Concert for the Animals

Violins, piano music, panting and purrs will fill the air at the 2018 DeeDee Arrison Concert for the Animals, Oct. 6 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in Lecture Halls 4 and 5 at the College of Veterinary Medicine, 606 Tower Road. The free concert coincides with the 2018 Fall New York State Veterinary Conference Oct. 5-7.

The concert features violinists and members of the Stradivari Society, Tim Fain and Francisco Fullana, accompanied by Grammy-nominated pianist Robert Koenig. The performance honors animals, and well-socialized pets are welcome to attend with their owners.

The annual concert was established in 2009 by Clement and Karen Arrison, who provide some of the rare violins played at the event. It is named for their beloved dog, a Briard who was treated for bone cancer in her jaw at Cornell’s small animal hospital. A team of integrative practitioners treated DeeDee’s pain with traditional and holistic approaches as alternatives to medications and chemotherapy.

DeeDee lived for 11 months and did not waste away; she responded to her care including a raw food diet, acupuncture and music the Arrisons left for her at the hospital. Vet students learned that dogs coming out of radiation therapy woke up better with music playing; DeeDee herself favored violin adagios. Her experience also inspired a holistic and integrative wellness seminar series at Cornell’s Veterinary Education Center.

President’s Address to Staff

Cornell President Martha E. Pollack’s annual address to staff is Tuesday, Oct. 9 at noon in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall.

Lunch will be provided, and the president’s remarks will be followed by a Q&A session. Staff may submit questions in advance online.

The event will be livestreamed with captions and recorded for later viewing on CornellCast. For staff members at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, the livestream will be shown in Jordan Hall Auditorium. For accommodations to participate in the event, contact the Office of the Assemblies at 607-255-3715.

Human survival: A science competition

Science Cabaret presents a competition between four teams of scientists discussing creative ways to address some of the biggest agriculture and technology challenges of our time, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 7 to 8:30 p.m. at The Cherry Artspace, 102 Cherry St., Ithaca. Admission is free. Audience members will help determine the winner.

“Can We Survive on Planet Earth?” features scientists from the fields of agriculture and environmental engineering, food science and energy systems, plant science, chemical engineering, biological chemistry, materials science and systems engineering.

The program is part of a collaboration between Cornell and Tokyo University of Ag & Tech, with sponsorship from the National Science Foundation.

Kuhlman Scholars exhibition

“Fear and Freedom,” the 13th annual Barbara L. Kuhlman Scholars’ Fiber Arts and Wearable Arts Group Exhibition, is on display through Oct. 16 in the Jill Stuart Gallery in the Human Ecology Building.

The exhibition showcases innovative fiber arts and wearable artworks created by the seven Fiber Science & Apparel Design students who were awarded the Kuhlman scholarship in December 2017.

Alice McDermott reading

Pulitzer Prize-nominated novelist Alice McDermott is the featured writer in the Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading, Oct. 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall.

The event is part of the Fall 2018 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series sponsored by the Department of English and Creative Writing Program.

The reading is free and open to the public. A free catered reception and book signing will follow in the English Department Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. The author’s books will be available for purchase courtesy of Buffalo Street Books.

McDermott’s eighth novel, “The Ninth Hour,” was a finalist for the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and (like her seventh, “Someone”) the National Book Critics Circle Award. Three of her previous novels – “After This,” “At Weddings and Wakes” and “That Night” – were Pulitzer Prize finalists, and “Charming Billy” won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.

Eamon McEneaney ’77, who played on the two-time NCAA Championship-winning Big Red lacrosse team, died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Miniatures honor Stucky

The Department of Music presents pianist Gloria Cheng performing “Garlands for Steven Stucky,” Friday, Oct. 12, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium. Cheng is releasing a CD of the new project at the event, which is part of a recital tour. She gives a presentation on the project Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Both programs are free and open to the public.

“Garlands” features 32 miniatures written in honor of the late Cornell composition professor by several distinguished friends and former students. The collection “embodies the boundless esteem that Stucky continues to inspire from all who knew him,” the program notes state. The Given Foundation Professor of Composition Emeritus, Stucky, D.M.A. ’78, was on the faculty from 1980 to 2014. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2005 and died on Valentine’s Day 2016.

Contributors include pianist, composer and Latin Grammy winner Gabriela Lena Frank; Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen; and Cornell alumni composers Julia Adolphe, Louis Chiappetta, Jesse Jones, David Lefkowitz, Fang Man, James Matheson, Eric Nathan, Joseph Phibbs, Kay Rhie, Christopher Rouse, Michael Small, Stephen Andrew Taylor and Andrew Waggoner.

Cheng has dedicated much of her performing and recording career to exploring connections and collaborations with contemporary composers. A faculty member at the Herb Alpert School of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles, she is a frequent guest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Her 2008 album “Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky and Lutoslawski” featured Stucky’s “Four Album Leaves” and “Three Little Variations for David” and won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance.

Revolution remembered

Brazilian director João Moreira Salles’ “In the Intense Now,” a personal essay on the political upheavals of the 1960s, screens Oct. 10 at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre, co-sponsored with the Department of History and the Society for the Humanities.

Presented as part of Cornell Cinema’s “The 1968 Era Revisited” series and Ithaca’s Cine con Cultura Film Festival, the 2018 film combines images from the era with voice-over narration, and features footage of the military coup in Brazil, China’s Cultural Revolution, student uprisings in Paris and the end of the Prague Spring.

Also playing: “McQueen,” a 2018 portrait of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, Oct. 11 and 13, co-sponsored with the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design; and “Experimental Minute Films by Alexander Kluge” (2018), a free screening Oct. 11 at 7:15 p.m., with a discussion facilitated by Erik Born, visiting assistant professor German studies. The program is part of “Alexander Kluge: New Perspectives on Creative Arts and Critical Practice,” an international conference at Cornell Oct. 11-13.