Caribbean Sizzle Meets Cool Jazz at the Lied Center

Combining sensational south-of-the-border rhythms with passionate jazz inflections, the Caribbean Jazz Project will bring their dynamic brand of music to the Lied Center for Performing Arts at 8 p.m. April 13.

The Caribbean Jazz Project features Cuban saxophone/clarinet great Paquito D'Rivera, steel pan legend Andy Narell, and vibes/marimba master Dave Samuels. Their loose, playful style revolves around the relentless grooves of pianist Dario Eskenazi, bassist Oscar Stagnaro and drummer Mark Walker.

Samuels, one of the original members of Spyro Gyra, assembled the group for a 1993 concert in New York's Central Park Zoo, but the musicians were so pleased with the collaboration, they soon played several other venues. In 1995, the Caribbean Jazz Project released a self-titled CD featuring their original brand of music.

D'Rivera, who has performed with jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie and soloed with symphonies throughout the Americas, explained the benefits of the collaboration. "Our main interest was to learn from each other, learn from the other guy what he may know better than you," he said. "The whole thing about interacting with the sounds of other cultures is learning to pay respect to the music."

An innovator who has brought the steel pan into modern musical vocabulary, Narell recognized the unusual nature of the Caribbean Jazz Project. "The whole challenge is taking three unusual lead instruments and working out the inherent bugs which come from bringing them together," he explained. "The solutions lie in how you orchestrate the music."

Two pre-performance talks will be given in the Lied Center's Steinhart Room. David E. Sharp, director of jazz studies at UNL's School of Music, will offer his insights 55 minutes before the performance and again at 30 minutes before curtain.

Tickets for the performance are $22, $18 and $14; half-price for those 18 and under or UNL, Doane or Wesleyan students who present identification. The Lied Center box office is open for walk-in sales on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and 90 minutes before the performance. Phone orders may be placed by 2-4747 or 1-800-432-3231.

Ross Theater to Host Student Academy Awards

Screenings Begin April 4

The Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater is hosting free-to-the public screenings beginning April 4 of films by students from accredited colleges and universities in the United States who have entered the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 23rd Annual Student Academy Awards.

The festival also will feature a compilation film on April 6 featuring the four Gold Medal Award-winning entries from last year's competition. The Academy is the same organization that hosts the annual Oscar awards.

The purpose of the Student Academy Awards competition is to support and encourage filmmakers with no previous professional experience who are enrolled in accredited colleges and universities.

Screenings of this year's competition entries are scheduled from 7 until 11:30 p.m. on April 4 and 5; from 1 to 4:45 p.m. and 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. on April 6; and from 2:30 to 11:30 p.m. on April 7. The 1995 Compilation Film is showing at 7 p.m. on April 6. Complete schedules and synopses are available at the door.

The 1995 Compilation film, which runs approximately 70 minutes, includes the following four Gold Metal Award-winning entries from the 22nd Annual Student Academy Awards competition: Picasso Would Have Made a Glorious Waiter by Jonathan Schell from New York University, a multimedia presentation of food preparation and preparers; Card Trick by Robert Herrick Russ from the University of California, San Diego, an animation which asks what would happen if a lowly deuce thought to himself, "I could be the king?"; Their Own Vietnam by Nancy D. Kates from Stanford University, the stories of several American women who served in the Vietnam War; and La Ciudad (The City) by David Riker from New York University, about a puppeteer and his young daughter homeless in New York City.

The films compete in four categories: Animation, Documentary, Dramatic, and Alternative. The winning films will be sent on to the Academy to compete against entries sent from other regions throughout the United States. The final judging for the national winners is done exclusively by members of the Academy.

Winners of the national competition will be flown to Los Angeles to participate in an intensive week of industry-related activities, such as visiting film locations, meeting with industry professionals, and attending state-of-the-art filmmaking demonstrations. The week culminates in the Student Academy Awards Presentation Ceremony.

In addition, all regional finalist films in the Dramatic Category automatically become eligible for the Directors Guild of America Student Film Award. The winner of this award will receive a $1,000 cash prize, a directing internship of up to 13 weeks on a feature motion picture, and a stipend for living expenses as well as a travel allowance.

Russian Wood Building Exhibit Opens April 1

Six centuries of Russian architecture in wood will be the subject of a photographic exhibition and lecture at UNL in April.

"The Russian Art of Building in Wood," a selection of photographs by William Brumfield, will be on display in the UNL College of Architecture Gallery April 1-19 in Architecture Hall. Brumfield, professor of Germanic and Slavic languages at Tulane University, will deliver a lecture at 7:30 p.m. April 3 in room 202/211 of Architecture Hall. The exhibition and lecture are free and open to the public and are sponsored by the UNL European Studies program, with the support of the College of Architecture, the National Humanities Center, the University of Nebraska Research Council and the Academic Senate Convocations Committee.

The exhibit is composed of 36 black-and-white photographs of log buildings dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. It illustrates the techniques and designs of this traditional Russian form of construction. Among the buildings featured is the spectacular Church of the Transfiguration at Kizhi with its 22 cupolas.

As a scholar in Russian and Slavic literature, Brumfield at first had only a passing interest in architecture. He began his photographic odyssey in 1970 with a small camera and two rolls of film with the idea of using the photographs to provide a setting for works of literature.

"This simple linkage soon proved unsatisfactory," Brumfield wrote in Ideas, the biannual publication of the National Humanities Center. "In the first place, the architecture itself deserved far more scholarly attention than I had been prepared to give it. (I would learn that astonishingly little had been written on Russian architecture by Western scholars and that academic programs in art history had little or no interest in the topic). Secondly, there was the sheer exhilaration of exploring and photographing an architecture that not only offered a richly varied, often exotic, stylistic display but also had served as a backdrop for some of the most dramatic events of modern history."

Pottery Works Focus of New Sheldon Exhibit

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery is presenting a special exhibition -- Pots, Plates, Vessels and Vases -- that surveys the development of the media of ceramics from detailed china-painted Victorian-era vases, through the art nouveau movement and to more contemporary expressions by internationally-known artists Pablo Picasso and Peter Voulkos.

Drawn from the gallery's permanent collection, items in the exhibition will be on display through June 30.

Ceramics, primarily for the utilitarian use, have been around since the beginning of time. However, this exhibition focuses on the more recent development and changing aesthetics of the media.

Two primary American art pottery workshops which were instrumental in transforming the ceramic media into an artistic expression are Artus Van Briggle of Colorado Springs, Colo. and Grueby Pottery of Boston, Mass. Utilizing natural forms and color from nature, this exhibition includes prime examples from these workshops that reflect aesthetics of the arts and craft movement.

The tradition of decorative utilitarian pottery of Native America is represented by Native American Maria Martinez, who revitalized the use of ancient motifs and designs and the recent contemporary expressions of Helen Naha, a Hopi Indian. Former UNL Department of Art and Art History faculty members David Seyler and Tom Sheffield and current professor Gail Kendall are also represented in the exhibition's selection. The vessel as a sculptural expression is well represented in several works including plates by Pablo Picasso, West Coast artists Peter Voulkos and Peter Shire, and ceramic sculptor Jun Kaneko of Omaha.

The exhibition was curated by George Neubert, director of Sheldon Gallery, with the assistance of Kelly Smithey, a student intern through the university's Department of Art and Art History.

Scarlet and Cream Omaha Show is April 18

The UNL Alumni Association and School of Music's Scarlet and Cream Singers will present their annual concert in Omaha at 7:30 p.m. April 18 at Millard North High School.

The Omaha concert is a two-hour show featuring familiar songs from Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats and Big River. Nebraska spirit songs also will be featured.

Tickets for the Omaha show may be purchased in advance or at the door. Call Beth Brase at the alumni association, 472-4222, to reserve seats. Tickets are $6. Students and seniors may purchase tickets for $3.

For questions regarding these Scarlet pages, contact:
dtaurins@unlinfo.unl.edu
(402) 472-8518, Fax: (402) 472-7825