Creativity in the Arts

Restoration of Rockefeller Organ and Carillon Completed

A June gala concert in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel introduced the newly restored Ernest M. Skinner pipe organ, Chicago’s largest organ, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon, the world’s second-largest carillon. It marked the completion of an odyssey taking three years, more than $3 million, and the efforts of specialists from the Netherlands and Orrville, Ohio. The concert included works for organ and choir commissioned from composers William Bolcom and Marta Ptaszynska, the Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor in Music.

Grammys Honor Resident Ensemble

The Department of Music artist-in-residence ensemble eighth blackbird received two honors at the 50th Grammy Awards. The contemporary classical sextet’s fourth release, strange imaginary animals, won for Best Chamber Music Performance. The recording’s producer, Judith Sherman, was named Best Producer of the Year, Classical. The winning disc includes “Friction Systems,” a work by composition doctoral student David M. Gordon. While a student at Chicago, Gordon has also written works for resident ensembles Pacifica Quartet and Contempo.

Visual Art Faculty on PBS

The fourth season of PBS’s award-winning series Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century featured two faculty members in the Department of Visual Arts, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle and Catherine Sullivan. Professor Manglano-Ovalle’s video installations and sculptures were described as “metaphors for understanding difficult social issues from immigration and gun violence to human cloning.” The films and live performances of Assistant Professor Catherine Sullivan question “the border between innate and learned behavior.”