Music Department

Join us for the opening reception of Modfest 2019 with a performance by the Vassar College Women’s Chorus featuring “Its Motion Keeps” by Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw.

Frances Lehman Loeb Arts Center

A talented, young getaway driver relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. But after being coerced into working for a crime boss, he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom. With introduction by Vassar faculty member, Tahirih Motazedian.

The Rosenwald Film Theater, Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film

Join us for an interdisciplinary workshop that will explore how the vocabulary of Viewpoints can be applied to music and performance. This workshop is open to current Vassar students and will be led by Senior Lecturer in Music, Drew Minter, and Interdisciplinary Arts Coordinator, Tom Pacio.

Ely Hall, Aula

The award winning Attacca Quartet presents the world premiere of String Quartet No. 6 by Richard Wilson and Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution. Smith’s innovative work was shaped by diverse influences including Bach, Joni Mitchell, Ligeti, Simon & Garfunkel, and traditions of bluegrass and Georgian folk music. Faculty and guest performers include Susan Botti, soprano, and Sophie Shao, cello. 

Skinner Hall of Music

Students from the Music Department explore ModFest’s theme “In Motion” with a retrospective of movie songs from the first 50 years of “talkies.”  Classics and rarities by giants of the Great American Songbook, spiced with movie gossip!  David Alpher, piano, and Jennie Litt, director.

Skinner Hall of Music

Looking to invocations of weather in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, multidisciplinary artist Saski Plum Globig ’19 will stage a video and movement installation probing the boundaries of randomness and intention, chance and fate. Popular music and found-soundscapes will interrupt each other, dance will interrupt the everyday body, and caution will be thrown to the winds of extreme and quiet weather.

Ben Model is one of the nation's leading silent film accompanists, performing on both piano and theatre organ. Over the past 35 years he has created and performed several hundred live scores for silent films on piano and theatre organ. Ben is a resident film accompanist at the Museum of Modern Art (NY) and at the Library of Congress' Packard Campus Theatre.

Skinner Hall of Music 

Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre performs works selected from the current repertory by faculty, students and guest choreographers. 

Reservations will be available online beginning January 21. This is a free but ticketed event. Reservations are required at https://vassardance.tix.com. For additional information please email: boxoffice@vassar.edu or call (845) 437-5599.

Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, Kenyon Hall

Innovative hip-hop orchestra, Ensemble Mik Nawooj) is led by classically trained composer/pianist, JooWan Kim, with MCs/ lyricists Do D.A.T. and Sandman, with soprano, winds, strings, funky drums, and piano. Described as rigorous, nuanced, and accessible, EMN injects classical compositional techniques into hip-hop favorites and original music.

4pm Panel at Skinner Hall of Music
8pm Off-Campus Concert at the Poughkeepsie Trolley Barn

Reservations will be available for the 8pm concert at The Poughkeepsie Trolley Barn beginning January 23. This is a free but ticketed event. Reservations are required at vassarmusic.tix.com. For additional information please email: boxoffice@vassar.edu or call (845) 437-5599.

Cellist Joshua Roman and the acclaimed JACK Quartet perform Roman’s “Tornado Quintet.” Roman is a native of Oklahoma, where the gentle beauty of spring is routinely dismantled by the awesome and destructive power of tornadoes. This piece paints a musical portrait of his childhood storm experiences, using chaotic string textures to conjure up the stunning and terrifying natural imagery of tornado season.

Inez Nathaniel Walker (1907–1990) made her first drawings while she was serving a sentence for killing a man who had abused her. While in prison she began creating remarkable portraits of her fellow inmates whom she called “bad girls.” Her richly patterned works combine meticulous detail and playful simplicity, forming expressive depictions of her subjects’ personalities and physical attributes. Freehand gathers together works by Walker from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s permanent collection, donated by Pat O’Brien Parsons ’51, along with a number of key loans from private and public collections to present the artist’s first one-person museum exhibition.

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 24, 2019, 5-7pm

Featuring painting, drawing, photography and sculpture by Chad Fust, Karen Gallagher, Pamela Hall, Emilie Houssart, Steve Kenney, Amy Laughlin, George Laws, Jeff Macaluso, Christopher Silverman, & Angela Smith.