Calendar of Events

The Amherst College Department of Music presents “Choral Society: Senior Concert.” Pre-recorded from Buckley with our on-campus choirs, the Choral Society performs on Saturday, May 1 at 7 PM on the Music Department Event Live Stream page.

Singing during the pandemic has been a challenge around the globe, but we at Amherst have been lucky to make music safely and in-person. The on-campus Amherst choirs share a variety of choral works including world premieres of Grey Grant's "Voice Chant II" and Brandon Waddles' "Come, Lord Jesus." We will also feature the on-campus and remote choir members on the world premiere of Colin Britt's "Unmute Yourself." We will close the concert with our traditional Senior Song. FREE, open to the public.

“There is a growing consensus that art can be a powerful tool in restorative justice processes. This is, in part, due to the therapeutic nature of art. Art, as an introspective and expressive endeavor, can encourage emotional processing and the kind of active and productive healing [toward which] restorative justice aims….” —from Art and Restorative Justice: Transformative Healing Through Expression

Join us for an evening of Amherst art as it intertwines around, with and through restorative justice. Music, dance, theater, spoken word, graphic design… all media of expression are welcomed!

Join the Arts at Amherst Initiative for our final event of the semester! Arts Coordinator Ellen Mutter '18 will unveil the new virtual tour of the Bailey Brown House, which features new works by several local artists. In the second half of the event, Ellen will be joined by Professor of Art and the History of Art Dwight Carey for a conversation about preliminary research into the history of the home.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the arts coordinator for the AAI, Ellen Mutter, at arts@amherst.edu.

Join the Wellness Team and the staff of Book & Plow for a chance to learn to crochet and connect with Amherst community members at the scenic Book & Plow Farm. Participants will be provided with their choice of yarn, a crochet hook and a linen bag, and can keep all supplies. Sign up here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0mVwyjunkktM_NpdVDwrCIzoLyRQl...

Members of the Jazz Performance Program at Amherst College, which includes two jazz combos and the Amherst College Jazz Ensemble (ACJE), perform. Jazz combos Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake perform starting at 7 p.m., followed by the Jazz Ensemble at 8:30 p.m. Both performances will be livestreamed through the Amherst College music department website and are FREE and open to the public. 

All three groups perform a wide array of jazz compositions and arrangements from composers such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Stevie Wonder and the 2021 McBride ’59 Jazz Commission Series composer, Jen Allen. The ACJE premieres her new composition “On the Precipice.”

Join the Amherst College Theater & Dance Department for a Zoom performance of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s Continuous Replay: Come Together.

Amidst the isolation and racial uprisings in the early summer of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic continued its spread, 44 current and former members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company came together (while being apart) to create something as a community in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. At the center of this virtual presentation was a recreation of Arnie Zane‘s iconic work Continuous Replay. In 1991, three years after Arnie’s passing at the height of the AIDS pandemic, Bill T. Jones made Arnie’s choreography into a full company work. Continuous Replay has connected generations of company members and was, for most of them, the only way to know Arnie. Now, students from both Amherst College and Mount Holyoke College join in this legacy as they embody this seminal work in its reimagined digital rendition, Continuous Replay: Come Together, with original sound score created by Jake Meginsky and digital design and technical direction by Scotty Hardwig and Raul Mendoza.

This performance event will promote and benefit three local and remarkable Black-women-led initiatives: Sonya Clark’s The Solidarity Book Project, Shakia Barron’s Black Beauty Dance, and Shakia Barron and Jamila Umi Jackson’s Black Women’s Leadership Initiative. The evening will begin with a conversation between Jenna Riegel (repetiteur of Continuous Replay: Come Together) and Sonya Clark, Shakia Barron and Jamila Umi Jackson. The event will culminate with the Amherst College Theater and Dance Repertory class’ performance of Continuous Replay: Come Together, with a talk-back with the performing artists to follow. This event is open to all.

In 1996, Gil Rose set out to restore a widening disconnect between contemporary audiences and contemporary music. Today, the Grammy award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) remains dedicated to its mission and is the leading orchestra for commissioning, performing and recording modern orchestral music.

Program:
Scott Wheeler: "Pocket Concerto"
Martin Brody: "Prince of Cats" – World Premiere
Martin Brody: "The Trick of Singularity" – World Premiere
Eric Sawyer: "Ways of Being" – World Premiere
Lewis Spratlan: "Chamber Symphony" – World Premiere

Join Mead staff and students as we consider art acquisition proposals from students in Professor Odo’s course "WWII and Japanese Americans." The presenters have been researching artists Toyo Miyakate, Roger Shimomura, Kristine Aono and Lynne Yamamoto and their work, as it reflects Japanese American experience during and since WWII and whose inclusion into the Mead collection would advance the curriculum and speak to silences within the museum’s collection of American art.

The Department of Theater and Dance presents I Met God (and the Devil) in an Uber, an original drama by Daniel Rendon '21. How much pain and suffering can we take as human beings before we reach the end of the line? What is the price of being good? What is the price of being bad? In Daniel Rendon’s new play, Santiago, a down-on-his-luck Uber driver, is pushed to find the answers, but will he?

I Met God (and the Devil) in an Uber will be released for streaming on May 14, 2021.

The Amherst College Department of Music presents "Black Music Matters Marathon," a virtual performance by members of the Amherst Symphony Orchestra showcasing a multitude of unjustly neglected masterpieces by Black composers for the concert hall.

Fifty-five Amherst College classical musicians will perform numerous solo works as well as works for string quartet, woodwind and brass quintet. Composers featured include Scott Joplin, William Grant Still, Florence Price, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, George Walker, Margaret Bonds, Nathaniel Dett, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Harry T. Burleigh, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Valerie Coleman, Frederick Tillis, Clarence Cameron White and many others. FREE. View on the livestream.

The Amherst College Department of Theater and Dance presents Solo Performance, a Zoom event featuring original works created by students in course THDA 355, taught by Professor Wendy Woodson.

Alistair Edwards '22 presents Deadline, an introspective journey through the mind of an average college student. What starts as a simple request for an extension descends into a deep look at one's insecurities, flaws and resolve for self-improvement.

Charmolypi’ by Nick Govus '22 is a story-driven autobiographical work exploring the questions of childhood and adulthood, love and loss, good and evil, fear and joy. It is an exploration into what it means to be human in a world filled with chaos, a question as much as it is an answer.

No Door is an electric poem made by Rebecca Schrader '21 in collaboration with Elizabeth Green and Isabela Haye. The work features entirely original audiovisual material which happens in a place where one plus one is not two, where there is no such thing as "being awake," and pleasure is no different than pain.

Open to all. Please register in advance for Zoom link.