Matthew Kraemer '99 Named Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's New Music Director
PUBLISHED ON Mar 26 2015
Matthew Kraemer ’99 has been named Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra (ICO).
“The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra is a dynamic organization comprised of superb musicians providing its audience an impressive variety of music and concert formats,” he said. “This position would undoubtedly be highly attractive to any conductor, but I am also drawn to the ICO because of my sincere affection for the rich and varied repertoire available to chamber orchestra.”
Appointed Music Director of the Butler County (Pennsylvania) Symphony and the Erie (Pennsylvania) Chamber Orchestra in 2012, Kraemer has reinvigorated both ensembles with innovative programming and elevated artistic standards. His active guest conducting schedule has included appearances with many of the nation’s finest orchestras, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, Houston, Indianapolis, Saint Louis, and Virginia symphony orchestras, as well as Canada’s Mississauga Symphony and Hamilton Philharmonic and in Europe with the Vidin Philharmonic and the Orquesta de Cadaqués.
Kraemer also spent five years as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic, which under his watch experienced exponential growth in its award-winning education concerts program. Prior to his appointment in Buffalo, he served for three seasons as associate conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.
The Indiana native is noted for his “musical sensitivity” and “energized sense of interpretation.”
“I'm thrilled about our new Music Director,” Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra Vice President of Audience Development and owner of Meridian Music Craig Gigax said. “He represents a new beginning to the ICO and Indianapolis, and will bring energy, ideas, relationships with soloists, and an innovative vision.”
The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra’s mission is to advance and promote music composed for the small orchestra through professional concert performances and education programs. The ICO also provides accompaniment to many area arts and educational organizations.
Broadcasts of its concerts can be heard on WFYI-FM (90.1) on Monday evenings.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
Matthew Kraemer '99 Named Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's New Music Director
Visiting Writing Series Announces Spring Speakers
PUBLISHED ON Dec 04 2017
Series begins February 1 with Kazim Ali.
Novelist/biographer Edmund White and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück will be among the speakers this spring in Butler University’s Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series.
The series begins February 1 with poet/novelist Kazim Ali and continues with novelist Ali Eteraz (February 15), poet Danez Smith (March 22), White (April 3), and Glück (April 18). Times and locations are below.
All events in the spring 2018 series are free and open to the public without tickets. For more information, call 317-940-9861.
More information about each speaker follows.
Kazim Ali
Thursday, February 1, 7:30 PM
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Kazim Ali’s books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon. He has received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and his poetry has been featured in Best American Poetry. His novels include The Secret Room: A String Quartet, and among his books of essays is Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice.
Ali is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College. His new book of poems, Inquisition, and a new hybrid memoir, Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies, are scheduled for release in 2018.
Ali Eteraz
Thursday, February 15, 7:30 PM
Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Ali Eteraz is the author of the debut novel Native Believer, a New York TimesBook Review Editors’ Choice selection. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Children of Dust, which was selected as a New Statesman Book of the Year, won the Nautilus Book Award Gold, and was featured on PBS with Tavis Smiley, NPR with Terry Gross, C-SPAN2, and numerous international outlets. O, The Oprah Magazine, called it “a picaresque journey” and the book was long-listed for the Asian American Writers Workshop Award.
Previously, he wrote the short story collection Falsipedies and Fibsiennes. Other short stories have appeared in The Adirondack Review, storySouth, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Forge Journal.
Eteraz is an accomplished essayist and has been spotlighted by Time Magazine and Pageturner, the literary blog of The New Yorker.
Danez Smith
Thursday, March 22, 7:30 PM
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (2017), finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; [insert] Boy (2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; and the chapbook hands on ya knees. Their writing has appeared in many magazines and journals, such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Kinfolks. Smith is a 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam finalist and the reigning two-time Rustbelt Individual Champion and was on the 2014 championship team Sad Boy Supper Club.
In 2014, they were the festival director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam and were awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Edmund White
Tuesday, April 3, 7:30 PM
Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Edmund White is America’s preeminent gay writer. In biography, social history, travel writing, journalism, the short story, and the novel, this prolific and versatile author has chronicled the gay experience in the United States from the closeted 1950s through the AIDS crisis and beyond.
His first novel, Forgetting Elena, published in 1973, is the story of an amnesia victim, set at a stylish resort reminiscent of Fire Island. With the classic coming-of-age tale A Boy’s Own Story, White cemented a place for himself—and for gay fiction—in the cultural consciousness. His celebrated fiction also includes Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Caracole, The Beautiful Room Is Empty (winner of the 1988 Lambda Literary Award), The Farewell Symphony, The Married Man, Fanny: A Fiction, Hotel de Dream, and Jack Holmes and His Friend. His latest is Our Young Man.
White has been involved in the gay rights movement since the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 and has acted as one of its canniest observers. His pioneering The Joy of Gay Sex: An Intimate Guide for Gay Men to the Pleasures of a Gay Lifestyle was published in 1977 and served as a national coming-out announcement for the entire gay community.
White has also made his mark as a highly accomplished biographer. Genet: A Biography is recognized as a definitive work on writer and playwright Jean Genet, and in 1993 it won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award. White also authored the well-received Marcel Proust and Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel. His memoir Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris recounts the fifteen years he spent living there—one of the most productive and creative phases in his career.
White is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review, and Vanity Fair, and is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Louise Glück
Wednesday, April 18, 7:30 PM
Atherton Union, Reilly Room
Louise Glück is the author of twelve books of poetry and served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003-2004. In 1993 Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection The Wild Iris. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other honors include the Academy of American Poets Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Bobbitt National Poetry Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her most recent book of poems Faithful and Virtuous Nightxs received the 2014 National Book Award. Her book of essays Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994) was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction, and her book Vita Nova (2001) won the first New YorkerReaders Award. In 2001 Yale University recognized her lifetime achievement by awarding her its Bollingen Prize for Poetry.
Glück is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and currently serves as the Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at Yale University.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
Visiting Writing Series Announces Spring Speakers
The series begins February 1 with poet/novelist Kazim Ali and continues with novelist Ali Eteraz (February 15), Barry (March 1), poet Danez Smith (March 22), White (April 3), and Glück (April 18). Times and locations are below.
The series begins February 1 with poet/novelist Kazim Ali and continues with novelist Ali Eteraz (February 15), Barry (March 1), poet Danez Smith (March 22), White (April 3), and Glück (April 18). Times and locations are below.
At Clowes Hall, Lugar and Hamilton Discuss Civility
PUBLISHED ON Nov 14 2017
Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton come from opposite political parties, but they came together at Clowes Memorial Hall to express the importance of civility in politics and in society.
Speaking in front of about 700 people November 13, as part of Butler University’s Celebration of Diversity Distinguished Lecture Series, the two political leaders agreed that you can’t get much done in an uncivil atmosphere.
Lugar, a Republican, told a story about serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and how the chair, whether a Republican or Democrat, strived for a unanimous vote.
“The rest of the world was looking at the committee to come up with a 19-0 vote, not a 10-9 vote,” Lugar said. “If we came to a 19-0, the rest of the world would know that we meant business.”
Reaching a 19-0 vote “would take time and require a lot of civility,” he said.
Hamilton, a Democrat, reminded the audience about the way former President Ronald Reagan and former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used humor to diffuse tense situations.
“The level of discourse every now and then would become intense as you discussed difficult problems, but I do not ever recall the meetings becoming uncivil,” he said.
Hamilton said Reagan’s modus operandi would be to hand you a jar of jellybeans and ask you to pick one out. Then he’d psychoanalyze you based on the color you picked.
O’Neill, meanwhile, always told an Irish story.
“They both had a marvelous human touch, and they always tried to end a meeting with a touch of lightness,” Hamilton said.
This was the second event in the 2017-2018 Diversity Lecture Series. The series kicked off in October with David “Olmeca” Barragan, a bilingual hip-hop artist and producer. Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington will present “Diversity and Leadership in the 21st Century” on January 24. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a world-renowned presidential historian, will present “Where Do We Go from Here: Leadership in Turbulent Times” on February 12. Ellen Hume, a veteran teacher, journalist and civic activist, concludes the series with “Media and Politics: Finding a Useful Path” on March 6.
At this lecture, Lugar, the longest-serving member of Congress in Indiana history (1976-2012), and Hamilton, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965-1999, were joined onstage by Ivy Tech President and former Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann, who served as moderator. When Ellspermann asked the audience whether people came to the event because they thought today’s political atmosphere was uncivil, most of the audience members raised their hands.
Hamilton said sometimes problems are insurmountable, but ultimately, you’ve got to be pragmatic.
“I think the greatest political skill that’s needed today is the skill to build a consensus behind the remedy for a problem,” he said. “It’s very easy to go into a room where you have disparate opinions and blow it apart…. What’s really hard is to go into a room where you have disparate opinions and bring people together.”
Lugar said the public can help the process by learning public speaking and how to frame an argument concisely. He suggested that students write for their school newspaper and participate in debate.
“Civility requires preparation,” he said. “Economy with use of language as opposed to babbling on and on and on.”
Hamilton said the public needs to hold public officials accountable.
“Some of those people who claim to be the most bipartisan have a 99 or 98 percent record of support for their party,” he said. “Now, come on. Hold them accountable. That’s your job.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
At Clowes Hall, Lugar and Hamilton Discuss Civility
Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton come from opposite political parties, but they came together at Clowes Memorial Hall to express the importance of civility in politics and in society.
Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton come from opposite political parties, but they came together at Clowes Memorial Hall to express the importance of civility in politics and in society.
Butler Chorale Members Are Back For An Encore
PUBLISHED ON Jul 27 2015
He left Butler nearly 20 years ago, but, from 1986–1996, Michael Shasberger provided his students in the Butler Chorale with great memories—including five international tours and the staging of Handel’s “Messiah”—along with instruction that still guides them today.
The memories are so strong, in fact, that over the July 24–26 weekend, about two dozen of Shasberger’s former students came from all over the country to reunite and sing with him again in Indianapolis.
“He’s probably one of the finest choral conductors I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with a lot of conductors,” said Sam Hepler ’94, a professional singer and musician based in New York City. “He’s a wonderful man and was a wonderful teacher—and I’m sure he still is—and he brought the best out of all of us.”
Shasberger and his former students rehearsed on Friday and Saturday for a Sunday performance at North United Methodist Church. The song selection included some numbers they performed in the student chorale, as well as a few more current pieces.
Mary Scheib ’96 organized this reunion, the second time Shasberger’s Butler students have gotten back together. (The first was in 2009.) These days, Scheib, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, sings as a freelancer and has a day job in professional development at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Although some of the reunion participants had never met each other because their years in school didn’t overlap, they were “bound by the shared experience of Michael Shasberger,” Scheib said.
“Dr. Shasberger has such a style with singers to not only make them comfortable singing in their own way—in their own voice, rather than in a choral voice—but to inspire them to sing better,” she said. “That created such an environment of growth while you’re here for four years that everybody wanted to come back and experience that again. Not to mention all the friendships that are forged and funny stories that happen along the way.”
Shasberger, who now teaches and conducts at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, estimated that about half the participants in this reunion are active as professional singers. Some still sing on the side, and some have found completely different careers.
What they have in common is “a wonderful sense of community. An incredible spirit ran through the group. It’s really affirming, and a real delight. And it’s so great to see them. They look fabulous, and they have so much energy, and, as I told them last night, ‘You’re all as old as I was when I was here.’”
As for Butler, it’s a far different place than they left.
“Butler looks fabulous,” Shasberger said. “The facilities are what we always talked and dreamed about and planned for. But what I’ve learned over the course of a 40-year career is that the work that really matters is the work that you leave that continues to prosper. And to see that here is really exciting.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822