UALR to Honor Sotomoras at FINALE

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Scott

UALR will honor Eileen and Dr. Ricardo Sotomora at the seventh annual Finale at 6:30 p.m., Saturday, April 28 at the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the UALR Fine Arts Building.

Reservations to the black-tie optional event are $150 with $110 being deductible.

Finale celebrates the arts in Central Arkansas and is the premier fundraising event for UALR’s fine arts programs. The dinner gala features performances and artwork by students.

Dr. Sotomora is the only pediatric cardiologist in private practice in Arkansas. He is the exclusive provider of cardiology services for children at Baptist Health Medical Center and St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, in Little Rock, and Baptist Health Medical Center in North Little Rock. His cardiology practice is managed by Eileen.

The Sotomoras were instrumental in founding the American Heart Association’s annual “Heart Ball,” in Arkansas, a debutante ball that not only raises proceeds for the organization but strives to teach girls about volunteerism and health. In 2006, Dr. Sotomora received the “Worthen Cornett Award,” the highest honor given to a person for work on behalf of the American Heart Association in Central Arkansas.

In 2008, they chaired the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s Opus XXIV. Currently, Dr. Sotomora is a trustee of the Arkansas Arts Center Board and a member of the development committee. Both of the Sotomoras are members of the Director’s Circle. The Sotomoras are supporters of the Venezuelan “El Sistemia,” a government-funded program that currently assists nearly one million Venezuelan children in learning classical music.

“Eileen and Ricardo are amazing leaders in the Central Arkansas community,” said Deborah Baldwin, dean of the UALR College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “We are honored that they would assist us in raising awareness about how arts programs enrich the communities in which we live.”

Finale 2012’s performance will feature UALR music students performing scenes from the Broadway musical, “Into the Woods,” with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. Craig O’Neill of Today’s THV will serve as master of ceremonies. This is his fourth year to host the event.

In the live auction, Finale will feature a designer jewelry piece created by Sissy’s Log Cabin.

Presenting sponsors of the 2012 event are Glazer’s Distributors of Arkansas and Sissy’s Log Cabin. Premier sponsors include Pediatrix, Terri and Chuck Erwin, and Chip and Cindy Murphy. Sustaining sponsors are Simmons First National Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield, East-Harding, Inc., Entergy, US Bank, and HBO/Time Warner.

Arts organizations from around the region lend their support to Finale each year. This year’s participating arts partners are Accademia dell’Arte, Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.
Reservations to Finale are $150 each. Call Rivka Kuperman at (501) 765-9636 or at rekuperman@ualr.edu for more information.

UALR Evenings In History concludes 2011-2012 series tonight

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Scott

The UALR Evenings with History program concludes the 2011-2012 series tonight with Edward Anson’s “Counter-Insurgency: The Lessons of Alexander the Great.”

During Alexander the Great’s conquering expedition, which took him from Greece to Egypt to the Punjab, he only endured one serious insurrection against his once established authority. This talk shows how he dealt with the peoples of the areas he conquered, mollifying them through the retention of basic political, cultural, and religious institutions and establishing close bonds with local elites. Why, then, did his policy fail in the one instance that produced an insurgency? The talk assesses that failure and examines the brutal counter-insurgent measures employed by Alexander to deal with this resistance to his authority.

Edward M. Anson has authored or edited five books, including Eumenes of Cardia: A Greek Among Macedonians (Leiden, Boston, Tokyo: E. J. Brill, 2004), 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, Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, Phoenix, Classical Journal, Greece and Rome, Ancient Society, Ancient History Bulletin, The Ancient World, and The American Journal of Philology; ten 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.

The Evenings with History take place in the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street. Refreshments are served at 7:00 p.m., and the talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

Corporate sponsors for the 2011-2012 season are Delta Trust, Union Pacific Railroad, the Little Rock School District—Teaching American History Program; the law firms of Friday, Eldredge, & Clark and Wright, Lindsey & Jennings. Also thanks for support and gifts in kind from the Ottenheimer Library; Historic Arkansas Museum, a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; UALR Public Radio–KLRE-KUAR; and Grapevine Spirits

UALR Evenings with History: A Brief History of Human Rights on March 6

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Scott

The UALR Evenings with History program returns tomorrow night (March 6) with Charles W. Romney’s “A Brief History of Human Rights.”

What are Human Rights? Some claim humans have always had rights that cannot be traded, infringed, or given away. Others argue international organizations and American officials invented the concept of human rights in the 1970s to further various political agendas. In this Evening with History we will discuss the two historical interpretations behind each vision of human rights, assess the relative strength of both ideas of international rights, and explore the political and intellectual stakes in the debate over the origins of Human Rights.

Charles Romney graduated from Pomona College and received his Ph.D. in history from UCLA. He worked in public history for seven years on documentary films and digital history projects, and in the five years before joining UALR taught Asian and African history at Whittier College in California. At UALR he is the Graduate Coordinator of the History Department’s MA program in Public History. Dr. Romney teaches classes on public history, digital history, African history, and on the United States and the world. His current research includes a study of law, labor, and the state in modern America and a comparative history of colonial Hawaii.

The Evenings with History take place in the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street. Refreshments are served at 7:00 p.m., and the talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

Arkansas Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven, Schoenberg, Takei

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Scott

Actor and activist George Takei joins the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra this weekend in concerts at Robinson Center Music Hall to narrate Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw at a concert featuring a message of hope and unity with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony also known as Ode to Joy.

The ASO MasterWorks concerts are tonight at 8pm and tomorrow at 3pm.

Takei’s appearance is sponsored by the Stella Boyle Smith Trust and he will take the stage as narrator during Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw. The narration that accompanies this piece depicts the story of a concentration camp survivor from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. Takei, a Japanese American who as a child was interned at an internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas during World War II, is a supporter of human right issues and community activist. Takei is chairman emeritus and a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and was appointed to the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission by former President Clinton.

Just after Schoenberg’s moving piece, Maestro Philip Mann and the ASO musicians will be joined by over 400 voices from the state of Arkansas for Beethoven’s prayer for hope and peace,Symphony No. 9, Ode to Joy. “This is perhaps the most recognizable work in the history of classical music, and for good reason,” said Mann. “Its message of triumph and victory through a shared brotherhood between peoples is an enduring, timeless, and transcendent declaration. Seen as a watershed movement in music history, the work has gained such significance and is now synonymous with important moments in world historylike its performance marking the re-unification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Featuring:

George Takei, narrator
Schoenberg Chorus
River City Men’s Chorus
Beethoven Chorus
Arkansas State University
Harding University
Hendrix College
Lyon College
Ouachita Baptist University
Philander Smith College
Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
University of Arkansas at Monticello
Members of River City Men’s Chorus
Philip Mann, conductor
Arkansas Symphony Orchestra

UALR Evenings with History: How an Arkansan taught Chinese Nationalism

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Scott

The UALR Evenings with History program resumes for 2012 tomorrow night (February 7) with Jeffrey Kyong-McClain’s “The Heavenly History of the Han, or How a Liberal Baptist from Green Forest, Arkansas Taught Racial and Ethnic Nationalism to the Chinese.”

In the early years of the twentieth century, Chinese (or “Han”) nationalists were searching for ways to convert a tradition-bound and multi-cultural empire into a modern nation-state. Although, in the minds of these nationalists, foreign missionaries were a big part of China’s problem, many such missionaries in fact aided the Chinese against the non-Chinese in questions over who had the historical right to rule the borderlands, thereby helping Chinese nationalists assert their purported rights over vast amounts of territory.

This talk looks at the case of one missionary particularly active in this regard, Arkansan D.C. Graham, who blended liberal theology with a Social Darwinian belief in the superiority of the Chinese over the other people groups in the region (southwest China). Graham propagated this belief as the pioneer of modern archaeology and ethnography in Sichuan province in the 1920s and 1930s, and his ideas remain influential in the region to this day.

A member of the UALR History faculty, Dr. Kyong-McClain was born and raised in Minneapolis. He received a BA in History from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Theology from Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, before beginning graduate work in Chinese History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He lived for three years in the city of Chengdu, in southwestern China, the last year on a Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant. His research centers on the place of archaeology in modern Chinese nation-building; teaching interests include modern China and modern Korea, and anything pertaining to Sino-Western interaction.

The Evenings with History take place in the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street. Refreshments are served at 7:00 p.m., and the talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

Johannes Möller, award winning classical guitarist, opens Artspree’s 2012 spring semester

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Scott

Guitarist Johannes Möller, the 2010 first prize winner of the Guitar Foundation of America’s Concert Artist Competition, opens the spring Artspree stage at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, at the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in UALR’s Fine Arts Building.

Tickets are $20 general admission, $80 for the season, $10 for non-UALR students, and free for UALR students. Group discounts are available. For tickets or more information, call the Artspree office at 501-569-8993.

Möller began performing at 13, and his performances now total more than 500 and span the continents of Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

In 2010 he was awarded first prize in the GFA Concert Artist Competition, considered by many to be the most prestigious guitar competition in the world. As part of this prize, he will perform more than 50 concerts throughout the United States, including a Carnegie Hall debut in the Weill Recital Hall, Canada, Mexico, South America, and China.

At the age of 12 as a self-taught composer, Möller experienced an outburst of creativity that resulted in a large quantity of pieces that were performed and recorded with great critical acclaim. A selection of these works was recorded on a CD with some of the top instrumentalists in Sweden when he was 14. In his later teenage years, Möller continued composing, experimenting with various compositional styles and techniques.

Möller earned a bachelor’s degree in music from the Royal College of Music in London where he studied guitar with Gary Ryan and Carlos Bonell and composition with William Mival.

He received a master’s degree from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague where he studied with Zoran Dukic. He also received a scholarship from the Royal Conservatoire that allowed him to study privately with Pavel Steidl in the Czech Republic as well as composition lessons with Dusan Bogdanovic in the United States. He completed a second master’s degree at the Conservatoire in Amsterdam where he studied guitar with Lex Eisenhardt and composition with Richard Ayers.