WMU

A gallery filled with the musical paintings of David Park at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts will become a concert space at 6:30 pm on Tuesday, Feb 18, when the New York City-based composer-performer duo Chromic plays new and improvised music on toy piano, electric and acoustic piano. 

Kalamazoo composer Adam Schumaker received an Arts Council grant to fund the performance. He talks to Cara Lieurance about Chromic and their music, and Chromic's Lucy Yao, an alumna of Western Michigan University, joins them by phone to talk about how Chromic was founded.

After tragically losing her brother, a young woman named Yolanda is sent to live with her grandmother, Mother Shaw. Mother Shaw takes the reluctant Yolanda in, and soon Mother Shaw's circle of friends becomes interested in Yolanda's welfare. These ladies take pride in dressing up for church and wearing spectacular hats to Sunday services-- hats that have stayed in families for years, each one a uniquely personal possession.  That's the premise of Regina Taylor's play CROWNS, which will run from Feb 27 - Mar 1 at the Judy K. Joliffe Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo.

In this radio interview, Cara Lieurance spoke with Face Off Theatre Company's founder/artistic director Marissa Harrington, actress Brenda Earvin (Mother Shaw), and actress Jeannine Jones (Wanda) about the hats, gospel music, and themes of hope and healing community that CROWNS has to offer.

Dr. Scott Boerma and Dr. Trey Harris joined Cara Lieurance to preview a 3 pm concert on Sunday Feb 16 shared by the WMU Concert Band and WMU Wind Symphony, and 7:30 pm concert on Monday, Feb 17 featuring the WMU Symphonic Band. Both will be held in Miller Auditorium, and both share the same guest artist: soprano Lindsay Kesselman.

Conductor Bruce Uchimura will lead the WMU Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Arturo Marquez' Congal del Fuego Nuevo at 3 pm on Sunday, Feb 9 in a free concert in Miller Auditorium. The Moxie Strings, an innovative electro-acoustic duo featuring violinist Diana Ladio and WMU alumna cellist Alison Lynn, will join the orchestra to play their original music, which includes Celtic, rock, and contemporary influences. 

Lynn and Uchimura talk to Cara Lieurance about the concert, and Lynn talks about how she and her partner turned Moxie Strings into a music career that takes them around the country and beyond.

Gardeners and farmers are already thinking about the seeds they will plant in spring. They also think about those seeds throughout the winter, planning each crop and each garden row with care.