The Alva deMars Megan Chapel Art Center at Saint Anselm College has commissioned works of music and poetry in conjunction with its ongoing Figural Presence art exhibition. Both works will be presented this month at the college’s Chapel Art gallery.
The premiere of internationally recognized composer Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee’s work, Sonata No. 5, will occur Thursday, Nov. 12, at 6 p.m. It is the culmination of the evening’s program called “Centuries of Sonata,” featuring representative piano sonatas of the classical through modern styles. Pianist George Lopez will perform.
On Thursday, Nov. 19, at 6 p.m., award winning poet F.D. Reeve will read for the first time his newly composed work, A Girl and Two Doves. Both events are free and open to the public.
As a first-generation Armenian-American, Goolkashian Rahbee creates music that is deep-rooted in her ethnic background. Her first spoken language, Armenian, and the folk music she grew up with are particularly influential in her own music. Her mother was a talented violinist and aided her daughter’s early love for music. Her father was a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. She has created a large body of pieces for piano solo, orchestra, instrumental ensembles, percussion, and voice. She performs internationally, and her work has been featured in the United States and abroad.
Franklin Reeve, a renowned writer, scholar and critic, has achieved honors for his fiction, poetry, and translations. His honors include the New England Poetry Society's Golden Rose award and an award in literature from the American Academy National Institute of Arts and Letters.
A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, he taught in the Slavic Department at Columbia University and then the Russian department at Wesleyan University. He retired as a Professor of Letters from Wesleyan, following 50 years of academic service. He is the father of the late actor Christopher Reeve.
A Figural Presence is an interdisciplinary exhibition that seeks to combine learning with the experience of beauty through the study of contemporary American figural works of art in painting, drawing, and sculpture. The exhibition, at the Chapel Art Center, runs through Nov. 25. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Thursday evenings until 8 p.m.
This program, including the exhibition and associated events and activities, is funded in part by a grand from the National Endowment for the Arts.