So far, it’s worked out well, says reporter Bob Keyes of the Maine Sunday Telegram.

In April, a composer Cyr championed won a Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy.

Composer Vivian Fung won Classical Composition of the Year for her violin concerto, which Cyr recorded with the Metropolis Ensemble and released last fall on the Naxon label imprint Canadian Classics.

Video of the 2011 world premiere of Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, performed by violinist Kristin Lee and the Metropolis Ensemble, with Cyr conducting.

Ambrosino, who has the role of Gabey (Gene Kelly’s part in the 1949 film version of the Broadway play), tells Boston Spirit Magazine blog that while he recalls being “enthralled by the performances”  when he watched the movie as a boy, no one should expect him to channel Kelly.

Chip (Phil Tayler), Ozzie (Zachary Eisenstat) and Gabey (John Ambrosino ’01) in a scene from the Lyric Theater’s production of On the Town. Photograph by Mark S. Howard.

“I’m going to stay away from the movie now and let [director] Spiro [Veloudos] lead us down the road.”

Thus far, media reviews of the play have been positive.

Ambrosino says the Lyric is taking an “awesome artistic risk” by staging the play that was first produced on Broadway in 1944. “It’s so infrequently done because it’s a difficult show to do,” says Ambrosino.

• View post on the Boston Spirit Magazine blog, May 5, 2013.

Postell Pringle ’98 (left, as Othello) and GQ (Iago) face off as Iago’s plot unfolds in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of “Othello: The Remix.” Photograph by Michael Brosilow.

Rapper, writer, actor and director Postell Pringle ’98 is winning rave reviews for his star turn this spring in the title role of Othello: The Remix at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

In March, Time Out Chicago named Pringle its Performer of the Week. In a Time Out Q-and-A , he discussed how working in theater at Bates sharpened his delivery as a rapper:

“My approach to the actual attack of the line and getting punchlines and the arc of the storytelling within the song was all different. I realized that it had to do with the fact that I had just been working on acting, working on playing characters. … I wouldn’t be as good of a rapper if I hadn’t spent all that time working on just acting and just theater.”

Othello: The Remix was adapted from Shakespeare’s tragedy by the Q Brothers — aka GQ and JQ, who with Pringle and a fourth member are also members of the rap group the Retar Crew. The entire Crew performs in The Remix.

The Q’s modus operandi, previously exercised on such works as The Bomb-itty of Errors, is to render Shakespeare’s entire text as rhyming couplets suitable for rap delivery. The Remix re-imagines the title character as “a hip-hop mogul whose life falls apart when he makes Iago the opener’s opener on a new tour,” writes Time Out blogger Oliver Sava.

“To cut to the chase: Othello: The Remix — the 90-minute, lightning-fast, hip-hop version of Shakespeare’s tragic tale of jealousy and self-doubt — is absolutely brilliant, and immense fun,” wrote Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss.

With Bates classmate Erin Gottwald, a dancer and choreographer, Pringle returns to campus this spring to lead the longstanding Short Term unit Tour Teach Perform, in which students create a dance piece and teach it to pupils in local schools.

• See the Chicago Time Out story about Pringle from March 21, 2013.
• See the Chicago Sun-Times review.
• See Pringle and Gottwald in their collaborative piece “Last Chance.”

In this scene from the play Christmas in Hanoi, members of the Ganley family, including grandson Lou (Joseph Kim ’96, left) visit a spirit medium to deal with hauntings in their family. Photo by Michael Lamont.

In her Los Angeles Times review, F. Katherine Foley notes that the play, staged by the East West Players, “is very much a family drama, but echoes of the catastrophic ‘American War,’ as it is known in Vietnam, reverberate.”

Alumni in Entertainment Panel

After the March 10 performance of Christmas in Hanoi, actor Joseph Kim ’96 joins Chris Donovan ’92, senior VP with The CW network; John Murchison, vice president, miniseries, HBO; and Marco Black ’92, line producer and unit production manager for CSI: Miami and CSI: Vegas,
for a discussion about their work.

• Discounted tickets are available through the East West Players website or call 213-625-7000. Use ticket code Bates26.
• For more information: Office of Alumni Engagement at alumni@bates.edu.

Kim, who performs under the stage name Joseph Daugherty, plays the American-born grandson of a Vietnamese grandfather, George. Years before, George fled his native country with his daughter, Oanh (who has since died but who haunts her family), and Oanh’s American husband, Philip Ganley.

In the play, George, Philip, Lou, and Lou’s sister, Winnie, return to Vietnam.

“Spirits of Vietnamese war dead – ‘angry ghosts’ deprived of ritual and resting places – drift around the play’s periphery,” Foley writes. “And when those angry ghosts fix their fury in the person of Philip, creepy events unfold.”

• Read the review in the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 18, 2013.

This U.S. World War II propaganda poster was the Dec. 8, 2012, entry on the Cooper-Hewitt’s Object of the Day blog. Poster: Give ‘Em Both Barrels. Designed by Jean Carlu, printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941. 1980-32-1201.

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Object of the Day blog, brainchild of Caroline Baumann ’87, is the “best new blog in the design world,” writes New York Times style writer David Colman.

Baumann is the Cooper-Hewitt’s acting director.

The Object of the Day blog, writes Colman, is “curation in all its glory,” noting that recent entries have ranged from a Saul Bass movie poster, a 14th-century polka-dot silk-velvet fabric and modern Braille wallpaper.

He says that Baumann’s “enthusiasm for so many forms of design ingenuity, as well as the icebergian riches of the museum’s vast holdings” inspired the blog, which is researched, written and produced by museum curators.

“It was something I had been wanting to do for years and years, so I am thrilled,” Baumann tells Colman. “We have 25 centuries in our collection here.”

• View story from The New York Times, Jan. 11, 2013

Victoria Lowe ’12, a double major in dance and American cultural studies, discusses her Short Term experience with “Tour, Teach, Perform” and her goal of advancing arts education in the schools.

The Steel Pan Orchestra performs at the inauguration of President Clayton Spencer.

Three musical ensembles featuring Bates students will perform Dec. 5, 6 and 8 in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Led by Tom Snow, the Bates Jazz Band performs a diverse array of styles at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 5. The band will offer jazz, Latin jazz, and blues by composers Cole Porter, Billy Strayhorn, Kenny Durham, Thelonious Monk and others. Snow is well-known in Maine and beyond as a jazz pianist.

Erica Butler directs the Bates Steel Pan Orchestra in concert at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6. The program consists of “Got a Little Something for You” by Artiguan musician King Obstinate; Rihanna’s “Disturbia”; Bryan Adams’ “We’re In Heaven”; and the Blondie classic “Heart of Glass.” Butler performed for many years with the Atlantic Clarion Steel Band.

The Bates Gamelan Orchestra, directed by Peter Steele, performs at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8. Two guest artists will share the stage with the orchestra: I Dewa Made Suparta will perform Balinese masked dances and direct the ensemble on Balinese drums. Shoko Yamamuro will perform as a guest dancer.

The concert will feature new and traditional works, including the full version of “Mornings Well Augured,” which Steele, a visiting instructor in music, composed for the recent inauguration of Bates President Clayton Spencer.

The three concerts are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Besides gigs at Boston’s Faneuel Hall and many other North American venues, Brent McCoy is a regular at Reunion. Phyllis Graber Jensen / Bates College.

Reporter Wendy Davis Johnson writes:

“The delight McCoy gets from street performing and his comfort with his audience are clear. His effervescent personality and adroit physical comedy prompt easy laughter and steady applause.”

McCoy, who majored in studio art at Bates, tells Johnson that “if you gave me a choice between doing two of these shows and a regular paycheck, I wouldn’t think twice. It’s all about the joy.”

McCoy’s show, Comedy That Works, has been among just 13 acts approved to perform in the open air spaces at Faneuil Hall this summer. “Performers come from around the world to try and get a space here,” he tells Johnson.

• View story from The Royal Gazette, July 11, 2012.

With poet and writing adviser Rob Farnsworth looking on, Karen Nicoletti '12 reads from her novel during the 2012 Mount David Summit. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

As is his custom at the annual senior thesis reading, creative writing adviser Rob Farnsworth blessed the graduating Bates poets and novelists whom he has advised during the academic year.

A poet and senior lecturer in English, Farnsworth invoked the four ingredients that Herman Melville said writers need to continue their important but often thankless art.

“May you go forth into the world,” Farnsworth told the seniors, “and find what every writer needs: time, strength, cash and patience.” And like any good public reader, he paused at “cash” for appropriate humorous effect.

Farnsworth also praised them for their “dedicated commitment to the life of the imagination.”

The seven readers and their voices at the May 17 event (an eighth creative writing major, Emily Cull of Greenville, S.C., was unable to attend):

Alison Cornforth of Warren, Maine, read autobiographical poems. The experience of creating them, she said, raised emotional issues, “but I ended up writing them anyway.”

Listen to Alison Cornforth read her autobiographical poetry.

Alana Folsom of Los Angeles read part of her prose thesis that explains, like a parable, the curse on the small Southern town that is the focus on her story.

Listen to Alana Folsom read prose about the curse on a small town.

Lil Henry of Lee, N.H., read from her poetry on relationships, including one about difficult emotions a young mother feels toward her new baby.

Listen to Lil Henry’s poetry about human relationships.

Karen Nicoletti of Brewster, N.Y., read from her prose thesis about a saxophone player and Juilliard dropout who winds up playing for handouts in the New York City subway.

Listen to Karen Nicoletti read a selection from her prose thesis.

Charlotte Simpson's poetry and prose explore the power of imagination to pull us into the unknown. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

Meg Ramey of Bethesda, Md., read her gritty and realistic poem “Violet” and a selection from her prose thesis dealing with mental and emotional disorientation.

Listen to Meg Ramey read her poetry and prose.

Charlotte Simpson of New York, N.Y., read the poem “Opener” and a prose piece called “Space Is the Place,” each about submitting to one’s imagination and the unknown.

Listen to Charlotte Simpson read two pieces whose theme is the lure of the unknown.

Michelle Schloss of Unionville, Conn., read a biographical poem, 18 stanzas each with 10 lines about Zelda Fitzgerald, from her wild Roaring Twenties days to her suicide in 1948.

Listen to Michelle Schloss read her biographical poem about Zelda Fitzgerald.

The dining room at Oceanside, the home of Peter Gomes '65 in his hometown of Plymouth, Mass.

The sale of the Gomes collection has been entrusted to Grogan and Co. Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers of Dedham, Mass.

The 550-lot collection features a discerning array of 18th- and 19th-century American and English art, books and furniture from Gomes’ Harvard residence, Sparks House, and from Oceanside, his home in Plymouth, Mass.

Gomes, who died Feb. 28, 2011, was the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard. He was a famous preacher, bestselling author and beloved member of the Harvard, Plymouth and Bates communities.

“Making a place for me in my times.”

A passionate collector and historic preservationist who embraced the past as a touchstone for today, Gomes was a man who “cared about history in a way that was quite intimate,” said his Harvard faculty colleague Diana Eck last year.

In 1997, he explained to House and Garden magazine that collecting historical items was not about “making a place for the ages” but instead “a place for me in my times.”

Peter Gomes '65 used this early 19th-century silver tea service to offer his famous Wednesday afternoon teas at Sparks House.

From a personal and theological perspective, he continued, “I do believe that God is the author of beauty. It is not beauty that distracts us from the love of God. It is beauty that affirms the presence of God. This [collecting] is not the worship of the material. This is using the gifts of God for the people of God.”

“That sentiment, about seeing God’s beauty and about appreciating the minutiae of God’s work, is straight out of the Renaissance,” observes Nancy Carlisle ’77, senior curator of collections at Historic New England, the region’s venerable historic preservation and heritage organization. In 2005, she curated and wrote the catalog for Historic New England’s acclaimed Cherished Possessions exhibition and is the author of the book America’s Kitchens.

Grounded in times and places of which Gomes was famously fond, the collection is hardly modern and hardly eclectic — but that does not mean he was a narrow collector, Carlisle says.

“One type of collector might dogmatically recreate an 18th-century period room at its most symmetrical and high style,” Carlisle says. “But I don’t think that was Peter Gomes.”

Rather, suggests Carlisle, the Gomes collection reflects his “rootedness.” He surrounded himself with beautiful and historic things that “anchored him in the world in which he grew up and lived. What he collected he deeply appreciated both spiritually and intellectually.

Seen here is Peter Gomes' living room at his Harvard residence, Sparks House.

“There are people who live in their heads and collect in their heads. But through the items he collected, Gomes was deeply invested in beauty and comfort and the world around him.”

There is, for example, Lot 110, an early 19th-century silver tea service by Lewis & Smith of Philadelphia, which Gomes used during his famous Wednesday afternoon teas at Sparks House. The gatherings hosted by Gomes, The Harvard Crimson wrote, were among the “hidden gems of Harvard life…[offering] students an opportunity to mingle with the university’s most colorful luminaries and eccentrics.”

Items from Oceanside include a George III inlaid mahogany secretary bookcase; a 19th-century English School portrait of a gentleman reading New Monthly Magazine; and an extensive collection of Chinese export porcelain and Canton blue and white porcelain.

In both residences, the Gomes collection boasts a large selection of English School and American School ancestral portraits and landscapes; 18th- and 19th-century English engravings of historical, theological and royal subjects; books focusing on similar themes; and numerous decorations, mirrors, chandeliers and lighting, garden furniture and statuary.

This fall, Bates will celebrate the naming of the college chapel in memory of Peter Gomes. A former Bates trustee and recipient of the Benjamin Elijah Mays Medal, the college’s highest honor, Gomes included Bates as one of the beneficiaries of his estate.

The auction exhibition opens March 21 and continues until the auction begins at noon March 24. Grogan and Co. is located at 22 Harris St., Dedham, Mass.