2018 Fall Arts Preview
After a quiet summer quarter, the arts scene at the University of Denver is in full swing with the arrival of fall. Across campus, concerts, theatrical productions, art exhibits and more offer an embarrassment of riches for arts lovers.
Highlights of the fall season at the Lamont School of Music include the Lamont Symphony Orchestra, in a concert saluting the centennial anniversary of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and featuring violinist and faculty member Linda Wang (Oct. 9, free); Lamont Opera Theatre’s “A Night at the Opera,” featuring scenes from Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore,” Verdi’s “La Traviata” and Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Nov. 2, free); and the Lamont Jazz Orchestra, which is celebrating a recent high-profile performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival. “Miles Ahead” will feature the music of Miles Davis and Gil Evans (Nov. 5, free). All concerts are in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts.
Lamont and the Newman Center also welcome five guest artists this season: pianist Ashlee Mack,performing composer James Romig’s “Still,” a solo work inspired by the collection at Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum (Oct. 11); trumpet soloist and chamber musician Craig Morris, with pianist Rebecca Wilt (Oct. 12); and University of Missouri Conservatory faculty pianist Robert Weirich (Nov. 16). Tickets for all guest artist performances are $10.
The Newman Center also hosts a concert series, Newman Center Presents, featuring nationally touring performers. The series this fall welcomes choreographer Camille A. Brown and her dancers (Oct. 4); jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and his quartet (Oct. 17); the U.S. Army’s Jazz Ambassadors, playing a free concert (Oct. 20); Denver-based kids act the Okee Dokee Brothers (Nov. 4); Colorado’s own Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (Nov. 10–11); and the Turtle Island Quartet with pianist Cyrus Chestnut (Nov. 16). The concert series offers free and discounted tickets for faculty, staff and students.
For fans of the visual arts, DU has an on-campus gallery and an anthropology museum, as well as dedicated exhibit space in the Anderson Academic Commons.
This fall, the Myhren Gallery hosts “Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.” a traveling exhibition that explores the intersections among a network of more than 50 Los Angeles-based queer Chicanx artists between the late 1960s and early 1990s (through Dec. 2, free). The Museum of Anthropology in Sturm Hall, meanwhile, will open a new exhibit, “Indigenous Futurisms,” on Oct. 5. Featuring new artwork by Lakota/Cherokee comics artist Kristina M. Bad Hand and comics artist and game designer Elizabeth LaPensée, the show explores the relationship between pop culture and native life. Part of the 15th Indigenous Film and Arts Festival, the free exhibit will be up through Nov. 16.
In the Anderson Academic Commons, “Blazing the Trail: Colorado Jewish History” and “Square Dance in the American West” are on display on the lower level, while “Jacques Parker: The Mountaineer’s View” — showcasing pencil, ink, and watercolor works created by the machine gun squad leader and member of the 10th Mountain Division during his service in World War II — is mounted on the upper level near the Dean’s Suite.
Finally, DU’s theater department offers two productions this fall. “Savage/Love,” Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin’s collection of monologues on romantic love, is paired with Shepard’s “Red Cross” Oct. 11–21 in JMAC Studios; and Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things” plays Nov. 1–11 in the Newman Center’s Byron Theatre.