The Virupannavar Family Merging Rivers Endowed Fund for Hindu Faith and Cultural Studies at Kalamazoo College is sponsoring and organizing a free concert of devotional Indian classical music on Tuesday, October 3, at 7 p.m. in Stetson Chapel.
The concert’s title, Bhakti Rasamanjari, includes references to devotional worship emphasizing mutual attachment and love of a devotee and a personal god; essence, in particular the characteristic quality of music, literature and drama; and the blossom that flowers on a tree before the fruit, according to Chandrashekhar and Sushila Virupannavar. The couple established the fund to enhance experiences for current and future students while honoring the opportunities K offered two of their children who graduated from K.
“Like all art forms in Indian culture, Indian classical music and dance art are believed to be a divine art form, originating from the Hindu gods and goddesses,” the Virupannavars said.
Utsad Rais Balekhan and Utsad Hafiz Balekhan will be among the musicians performing Indian classical music at 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 3, in Stetson Chapel.
The concert features world-famous, seventh-generation Hindustani vocalists and sitarists the Khan Brothers—Utsad Rais Balekhan and Utsad Hafiz Balekhan.
Hindustani music is associated with north India and primarily uses Hindi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Urdu and Braj Bhasha languages. The sitar is a plucked, stringed instrument used in Hindustani classical music. A sitar can have from 18 to 21 strings, with six or seven running over curved, raised frets and being played directly, while the remainder resonate with the played strings.
The Khan Brothers will be accompanied by Atul Kamble on tabla and Shri Gangadhar Shinde on harmonium.
A tabla is a pair of small hand drums of slightly different shapes and sizes, somewhat similar in shape to bongos. A tabla is the principal percussion instrument in Indian classical music and is essential in the bhakti devotional traditions of Hinduism and Sikhism.
The harmonium is a stringed instrument that, in Indian music, is a portable, hand-pumped wooden box.
The Khan Brothers are of the Kirana/Dharwad gharana, which means they are part of a school of music tied to Kirana, a town in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. The Kirana style emphasizes perfect intonation of notes. The city of Dharwad, where the Khan Brothers have seven generations of family roots, lies in a region particularly associated with the Kirana gharana.
The Virupannavars said the concert fits the focus of their family fund on Hindu faith and Indian cultural studies.
“This will be a display of Hindu devotional music, expressing love and devotion to one divinity,” Chandrashekhar said. “Secondly, it will be a beautiful display of Indian musical cultural tradition by eminent performers and esteemed scholars who come from our region in India.”
Merging Rivers in the fund’s name is borrowed from the 12th century Shiva saint Basava, who spread his messages in simple, short poems called vachanas, which ended with the Lord of the Merging Rivers, amplifying the concept of unity, union and oneness with the eternal.
The Virupannavar family expressed appreciation for the College’s support of the fund, including support from Sohini Pillai, assistant professor of religion and director of film and media studies, in helping to shape the fund’s focus and bring the concert to campus.
“Hopefully, this will be a long and beautiful journey,” Sushila said. “Two of our three children attended K, had a great education and became doctors. We are proud of their accomplishments and of our decision to send them here.”
The Virupannavars hope the concert inspires K students to learn about and try sitar and tabla. In service of that, the performers will also deliver a demonstration and talk to a music class the day of the concert.
“Kalamazoo is a renowned location on the world’s music map,” Chandrashekhar said. “Our family is excited to celebrate that great and long Kalamazoo music tradition, by adding a small element of Indian classical music essence, with a very sincere hope that it will grow and blossom.”
A musician known for working with pianists from around world will conduct a concert at Kalamazoo College this weekend through the Gilmore.
Maria João Pires launched the Partitura Project in Belgium in 2012, aiming to encourage cooperation and social engagement among pianists while steering the dynamic between artists toward altruism rather than competitiveness. She will lead a 10-day workshop of that project in Kalamazoo and perform at 4 p.m. Sunday in Stetson Chapel with her students.
Pires is known for her lightness of touch, vital imagination and masterful interpretations of Chopin, Schubert and Mozart. She has devoted herself to expressing the influence of art in life, community and education.
“We have a responsibility to lead our life in the best possible way, to help others and to share this planet with compassion,” Pires said. “Music and art are the deepest expressions of our soul and the direct transmission of our universe. I think everyone is born an artist and art should be shared with all people on this planet.”
In-person concert tickets for the general Kalamazoo community are $35 for adults and $7 for students 7 and older.
K faculty and staff are eligible for buy one, get one free tickets. K students are eligible for single free tickets. At the Gilmore website, click “Promo Code” on the upper right of the ticketing page. Students should use the code KCSTU23. Faculty and staff should use the code KC23. Click “Apply Promo Code” and choose your tickets. The discount will be applied at checkout.
Rush tickets will also be available with a K ID on the day of the concert when the box office opens on site.
Maria João Pires will lead a 10-day workshop of her Partitura Project in Kalamazoo and perform at 4 p.m. Sunday in Stetson Chapel with her students.
Three concerts over the next two weekends are sure to please a variety of music lovers while spotlighting the talents of Kalamazoo College students. All three are free and open to the public.
The first concert, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 5, in Dalton Theatre, will conclude the season for the Academy Street Winds, directed by Professor of Music Tom Evans. Their presentation, titled VivaEspaña,will feature some of the driving rhythms, lush harmonies and toe-tapping melodies associated with the vibrant Spanish culture. A rousing paso dobles, an exhilarating dance suite titled Dazas Cubanas, the wind band classic El Camino Real by Alfred Reed, and The Impossible Dream, sung by the Academy Street Chorus, will be among the featured songs.
There was standing room only at the band’s last concert, so arrive early to ensure a seat. As your reward, attendees can enjoy several selections by the Academy Street Winds Flute Quartet during the concert’s prelude.
At 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 12, in Dalton Theatre, hear the Kalamazoo College Jazz Band, which Evans says is among the best he’s led in his 28 years at K.
The performance will feature classics such as Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, Charles Mingus’ Boogie Stop Shuffle, Duke Pearson’s Jeannine, Oliver Nelson’s Checkpoint Charlie, David Benoit’s Café Rio, and George Gershwin’s Summertime, which will be sung by Isabella Pellegrom ’25 in a new, hip arrangement. Plus, per tradition, the band will have a dance number at the end, allowing attendees to dance themselves.
Finally, the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, directed by Department of Music Chair Andrew Koehler, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 13, in Dalton Theatre.
In the Orthodox Christian tradition, keeping eternal memory is the promise given by the living to the recently deceased. In honor of the thousands who have died in Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and of the resilient Ukrainian culture that Russia has tried to appropriate and erase over centuries, the concert will be both a celebration and an act of mourning.
Professor of Music Tom Evans will lead the Academy Street Winds and the Kalamazoo College Jazz Band in concerts on Friday, May 5, and Friday, May 12, respectively.Kalamazoo College Associate Professor of Music Andrew Koehler directs the Kalamazoo Philharmonia.
A centuries-wide sampling of Ukrainian music will be featured including the bright, recently discovered Symphony of Maksym Berezovsky, which connects Ukraine to the wider trends of classical music in Europe; the charming, early Romantic symphony-overtures of Mykhailo Verbytsky, the author of the Ukrainian national anthem; the brooding late-Romantic lyrical lament of Viktor Kosenko; the angular, muscular music of Soviet composer Boris Lyatoshynsky, written for a movie about the patron saint of Ukrainian letters, Taras Shevchenko; the folk-inflected dance suites of Levko Kolodub; the hypnotic, sacred stillness of composer Hanna Havrylets; and Mykola Skoryk’s timeless Melody, an unofficial second national anthem of Ukraine.
For more information on these concerts, please call the Department of Music at 269.337.7070.
The Gilmore is scheduling two concerts on campus at Stetson Chapel and the Kalamazoo College community is invited to attend both at a discount.
First, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will perform at 7:30 p.m. this Thursday. The world-renowned performer has recorded more than 50 albums and performs a range of solo, chamber and orchestral pieces at worldwide venues. In the 2022-23 season, he is performing with colleagues including Renée Fleming, Itzhak Perlman, Michael Tilson Thomas and Emanuel Ax, and he is playing Debussy’s Préludes in Switzerland, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and throughout the U.S., including at Carnegie Hall.
Thibaudet’s recordings have received two Grammy nominations, and his 2021 album Carte Blanche features a collection of deeply personal solo piano pieces never-before recorded by the pianist. He has also worked in film, as a soloist in Dario Marianelli’s award-winning and nominated scores for Atonement, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score, and Pride and Prejudice; in Alexandre Desplat’s soundtrack for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; and in Wes Anderson’s film, The French Dispatch.
Then, Maria João Pires will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 21.
Pires launched the Partitura Project in Belgium in 2012, with the aim to encourage cooperation and social engagement among pianists, while balancing the dynamic between artists toward altruism rather than competitiveness. She will conclude her nine-day workshop for pianists with a solo and joint performance with her students. The program and participants will be announced from the stage.
The Gilmore has scheduled a performance by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet to take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 30, at Stetson Chapel.
A piano master admired for her interpretations of Chopin, Schubert and Mozart, Pires is known for her lightness of touch and vital imagination. She has devoted herself to expressing the influence of art in life, community and education. Reflecting on this philosophy, she has said, “We have a responsibility to lead our life in the best possible way, to help others and to share this planet with compassion. Music and art are the deepest expressions of our soul and the direct transmission of our universe. I think everyone is born an artist and art should be shared with all people on this planet.”
Born in 1944 in Lisbon, Pires gave her first performance at age 4, and received Portugal’s highest award for young musicians at age 9. She gained international recognition upon winning first prize at the Brussels Beethoven International Competition, commemorating the composer’s 200th birthday in 1970. Pires has appeared all over the globe with major orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Faculty and staff are eligible for buy one, get one free tickets to both concerts. Students are eligible for single free tickets.
Before adding tickets to your cart for the Thibaudet concert or the Pires concert on the Gilmore website, click “Promo Code” on the upper right of the ticketing page. Students should use the code KCSTU23. Faculty and staff should use the code KC23. Click “Apply Promo Code” and choose your tickets. The discount will be applied at checkout. Rush tickets will also be available with a K ID on the day of the concert when the box office opens on site.
Kalamazoo College music ensembles are widely known for conducting performances all over the world, yet a recent appearance provided a first-of-its-kind venue for the Kalamazoo College Singers.
On March 2, the 30-student group had the opportunity to perform at the Ionia Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan, about 78 miles northeast of campus—an opportunity that College Singers Director and Assistant Professor of Music Chris Ludwa says he had been pursing for nearly 15 years.
“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to engage in music in prisons,” Ludwa said. “It’s very easy when you’re in the academy to spend all your time focused on the academy, and I feel called to bring music to this particular population. It doesn’t make sense to me that when somebody gets locked up, we take away from them the things that may in fact provide the greatest sense of peace, serenity or calm. This is a world with so many inequities. We need to balance the opportunities that we’re providing for people of means, with those who are—for whatever reason—not able to access or experience live musical performances. Everybody’s soul hungers for it.”
Plans for the event at the prison developed as the College Singers have sought more performances in the community in recent years. Ionia Correctional Facility Chaplain Casey Cheney was thrilled to welcome the group when Ludwa reached out.
When March 2 came and the bus departed, Ludwa talked with the College Singers on the ride to Ionia about their expectations for the visit and who they might see.
“I asked the students if they have ever broken the law or broken any rules and not been caught,” he said. “Every hand went up, underscoring that most of us have a lot of preconceived notions about who’s in the prison system. We assume that we know more than we do about people who are imprisoned, but in a country whose justice system favors one population over another, that is an assumption that only furthers the systemic issues we see around us.”
Upon arriving in Ionia, the group spent about an hour going through security. “The guards did everything from checking what was on our person to taking our socks off and running scans on the bottom of our feet to make sure we weren’t bringing in any contraband,” Ludwa said. “They were checking our keyboards. Some of the students had their mouths swabbed.”
As they proceeded further into the prison complex and walked across the yard, they found themselves surrounded by razor wire, and they caught a rare glimpse of life inside the facility.
“You see these guys in the library and in the lunchroom, dressed in their blue uniforms,” Ludwa said. “But when you get into the performance hall, they’re an audience like any other. In the performance hall, there are no labels. There’s no ‘them’ or ‘us.’ You’re just all experiencing music together.”
Prison officials had taped off seats in the auditorium, putting at least 50 feet between the inmates and the College Singers. The singers stayed onstage for most of the performance until they decided to come offstage to perform a gospel piece led by Tyrus Parnell ’25, followed by the spiritual Down by the Riverside as a finale.
“When we joined them, they engaged in a different way,” Ludwa said. “It’s like we tore down this wall, literally and figuratively. When Tyrus performed, one of the inmates spontaneously got up and started applauding spontaneously. He was so encouraging of what Tyrus had done.” Then came a post-performance Q-and-A that Ludwa described as amazing.
The College Singers have performed at a variety of sites around the country including churches and concert halls.
College Singers Director and Assistant Professor of Music Chris Ludwa has made it a goal to perform at more sites in the community.
The College Singers performed March 2 at the Ionia Correctional Facility.
“They asked the same kinds of questions we get whenever we go on tour,” he said. “Whether we’re at a wealthy, predominantly white church in the middle of a city or a prison in a rural area like Ionia, the questions show us that music is universal.”
After the performance, Chaplain Cheney reached out to Ludwa to thank the group for coming: “Our men have experienced so much violence, so much trauma. They lack so many things we take for granted and the live musical performance reminds them what a beautiful place this world can be and is.”
In hindsight, College Singers representatives such as Keegan Sweeney ’24 said K professors engage in conversations around social justice, equity, the prison industrial complex and injustices in society, so it’s important that the College offers ways to engage with it.
“I appreciated the opportunity to see a part of American life that few college students our age experience,” Sweeney said. “Walking out of the auditorium, many of us were already reflecting on our experience. As we passed the window of the prison law library—several people sat inside, their noses in textbooks. Next to the window was a classroom with a group, deep in conversation.”
“I was reminded of the injustices endemic to our system and the stark comparison of the classroom and law library to our campus dorm rooms and K classrooms—where we discuss the same system, but rarely ever see it for ourselves. At the same time, I think the classroom and library humanized incarcerated people, those who only show up in statistics to many of us.”
Jacob McKinney ’26 said, “I wish we could have talked more to the people who came and watched because I felt like we connected with them when we were offstage. I could see some of them smiling and clapping along to Down by the Riverside and it brought a great amount of emotion to me. It was a really special experience.”
Ludwa said, “For me, it was the quintessential education experience that is a part of the K-Plan, where we plan what we’re going to learn about in the classroom, and then we experience it ourselves because the firsthand learning is so much more influential. It helps take something from theoretical to practical. Once the students do that, they have a better sense of the human toll these systems of injustice cause.”
Ludwa added that the trip scratched the surface of his dream, and from an emotional standpoint, it far exceeded his expectations of what he hoped the both the inmates and the students would get from the experience.
“Perhaps we go back in and do a workshop on singing. Then eventually it becomes a regular performance venue. The key is to build relationships.” The challenge is finding funding, as the trips carry an expense with them, and it’s important to avoid that expense being something that further underscores the inequities amongst students in terms of financial means.
Sweeney said, “We came to sing, but I think we left having learned something that you cannot teach in a classroom. I cannot speak for everyone, but I know that I got a dose of reality that day. As our bus pulled out of the parking lot, leaving to come back to campus, I was reminded to live each day with more intention and not to take privileges for granted.”
Help College Singers Fund Experiences Like Prison Concert
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Three concerts in the coming week will put Kalamazoo College students center stage along with a mix of community music partners.
First, the Kalamazoo Philharmonia will hold a recital titled The 9th at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Dalton Theater at Light Fine Arts as a tribute to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The performance will include a collaboration with the Kalamazoo Bach Festival Chorus and feature soloists Madelaine Lane, soprano; Carrie Ledet, mezzo-soprano; Jonathon Lovegrove, tenor; and Trent Broussard, baritone. Tickets are $2–$5.
Led by Director Andrew Koehler, the Kalamazoo Philharmonia brings together students, faculty, and amateur and professional musicians. The group won The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Maestro Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award in 2014 and has produced several CDs. It also has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning.
The Kalamazoo College Singers will have a free performance at 4 p.m. Sunday in the lobby at Light Fine Arts. The hour-long program, simply titled RE, will focus on restoring many of the things we lose in the struggles of daily life within themes of revival, restoration, reparation, resurrection, recirculation and respiration.
The Kalamazoo College Singers will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday in the lobby at Light Fine Arts.
The 35-singer ensemble features students representing majors from music to chemistry. They’re from locales as close as Kalamazoo and as far as Colombia. Nature enthusiasts and environmentalists will appreciate the texts centered on Earth’s natural beauty. Other works link the power of nature with the beauty of languages such as Mandarin, drawing together similarities from across the globe.
Sophomore Tyrus Parnell, a multi-talented musician and Presidential Student Ambassador, will direct the choir in a gospel piece. In solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, the singers will perform pieces by luminaries for queer rights such as the Indigo Girls and kd lang. The whole evening wraps up with a bit of Stevie Wonder and a setting of the spiritual Down by the Riverside.
“If audiences have never experienced a concert in the lobby of the Light Fine Arts building, they are in for a treat, as the acoustics are superb for a cappella singing, as most of this concert is,” College Singers Director Chris Ludwa said.
Finally, the International Percussion Ensemble will perform a free concert at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, in the Dalton Theatre. The group—which includes African drums, Japanese taiko drums and Caribbean steel drums—features individuals with varied musical backgrounds from K, nearby institutions, and the general community.
Two Kalamazoo College music ensembles are sure to excite and entertain audiences this weekend with their winter performances.
A wide variety of styles will be performed from second-line New Orleans to blues and swing when K’s Jazz Band takes the stage at 8 p.m. Friday, February 17, at the Dalton Theatre. Directed by Music Professor Thomas G. Evans, K’s Jazz Band pulls together a collection of contemporary and classic jazz arrangements to provide the participating students and the audience with an electric experience. Listeners are encouraged to dance if the music inspires them with the enthusiasm of the musicians making the band special.
At 8 p.m. Saturday, February 18, at Dalton Theatre, join the Academy Street Winds as the group pays loving tribute to legendary film composer John Williams. Led by conductor Evans, the ensemble will perform selections from Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, War Horse, Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones and more. The group is especially proud to share the stage with Music Department Chair Andrew Koehler, who will perform the violin theme from Schindler’s List.
Kalamazoo College’s Jazz Band and the Academy Street Winds are sure to excite and entertain audiences this weekend under their conductor, Music Professor Thomas G. Evans.
A major grant awarded to Kalamazoo College helped 17 students begin experiencing a new dimension of hands-on learning in their humanities coursework through a visit to New Orleans over winter break.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation granted $1.297 million in January 2022 to provide new learning opportunities through the College’s Humanities Integrated Locational Learning (HILL) project. HILL builds student coursework rooted in the College’s commitment to experiential learning and social justice to address issues such as racism, economic inequities and homelessness, while examining history, how humans share land, and the dislocations that bring people to a communal space.
Within HILL, there are multiple academic departments represented with clusters of classes that emphasize collaborative learning within the humanities and humanistic social sciences:
The Beyond Kalamazoo course clusters focus on location or dislocation and emphasize place-based learning through an integrated travel component in New Orleans, St. Louis or San Diego.
The Within Kalamazoo cluster, which emphasizes a theme relevant to location or dislocation, where faculty directly collaborate on coursework that engages directly with social issues in the Kalamazoo community.
The digital humanities hub, which publishes, archives and assesses outcomes in relation to course work and partnerships beyond and within Kalamazoo.
New Orleans was the first site on which the Beyond Kalamazoo cluster focused. In fall, courses consisted of Lest We Forget: Memory and Identity in the African Diaspora in New Orleans, taught by Associate Professor of Anthropology Espelencia Baptiste; Public Art and its Publics led by Professor of Art and Art History Christine Hahn; NOLA Divided: Race in the Big Easy, led by Associate Professor of English Shanna Salinas; and The World Through New Orleans, led by Associate Professor of Music Beau Bothwell. Each course operated independently with discipline-specific instruction.
Students interested in doing place-based research in New Orleans applied for the Beyond Kalamazoo cluster, which included six weeks of preparation, instruction on research methodologies in the humanities, the seven-day research trip, and post-trip research and writing. Those students were put into research groups formed by research interest and a distribution of one member from each of the cluster courses, so every group had at least one representative from each of the four cluster courses.
The students’ pre-trip collaboration—based on their knowledge from their respective courses within the departments of English, art history, anthropology-sociology and music—helped them create a collaborative research project that would emphasize location or dislocation, problem solving and social justice in New Orleans.
During a volunteer day, Jenna Paterob ’23 worked with her peers to create signs for Ms. Gloria’s Garden at People for Public Art in New Orleans.Community partners such as Lower Nine, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the long-term recovery of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Ida and Rita, and the levee breaches of 2005; and People for Public Art, an organization of artists that funds, creates and documents works of public art for the City of New Orleans to reflect the stories of the people, were significant contributors to the experiences Kalamazoo College humanities students had.“Throughout the day, I discovered that we were seeing different types of public art, allowing us to feel like we were a part of the community,” said Jenna Paterob ’23 of her humanities experience at People for Public Art in New Orleans.
Kalamazoo College students enrolled in Humanities Integrated Locational Learning classes this fall called their experience in New Orleans educational, eye-opening, fun and immersive.“There is a ton of history that none of us knew about before going there, even though we had all taken a class about the city,” said Josh Kuh ’23. “I thought it was valuable to have this structured opportunity that felt like doing more than observing for research.”During a volunteer day, Jenna Paterob ’23 worked with her peers to create signs for Ms. Gloria’s Garden at People for Public Art in New Orleans.
Their subjects of interest for the projects included the city’s theatre scene, public transportation and historical ties to slavery with each student connecting their social justice interests with each of a variety of community partners. Students were encouraged to use onsite and digital archives at the Historical New Orleans Collection for their projects when applicable.
The community partners included Lower Nine, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the long-term recovery of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Ida and Rita, and the levee breaches of 2005; and People for Public Art, an organization of artists that funds, creates and documents works of public art for the City of New Orleans to reflect the stories of the people. Students then worked with these partners during their on-site visit this winter.
Morgan Acord ’23, an English major with a passion for literature, found Salinas’ class to be fascinating because New Orleans has a literature culture all its own, she said. She appreciated that their trip also included cultural opportunities such as participating in a second-line parade, seeing the Oak Alley and Whitney plantations, and observing French and Spanish artifacts at the New Orleans Archive.
Yet for Acord, filling a need for social justice work through a nonprofit was the biggest benefit.
“We helped an 80-year-old woman and her husband who had been sleeping on an air mattress in their kitchen after Hurricane Ida,” Acord said. “They were living in a shotgun-style house and all of her belongings were in what I assumed was the living room. Overall, it showed how catastrophic those New Orleans hurricanes were. You see the footage on TV, but to see it firsthand and see how people live in houses still under repair is eye opening. It felt good on the surface to be able to help, but it was eye opening to know how privileged some of us are.”
Together, Acord and classmates including Josh Kuh ’23, an anthropology-sociology major from Seattle, tore a front wall out of the house that had been destroyed by termites, painted baseboards, and laid down flooring in what was to be the couple’s bedroom. Professor Mills along with Lower Nine representatives assisted in painting the ceiling and the dining room.
“There is a ton of history that none of us knew about before going there, even though we had all taken a class about the city,” Kuh said. “I thought it was valuable to have this structured opportunity that felt like doing more than observing for research. We provided a meaningful service to the organizations that we were working with. I think the biggest takeaways of mine involved seeing firsthand how extensive the hurricane damage was. I saw the disarray in this house and it hadn’t been fixed even though it had been almost 20 years since some of the damage happened.”
Jenna Paterob ’23, a business and psychology double major and art minor, took Professor Hahn’s class in fall because she often feels like she overlooks public art.
“Our experience in New Orleans was educational, eye-opening, fun and immersive,” she said. “It isn’t every day that we get to go into a new area of the country and interact with the community there. I feel like we were able to see bigger issues encapsulated in the city such as tourism, racism, white supremacy and classism. “I feel like when we stay in one place for a long period of time, we may become a little desensitized to the issues that surround us. Therefore, going to a new area, especially as someone who has never been out of the Midwest, was definitely an educational experience for me.”
Paterob had a social justice experience with People for Public Art in New Orleans. During the volunteer day, Paterob worked with her peers to create signs for Ms. Gloria’s Garden. The location offers opportunities for children to garden, cook, sew, make jewelry and music, and take yoga and meditation classes. The garden is managed by a nonprofit, Developing Young Entrepreneurs, which provides youths and young adults with entrepreneurial skills and a safe space for people to feel free to be themselves.
“When I first discovered that we were going to be making signs, I was confused about what that had to do with public art,” she said. “Throughout the day, I discovered that we were seeing different types of public art, allowing us to feel like we were a part of the community. Painting signs for plants in a garden may not be the first thing people think of when they think about public art, but we really did create some fun and beautiful pieces of art that communicate information and improve the garden. I liked that day because I was exposed to a whole new setting and sense of community. I also learned that the organization creates a bunch of impactful pieces, such as the memorial pieces they showed us. They took a tragic event that was minimized and silenced by certain people and allowed the community to come together to grieve. I learned a lot about New Orleans and how the residents interact with their community through learning about the public art there.”
Ally Noel ’24, an anthropology-sociology and English double major, had similar praise for her experience at People for Public Art.
“That day shifted my entire trajectory in terms of my research in New Orleans,” she said. “Going into New Orleans, I had this idea of what I thought I wanted to study but then after Monica (Kelly, representing People for Public Art) was telling the story of the lower mid-city and the inequities that exist there, I realized I wanted to do research on the closure of Charity Hospital after Hurricane Katrina hit. That was the day that everything clicked for me, and I realized, being in that space was important. A student can study a space from afar, but being there helps research in terms of learning and making meaning of the experience.”
Salinas is serving as the curriculum coordinator for integrated travel to New Orleans and a co-principal investigator for the HILL initiative as a whole.
“The primary vision of this initiative is collaboration, be that students sharing their knowledge with other members of their research group based on the cluster class they took, community partners holding space for students to learn about the work they do in New Orleans and the stakes of that work, and research groups working across disciplines in the humanities to develop a digital humanities research project that reflects both their academic knowledge and their experiences in the city,” Salinas said. “We asked students to commit to one eight-hour work day with two of our community partners. Students self-selected according to interest or research investment, frequently with research group members on different work sites. Afterward, students were able to come together and share those experiences with each other and discuss what they learned. It was these moments that enhanced their research and, ultimately, their collaborative projects. HILL’s curricular design relies on students being able to share their experiences, to talk to each other about what they learned, to root in in the type of instruction they received in their cluster classes, and to make those concrete connections back to things like community-building as a crucial element of the humanities.”
As they reflected on their experiences, the students praised the opportunity to go to New Orleans and said they would encourage their peers to seek HILL-focused, place-based learning classes as well.
Baptiste’s class, for example, set the table for students such as Maya Nathwani ’23, an anthropology-sociology and biology double major, to examine history away from campus when she missed a study abroad opportunity because of COVID-19. Lest We Forget: Memory and Identity in the African Diaspora in New Orleans provided Nathwani with a life-changing experience in her college years that she otherwise would’ve missed.
“The class emphasized understanding what history is and how it’s created and produced, along with who has the ability to share and pass on history, impacting how we remember the past,” Nathwani said. “Going to do research in a space where I’d never been was intimidating just because I’d never done it before. But I would encourage other students to try these classes, too, because the professors prepare you to be successful.”
Isabella Pellegrom ’25 conducted a launch party for her album, “Nomadic Tendencies,” at a sports bar near her home in Minnesota and performed to rave reviews in the nearby town of Pepin, Wisconsin.
It’s the time of year when Spotify and Apple Music users look forward to the apps revealing the artists, songs and genres they’ve listened to most and the statistics that surrounded them in 2022. But search for an artist less familiar, and you might find a new voice to appreciate: a Kalamazoo College student reaching new audiences and achievements with her first album.
Isabella Pellegrom ’25, from Eagan, Minnesota, has produced and released Nomadic Tendencies, a 10-track collection of her vocal talents. Spotify describes Pellegrom as a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter, who pulls inspiration from indie pop, soft rock and jazz, while embedding her own voice. As a storyteller, she hopes to find truth and unite others around her. The album reflects a journey of self-discovery and self-love to highlight the idea that everyone builds a wall and runs away only to return and appreciate the people who matter most in their lives.
That theme of running away followed by an inevitable return helped her realize the moment she finished writing the song Nomadic Tendencies that it would be the title track of her album.
“It was one of the first times I’d just written a song from front to end all in one go,” Pellegrom said. “It was cool to talk about this person who tends to go everywhere because they can’t really find their place. It worked because I realized it correlated to the story of this person throughout the album who is constantly going to new places, whether it’s for better or worse. She’s meeting new people or finding out more about herself, and so has these tendencies to always move around. I liked it because at the very end, it comes back to I’ll Come Home to You because she eventually finds out that her home is with the people who have always supported her.”
Pellegrom first discovered her love of music and singing when she was about 6 years old.
“I have an older sister and she had given me her old MP3 player,” Pellegrom said. “It had maybe 15 songs on it, and by the end of the first week I had it, I knew every lyric to every song that was on it. I sang along to them and pretended I was a little pop star. I loved it.”
You can hear Isabella Pellegrom’s album, “Nomadic Tendencies,” on all streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.
Yet over the years, she became not only a vocalist, but an instrumentalist through guitar, saxophone and piano, and a songwriter whose talents and shared messages have grown with her.
“It’s funny to look back at the songs I first wrote because, when I was 10 years old, I would write and sing about things like fairy-tale princesses,” Pellegrom said. “It wasn’t anything that had to do with what was happening in my life. I would like to say I’ve improved since then. I’ve joined choirs, I’m in band (Academy Street Winds) at K now and I did jazz band in high school. I also just recently got into acapella (the student group Limelights) where I’ve learned to arrange music, which has helped me put together and break apart songs. Music is a huge part of my life and it’s nice that I’ve kept it separate from what I hope to do with my career. In that way, it’s allowed me to take off some pressure and just do it because I love it.”
While boating on the Mississippi River one day a couple of summers ago, Pellegrom’s family voted on which town they would stop in to find dinner. The decision turned out to be fateful.
“My mom and her friend, who had this little café, were just eating, when all of a sudden, the café had this live artist,” Pellegrom said. “The artist was Tim Cheesebrow, and my mom knew I wanted to get back into playing guitar. She was wondering if Tim taught lessons and he gave us his card.”
Pellegrom spent those lessons working on songwriting and collaboration.
“He helped me with my songwriting by saying that a lot of times it’s good to keep a continuous theme or have a main message,” Pellegrom said. “It was helpful because I ended up finishing a lot of my songs for those lessons. It was the first time I got to collaborate with someone in terms of songwriting. Through these lessons, I eventually had about 13 songs that I thought were great together. Tim also has his own at-home studio and he’s been producing music for a long time.”
Pellegrom recruited some fellow musicians, pared her songs to the 10 that worked best together, and produced Nomadic Tendencies at Cheesebrow’s studio.
“That’s what I spent the majority of my summer doing the year I came to K,” said Pellegrom, whose parents, Jeffrey ’88 and Mary ’88, also attended K along with a grandfather and some of her aunts and uncles. “I got help from other local musicians for the baselines and the drumming. Tim helped me out with the guitar and walked me through the whole process of what it takes to release it. It all felt like a fever dream at the time and it still kind of does. It’s now out in the world and I’m really proud of it.”
Pellegrom conducted a launch party at a sports bar near her home in Minnesota and performed to rave reviews in the nearby town of Pepin, Wisconsin. She has plans to release a second album, although when is not yet decided as she tries to balance an intended biochemistry major and music minor. Medical school is a possibility for her, too, one day. Yet in the meantime, she will enjoy the success of releasing Nomadic Tendencies.
“I love it when people listen to it,” Pellegrom said. “The best part is realizing that I released it for me. I don’t really have any expectations for it. I don’t need for something to come from it. I just felt it was time to release it. I was ready to put this project that I’m really proud of into the world and move on to other songs and other projects. In terms of my goals for it, the main goal was to release it and hope that people who listen to it can enjoy it.”
The Kalamazoo College Singers will present their fall program, a concert titled “Unattached,” at 7 p.m. Sunday, November 13, in the lobby outside Dalton Theatre.
Kalamazoo College’s Department of Music has four ensembles that will be performing their free and open-to-the-public fall concerts on Friday, Sunday and Tuesday.
Directed by Thomas G. Evans, K’s Jazz Band pulls together an eclectic collection of contemporary and classic jazz arrangements to provide the participating students and the audience with an electric experience. The group will perform a set list titled “Swing Set” at 8 p.m. Friday in the Dalton Theatre at Light Fine Arts. Music selections will include favorites from Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmy Davis and more with songs such as “Satin Doll,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “In the Mood.” Two dance groups will also entertain the audience: a community group and a K dance group.
The Kalamazoo Philharmonia, directed by Guest Conductor Anthony Elliott, is an orchestra of Kalamazoo College and the community. The group brings together students, faculty and amateur and professional musicians. The group won the 2014 American Prize—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award in Orchestral Programming and has produced several CDs. Philharmonia also has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, and collaborated with the Bach Festival Chorus, as well as many renowned soloists. The ensemble, at 3 p.m. Sunday in Dalton Theatre, will perform selections such as “Global Warming” by Michael Abels, “Symphony No. 29” by Wolfgang Mozart, “Fountains of Rome” by Ottorino Respighi and “Suite No. 2” by Albert Roussel. Hear from Elliott about the concert in this interview with WMUK 102.1.
The College Singers choral group includes music majors and non-music majors, offering a different approach to choral singing with a specialty of social justice. At 7 p.m. Sunday in the Dalton lobby, the group—with solos from choir members—will perform songs such as “California Dreamin’,” “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” “Imagine” and more with the theme of “Unattached.”
Finally, the International Percussion Ensemble will perform at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Dalton Theatre. The group—which includes African drums, Japanese taiko drums and Caribbean steel drums—features individuals with varied musical backgrounds from K, nearby institutions and the general community.
