Come in costume and celebrate Carnival at the Urbana Free Library! Enjoy beautiful Brazilian music by the Elis Artz Quartet. Dance, make crafts and celebrate with your family at this all ages party!

The Busey-Mills reading room is located on the first floor of the library.
This event is free and open to the public.

Celebrate the cultures of India at this all ages special event featuring Subhalakshmi Kumar, an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer (a form of Indian classical dance). You can also sample foods and spices of India, enjoy hands-on art activities and see a display of Indian clothing and artifacts.

This program is a part of the Library's participation in a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Program focusing on the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Programs take place between January 27 and March 10, 2019. A full schedule can be found here:

https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/blog/p/the-nea-big/288

Part of the NEA Big Read Champaign-Urbana, a partnership among the Spurlock Museum, the International & Area Studies Library, the Urbana Free Library, the Champaign Public Library, and the Art Theater. The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Learn more about the program here:

https://go.illlinois.edu/TheNamesake

All events are free and open to the public.

Enjoy an afternoon of Indian classical music and dance with University of Illinois' talented Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Among Youth (SPICMACAY). This performance is part of the NEA Big Read Champaign-Urbana. See below for full schedule of events:

NEA Big Read 2019: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Events at Champaign Public Library:
• Feb 3, NEA Big Read: An Afternoon with Samrat Upadhyay, 3 pm
• Feb 14, NEA Big Read Book Club: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1:30 pm @ Douglass
• Feb 18, The History of Henna, 6:30 pm
• Feb 21, NEA Big Read Book Club: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, , 1:30 pm
• Feb 24, In Concert at CPL: Indian Classical Music and Dance, 2 pm
• Feb 28, NEA Big Read Battle of the Books, 6:30 pm

Part of the NEA Big Read Champaign-Urbana, a partnership among the Spurlock Museum, the International & Area Studies Library, the Urbana Free Library, the Champaign Public Library, and the Art Theater. The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Learn more about the program here:

https://go.illlinois.edu/TheNamesake

All events are free and open to the public.

Grammy Award-winner Arturo O’Farrill descends from the “first family of Afro-Cuban jazz” (The New York Times). Born in Mexico and raised in New York City—the son of legendary Cuban bandleader/ arranger Chico O’Farrill—the pianist/composer is Director of Jazz Studies at CUNY’s Brooklyn College and founder of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, an organization dedicated to preserving the music and heritage of Afro Latin jazz, supporting its performance for new audiences, and educating young people in the understanding and performance of this cultural treasure. O’Farrill honed his chops in Carla Bley’s Big Band and earned a reputation as a soloist in groups led by icons Dizzy Gillespie, Freddy Cole, Harry Belafonte, and Wynton Marsalis before taking the reins of his own group, passionately dedicated to both the heritage and progress of Afro Latin jazz.

As part of the center’s programming, the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music offers community members the opportunity to learn and play traditional Balinese Gamelan music under the direction of I Ketut Gede Asnawa, a master gamelan musician and composer at the University of Illinois. A gamelan is an orchestra consisting mainly of keyed metallophones, gongs, and drums, often functioning as accompaniment to dance, dramas, and other Balinese performance arts.

Our Monday evening classes run from 6pm to 8pm in Room 0300 at the School of Music, 1114 W. Nevada Street. Community gamelan is open to all, free of charge, with no prior experience required. No credit is offered. There is no need for registration, but participants who join the ensemble should understand that regular attendance is expected in order to enjoy making music in an orchestra dependent upon the contribution of every player. Community Gamelan members will be asked to perform at our end of semester concert on April 27th, 2019.

The Iranian Cultural Association (ICA) will be hosting a Yalda event this year at the Asian American Cultural Center on December 15th! Come celebrate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year with music, dance, and Hafez's poetry.

Program:

Music Performance:
Presentation on Yalda Night in Persian Poetry
Hafiz Khani accompanied by violin improvisation
traditional Iranian Dance performance
Fal e Hafiz

This event is sponsored in part by the Student Affairs Program Coordinating Council.

The Spurlock Museum presents a concert by Hathaways on Wednesday, December 5 at 4:00 pm. The group will perform an hour of traditional Andean charango music, as well as some original pieces that allow the audience to hear how the performers have blended musical traditions.

Hathaways are known for their depth in songwriting, but also for the unique Andean folk influence on their music, which is evidenced most clearly by Kate's use of a petite ten-string South American instrument called the charango. The pair has repeatedly toured and played at festivals in Peru, always to a warm reception and great acclaim for the way they infuse American pop music with Peruvian soul. Siblings Kate and James Hathaway, who head up the indie-pop band, have studied Andean music since 2006 under the tutelage of Thomas Turino, ethnomusicologist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.

The concert is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. This free event will be held in the Museum’s Ancient Mediterranean Gallery.

This event is part of a series of programming initiatives accompanying special exhibit "The Hidden Life of Things: Andean and Amazonian Cultural Artifacts and the Stories They Tell," on loan from The Ohio State University through December 16.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Musicology Colloquium 2018-19 continues its series of distinguished lectures. Ayana Smith (Indiana University) will give a talk entitled "Fake News and False Images: Ocularcentrism and Operatic Culture in Seventeenth-Century Rome."

About the lecture:

In November of 1680, a Great Comet streaked across the sky, simultaneously fascinating and frightening observers across Europe, North America, and other “divers places beyond the seas.” Contemporary accounts of this “prodigious appearance” reflect much superstition, but also demonstrate emerging cultural rifts in accepting visual methods of empirical inquiry.

While scientific publications discussed ocular devices and mathematical calculations, popular pamphlets focused on astrology, prognostication, and religion. Whatever the tool, both sides debated the nature of visual observation. Images, both literal and figurative, became mechanisms of proof yet subject to disbelief. Smith's presentation will discuss several case studies, drawn from art, science, and music, including examples from George Frideric Handel (Il Trionfo del Tempo; Agrippina; and Semele) and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo (La forza della virtù).