Monthly Archives: October 2013

Final Day of ASO “Pick Three” Ticket Special Offer

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ASO_2-colorThe Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Philip Mann, Music Director and Conductor, announces Pick Three—a special pricing promotion allowing concertgoers to pick three or more ASO performances during the 2013-2014 Season for a special price of only $19 per best available seat!  Pick Three represents a saving of up to 60 percent off regular ticket prices, and is available through this special promotion only thru Friday, October 4th.

Pick Three pricing applies to any three or more of the Symphony’s roster of concerts—the Masterworks series; POPS Live! series; or the River Rhapsodies chamber series.   Concertgoers can visit arkansassymphony.org/pick3 , select the concerts they want to attend, and enter the discount code PICK3, or they can call the box office at 501-666-1761 and ask for Pick Three pricing.

The Masterworks and Pops Live! concerts are

OCT 12-13 – Halloween Spooktacular (Pops Live!)
Have a spooky time with your ASO – Come in costume, bring the family and hear familiar favorites.
Tickets & Info

OCT 19-20 – Barber’s Violin Concerto (Masterworks)
Barber – Concerto for Violin
Rachmaninoff – Symphony No. 2
Tickets & Info

NOV 9-10 – Beethoven & Blue Jeans (Masterworks)
Gulda – Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra
Beethoven – Symphony No. 4
Tickets & Info

DEC 20-22 – Holiday Fantasy (Pops Live!)
Christmas carols, sing-alongs, and the ASO – come celebrate the season with your favorite holiday music.
Tickets & Info

JAN 25-26 – Bohemian Rhapsody (Masterworks)
Brahms – Concerto for Piano No. 2
Dvořák – Slavonic Dances
Tickets & Info

FEB 15-16 – Best of Broadway (Pops Live!)
Hits from Broadway’s most beloved show tunes – get ready to smile!
Tickets & Info

MAR 1-2 – Verdi’s Requiem (Masterworks)
Verdi – Missa di Requiem
Tickets & Info

MAR 8-9 – Wizard of Oz with Orchestra (Pops Live!)
Follow the yellow brick road to a a magical evening featuring the film “Wizard of Oz.”
Tickets & Info

APR 12-13 – Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (Masterworks)
Theofanidis – Commissioned by the ASO Musicians
Mahler – Symphony No. 5
Tickets & Info

MAY 3-4 – Shower the People: The Music of James Taylor (Pops Live!)
How sweet it is! The ASO pays tribute to the music of James Taylor.
Tickets & Info

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 48th season in 2013-2014 under the leadership of Music Director Philip Mann.  ASO is the resident orchestra of Robinson Center Music Hall, and performs more than thirty concerts each year for more than 42,000 people through its Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks Series, ACXIOM Pops LIVE! Series and Parker Lexus River Rhapsodies Chamber Series, in addition to serving central Arkansas through numerous community outreach programs and bringing live symphonic music education to over 24,000 school children and over 200 schools.

Butler Center Honors Mark Christ, Pat Carr at A PRIZED EVENING

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Tonight at 6:30, the Central Arkansas Library System Butler Center for Arkansas Studies will host the annual “A Prized Evening.”  The 2013 Booker Worthen Prize will be presented to Mark Christ and the 2013 Porter Fund prize will be given to Pat Carr.

christ_markAs one of the most fertile regions in the South, the Arkansas River Valley was highly contested territory during the Civil War. While the Siege on Vicksburg raged, equally important battles were fought here in Arkansas. This struggle is the topic of Mark Christ’s nonfiction work, Civil War Arkansas 1863, which has been selected to receive the 2013 Booker Worthen Literary Prize, awarded by the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS).

Christ, community outreach director for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, has edited a number of books and articles about Civil War events in Arkansas. He is a member of the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, serves as chairman of the board of directors of the Arkansas Humanities Council, and is a member of the board of trustees of the Arkansas Historical Association. Christ recently received the 2013 State Preservation Leadership Award from the Civil War Trust, the largest nonprofit battlefield preservation organization in the United States.

The Worthen Prize is awarded each year to an author living in the CALS’s service area whose work is highly regarded. It is named for Booker Worthen, who served twenty-two years on CALS’s board of trustees.

 

Pat CarrThe 2013 Porter Fund Literary Prize will be given to Pat Carr. The Porter Fund presents the award annually to an Arkansas writer who has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition

 

She has a B.A.(Phi Beta Kappa) and an M.A. from Rice, a Ph.D. from Tulane, and she’s taught literature and writing in colleges all across the South. She’s published sixteen books, including the Iowa Fiction Prize winner, The Women in the Mirror, and the PEN Book Award finalist, If We Must Die, and she’s had over a hundred short stories appear in such places as The Southern Review, Yale Review, and Best American Short Stories.

 

Her latest short story collection, The Death of a Confederate Colonel, a nominee for the Faulkner Award, won the PEN Southwest Fiction Award, the John Estes Cooke Fiction Award, and was voted one of the top ten books from university presses for 2007 by Foreword Magazine.

 

Carr has won numerous other awards, including a Library of Congress Marc IV, an NEH, the Texas Institute of Letters Short Story Award, an Al Smith Literary Fellowship, and a Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt Writing Fellowship in Lausanne, Switzerland.

 

A writing text, Writing Fiction with Pat Carr appeared from High Hill Press in June, 2010, and her autobiography, One Page at a Time: On a Writing Life was published by Texas Tech University Press in December, 2010. Pat Carr’s new novella, The Radiance of Fossils, came out in July 2012 with Main Street Rag Press. Her latest published work, Lincoln, Booth, and Me: A Graphic Novel of the Assassination by Horatio, the Cat as told by Par Carr was published in May 2013 by El Amarna Publishing.

Past honorees of the Booker Worthen prize are: 2012-The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937, David Welky; 2011-The Broken Vase, Phillip H. McMath and Emily Matson Lewis; 2010-Ruled by Race: Black/White Relations in Arkansas from Slavery to the Present, Grif Stockley; 2009-The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, Trenton Lee Stewart; 2008-Turn away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked the Nation, Elizabeth Jacoway; 2007-A Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier; 2006-Promises Kept, Sidney S. McMath (posthumous); 2005-Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier, Carolyn Earle Billingsley; 2004-The Truth about Celia, Kevin Brockmeier; 2003-Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, Mara Leveritt; 2002-Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919, Grif Stockley; 2000-The Boys on the Tracks, Mara Leveritt; 2001-The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673–1804., Morris S. Arnold; 1999-Arkansas, 1800–1860: Remote and Restless, S. Charles Bolton.

Previous recipients of the Porter Fund prize are: 2012-Margaret Jones Bolsterli (Non-Fiction); 2011-Bill Harrison  (Fiction); 2010-Bob Ford  (Playwriting); 2009-Roy Reed  (Non-Fiction); 2008-Trenton Lee Stewart  (Fiction); 2007-Greg Brownderville  (Poetry); 2006-Donald “Skip” Hays  (Fiction); 2005-Shirley Abbott (Non-Fiction); 2005-Constance Merritt  (Poetry); 2004-Michael Burns  (Poetry); 2003-Kevin Brockmeier  (Fiction); 2002-Ralph Burns  (Poetry); 2001-Morris Arnold  (Non-Fiction); 2001-Fleda Brown  (Poetry); 2000-Jo McDougall  (Poetry); 1999-Grif Stockley  (Fiction); 1998-Michael Heffernan  (Poetry); 1997-Dennis Vannatta  (Fiction); 1996-David Jauss  (Fiction); 1995-Norman Lavers  (Fiction); 1994-Werner Trieschmann  (Playwriting); 1993-No Prize was awarded; 1992-Andrea Hollander Budy  (Poetry); 1991-Crescent Dragonwagon  (Fiction); 1990-James Twiggs  (Fiction); 1989-Hope Norman Coulter  (Fiction); 1988-Paul Lake  (Poetry); 1987-Donald Harington  (Fiction); 1986-Buddy Nordan  (Fiction); 1985-Leon Stokesbury  (Poetry).

 

 

Chamber Music Society of LR kicks off 60th season tonight with La Catrina Quartet

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CMSLR_logo_webTonight the Chamber Music Society of Little Rock kicks off its 60th anniversary season with a recital by La Catrina Quartet.

The recital will be at 7pm at Trinity United Methodist Church (at the corner of Evergreen and Mississippi).  Tickets are $25 for adults; students are free.

Hailed by Yo-Yo Ma as wonderful ambassadors of music, the La Catrina Quartet is one of the most sought after ensembles on tour today. Their unique blend of Latin-American and standard repertoire has proved enormously entertaining for its diverse audiences, catering to the more traditional concertgoers while also attracting the next generation of listeners. Their infectious personalities infuse their playing, creating truly compelling performances. The La Catrina Quartet has a triple mission: to perform the masterworks of the string quartet repertoire, to promote Mexican and Latin American concert music worldwide and to work closely with composers in order to promote the performance of new music.

The Chamber Music Society of Little Rock (CMSLR) is one of Central Arkansas’ premiere performing arts organizations. Through its performance and education activities, the Society offers audiences unique chamber music experiences. CMSLR presents annual series of concerts and educational events for listeners ranging from connoisseurs to chamber music newcomers of all ages. Presenting performances of repertoire spanning  three centuries, and numerous premieres by living composers, CMSLR programs are designed to provide listeners a comprehensive perspective on the art of chamber music.

Each year CMSLR presents four concerts by award-winning solo and ensemble performers. The Society offers a unique opportunity for Little Rock Audiences to experience first class performances by internationally recognized performers such as the Guarneri Quartet, the Chestnut Brass, and the Parker String Quartet.

The Chamber Music Society of Little Rock continues today in the spirit of its founders. In 1953 a group of friends began meeting in one another’s homes to enrich the cultural life of Little Rock with a new form of classical music.

Sen. David Pryor speaks, Mayor Stodola an honoree at Quapaw Quarter annual meeting tonight

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QQAThe Quapaw Quarter Association will host its annual membership meeting on Wednesday, October 2 in the Ottenheimer Theater at Historic Arkansas Museum.  The evening will begin with a 5:30 p.m. reception in the atrium, the membership meeting will begin at 6:00 p.m.  Nonmembers of the organization are invited to join at the door.

Board members standing for re-election this year are:
Chuck Cliett
John Herzog
Gabe Holmstrom
Cheri Nichols
Shana Woodard

Following a short business meeting, the Greater Little Rock Preservation Awards will be presented to projects in SoMa, the Governor’s Mansion Historic District, MacArthur Park Historic District and Main Street Commercial Historic District.  Anthony Black will receive the Peg Smith Award for his many years of exemplary volunteer work on QQA projects and programs.  Mayor Mark Stodola will receive the Jimmy Strawn Award.  Since 1980, the QQA has presented its most prestigious award to “someone whose efforts on behalf of the preservation of Greater Little Rock’s architectural heritage are an inspiration to the entire community.”

Senator David Pryor will join the QQA as guest speaker to close out the evening.

The Quapaw Quarter Association’s mission is to promote the preservation of Little Rock’s architectural heritage through advocacy, marketing and education.

Incorporated in 1968, the QQA grew out of an effort to identify and protect significant historic structures in Little Rock during the urban renewal projects of the early 1960s. Throughout its existence, the QQA has been a driving force behind historic preservation in Greater Little Rock.

Rhea Roberts serves as the executive director.

Legacies & Lunch today at noon – History of Weapon Laws in Arkansas

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legaciesLegal issues of violence and gun possession were as prevalent in Spanish colonial Arkansas as they are today. Dr. Michael Dougan, distinguished professor of history emeritus of Arkansas State University, will discuss the history of Arkansas’s anti-gun laws in his talk, “Black Powder & Bowie Knives:  Violence and the Law in Arkansas,” at noon on Wednesday, October 2, in the Main Library’s Darragh Center, 100 Rock Street.

The talk is part of Legacies & Lunch, a monthly lecture series hosted by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS).

Early American Arkansas passed a law against carrying concealed weapons that triggered a major case for the newly established Arkansas Supreme Court. The majority upheld the law, and anti-gun laws remained a part of Arkansas until well into the twentieth century.

Legacies & Lunch is free, open to the public, and supported in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council.  Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert will be provided.

Anson discusses Alexander the Great to kick of 2013-14 Evenings with History

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Ed-AnsonThe Evenings with History series, sponsored by the UALR History Institute kicks off the 2013-2014 series tonight.  This year’s series will focus on how the study and writing of history is done.

The six sessions of the 2013-2014 Evenings with History series will be on the first Tuesday of October, November, and December of 2013 and February, March, and April of 2014.

They are held at the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street in Little Rock. Historic Arkansas’s downtown location and the museum’s adjacent parking lot at Third and Cumberland make the sessions convenient and pleasant to attend.

Refreshments are served at 7:00 p.m., and the talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

An individual subscription to the series, at $50 annually, includes admission to all six lectures.

Tonight, Edward Anson discusses “The Character of Alexander the Great.”

Professor Anson has been working for many years examining aspects of the life of Alexander the Great but wanted to write something about who he was as opposed to what he did. Ancient history presents unique problems for the historian. Sources seldom are contemporary with the topic studied. Standards of behavior often do not coincide with those of today.

This talk examines Professor Anson’s efforts to establish the character of Alexander, which resulted in his new book, Alexander the Great: Themes and Issues. Simply detailing what Alexander did produces serious difficulties, but getting into the mind of someone who lived more than two thousand years ago turns out to be even more difficult. Anson offers insights into how the historian uses the evidence of antiquity to overcome these barriers.

Edward M. Anson has authored or edited seven books, including Alexander the Great: Themes and Issues (2013); After Alexander: The Age of the Diadochi (323-281 BC) (2013); Eumenes of Cardia: A Greek Among Macedonians (2004), and more than thirty articles in journals, including Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, The Journal of Cuneiform Studies, The Journal of the American Oriental Society, Classical Philology, and The American Journal of Philology; twelve book chapters, and over fifty encyclopedia articles. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia and is currently Professor of History, a faculty senator, and a former President of the University Assembly.

Corporate sponsors for the 2013-2014 season include Friday, Eldredge, & Clark; Union Pacific Railroad; Wright, Lindsey, and Jennings; and the Teaching American History Program of the Little Rock School District.

Support and gifts in kind are provided by the UALR Ottenheimer Library; Historic Arkansas Museum, a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; UALR Public Radio—KUAR-KLRE; UALR public television; and Grapevine Spirits.

Orval Faubus, Language of Segregation – topic of UALR talk this evening

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ualr logoDr. Lisa M. Corrigan, Assistant Professor of Communication and Chair of the Gender Studies Program at the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas will be the features speaker this evening at the UALR Cooper Honors and Gender Studies Program Lecture.  She will deliver a lecture entitled “Orval Faubus and the Language of Segregation:  Sexualized Violence and Racial Anxiety during the Little Rock Crisis.”

Dr. Corrigan uses the Orval Faubus Collection at the University of Arkansas to examine the rhetorical strategies embraced by the former Arkansas governor during the desegregation of Central High School.  In examining Faubus’ public speeches and private correspondence at the height of the desegregation crisis, her lecture will cover how he sought to control the rhetorical situation in Little Rock and how racial anxiety was articulated as sexual anxiety.

The program will take place at 6pm in the Dickinson Hall Auditorium on the UALR campus.  At 5:30 there will be a reception.