Penn Music Colloquium Series

As part of the 2022-23 Penn Music Colloquium Series, the Penn Music Department presents Marcos Balter, Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, to discuss his recent works.

In this talk, Yun Emily Wang will present her paper that draws on fieldwork from 2013 to 2018 (the pivotal years during which Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalized same-sex marriage) and traces how a group of queer Taiwanese immigrants listen to and for multiple incommensurable sexual modernities in Toronto.

SanDance! celebrates the ancient dance and musical culture of San/Bushman peoples in southern Africa, focusing on the trance healing dance at the core of San cultural expression. The award-winning film features San dance groups rehearsing in remote areas in the Kalahari in preparation for performance at the annual Kuru Dance Festival in Botswana, and follows them to performance at the festival. Richard will discuss the making of the film itself, and San dance culture, in the context of the historical oppression and ongoing marginalization of San culture across southern Africa.

Wadada Leo Smith joins us as part of this year's Penn Music Colloquium Series. Smith will play excerpts and exhibit sections from scores that illustrate what the  “sonic-field” looks and sounds like. This information will demonstrate the why and what conditioned him to focus on composing string quartets for over fifty years.