Music in Russian Modernist Culture Conference

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Leading American scholars of Russian music and culture and Northwestern University faculty will participate in a ground-breaking two-day interdisciplinary conference titled “Music in Russian Modernist Culture” on March 6 and 7.

The conference will explore the impact Russian musical tradition and innovation had on the development of national self-identity and on Russian cultural politics, from the late 19th through the first half of the 20th century. It is free and open to the public.

The conference will take place at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. It begins March 6 with a 1:30 p.m. reception and 2:30 p.m. opening remarks by University President Morton Schapiro. It concludes March 7 with a 4:15 p.m. panel discussion on Sergei Prokofiev’s satirical opera “The Love for Three Oranges.”

Sessions on music, theatre, dance, visual arts and literature will include “Shostakovich in America,” “Sergei Kusevitsky, Conductor and Creator of Musical Culture,” “The Role of Jazz in the Formation of Popular Music in Russia and the U.S.” and “Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes in the American Midwest.”

The event is organized by Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ Nina Gurianova, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures, and Northwestern alumnus and musicologist Samuel Dorf. Dorf is assistant professor at the University of Dayton’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The conference is co-sponsored by University President Morton Schapiro, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and the Harris Lecturer Fund.  

For event details and speakers, visit www.slavic.northwestern.edu/events/.