Junot Díaz • Nov. 8 | 7:00 p.m. Derryberry Hall Auditorium

CENTER STAGE SERIESwww.tntech.edu/centerstage

FALL 2016

ABOUT CENTER STAGESupported by student fees, the

Center Stage series presents lectures,

concerts, exhibits, readings, dramatic

performances, and other events that

promote greater appreciation of the

fine arts and better understanding of

diverse ideas and world cultures.

Admission to Center Stage events

is free unless otherwise noted. Tech

students are given priority if seating is

limited. Tech students can attend each

event for free just by showing their

Eagle Card ID.

Many Center Stage guests also provide

educational opportunities for students

through workshops or master classes.

Tennessee Tech University is a constituent university of the Tennessee Board of Regents. Pub#CAS030-PRNT-17

Art ExhibitionPerforming ArtsWords & IdeasWorld in Performance

TYPES OF EVENTSCenter Stage presents many kinds of events. Each event in this guide is color coded to its type.

CENTER STAGE EVENTS FALL 2016

SEPTEMBER Location TypeAug. 29 7:00 p.m. John A. Tures - Jeopardizing Education in Turkey BELLAug. 29 – Sept. 29 Arendt Fiber Art Exhibit JDAGSept. 13 7:30 p.m. Stripling Quartet BFASept. 20 7:30 p.m. First Nations - The Circle of Musi BFASept. 22 6:00 p.m. One World Multicultural Evening TPSept. 28 7:30 p.m. Attacca Quartet BFA

OCTOBEROct. 3 - 27 Hayes Sculpture Exhibit JDAGOct. 4 7:00 p.m. Arn Chorn-Pond - Survival Through Music DHOct. 12 7:30 p.m. Nancy Zeltsman, marimba BFAOct. 18 7:00 p.m. Shola Lynch TBAOct. 20 7:00 p.m. Alex Neuse - A No Doy Moment: Video Games as Art DHOct. 20 8:15 p.m. Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Civil War Band BFAOct. 27 7:00 p.m. Kelcey Parker Ervick, author JHOct. 31 - Nov. 22 Sally Crain-Jager Commemorative Exhibit JDAG

NOVEMBERNov. 1 7:00 p.m. Sarah Hepola, author of Blackout DHNov. 8 7:00 p.m. An Evening with Junot Diaz, author DH

Nov. 14 7:30 p.m. Brock McGuire Band BFANov. 17 11:00 a.m. Mix It Up At Lunch Day TP

WWW.TNTECH.EDU/CENTERSTAGE

EVENT LOCATIONSACC Appalachian Center for CraftBELL Bell Hall AuditoriumBFA Wattenbarger Auditorium, Bryan Fine Arts BuildingDH Derryberry Hall AuditoriumJDAG Joan Derryberry Art Gallery, Roaden University CenterMP Multipurpose Room, Roaden University CenterTP Tech Pride Room, Roaden University Center

CENTER STAGE EVENTS FALL 2016

SEPTEMBER Location TypeAug. 29 7:00 p.m. John A. Tures - Jeopardizing Education in Turkey BELLAug. 29 – Sept. 29 Arendt Fiber Art Exhibit JDAGSept. 13 7:30 p.m. Stripling Quartet BFASept. 20 7:30 p.m. First Nations - The Circle of Musi BFASept. 22 6:00 p.m. One World Multicultural Evening TPSept. 28 7:30 p.m. Attacca Quartet BFA

OCTOBEROct. 3 - 27 Hayes Sculpture Exhibit JDAGOct. 4 7:00 p.m. Arn Chorn-Pond - Survival Through Music DHOct. 12 7:30 p.m. Nancy Zeltsman, marimba BFAOct. 18 7:00 p.m. Shola Lynch TBAOct. 20 7:00 p.m. Alex Neuse - A No Doy Moment: Video Games as Art DHOct. 20 8:15 p.m. Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Civil War Band BFAOct. 27 7:00 p.m. Kelcey Parker Ervick, author JHOct. 31 - Nov. 22 Sally Crain-Jager Commemorative Exhibit JDAG

NOVEMBERNov. 1 7:00 p.m. Sarah Hepola, author of Blackout DHNov. 8 7:00 p.m. An Evening with Junot Diaz, author DH

Nov. 14 7:30 p.m. Brock McGuire Band BFANov. 17 11:00 a.m. Mix It Up At Lunch Day TP

JIM ARENDT Gallery Talk, Sept. 29, 4:30 p.m.Joan Derryberry Art GalleryFiber Art Exhibit

Aug. 29 – Sept. 29

Jim Arendt is an artist whose work explores the shifting paradigms of labor and place through narrative figure painting, drawing, prints, fabric and sculpture. Influenced by the radical reshaping of the rural and industrial landscapes he grew up in, he investigates how individual lives are affected by transitions in economic structures.

Arendt is an Assistant Professor and Gallery Director at Coastal Carolina University. He received his BFA from Kendall College of Art & Design and his MFA from the University of South Carolina. His work has been exhibited internationally in numerous group and solo shows. Recently, Arendt was a finalist for  The 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, awarded the $50,000 top prize at ArtFields, and included in Fiberarts International 2013 in Pittsburgh and the 2013 Museum Rijswijk Textile Biennial, Netherlands. | www.jimarendt.com

Aug. 29, 7:00 p.m.

JOHN A. TURES - JEOPARDIZING EDUCATION IN TURKEY Bell Hall Auditorium

John A. Tures is a political science professor at LaGrange College in Georgia. Before that, he worked for a defense contractor in Washington, DC. He taught at the University of Delaware and received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. He has had articles appear in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Homeland Security Affairs, Journal of American Studies, Middle East Politics, Cato Journal, Homeland Security Review, East European Quarterly, Journal of Conflict, Security and Development, Journal of International and Area Studies, Asian Politics and Policy, Digest of Middle East Studies, Journal of Private Enterprise, and the Western Journal of Black Studies, among others in international politics, foreign policy, terrorism, American government, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the War of 1812. He writes columns for newspapers, and provided columns for Yahoo News, Southern Political Report, and Like the Dew.

With a contagious smile and captivating charm, trumpet virtuoso, Byron Stripling, has ignited audiences internationally. As soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra, Stripling has performed frequently under the baton of Keith Lockhart, as well as being featured soloist on the PBS television special, “Evening at Pops,” with conductors John Williams and Mr. Lockhart. Currently, Stripling serves as artistic director and conductor of the highly acclaimed Columbus Jazz Orchestra.

Television viewers have enjoyed his work as soloist on the worldwide telecast of The Grammy Awards. Millions have heard his trumpet and voice on television commercials, TV theme songs including “20/20,” CNN, and soundtracks of favorite movies.

Stripling earned his stripes as lead trumpeter and soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Thad Jones and Frank Foster. He has also played and recorded extensively with the bands of Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry, Louis Bellson, and Buck Clayton in addition to The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, and The GRP All Star Big Band.

Stripling was educated at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan. One of his greatest joys is to return, periodically, to Eastman and Interlochen as a special guest lecturer.

Courtesy of Greenberg Artist | www.greenbergartists.com

Sept. 13, 7:30 p.m.

STRIPLING QUARTET

Wattenbarger AuditoriumBryan Fine Arts Building

First Prize winners of the 7th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2011, top prizewinners and Listeners’ Choice Award recipients in the 2011 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and winners of the Alice Coleman Grand Prize at the 60th annual Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in 2006, the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet has become one of America’s premier young performing ensembles. The Attacca Quartet is now in its twelfth season, having been formed at the Juilliard School in 2003, where they were also the Graduate Resident String Quartet from 2011 – 2013. For the 2014 – 2015 season, they were named the Quartet in Residence for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Attacca Quartet made their professional debut in 2007 as part of the Artists International Winners Series in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. They recently recorded the complete string quartet works of John Adams for Azica Records, which was released to great acclaim in March 2013.

FIRST NATIONS THE CIRCLE OF MUSICWattenbarger AuditoriumBryan Fine Arts Building

Wattenbarger AuditoriumBryan Fine Arts Building

Sept. 20, 7:30 p.m.

This group is made up of individuals from different tribes or nations that have come together to perform and educate the community about their people and culture, each with a different dance or song. The performance will highlight traditional Native Dancing and singing. They will speak on their history and cultural ways to help educate the community during the performance. A native flutist will also perform an original work.

Sept. 28, 7:30 p.m.

ATTACA QUARTET

ONE WORLD MULTICULTURAL EVENINGTech Pride RoomRoaden University Center

Sept. 22, 6:00 p.m.

One World, a student-run organization at Tennessee Tech University, will host its annual multicultural evening.

The annual event is designed to introduce people from other countries and cultures to each other and raise awareness and understanding of diversity. Food from world cultures will be provided.

ANDREW HAYES Gallery Talk, Oct. 27, 4:30 p.m.Joan Derryberry Art GallerySculpture Exhibit

Oct. 3 – Sept. 27

Andrew Hayes grew up in Tucson, Arizona and studied sculpture at Northern Arizona University. The desert landscape inspired much of his early sculptural work and allowed him to cultivate his style in fabricated steel.  After leaving school, Andrew worked in the industrial welding trade in Portland, Oregon alongside creating his own works. More recently Hayes has spent his time at Penland School of Crafts as a core fellow and currently as a resident artist. During this time he has explored a variety of materials and techniques; a combination of the book and steel have become a big part of his exploration. In this work he faces the challenge of marrying the rigid qualities of metal with the delicacy of the book page. “I take my sensory appreciation for the book as a material and employ the use of metal to create a new form, and hopefully a new story.” | http://andrew-hayes.squarespace.com

ARN CHORN-PONDSURVIVAL THROUGH MUSIC

Oct. 4, 7:00 p.m.

Renowned human rights activist, musician and Cambodian genocide survivor, Arn Chorn-Pond is inspiring change with incredible stories of hope, endurance, and survival through the power of music. The subject of the Emmy-nominated documentary, The Flute Player, he was separated from his family and forced by the Khmer Rouge into a youth work camp. He survived the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime by playing revolutionary songs on the flute.

Later, he was forced to be a child soldier with a weapon he couldn’t operate. Chorn-Pond has been honored with many awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Anne Frank Memorial Award, and the Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize. Never Fall Down is the achingly raw and powerful novel based on Pond’s life, a child of war who becomes a man of peace, from National Book Award finalist Patricia McCormick.

Derryberry Hall Auditorium

Nancy Zeltsman is a leading marimba performer, teacher, and festival director. She has premiered over 125 solo/chamber marimba works including compositions by Paul Simon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Gunther Schuller, Carla Bley, Louis Andriessen, Steven Mackey, Lyle Mays, and Robert Aldridge. Alejandro Vinao and Paul Lansky both wrote their first pieces for marimba for Nancy (which have been followed by a flood of additional works for marimba and percussion).

Zeltsman has presented recitals and marimba master classes across the U.S. and Europe and in China, Japan and Mexico. Venues include the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, subscription concerts with the San Francisco Symphony, and Shenzhen Concert Hall.

Since 1993, she has taught marimba in positions that were created for her at the Boston Conservatory where she has been Chair of the Percussion Department since 2005, and Berklee College of Music where she is a Professor. (The two institutions merged in June 2016.) Since 2001, she has been Artistic Director of Zeltsman Marimba Festival: an annual two-week seminar held in a different location each summer (www.ZMF.us). In the fall of 2013, Nancy was appointed regular guest professor of marimba at Conservatorium van Amsterdam where she teaches two weeks per year.

Nancy graduated from New England Conservatory of Music with a degree in percussion performance (BM, 1982) where she studied with Vic Firth. Other teachers included Ian Finkel, Robert Ayers, Donald Marrs and Dave Samuels. A Pearl/Adams artist, she endorses marimbas made by Adams Music Instruments (in the Netherlands) and her signature line of Encore Mallets. Nancy resides in Boston, Massachusetts. | www.nancyzeltsman.com

Wattenbarger AuditoriumBryan Fine Arts Building

NANCY ZELTSMAN

Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m.

Marimba

ALEX NEUSE A NO DOY MOMENT: VIDEO GAMES AS ARTDerryberry Hall Auditorium

Oct. 20, 7:00 p.m.

Alex Neuse is an industry lifer and has a wide breadth of talents, having held jobs in TIA, Production, Design, and Management at multiple companies, including LucasArts Entertainment Company, Activision, and Santa Cruz Games before co-founding Choice Provisions. An avid gamer, he once pondered that “sometimes a really good video game is just awesome” and it is this mantra that drives him to create unique experiences at Choice Provisions with his dashing and debonair partner in crime, Mike Roush.

Oct. 18, 7:00 p.m.

Shola Lynch is an award-winning American filmmaker with two decades of experience in film based in New York. Shola is currently working on several film projects including her first narrative feature tentatively titled “The Outlaw” which she was awarded a prestigious Creative Capital grant for development.

Since 2013 she has also served as the Curator of the Moving Image & Recorded Sound division of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Her critically acclaimed second feature documentary Free Angela & All Political Prisoners about the iconic Angela Davis premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012.

Shola graduated from the University of Texas with a Liberal Arts Honors Degree.She also holds a Master’s degree in American History & Public History Resource Management from the University of California at Riverside. She also earned a Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

SHOLA LYNCHLocation to be announced

Wattenbarger AuditoriumBryan Fine Arts Building

Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band was formed in 2002 to explore the music played by American bands during the years 1875-1890. This was a fascinating transitional period that saw the brass bands of the Civil War years gradually evolve into the large brass-and-reed bands of Sousa and others by the turn of the 20th Century. In recreating a typical touring professional brass band of the era, the Newberry Band plays published arrangements from the 1870s-90s on instruments of the same period. The group also employs the latest research on performance practice in order to offer audiences an aural trip to America’s Gilded Age.

The musicians of Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band are all dedicated professionals who specialize in performance on historic brass instruments. The instruments played by the group range in age from 90-120 years old at the American brass-band pitch level of the time (around A=454Hz).

Oct. 20, 8:15 p.m.

NEWBERRY’S VICTORIAN CORNET CIVIL WAR BAND

Kelcey Parker Ervick is the new name of Kelcey Parker, author of Liliane’s Balcony (Rose Metal Press), a novella set at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and silver award winner for the IPPY, Foreword, and Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Her story collection, For Sale by Owner (Kore Press), won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Award in Short Fiction and was a finalist for the 2012 Best Books of Indiana in Fiction. Her next book is The Bitter Life of Bozena Nemcova, a biographical collage of the Czech fairy tale writer, forthcoming from Rose Metal Press in 2016. She is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission and a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Her stories have appeared in numerous literary journals including Notre Dame Review, Bellingham Review, Santa Monica Review, Indiana Review, Third Coast, Redivider, Western Humanities Review, and Image. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati and currently directs the creative writing program at Indiana University South Bend. She blogs, now and again. http://phdincreativewriting.wordpress.com/

KELCEY PARKER ERVICKJohnson Hall Auditorium

Oct. 27, 7:00 p.m.

Sally Crain-Jager was born in Enid, Oklahoma on October 7, 1938. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Phillips University and her MFA in painting from Texas Christian University. During her career as a Professor at TTU from 1967 to 2001, she was instrumental in developing the first Art Education degree, and the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. She was responsible for the dedication of the University art gallery as the Joan Derryberry Art Gallery, and the development of the gallery's programs for the University and the Cookeville community. She was not only a devoted contributor to the development of the university art programs, she was very active in supporting and developing the arts in Cookeville, serving as President of the Cookeville Art Council for a period of time. Throughout her teaching career she was a prolific painter, exhibiting locally, regionally and nationally. After retiring in 2001, she moved for a time to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she was active in several artist groups as well as being represented by the Williams-Joseph Gallery. Upon returning to Cookeville in 2011, she became the driving force behind the Art for Healing program at Cookeville Regional Medical Center. Sally Crain-Jager passed away on November 22, 2014, but her legacy is still enriching the University and the community through the Sally Crain-Jager Memorial Art Scholarship at Tennessee Tech.

Joan Derryberry Art GalleryOct. 31 – Nov. 22

SALLY CRAIN-JAGERCOMMEMORATIVE EXHIBIT

For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was “the gasoline of all adventure.” She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as a strong, enlightened twenty-first-century woman. But there was a price. She often blacked out, waking up with a blank space where four hours should be. Mornings became detective work on her own life. What did I say last night? How did I meet that guy? She apologized for things she couldn’t remember doing, as though she were cleaning up after an evil twin. Publicly, she covered her shame with self-deprecating jokes, and her career flourished, but as the blackouts accumulated, she could no longer avoid a sinking truth. The fuel she thought she needed was draining her spirit instead. A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure — the sober life she never wanted. Shining a light into her blackouts, she discovers the person she buried, as well as the confidence, intimacy, and creativity she once believed came only from a bottle. Her tale will resonate with anyone who has been forced to reinvent or struggled in the face of necessary change. It’s about giving up the thing you cherish most — but getting yourself back in return.

Derryberry Hall Auditorium

Oct. 27, 7:00 p.m.

SARAH HEPOLA

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the co-founder of Voices of Our Nation Workshop.

Named “Traditional Irish Band of the Decade” by the Irish American News, multi-award winning Brock McGuire Band is fronted by two of Ireland’s most celebrated traditional musicians: button accordionist and melodeonist Paul Brock and fiddler Manus McGuire. The band also includes multi-instrumentalist Dave Curley (banjo, mandolin, bodhran, vocals and dance) and acclaimed pianist, composer and arranger Denis Carey.

A beacon of passion and precision, integrity and diversity, Brock McGuire Band is steeped in the Irish musical tradition yet seamlessly incorporates elements from American old time, bluegrass, French-Canadian, and other Celtic traditions to create something accessible, recognizable, beautiful, and entirely unique. This ability is exemplified in the band’s most recent album “Green Grass Blue Grass,” featuring with 14-time Grammy Award winner Ricky Skaggs. American music critic Bill Margeson has hailed the collaboration as a “masterpiece”.

Derryberry Hall AuditoriumNov. 8, 7:00 p.m.

AN EVENING WITH JUNOT DÍAZ

Wattenbarger AuditoriumBryan Fine Arts Building

Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m.

BROCK McGUIREBAND

Pierce Freelon is an Artivist – merging the worlds of art and activism, by any medium necessary. He is a professor of music and Black studies; an electrifying hip hop and jazz vocalist; the host of a popular PBS web-series; and a community organizer. Freelon’s lectures and performances are as entertaining as they are insightful, as he leads communities in dialogue and reflection, around questions of race, revolution, music and media. When he’s not teaching courses on beat making, or Black popular culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Freelon can be found in community music studios called Beat Making Labs, around the world – particularly on the continent of Africa. His presentations tackle some of the most pressing issues facing communities of color, from a radical, Pan-Africanist, intellectual and creative perspective.

Freelon earned his BA in African and Afro-American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA in Pan African Studies from Syracuse University. He has captured the oral histories of dozens of Black Freedom fighters and Artivists, such as Dr. Maya Angelou, Danny Glover and Nikki Giovanni, and is the host of PBS web-series Beat Making Lab. He lectured in over a dozen countries, and has been featured in Wall Street Journal, NPR and Good Magazine.

MIX-IT-UP-AT-LUNCH DAY

The Mix It Up at Lunch Day is part of a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program. Join this important service-learning project, which will challenge you to think critically about race relations, ethnicity, and social boundaries. Food and drink will be provided.

Multipurpose RoomRoaden University Center

Nov. 17, 11:00 a.m.