Denison unveils Vail Series 2019-20 season

Denison University’s acclaimed Vail Series presents its 2019-20 season, celebrating the series' 40th Anniversary. All events are at 7 p.m.

A limited number of tickets for the Vail Series will be released for public sale for $15 to the community as concert dates approach. Tickets are available online through Vailseries.org and on-sale dates vary by concert.

The Vail Series 40th Anniversary season looks back, and looks ahead, blends traditional classical with contemporary classical, and other genres as students, faculty and the community gather together to enjoy amazing performances.

The complete 2019-2020 Vail Series season:

•Thursday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m.: Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain with Rakesh Chaurasia in Swasey Chapel (200 Chapel Drive). NPR stated they are “Simply the best at what they do….they’re world-class masters of the banjo, the bass fiddle and the tabla (who) conquered mere technical prowess long ago.” There’s a bit of the sorcerer in Fleck (banjo), Hussain (tabla), Meyer (double bass), and their special guest Chaurasia (bansuri-Indian flute). Most musicians hope at most for proficiency in their chosen form, but these gentlemen move from bluegrass to Western classical to Indian classical to jazz, transmuting genres into something uniquely their own as though they’d gotten hold of the alchemist’s tools that legendarily changed lead into gold. In any case, it’s music that transcends description, ineffable, indefinable, and very beautiful.

•Friday, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m.: Baker Tarpaga Dance Project presents “When Birds Refused to Fly” choreographed by Olivier Tarpaga in the Sharon Martin Hall of the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts (240 West Broadway). “When Birds Refused to Fly” is a contemporary, evening-length dance theatre project, set to the music of Orchestra Super Volta. Super Volta’s music reflects the celebratory, post-independence fevers raging across sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, in stark contrast to the painful struggle African Americans faced during their fight for Civil Rights in the United States. This ensemble piece explores, through music and movement, a generational transformation both cultural and geographic; examining what it is to build up and break down.

•Thursday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m.: Vail+ Event with cellist Matt Haimovitz presenting his brilliant musical variation on the concept of "A Moveable Feast" in the Sharon Martin Hall of the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts (240 West Broadway). Haimovitz will perform "A Moveable Feast" in various locations around the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts and campus from Nov. 19, through Nov. 21. Bach’s “Suites for Unaccompanied Cello” (1717-1723) are some of the most moving and spiritual compositions for a solo instrument in history. Each suite is a masterpiece on its own, but, in addition to the suites, overtures by Philip Glass, Du Yun, Vijay Iyer, and others are performed. Haimovitz joins the Denison Symphony Orchestra to complete the cycle, and performs Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major on Thursday, Nov. 21, in the Sharon Martin Hall of the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts.

•Friday, and Saturday, Feb. 7, and 8, at 7 p.m.: Brasil Guitar Duo with JIJI presenting an evening of classical guitar music in the Burke Recital Hall of the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts (240 West Broadway). Brasil Guitar Duo, a 2006 winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, and hailed by Classical Guitar magazine for its “maturity of musicianship and technical virtuosity,” is equally at home on a classical or a world-music series or performing a concerto with orchestra. The Duo combines a broad repertoire of classical guitar duos (Bach, Sor, Scarlatti, Rameau, Debussy, etc.) with such traditional Brazilian dance forms as choro, samba, maxixe, and baião. JIJI made her Carnegie Hall/Stern Auditorium debut as soloist with the award-winning New York Youth Symphony, performing the world premiere of a new concerto written for JIJI by American composer Natalie Dietterich in the 2018/2019 season. Born in Seoul, South Korea, JIJI (Jiyeon Kim) began playing classical guitar at the age of nine, and was accepted to the Korea National University of Arts at age fourteen. She attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, was one of the first two guitarists in Curtis’ distinguished history, and earned her Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music.

•Saturday, March 7, at 7 p.m.: The Vail Series and TUTTI 2020 partner to present SYBARITE5 in a grand finale concert in Swasey Chapel (200 Chapel Drive). Comprised of Sami Merdinian and Sarah Whitney, violins; Angela Pickett, viola; Laura Metcalf, cello; and Louis Levitt, bass, SYBARITE5 has taken audiences by storm all across the United States, forever changing the perception of chamber music performance. From Elgar to Radiohead and Visconti to Akiho, SYBARITE5’s eclectic repertoire and commanding performance style is turning heads throughout the music world: “…in a program of serial high points, there were too many to mention.” (The Washington Post). SYBARITE5 served as the resident ensemble for the American Composers Forum National Competition in 2016. With their dynamic view on 21st-century entrepreneurial musicianship, Denison feels lucky to count itself among the institutions and conservatories such as the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory among others where the group will conduct residencies and workshops.

•Wednesday, April 15, at 7 p.m.: Grammy award-winning vocal project Roomful of Teeth, dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice, performs in Swasey Chapel (200 Chapel Drive). Through study with masters from vocal traditions the world over, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an ongoing commissioning process, forges a new repertoire without borders. Recent projects include “The Colorado,” a music-driven documentary film that explores water, land and survival in the Colorado River Basin (featuring former Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and Wilco’s Glenn Kotche); collaborations with A Far Cry and Nick Zammuto of The Books; appearances at new music festivals in the United States, Canada and Sweden; and partnerships with nearly two dozen higher education institutions across the country.