt Gallery

November 11, 2021 and December 1, 2021, Virtual

LA-based actor and filmmaker Tiffany Cox led two zoom workshops about bias in policing with her short film Roadside Assistance as the backdrop. The film presented many scenarios that challenged participants to check their biases and discuss their perspectives in the film’s scenario. It was a powerful dialogue between WFU and Forsyth county police, student leaders on campus, and many faculty and staff across the university. The zoom workshops are part of the IAC and our Wake the Arts commitment to Realizing Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (R.I.D.E.)

November 30, 2021, Reynolda Hall

Faculty from across the humanities, visual arts, and performing arts dare to discuss a keyword common among their disciplines. Each faculty member will have five minutes to explain how that keyword circulates in their particular discipline, including current controversies and innovations. The dare: speakers have to be correct within their discipline, but still intelligible to the rest of the group. This month’s keyword is

FORM.

Join us for a lively discussion and light refreshments!

November 10, 2021, Scales Fine Arts Center 102

WFU alumna Annie Leist (’96) presents Beacons, a talk about her work. Annie Leist’s paintings, inspired by her limited visual perception of light and life in urban spaces, parallel her work in the accessibility field. Specializing in enriching the cultural experience of persons with disabilities, Leist returns to her alma mater to share the intersectionality of her work as artist, advocate and educator.

November 9, 2021, ZSR Auditorium

The Department for the Study of Religions and The Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies come together to present Saba Taj. Described by the HuffPost as “socially conscious queer Muslim woman of color in America,” Saba Taj is a Durham, NC based visual artist. Taj will be conducting three in-class workshops, Hybrid Selves: Illustrating Intersectionality through Collage, where students will use strategies of collage and juxtaposition to create artworks that represent their intersectional selves. The visit will culminate in a public lecture entitled Nazar: Beauty and Monstrosity under The Gaze of Power, where Taj will share her own works inspired by Islamic stories, sci-fi, and revolution which explore representation, the gaze, queerness, and the body.

Collaborators: WFU Department for the Study of Religions, WFU Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Art

October 20, 2021, DeTamble Auditorium

The Wake Forest University Classics Department brings musician and Classics B.A. Joe Goodkin to campus to perform his adaptation of Homer’s Iliad. Joe’s first-person songs capture the horror, grief, and love that permeate the Iliad and the combat experience. Sung from the perspective of Achilles, Priam, Patroclus, Briseis, Helen, Andromache, and more, The Blues of Achilles evokes “the truths that the Iliad conveys [through] songs that [are] real and now” in the words of Tom Palaima, Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin.

This event brings together classical literature, modern folk music, and enduring questions about war, trauma, love, and grief.

Collaborators: WFU Department of Classics, WFU Department of Music

October 13, 2021

“Learning From the Old Masters: Copley, Katz and the Science of Painting Conservation” was an open lecture sponsored by the IAC, the Department of Chemistry, and University Art Collections in partnership with Hanes Gallery. Heather Galloway, founder and owner of Galloway Art Conservation, LLC, and a peer-reviewed Fellow in the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) shared her painstaking process for conserving two portraits from the Art Collection currently on display in Hanes Gallery.

Collaborators: WFU Department of Chemistry, WFU Art Collections, Hanes Gallery of Art

August 20, 2021

Music Carolina is bringing back another dance and live music event, in partnership with the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. Featuring the choreographic work of Christina Soriano, Janice Lancaster and Monet Beatty (’20), audience members moved through three locations for a brief and distinct music and dance performance event at each spot.

May 7, 2021

“Say Her Name” is a 4-minute choral work by Alysia Lee. This performance was a collaboration between the Wake Forest Choir and the Winston-Salem State Singing Rams, supported by the WFU Interdisciplinary Arts Center and the Slavery, Race, and Memory Project. Additional support was also provided by Wake Forest partners: WFU Women’s Center, Leadership and Character, the School of Divinity, the Department of Music, and the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This performance premieres as part of the event Remember With Us: Commemoration of the Enslaved, after which it will be available on Wake The Arts beginning May 7th at 7:30pm. 

May 7, 2021

The students of WFU Choir Director and Music Department faculty Dr. Chris Gilliam spent the spring term learning works by all female-identifying composers. Gilliam organized a guest artist workshop and collaborative virtual performance featuring the work of (among others) Alysia Lee, Kennedy Center Fellow and composer.  Lee provided a workshop for the Wake Forest University Choirs and the Winston-Salem State Singing Rams. The choirs from both universities collaborated on a virtual performance of Lee’s piece “Say Her Name,” a composition about the tragedies that have befallen African-American men and women, which was shared at the May 7 WFU Reading of the Names memorial and renaming event and online.

Both projects can be viewed by clicking the links below.

Say Her Name c. 4 minutes

Still I Rise: The Female Voice In Creation c. 30 minutes

Collaborators: WFU Choir Program, WFU Department of Music, Winston-Salem State University Singing Rams, WFU Divinity School, Alysia Lee, WFU Slavery, Race, and Memory Project, WFU Women’s Center, WFU Leadership and Character, WFU Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies

April 14-18, 2021

“Interstitial 3” was a weeklong rehearsal residency and video installation at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA). It was a collaboration between WFU staff member Steve Morrison (Communications Strategist for the Arts), Chris Yon/Taryn Griggs, a group of triad area dancers, and the public.

March 31, 2021

Guest artist discussion with Gregg Mozgala with students in THE 372 Contemporary Drama Class. Mozgala is an award winning writer, actor, dancer, and activist with Cerebral Palsy who has founded the theatre company, Apothete. He talked with students in THE 372 and followed up with a public talk which was attended, in part, by members of the Parkinson’s Forward Support Group of Forsyth County.

March 18, 2021

Viewing of a 90-minute dance performance titled “Peony Dreams: On the Other Side of Sleep” for students in EAL 222, “Themes of Chinese Literature,” and HST 352 “Ten Years of Madness, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976,” plus a guest lecture by and conversation with the creator-choreographer of that performance, Professor YIN Mei of CUNY Queens College.

Collaborators: WFU Dept. of History and WFU East Asian Languages and Culture, and Professor Yin Mei of CUNY Queens College

March 10, 2021

Tiffany Waddell Tate (‘07, MA ‘11) a former WFU theatre student, and now CEO of Career Maven Consulting as well as Associate Director of National Engagement at Wake Forest University, was a guest lecturer in THE 290 Resilient Practices for the Actor.

February 2021

Guest artist workshops with students in THE 295 Development and Performance with performance artist Tim Miller, culminating in an original performance by students, documented by film professor Cagney Gentry’s class, and lighting & projections design by Kevin Frazier, assistant professor in Theatre.  

Collaborators: WFU Dept. of Theatre & Dance, WFU Dept. of Communication

February 10, 2021

A guest visit by Broadway stage manager and producer Cambra Overend (‘04) with Dr. Brook Davis’ Contemporary Dramatic Literature class (THE 372/ENG 394) and a follow-up public talk to discuss Overend’s history with the play Oslo and her role as producer of the HBO film of the same name. 

Collaborators: WFU Dept. of Theatre & Dance, WFU Film and Media Studies Program

February-April 2021

Dr. Brook Davis assembled and directed a company of Theatre students who worked in simulated therapy situations with the counseling students enrolled in CNS 739 Advanced Skills/Crisis Management.

Collaborators: WFU Counseling Program, WFU Dept. of Theatre & Dance

January-May 2021

Dr. Teresa Sanhueza invited J.E.R.Friedman (recently retired WFU Theatre faculty) to co-teach a first year seminar they had previously developed and taught together.  The FYS was titled “Live & in Color: The Experience of Minorities in the U.S. Through Art,” and employed a field trip to the WFU Hanes Gallery, guest lecturers, guest artist workshops, and a final public art showing of the pieces made by the FYS students.

Collaborators: Department of Spanish & Italian, WFU Dept. of Theatre & Dance, Hanes Gallery

A lecture-workshop (mini-lecture about history and culture, experiential dance instruction, and Q&A) for MUS 134 Music of Asia relating to the music, the Bhangra dance form, and its practice in India-Pakistan and in the diaspora. 

Collaborators: WFU Department of Music,  Learn Bhangra

The Search for Wachovia, a commissioned new play and recorded performance delivered during the Reynolda Conference “Becoming American: Moravians and their Neighbors, 1772-1822.”

Collaborators: WFU Dept of Religion, WFU Dept of German, WFU Museum of Anthropology, Winston-Salem State University, Old Salem, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and Historic Bethabara.
André Minkins, Producer and Director
Laura Semilian, Solo Vocalist
Matthew Tooni (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian), Cherokee Cultural Consultant, Storyteller, Spoken Word Artist
Theatre Students at WFU and WSSU