Music
July
Wednesday July 16 10:00-12:00
Origins of Rock and Roll - The Early 1960s (Part 1)
Focusing on the early 1960s, prior to the British invasion by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and others, this twopart presentation will look at the slow demise of Rockabilly, whose stars included Ricky Nelson, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, The Everly Brothers, and Jerry Lee Lewis. We will listen to the “safe” performers like Fabian, Bobby Darin, Frankie Avalon, Annette, Paul Anka , Connie Francis, and Neil Sedaka. These performers did not represent the “threat” to our teenage years and ears that Little Richard, Link Wray, and Bo Diddley did with their raucous sounds and questionable lyrics. We will trace the rise to prominence of Berry Gordy’s Motown sound, “The Sound of Young America”. William Robinson, Mary Wells, The Primettes, The Temptations, Martha and The Vandellas, Marvin Gaye and other Motown acts brought a fresh sound to white America. Rhythm and Blues performers like James Brown, B.B. King, Albert King, Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, and the Mar-Keys and Bar-Kays performed on the Chitlin’ Circuit and in major venues around the world. R & B, once known as Race Music, Sepia Songs, and Bronze music made its presence known in homes across the country.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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This is a two-day presentation. It is a sequel to last year’s two-part program on the origins of Rock and Roll. Registration is required for each individual session; however, prior attendance at previous sessions is not required to attend either day
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Tom Dell has been playing Rock and Roll music since 1958. He played in rock bands during his high school and college years and still performs at small functions and reunions. He earned a BBA from Georgia State University while serving six years in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Since retiring in 2013, he developed a series of fourteen courses for senior citizens covering the origins and history of Rock and Roll. Since 2014, he has presented his courses to senior citizens in the Emory University OLLI program, Highlands-Cashiers Center for Life Enrichment, Central Dekalb Senior Center, Perimeter Adult Learning, and Brenau University’s BULLI program as well as various men’s and women’s clubs in Atlanta.
Thursday July 17 10:00-12:00
Origins of Rock and Roll - The Early 1960s (Part 2)
Please see description for “Origins of Rock and Roll - The Early 1960s (Part 1)” on page 26. This program will pick up where Part 1 leaves off.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Tom Dell has been playing Rock and Roll music since 1958. He played in rock bands during his high school and college years and still performs at small functions and reunions. He earned a BBA from Georgia State University while serving six years in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Since retiring in 2013, he developed a series of fourteen courses for senior citizens covering the origins and history of Rock and Roll. Since 2014, he has presented his courses to senior citizens in the Emory University OLLI program, Highlands-Cashiers Center for Life Enrichment, Central Dekalb Senior Center, Perimeter Adult Learning, and Brenau University’s BULLI program as well as various men’s and women’s clubs in Atlanta.
Saturday July 19 10:00-12:00
The Canonic Phenomenon of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: Primitivism, Myth, and Modernity
This course will explore arguably the most outstanding orchestral work of the twentieth century: Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Following the enormous success of his earlier ballets, The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911), Stravinsky unleashed a new era of modernism with Le Sacre du Printemps and its primitive subject matter, barbaric dissonances and rhythms, and radical style. This lecture will discuss the Rite of Spring’s controversial premiere and innovative musical characteristics that influenced generations of composers, choreographers, chroniclers, poets, and artists.
This program is in collaboration with the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Ben Arnold serves as the Acting Director of the University of Kentucky School of Music, a position he served in previously from 2003 to 2012. He has written extensively on music in response to war and the composer Franz Liszt. He is the author of Music and War and published in The Oxford Companion to American Military History, The Musical Quarterly, The Journal of Musicological Review, The Music Review, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Handbook of the Literature and Research of World War Two. In addition to writing for and editing The Liszt Companion, he is the editor of the Journal of the American Liszt Society. Prior to UK, he taught at Emory University for sixteen years, serving as Director of Graduate Studies in Music and two terms as Chair of the Music Department.
This program is sponsored by Richard and Honey Shackelford
August
Monday August 4 10:00-12:00
Jazz Meets Classical: Uncovering the Hidden Connections Between America’s and Europe’s Musical Traditions
The late great Dr. Billy Taylor said: “Jazz is America’s classical music.” But what does he mean? What is the relationship between “America’s classical music” and the classical music of the European tradition? The connections might be stronger than you think. Emory Music professor, minister, and jazz musician Dwight Andrews offers some intriguing insights into this subject with his lecture “Jazz Meets Classical.” He suggests there is more than a symbiotic relationship between the two in sound, sensibility, and even musical structures. Andrews uncovers the often overlooked connections of aesthetics, improvisation, and the requirement of mastery in both musical traditions. Equally important, he confronts the historically value-laden and exclusionary ways that the very term “classical” serves to place some composers and music within the framework and excludes others. His presentation will include musical excerpts, provocative observations from the musicians themselves, and engagement with the audience to literally “hear” the connections when “Jazz Meets Classical.”
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Dwight Andrews is a composer, musician, Professor of Music Theory and African American Music at Emory University and Senior Minister of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Atlanta. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the University of Michigan. Dr. Andrews continued his studies at Yale University, receiving a Master of Divinity degree and a Ph.D. in Music Theory. He has taught at Yale, Harvard, Rice, and Spelman College. In 1997, he was named the first Quincy Jones Visiting Professor of African American Music and delivered the 2004 Alain Locke Lectures at Harvard University. Also at Harvard, Andrews was appointed a Hutchins Research Fellow in 2020. In 2003, he served as Visiting Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music.He is presently working on a manuscript on the relationship between spirituality and jazz in the works of John and Alice Coltrane, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, Yusef Lateef, Sun Ra, and Dave Brubeck; and a new music theatre piece on W.E.B. Dubois.
September
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