HIGH POINT, N.C., Feb. 15, 2017 – High Point University will host the following events in March as part of the Community Enrichment Series. All of these events are open to the public. Tickets are not required unless otherwise noted.
Triad residents can sign up to receive email updates from HPU about events throughout the year at http://www.highpoint.edu/community.
Piano Recital: Yi-Yang Chen, to be held at 7 p.m. on March 13 in the Charles E. Hayworth Memorial Chapel. Taiwanese pianist Yi-Yang Chen is the 2016 winner of HPU’s annual piano competition. He has been training on piano since age 8. He was admitted as a graduate student to Robert McDonald and Jerome Lowenthal at The Juilliard School in 2012 and obtained his Master of Music in piano performance in 2014. Chen is currently a doctoral student in piano performance at Eastman School of Music, where he also received a Bachelor of Music while studying under Douglas Humpherys. He has attended the Perlman Music Program, Taos School of Music Summer Chamber Music Program, Four Seasons Winter Workshop (N.C.) and was awarded a fellowship at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara during the summer of 2012. In addition, he also has studied chamber music with Itzhak Perlman, Thomas Sauer and with members of the Cleveland, Shanghai, Borromeo, Brentano and Guarneri String Quartets. He captured first prize in the Hartford Chopin International Piano competition as well as HPU’s piano competition.
Faculty Exhibition 2017, to be held March 14 through April 20 in the Sechrest Art Gallery of Hayworth Fine Arts Center. The gallery is open 9 a.m.-noon and 1-5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. This exhibition features the work of HPU’s esteemed faculty. Professors present their most recent studio works of art showcasing a wide range of mediums and styles.
Design Artist Lecture: Art Chantry, to be held at 11 a.m. on March 17 in the Plato S. Wilson Commerce Ballroom. Art Chantry is a graphic designer provocateur from Tacoma, Washington, who utilizes analog techniques while celebrating the arcane and obscure. His work can be seen on record covers (more than 200 design credits to his name), t-shirts, posters, products, and the walls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Chantry’s pieces are in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian and the Louvre. His writings and musings on art, pop and design culture can be found nearly every day on Facebook and a collection of his prose was published by Feral House Books in 2015, titled “Art Chantry Speaks: A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design.”
HPU Chamber Music Series: From Russia with Love, to be held at 3:30 p.m. on March 19 in the Charles E. Hayworth Memorial Chapel. As this country came of age musically, Russia produced music whose sweeping lyricism and epic musical vision were as monumental as the Russian landscape itself. Join HPU for an hour of deeply stirring compositions by such luminaries as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Sergey Prokofiev.
Opening Reception for Faculty Exhibition 2017, to be held 4-6 p.m. on March 23 in the Sechrest Art Gallery of Hayworth Fine Arts Center. This exhibition features the work of HPU’s esteemed faculty. Professors present their most recent studio works of art showcasing a wide range of mediums and styles.
An Evening with Chris Abani, to be held at 7 p.m. on March 23 in the Francis Auditorium of Phillips Hall. Dr. Chris Abani is an acclaimed author of more than a dozen works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Born to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, received a bachelor’s degree in English from Imo State University, a master’s degree in English, gender and culture from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California. He has resided in the U.S. since 2001. He is the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, an Edgar Prize, a Ford USA Artists Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, Romanian, Hebrew, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dutch, Bosnian and Serbian. Through his TED talks, public speaking and essays, Abani is known as an international voice on humanitarianism, art, ethics and shared political responsibility. His critical and personal essays have been featured in Witness, Parkett, The New York Times, Bomb, and O Magazine. His many research interests include African poetics, world literature, 20th century anglophone literature, African presences in medieval and renaissance culture, the living architecture of cities, West African music, postcolonial and transnational theory, robotics and consciousness, and Yoruba and Igbo philosophy and religion. His most recent books are “The Secret History of Las Vegas,” “The Face: A Memoir” and “Sanctificum.”
Charles Franklin Finch Lecture: “Faith and Doubt in the Modern World: Christian Witness in the 21st Century and Engagements with Its Cultured Despisers,” to be held at 5:30 p.m. on March 27 in the Francis Auditorium of Phillips Hall. Charles Marsh is the Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the University of Virginia, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1989. Is belief in God a product of wishful thinking? Is religious belief a symptom of neurotic behavior? If there is no God, is everything permissible? Is atheism (new and old) parasitic on the moral convictions inspired by religion? Is religion a primitive stage in human intellectual development in need of an education to reality? Does religion promote violent tendencies among individuals and groups? Is it inherently immoral? On what basis do some intelligent people argue that belief in God is rational and others that belief in God violates reason? This lecture considers such questions by observing modern critiques of religion and the implications of such critiques for people of faith. The goal is to convey the variety of interpretations given to the idea of God in modernity and to clarify the conditions of responsible religious belief in a pluralistic and possibly post-modern world.
Percussion Ensemble Concert, to be held at 7:30 p.m. on March 31 in the Pauline Theatre of Hayworth Fine Arts Center. The Spring Percussion Ensemble Concert will offer audience members the opportunity to experience the broad range of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and timbral qualities of this unique ensemble. From soloists and small chamber works, to full ensemble selections, this concert is sure to leave the audience tapping its feet and humming memorable melodies. The HPU Percussion Ensemble is composed of students, both music majors and non-majors.