ALL LECTURES ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
SPRING 2015 LECTURES:
Donatienne Michel-Dansac
April 24, 2015, 3-4:30pm, Music Department Colloquium
Cal Performance/Eco Ensemble Concert: April 25, 2015, 8pm, Hertz Hall
http://music.berkeley.edu/?s=donatienne
Michel-Dansac has worked closely with composers at France’s IRCAM since 1993, and has premiered significant works by composers such as Philippe Manoury, Pascal Dusapin, Luca Francesconi, Georges Aperghis, Fausto Romitelli and Philippe Leroux.
Makhtar Diop
"Policymaking in Africa: Reflection from decades of experience."
March 31, 2015, 4:15-6pm, Great Hall, Faculty Club
http://cega.berkeley.edu/events/makhtar-diop-regents-lecturer/
Makhtar Diop has served as the World Bank's Vice President for Africa since May 2012. Under his leadership, the World Bank Group committed a record-breaking $15.3 billion to Sub- Saharan Africa in FY2014 to help tackle development challenges such as food security and agricultural productivity; access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy; economic opportunities for the continent’s growing “youth bulge”; and responding quickly and effectively to emergency situations such as the recent Ebola epidemic. A champion for higher education, particularly in science and technology, Makhtar Diop has been instrumental in mobilizing support for 19 university-based centers of excellence, which will equip young Africans with the skills needed to sustain Africa’s decade of economic growth. A passionate advocate for Africa’s right to clean and affordable sources of electricity, he has called for a green energy revolution to power African homes and businesses, as well as greater investment to exploit Africa’s vast resources in solar, wind, hydro and geothermal. As Africa bears the brunt of the impacts of climate change, Diop also advocates increased focus on climate-smart agriculture. In 2014, Jeune Afrique named him "one of the 50 most influential Africans."
For more than 15 years, Mr. Diop has held a variety of senior positions through which he has helped to shape the debate on development economics. He served as World Bank Country Director for Brazil, based in Brasilia, between January 2009 and April 2012; he previously held the positions of Director of Strategy and Operations, and Sector Director for Finance, Private Sector and Infrastructure, both in the Latin America and Caribbean Region. Between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Diop was the Bank’s Country Director for Kenya, Eritrea, and Somalia, based in Nairobi.
Before joining the World Bank, Mr. Diop worked at the International Monetary Fund, focusing on the Central African Republic. He also served as Minister of Economy and Finance of Senegal. Makhtar Diop is married and has two sons. He’s fluent in four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Wolof. Follow him on Twitter: @Diop_WB
Barney Frank
"Reducing the Military Budget: Necessary to Improve Our Quality of Life"
March 11, 2015, International House, Chevron Auditorium
5:30 pm Reception with Refreshments
6:00 pm Presentation and Q&A
Hosted by the Goldman School of Public Policy
Please RSVP here.
First elected to Congress in 1980,Barney Frank represented Massachusetts’s 4th District for 32 years. He is known as a superb legislator and a pragmatic politician whose sharp intellect and sense of humor has made him one of the most influential and colorful figures in Washington.
While in Congress, Frank worked to adjust America’s spending priorities to reduce the deficit, provide less funding for the military and more for important quality of life needs at home. As chair of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011, Frank was instrumental in crafting a compromise bill to stem the tide of home mortgage foreclosures, as well as the subsequent $550 billion rescue plan. He worked to adopt sweeping financial regulations to prevent a recurrence of this crisis and was a key author of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
In 1987, Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as openly gay, and in 2012 he married his longtime partner, becoming the nation’s first congressman in a same-sex marriage while in office.
Frank is currently a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Zakir Hussain
"Zakir Talks. Zakir Plays."
March 5, 2015, 6:00-8:00 pm, Wheeler Auditorium
Moderator: Janaki Bakhle, Associate Professor of History
Sponsors: Institute for South Asia Studies, Department of Music, Department of History
Tabla player Zakir Hussain is one of the foremost percussionists of the contemporary world, not only of Indian classical music but also of jazz and world music. As a player and composer he is a brilliant example of border crossing music. Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, he has historic collaborations to his name, including Shakti, which he founded with John McLaughlin and L. Shankar, the Diga Rhythm Band, Making Music, Planet Drum with Mickey Hart, and recordings and performances with artists as diverse as Joshua Redman, George Harrison, Joe Henderson, Van Morrison, Jack Bruce, Tito Puente, Pharoah Sanders, Billy Cobham, the Hong Kong Symphony and the New Orleans Symphony. He has been hailed by media as a virtuoso, a superstar and an encyclopedia of tabla.
The Regents' Lecture will include a tabla performance by the maestro and a conversation on his life, career, and the global fusion of Indian music with UC Berkeley historian, Janaki Bakhle.
In addition to delivering the Regents' Lecture, Zakir Hussain will also engage in two other public events:
Tuesday, March 10 @ 5 pm: The Changing Role of the Tabla Player in Hindustani Classical Music: Zakir Hussain in Conversation with Bonnie Wade
Wednesday, March 11 @ 7 pm: Masterclass with Zakir Hussain
FALL 2014 LECTURES:
Rick Lowe
"Social and Community Engaged Work: The Genuine and the Artificial "
November 17, 2014, 7:30-9:00pm, The David Brower Center
hosted by the Arts Research Center as part of the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
The Arts Research Center is delighted to be hosting acclaimed artist and community organizer Rick Lowe as he presents the 2014 Regents Lecture “Social and Community Engaged Work: The Genuine and the Artificial” onMonday, November 17. Lowe’s Project Row Houses, founded two decades ago, has created a blueprint for using urban renewal practices within an artistic context to enrich lives. Located in Houston’s Northern Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods, Lowe’s Project Row Houses was founded with 22 houses on a block-and-a-half and today occupies six blocks that are home to 40 properties, including exhibition and residency spaces for artists, office spaces, a community gallery, a park, low-income residential and commercial spaces, and houses in which young mothers can live for a year and receive support as they work to finish school and get their bearings.
By committing to what has been called a “politics of staying,” Lowe has been able to develop Project Row Houses into a wide ranging social service center, a center for ideas, and an influential artist residency program. The organization has developed over the past twenty years to become a site of experimentation for new economic models in sustaining social and artistic communities, particularly within the community of socially-engaged art. Lowe has been honored with the Rudy Bruner Award in Urban Excellence; the AIA Keystone Award; the Heinz Award in the arts and humanities; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Governors Award; Loeb Fellow at Harvard University; Skandalaris Award for Excellence in Art Architecture; USA Booth Fellowship; and the Creative Time Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change.
Luis Valdez
"The Power of Zero"
November 18, 2014, 5p.m., Zellerbach Playhouse
hosted by the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
Luis Valdez is an award-winning playwright, theater and film artist and founding director of El Teatro Campesino. Valdez earned an Obie, the Presidential Medal of the Arts, and the Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca, the highest decoration granted by the Mexican government to foreign nationals.
Luis Valdez presents “The Power of Zero”, a talk to honor the 50th anniversary celebrations of the work of Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. El Teatro Campesino catalyzed the Chicano Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s, and has continued to inspire generations of artists dedicated to political and social change. Initially using theater to raise consciousness among farm workers during the Delano grape strike of 1965, the Teatro created improvisational works called actos, or short theatrical plays that were performed on the picket lines, at rallies and at organizing events to support the farmworker’s movement. The actos brought attention to the exploitation of workers in the fields to expose the corruption of the agricultural industry and law enforcement in a theater imbued with humor and creativity. The ensemble continued through dozens of original staged productions around urban youth and the working class, trainings and the development of a methodology based on a Mexican world-view known as Theater of the Sphere. Winner of numerous awards, Valdez’s most recent production of Valley of the Heart (2013) drew audiences from across the country to the El Teatro Campesino home in San Juan Bautista, California. Other current work by Valdez continues activism on the issue of climate change and global warming.