The Vail Series brings Dada Masilo to campus February 3rd at 8pm. A performer since age 13, Masilo is known for taking Shakespeare’s Hamlet and forcing the viewer to reconsider Ophelia by viewing the classical subject matter through Masilo’s own preferences in choreography, light, and music. Reviews of her work describe her drive to innovate within traditional subject matter. Accoladed from Businessday South Africa to CNN here in the United States, Dada Masilo’s dance should be viewed as a glimpse into the very best of modern dance: an extraordinary occurrence for Granville, Ohio. We hope you’ll join the Vail Series for a departure from our usual fare to the privilege of seeing the decidedly unusual performance of Dada Masilo.

Student ticket distribution continues on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday — be sure to stop by Slayter 2nd Floor to pick up your ticket!
Faculty and staff distribution continues through campus mail.

The next Vail Series Concert features the Munich Symphony Orchestra, which according to press releases, performs with nothing less than “Apollonian excellence”. They open the performance with Verklärte Nacht, a Romantic work that contains the triple distinction of being an early example of programmatic music for chamber ensemble, based on a Romantic poem featuring an adulterous lover, and the unrecognized “inverted ninth chord” which lead to the piece’s rejection by the Vienna Music Society.

After the intermission, we will be listening to Mozart’s Requiem, which as those who have seen Amadeus know, is the intense choral work he died writing. Luckily we have performers to match the piece: Gloria Dei Cantores and our own Denison Chamber Singers will be doing the singing. With a program this dramatic, there is no excuse not to make it up the hill on what we hope to be a fine October evening.

We can say we knew her when: Yuja’s follows up her latest performance at Denison with her debut at Carnegie Hall.

At just 16 years old when we first met her, Yuja Wang already had the talent to attract the eye (and ear) of the Vail Series Director Lorraine Wales. But even Wales couldn’t have predicted the meteoric rise of this young star.

Since her first appearance on the stage at Swasey Chapel in 2004, Wang has gone on to perform with such luminaries as Pinchas Zukerman in her 2005 debut and many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony in the United States, and abroad with the Filarmonica della Scala, Gulbenkian Orchestra and London Philharmonic, to name just a few.

And now, fresh off her sixth performance with the Vail Series at Denison, Wang will debut at the grand old dame of concert venues, Carnegie Hall, tomorrow night.

We wish you well, Yuja. We know you’ll bring down the house!