Tag Archives: University of Central Arkansas

Vocal Recital – Karen Kenney Graham

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Karen Kenney Graham will present “An Evening with My Favorite Composers” at Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Little Rock. She is a Dramatic Soprano who received her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Vocal Performance from the University of Central Arkansas. The recital will consist of selections by Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Puccini, Mendelssohn and David W. Allison. A reception will follow the performance.

Graham received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Arkansas in 2003, where she also earned a master’s degree in music (vocal performance) nine years later. In this time, Graham frequently performed, gave recitals, and coached others on their performances. She was the State NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) winner in 2012 and won Outstanding Opera Student in 2011.

She was a member of UCA Choir, Chamber Choir, Opera, and University Singers. She taught voice with the Community School. While earning her master’s degree, Graham was a graduate assistant for the voice faculty, where she taught classroom voice.

Sculpture Vulture: Uptown Saturday Night

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One of the sculptures in the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden is Bryan W. Massey Sr.’s Uptown Saturday Night.  This bronze sculpture depicts a couple dancing the night away.

Massey, on the faculty of the University of Central Arkansas, received one of the top 10 Best of Show awards at the 2009 and 2010 Sculpture at the River Market Invitational Show and Sale.  Though primarily a stone carver working with a variation of stone, Massey also casts in iron, bronze, and aluminum as well as fabrication of steel sculptures.

Uptown Saturday Night was purchased in 2009 and installed in the Vogel Schwartz Garden when it opened.

Sculpture Vulture: Dee Brown

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20120519-114242.jpg Today the Sculpture Vulture continues with the Arkansas Heritage Month emphasis on sculptures of Arkansans.

Visitors to the Dee Brown Library are greeted by Kevin Kresse’s 2004 sculpture of the celebrated author. The bronze likeness depicts Brown with a bepenciled hand raised to his chin as if in the midst of a wondrous thought while writing. The titles of some of his books surround the pedestal including his most famous book: 1971’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Brown was a graduate of Little Rock High and Arkansas State Teachers College (now Little Rock Central and University of Central Arkansas, respectively). After a career as a librarian and bivocational but prolific author, he returned to Little Rock in 1973 and focused full time on his writing. He died in 2002.

Chamber Music Recital at UALR

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Tonight at UALR, Felice Magendanz-Farrell, Naoki Hakutani and David Renfro will present a chamber music recital.  The program begins at 7:30 in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall on the UALR campus.

Cellist Felice Magendanz-Farrell was born in Utica, N.Y., and educated at Indiana University under artists, Janos Starker, Josef Gingold and Gyorgy Sebok. Chamber music and teaching have been her enduring pursuits throughout her life from Indiana University to Minnesota University, Eastman School of Music, University of Central Arkansas, to concerts in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Europe and Eastern Europe.

Japanese American pianist Naoki Hakutani, a native of Kent, Ohio, has performed as a soloist and collaborator across the U.S. as well as Mexico, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Hakutani is currently serving as assistant professor of piano at The University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He received degrees from Northwestern University and Indiana University in Bloomington prior to receiving the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

A native of Kingsport, Tenn., hornist David Renfro received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in horn performance from the Indiana University Jacob’s School of Music. Currently, David resides in Little Rock, where he is in his seventh season with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, currently serving as principal horn. In 2010 he also became the symphony’s Orchestra Personnel and Operations Manager. Prior to that appointment, David taught horn and music at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University. In addition to his duties with the orchestra, David maintains an active teaching studio and performs regularly as a chamber musician and soloist.

OXFORD AMERICAN magazine

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As the Thanksgiving weekend approaches and people travel the highways and byways Arkansas and the South, it is a good time to think about the Oxford American magazine.

The Oxford American celebrates great writing, great food, great music and the great people of the South.  With a broad definition of “great” it takes time to highlight not only the renowned but also the hidden treasures. By focusing on the South, the Oxford American shines the spotlight on things that unique to the South, but also shows that there is much that is universal.

Founded in 1992 by Marc Smirnoff in Oxford, Mississippi, the Oxford American has been located in Conway, Arkansas, on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas since 2004.  The magazine is led by Smirnoff and publisher Warwick Sabin.

The magazine has won many awards and received much recognition.  The music issue will be released in December and is the most popular issue each year.  It will be discussed in a future entry here.  The current issue focuses on education.

If you are a passenger on a road trip this weekend, the Oxford American is a great way to spend the time. Or if you are having a family and turkey overload — it makes a great getaway.

Butler Center’s Legacies & Lunch: The Thousand-Year Flood

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The Central Arkansas Library System’s Butler Center for Arkansas Studies sponsors the “Legacies & Lunch” conversation each month.  November’s program features David Welky discussing his new book, The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937.

In this book, Dr. Welky, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas, discusses the 1937 deluge which was one of the biggest natural disasters in American history.

Welky

David Welky, associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas, specializes in 1930s America and has written several other books, including Everything Was Better in America: Print Culture in the Great Depression and The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II.

Legacies & Lunch is sponsored in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. Bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert are provided. This event is free and open to the public

Arts & Humanities Month: UALR History Department’s Evenings with History

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This year marks the 21st year for the History Institutes’ Evenings with History.  This nationally recognized series has featured a variety of subject.  This year, the first three evenings comprise a mini-series focused on African-Americans in Arkansas.  The other evenings will take listeners around the world in geography and chronology. The sessions take place at the Ottenheimer Auditorium of Historic Arkansas Museum. Refreshments are served at 7 with the program beginning at 7:30 pm. The cost is $50 for admission to all six programs.

Tonight’s program features Carl Moneyhon speaking on “Freedom: Black Arkansans and the End of Slavery”

On November 1, Story Matkin-Rawn of the UCA History Department will present a program entitled “From Land Ownership to Legal Defense: The World War I Watershed in Black Arkansan Organizing”

John Kirk presents December’s program on the 6th: “A Movement is more than a Moment: Arkansas and the African American Civil Rights struggle since 1940”

The Evenings in History return on February 7 with Jeff 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”

On March 6, Charles Romney will address “A Brief History of Human Rights”

The 2011-2012 sessions will conclude on April 3 with Edward Anson’s “Counter-Insurgency: The Lessons of Alexander the Great”

The 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. Support and gifts in kind have been provided by the UALR Ottenheimer Library; Historic Arkansas Museum, a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; UALR Public Radio–KLRE-KUAR; and Grapevine Spirits.