Arts & Culture
Bach ’n’ Roll
Stephanie Jutt proves classical can be cool.
Chamber music isn’t just for grandma anymore, thanks to UW music professor Stephanie Jutt. She founded an organization that hosts an annual Madison summer music festival to take some of the stuffiness out of sonatas.
A classically trained flutist, Jutt was inspired by a rocking house party in Half Moon Bay, California, where revelers blasted music and shot fireworks on the beach till dawn. But this was no ordinary gathering — what screamed from the stereo was Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.
“The next morning, the owner went out to check the mail, and someone had painted ‘Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society’ on his mailbox for a joke,” recalls Jutt. “The name stuck, and the rest is history!”
In 1992, Jutt teamed with Jeffrey Sykes MMusic’89, DMA’00 to bring the society to Madison. In the beginning, money was tight. The two musicians recruited a few friends to perform with them, and the Madison Civic Center donated space for two free concerts. Jutt and Sykes put an empty cello case near the exit, pleading with the two hundred concertgoers for spare change. That night, they were astonished to see the cello case brimming with more than $1,500 — funding that launched the society and made their dream of infusing fun into chamber music a reality.
Chamber music isn’t just for grandma anymore, thanks to UW music professor Stephanie Jutt. She founded an organization that hosts an annual Madison summer music festival to take some of the stuffiness out of sonatas.
A classically trained flutist, Jutt was inspired by a rocking house party in Half Moon Bay, California, where revelers blasted music and shot fireworks on the beach till dawn. But this was no ordinary gathering — what screamed from the stereo was Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.
“The next morning, the owner went out to check the mail, and someone had painted ‘Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society’ on his mailbox for a joke,” recalls Jutt. “The name stuck, and the rest is history!”
In 1992, Jutt teamed with Jeffrey Sykes MMusic’89, DMA’00 to bring the society to Madison. In the beginning, money was tight. The two musicians recruited a few friends to perform with them, and the Madison Civic Center donated space for two free concerts. Jutt and Sykes put an empty cello case near the exit, pleading with the two hundred concertgoers for spare change. That night, they were astonished to see the cello case brimming with more than $1,500 — funding that launched the society and made their dream of infusing fun into chamber music a reality.
“We try to keep all of our programming very fresh and accessible to the public,” says Jutt. “We don’t ever dumb it down — in fact, a lot of it is challenging repertoire for the listeners as well as the musicians.”
Today, the society is a non-profit organization with a loyal following. It hosts world-class musicians for three weeks of public performances each summer and brings the joy of the music to Madison-area senior centers, high schools, and civic groups via free concerts throughout the year. Listeners are treated to more than Bach and Brahms — the society plays modern pieces, too, and their stage is adorned with art installations that enhance the mood. Although artistic directors Jutt and Sykes are part of every performance, the rest of the ensemble comes and goes depending on the show. But if there’s one thing that never changes, it’s the spirit of spontaneity and a love of music.
“As musicians, we were hungry for an opportunity to learn and perform repertoire that we aren’t able to do during the regular season,” Jutt says. “It’s such an intimate experience compared with our regular work in orchestras and other ensembles.”
— Erin Hueffner ’00
Today, the society is a non-profit organization with a loyal following. It hosts world-class musicians for three weeks of public performances each summer and brings the joy of the music to Madison-area senior centers, high schools, and civic groups via free concerts throughout the year. Listeners are treated to more than Bach and Brahms — the society plays modern pieces, too, and their stage is adorned with art installations that enhance the mood. Although artistic directors Jutt and Sykes are part of every performance, the rest of the ensemble comes and goes depending on the show. But if there’s one thing that never changes, it’s the spirit of spontaneity and a love of music.
“As musicians, we were hungry for an opportunity to learn and perform repertoire that we aren’t able to do during the regular season,” Jutt says. “It’s such an intimate experience compared with our regular work in orchestras and other ensembles.”
— Erin Hueffner ’00
COLLECTION - Kids’ Corner
With well over a million titles, the UW Libraries boast a broad diversity in their collections. But none of them has shelves that look quite as diverse as those of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center’s Current Collection. With its hundreds of pop-ups, pull-outs, board books, and picture books, the Current Collection offers a thorough survey of the ways in which publishers are trying to grab the short attention spans of today’s youth.
The Current Collection contains a copy of every children’s book published in the last eighteen months, giving it about five thousand titles at any given time. “What makes it unique,” says Kathleen Horning of the CCBC, “is that it’s completely undiscriminating. When you look at our collection, you don’t see someone’s idea of what’s good in current children’s books. You see them all. This helps us accurately follow trends in publishing.”
What are those trends? According to Horning, the book world is trying to capitalize on big sellers. “Because of the popularity of the Harry Potter books and the Series of Unfortunate Events books, we’re seeing a lot of fantasy and humor right now,” she says. “And there are a lot of gimmicky books, ones that look like toys. The number of standard picture books has really dropped off.”
The Current Collection contains a copy of every children’s book published in the last eighteen months, giving it about five thousand titles at any given time. “What makes it unique,” says Kathleen Horning of the CCBC, “is that it’s completely undiscriminating. When you look at our collection, you don’t see someone’s idea of what’s good in current children’s books. You see them all. This helps us accurately follow trends in publishing.”
What are those trends? According to Horning, the book world is trying to capitalize on big sellers. “Because of the popularity of the Harry Potter books and the Series of Unfortunate Events books, we’re seeing a lot of fantasy and humor right now,” she says. “And there are a lot of gimmicky books, ones that look like toys. The number of standard picture books has really dropped off.”
The undiscriminating taste of the collection may be good for research, but it means that few of the items have much lasting quality. Only about 15 percent of the holdings make it into the library’s permanent collection.
Part of the School of Education, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center works to support teaching, learning, and research related to children’s literature. Its Current Collection is located in 4290 Helen C. White, and it’s noncirculating. But it’s open to the public from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, and 12:30 to 4:00 p.m. on weekends.
— John Allen
Part of the School of Education, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center works to support teaching, learning, and research related to children’s literature. Its Current Collection is located in 4290 Helen C. White, and it’s noncirculating. But it’s open to the public from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, and 12:30 to 4:00 p.m. on weekends.
— John Allen
Selling Cervantes
Center for the Humanities aims to spread the word on Don Quixote.
Few campus institutions are as quixotic as the Center for the Humanities, the interdisciplinary organization devoted to engaging staff, students, and the public in the intersections among literature, history, and culture.
“It’s very easy to justify science,” says Susanne Wofford, the center’s director and a UW English professor. “If you’re trying to cure cancer, it’s easy to get attention. Getting exposure is harder for the humanities.”
Then again, without the humanities, and their focus on language and literature, few people on campus could readily define the term quixotic. That will change, however, if the center has its way.
This year, the center marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote de la Mancha with a year-long, statewide initiative that links five campus departments, ten classes, and nearly twenty high schools and colleges. The initiative aims to spark deeper study of the work and its influence on Western culture.
“The Quixote is one of those books that everyone knows about, but very few read anymore,” says Wofford. “It’s one of the most important texts in our culture, yet it’s understudied at the collegiate and high school level.”
Few campus institutions are as quixotic as the Center for the Humanities, the interdisciplinary organization devoted to engaging staff, students, and the public in the intersections among literature, history, and culture.
“It’s very easy to justify science,” says Susanne Wofford, the center’s director and a UW English professor. “If you’re trying to cure cancer, it’s easy to get attention. Getting exposure is harder for the humanities.”
Then again, without the humanities, and their focus on language and literature, few people on campus could readily define the term quixotic. That will change, however, if the center has its way.
This year, the center marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote de la Mancha with a year-long, statewide initiative that links five campus departments, ten classes, and nearly twenty high schools and colleges. The initiative aims to spark deeper study of the work and its influence on Western culture.
“The Quixote is one of those books that everyone knows about, but very few read anymore,” says Wofford. “It’s one of the most important texts in our culture, yet it’s understudied at the collegiate and high school level.”
Written in the early seventeenth century by Miguel de Cervantes, the book tells the story of a self-proclaimed, self-deluded knight, Don Quixote, and his squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel around Spain attempting to right wrongs and protect the oppressed. Considered by many to be the world’s first novel and the greatest work of Spanish literature, the book has left its mark through such terms as quixotic, meaning idealistic and impractical, and tilting at windmills, fighting out of delusion. Its inspiration stretches to modern American culture and can be found in everything from a Broadway musical (Man of La Mancha) to a Hanna-Barbera cartoon (Don Coyote and Sancho Panda).
The Center for the Humanities program is coordinated with Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction and includesa teacher colloquium, lectures, curricular resources, and a student conference next spring. At both the high school and collegiate level, it will work to involve teachers of literature, social studies, Spanish, and even environmental studies (with a nod to Quixote’s penchant for windmills).
Among those taking part is Maria Coy, who teaches Spanish at Sun Prairie High School in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and who attended with her colleagues, humanities teachers Betsy Butler and Val Schroetter. The Quixote, she says, “is such an important work, but right now we don’t teach very much Cervantes. We want to find more ways to fit him into our curriculum.”
The Center for the Humanities program is coordinated with Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction and includesa teacher colloquium, lectures, curricular resources, and a student conference next spring. At both the high school and collegiate level, it will work to involve teachers of literature, social studies, Spanish, and even environmental studies (with a nod to Quixote’s penchant for windmills).
Among those taking part is Maria Coy, who teaches Spanish at Sun Prairie High School in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and who attended with her colleagues, humanities teachers Betsy Butler and Val Schroetter. The Quixote, she says, “is such an important work, but right now we don’t teach very much Cervantes. We want to find more ways to fit him into our curriculum.”
Wofford hopes that the Don Quixote program will be the first of many similar efforts, with the center sponsoring a different great-but-understudied literary or historical work each year. Forging an ongoing connection between high school and college teachers is one of her biggest goals.
“Our country would be better if there wasn’t such a big gap between secondary and higher education,” she says. “I want this program to build more ties between us and high school teachers. They don’t make the biggest salaries or get the most credit, but they’re devoted to their subjects and to helping people learn. Building those ties is what our center is all about.”
— John Allen
“Our country would be better if there wasn’t such a big gap between secondary and higher education,” she says. “I want this program to build more ties between us and high school teachers. They don’t make the biggest salaries or get the most credit, but they’re devoted to their subjects and to helping people learn. Building those ties is what our center is all about.”
— John Allen
The Original Reality Show
A new Up documentary puts a professor in the spotlight — again.
Nicholas Hitchon has all the accolades of a quietly distinguished academic career: an armful of awards, a cadre of devoted students, and a shelf of publications that includes the 1999 book Plasma Processes for Semiconductor Fabrication. But to millions, he’s known not as Professor Hitchon, the materials science expert, but as Nick, the gap-toothed boy from Yorkshire who grew up before our eyes.
That’s the image of Hitchon familiar to fans of the Up films, a series of British documentaries that has followed the lives of fourteen Englanders since they were seven years old. Beginning with Seven Up, a 1964 television program intended as a one-time look at “the shop-steward and the executive of the year 2000,” filmmakers have interviewed the original subjects every seven years through five decades, making it one of the longest-running documentary projects in television history. Forty-Nine Up, the series’ seventh film, featuring a now-middle-aged cast, aired on British television in September and is slated to debut in the United States later this year.
For Hitchon, that means reprising a role that has brought more fame — and more grief — than he ever cared to have.
Nicholas Hitchon has all the accolades of a quietly distinguished academic career: an armful of awards, a cadre of devoted students, and a shelf of publications that includes the 1999 book Plasma Processes for Semiconductor Fabrication. But to millions, he’s known not as Professor Hitchon, the materials science expert, but as Nick, the gap-toothed boy from Yorkshire who grew up before our eyes.
That’s the image of Hitchon familiar to fans of the Up films, a series of British documentaries that has followed the lives of fourteen Englanders since they were seven years old. Beginning with Seven Up, a 1964 television program intended as a one-time look at “the shop-steward and the executive of the year 2000,” filmmakers have interviewed the original subjects every seven years through five decades, making it one of the longest-running documentary projects in television history. Forty-Nine Up, the series’ seventh film, featuring a now-middle-aged cast, aired on British television in September and is slated to debut in the United States later this year.
For Hitchon, that means reprising a role that has brought more fame — and more grief — than he ever cared to have.
“The film is a very weird experience, because you’re going on doing your ordinary thing, and then suddenly, for seven days every seven years, these people descend on you,” says Hitchon, who joined the engineering faculty in 1982. “You’re asked to talk about these very personal things, and you’re thinking, ‘Millions of people are going to see this all around the world.’ Honestly, I can’t stand to look at them.”
Those who do will see Hitchon’s life unfold in stunning time-lapse photography. The series meets him as a boy, trodding about his parents’ sheep farm in muddy boots and wanting to “find out about the moon and all that.” Within minutes, he’s off to study physics at Oxford, leaving England for a job at UW-Madison, married, raising a son, divorced, and casting doubts about what he’s accomplished in his career. Such an extraordinary perspective on ordinary life has made the Up films favorites among sociologists and film critics alike. Roger Ebert has called them “an inspired, almost noble use of the film medium” that “penetrates to the central mystery of life.”
Those who do will see Hitchon’s life unfold in stunning time-lapse photography. The series meets him as a boy, trodding about his parents’ sheep farm in muddy boots and wanting to “find out about the moon and all that.” Within minutes, he’s off to study physics at Oxford, leaving England for a job at UW-Madison, married, raising a son, divorced, and casting doubts about what he’s accomplished in his career. Such an extraordinary perspective on ordinary life has made the Up films favorites among sociologists and film critics alike. Roger Ebert has called them “an inspired, almost noble use of the film medium” that “penetrates to the central mystery of life.”
Hitchon largely agrees, which is why he continues to put up with the septennial invasion of his life. “We don’t normally see people at these intervals, and so we don’t often get to see the trends in ourselves,” he says. “But if you see someone filmed like this, you can see the consequences of their choices. It’s a perspective on the human condition that I don’t think we generally have.”
And in the professor’s case, it seems true enough that traces of his adult self were visible in that Yorkshire boy who dreamed of the moon — although that’s not exactly what Hitchon sees in the old footage. “I can’t believe I actually looked like that,” he says.
— Michael Penn
And in the professor’s case, it seems true enough that traces of his adult self were visible in that Yorkshire boy who dreamed of the moon — although that’s not exactly what Hitchon sees in the old footage. “I can’t believe I actually looked like that,” he says.
— Michael Penn
Math Verse
Physics professor Clint Sprott PhD’69 and emerita professor of communicative disorders Robin Chapman mix science and poetry in their new collaboration, Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos, a coffee-table book that mixes Chapman’s poetry with Sprott’s full-color, computer-generated fractal art. Fractals are geometric objects that are irregular on all scales of length. They’re illustrated in such natural objects as snowflakes, clouds, and broccoli — or, like the one here, they can be generated on a computer.
