Journey into jazz

The Cornell Symphony Orchestra and Cornell Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Chris Younghoon Kim, begin the 2017-18 season with a joint concert Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. in Bailey Hall, with special guests President Martha E. Pollack and soloist Alex Shuhan. The concert is free and open to the public and will be live streamed on CornellCast.

Pollack will narrate Gunther Schuller’s “Journey into Jazz,” featuring the chamber orchestra, members of the Cornell University Jazz Band directed by Paul Merrill, and faculty soloist James Spinazzola. Shuhan is featured on James Stephenson’s “Sounds Awakened” concerto for French horn and orchestra.

The chamber orchestra will perform Grazyna Bacewicz’ “Concerto for Strings” and the symphony orchestra will play the first movements of two more works: Duke Ellington’s “Black, Brown, and Beige” Suite; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (to be performed in its entirety over the concert season).

In preparation for a residency by A.D. White Professor-at-Large Wynton Marsalis in March, the Cornell Orchestras and Jazz Ensembles will be exploring orchestral music and jazz throughout the 2017-18 season.

Cider insiders

Cornell Orchards holds its Apple Spectacular Sunday, Oct. 1 from 1 to 5 p.m. at 709 Dryden Road, Ithaca. The family-friendly celebration is free and open to the public and is part of Finger Lakes Cider Week events from Sept. 29 to Oct. 8.

The event features the Cornell Orchards Store, Cornell Catering and the Cornell Hard Cider Program Work Team celebrating all things apples and cider. Cornell is a leader in hard cider research and outreach, and offers an undergraduate course on hard cider production.

A wide selection of specialized cider-apple varieties will be available for tasting and visitors can create their own cider blends using freshly pressed apple juice. The Peck Lab will lead walking tours of high-density cider apple research orchards at 1 and 3 p.m. Visitors can also sample hard cider from local producers with food pairings, and purchase apples and sweet cider from Cornell’s research farms.

Service and ‘Salvation’

Cornell Cinema hosts a free screening of the documentary “Six Months to Salvation,” introduced by student filmmaker Lorenzo Benitez ’19, Oct. 2 at 5 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.

Benitez, a philosophy and economics major, participated in a service trip to rural Thailand in which he and six other volunteer teachers from Australia taught English to tribal children. The film was a collective effort and reflects on cultural differences, sense of purpose and other challenges the volunteers faced – including realizing the colonial implications of their work and “voluntourism.”

Benitez discusses the project in an interview airing Sept. 29 at 3:30 p.m. on WVBR-FM 93.5, www.wvbr.com.

Also showing: Bertrand Tavernier’s “My Journey Through French Cinema” (2017), Oct. 1 at 3:30 p.m. ($5.50 for all) and Oct. 3 at 6:45 p.m. The veteran director’s knowledge and cinephilia extend to working for both Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Melville – whose films comprise a Cornell Cinema series this semester, “Criminally Cool.” (Tavernier claims he was a “lousy assistant” to Melville.)

Godard’s 3-D “cinematic brain teaser,” “Goodbye to Language,” screens Oct. 4 and 6 at 7 p.m., introduced Oct. 4 by Ithaca College cinema studies professor Andrew Utterson, a Cornell Institute for European Studies visiting fellow.

Kristof on child welfare

Journalist and social justice activist Nicholas Kristof will give a public lecture on campus, “A Path Appears: Promoting the Welfare of Children,” Oct. 2 at 5 p.m. in Call Auditorium, Kennedy Hall. Admission is free.

He will speak about public health and poverty with a focus on children, and his work in promoting gender equality internationally. Kristof is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New York Times whose reporting has advocated for human rights and documented the living conditions of people around the world.

His talk is the Bronfenbrenner Centennial Lecture, which honors the 100th anniversary of the birth of developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, who taught at Cornell for more than 50 years and has been called the father of translational research.

Law and technology talks

Solon Barocas, assistant professor of information science, presents “Regulation by Explanation,” Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. in G01 Gates Hall as part of the Tech/Law Colloquium series.

The colloquium explores new developments at the intersection of law and information science. All talks in the series are being live streamed and archived.

Upcoming speakers and topics include James Grimmelmann, professor of law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School, on “The Structure and Interpretation of Legal Programs,” Oct. 24; Fred Schneider, professor of computer science, on “A Doctrine of Public Cybersecurity,” Oct. 31; and Ifeoma Ajunwa, assistant professor of industrial and labor relations and associate law faculty member, on “Hiring by Algorithm,” Nov. 7 in 184 Myron Taylor Hall.

Syria and economic impacts

Banker Raed H. Charafeddine delivers a public lecture on “The Macro- and Socioeconomic Impact of the Syrian Crisis on Lebanon,” Oct. 4 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall. The talk is organized by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and cosponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Charafeddine is first vice-governor at Banque du Liban, Lebanon’s central bank, and an activist for social justice, women’s empowerment, interfaith dialogue and institutional, human and economic development. He has lectured internationally at universities on topics related to central banking and Arab countries in transition. He has a master’s and a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

MFA reading series

The Fall 2017 First Year MFA Reading Series, featuring new writers in Cornell’s Creative Writing Program, begins Oct. 5 with a reading by Sasha Smith and Remy Barnes from 6 to 7 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books. It is free and open to the public.

Smith is a poet, Bronx native and cofounder of the community arts organization Bronx Blaqlist. She has a bachelor’s degree in literature from New York University’s School of Professional Studies and is a graduate of CUNY’s Bronx Community College. A 2016-17 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow of the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Project, her writing has been published in Poet’s Country No. 1 (2017), the NYU literary journal Dovetail and the Literary and Arts Journal at CUNY.

Barnes’ work lives in the shadow of the American South. He hails from Tallahassee, Florida, and has a bachelor’s from the University of Texas at Austin. Currently at work on a novel, Barnes’ short fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly (2016), the Austin Chronicle (2015), Five Quarterly (2014) and Whiskeypaper (“I Think I Have the Wrong House” in 2017 and “The Teeth of Whatever Waits,” a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee). Two stories are forthcoming in Redivider and The Southampton Review.

Buffalo Street Books hosts MFA fiction writers and poets reading from their work at three more events this semester: Oct. 20 and 26 and Nov. 10.