The Kalamazoo Air Zoo turns 40 this year. The aerospace museum plans to celebrate its birthday with several new exhibits. They include "Memories and Milestones," which includes old photographs of the Air Zoo as well as new and vintage airplanes it flew during airshows at the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport.

Remember the late celebrated astrophysicist Carl Sagan? An interesting tie exists between science phenom Neil deGrasse Tyson and him besides both having hosted the popular "Cosmos" show begun by Sagan. It's that Tyson met Sagan as a teenager. In fact, Sagan personally invited Tyson to visit Cornell University to convince him to enroll there. Sagan met Tyson in his professor's office on a Saturday, gave him a campus tour, then gifted him one of his books with a foretelling inscription: "To Neil Tyson, future astrophysicist."

On Wednesday, May 22nd, preeminent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will hit the stage at Western Michigan University's Miller Auditorium. He's become a pop culture figure for his ability to excite people about science. Today we replay WMUK's Earlene McMichael's interview with him that originally aired on April 15th on the WestSouthwest news and public affairs show.

Each year, the Stulberg International String Competition receives applications from hundreds of violinists, violists, cellists and bassists, all age 19 and under. These applications are reviewed and narrowed down to just 12 finalists, who travel from all corners of the continent to perform not only for prizes, but for the experience and the opportunity to meet other top players of their generation. In these interviews, you'll hear nine of the talented young musicians talk about their backgrounds and the music they've prepared to play in front of the public and judges Paul Coletti, Emilio Colón, and Jennifer Frautschi on Saturday, May 18.

Semifinals run on the half-hour between 9 am and 4 pm, and are free to attend. The six finalists chosen from the field of 12 will perform in the Finals Concert at 7:30 pm in the Dalton Center Recital Hall, after which the awards will be announced. The Stulberg judges teach masterclasses the following day, and are open to the public.

Violinist Corey Cerovsek will perform the Violin Concerto No. 2 by Bela Bartok in the season-ending concert by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra on Friday, May 17 at 8 pm in Miller Auditorium. A nomadic musician from Vancouver, British Columbia who began performing professionally as a child, Cerovsek also maintains an equal interest in mathematics, and recently launched a start-up company in the field of medical technology. For this concert, Cerovsek was up to the challenge of re-learning the Bartok concerto, a piece he has performed 20 years before, in a short period of time as a replacement for the scheduled soloist. 

The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra will also perform Stravinsky's 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring. It's a work that completely transformed orchestral playing, according to assistant conductor Daniel Brier. He points to the fact that the original performance required 17 orchestral rehearsals to learn the piece, and today, orchestras routinely learn it in four. As for conductors, Brier says that anyone who masters the Rite of Spring will find conducting nearly any other work a little easier.

Western Michigan University’s Robert M. Beam Power Plant is easy to miss in the summer when leaves obscure the view from Kalamazoo’s Stadium Drive. But earlier this year, when the trees were bare, Paul Toth of Kalamazoo noticed something curious about big metal pipes that come out of the plant near the road.

Very few people would look at a lump of elephant dung and see art. But Maryellen Hains does. She sees beauty not only in elephant dung but in most everything. The multi-media artist is known for her work in jewelry, glass, and silk painting. And yes, she's made a brooch out of a mold of a piece of elephant dung.