Music for St. Francis

The Rose Ensemble opens the 2011-12 Cornell Concert Series Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. in Sage Chapel with the concert program "Il Poverello," featuring hymns, motets, early Italian spiritual songs and readings honoring St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is Oct. 4.

The acclaimed early music group connects listeners to past worlds with stories of spirituality and humanity, performing rarely heard repertoire in choral settings and on historic instruments. The concert features hurdy-gurdy and other piquant instrumental touches, and guest artist Isacco Colombo on medieval Italian bagpipes, shawm, fife and tabor.

Single tickets (general admission) are $25, $12 for students. The Cornell discount rate with netID is $23 faculty/staff, $10 students. To order: 607-273-4497, http://www.cornellconcertseries.com or http://www.baileytickets.com, or visit Ticket Center Ithaca, 171 The Commons.

Cornell Concert Series' 109th season features 10 performances. Upcoming: The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble, Oct. 4, and modern jazz with Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman, Oct. 16; both in Bailey Hall. Subscriptions and season ticket packages are available through Sept. 24.

Flamenco Vivo

The Department of Theatre, Film and Dance will bring the Flamenco Vivo dance company to Cornell for workshops and a performance Sept. 26-27 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

A multidisciplinary workshop on dance and music, open to the campus and community through Spanish language, Latin American studies and dance classes, will be held 4:50-6:20 p.m. Sept. 26 in the Schwartz Center's Kiplinger Theatre. No advance registration is required, but participants should wear shoes suitable for dancing (e.g., hard soled shoes, jazz shoes or sneakers). The company will also lead workshops for students at Boynton Middle School.

The Sept. 27 performance, at 7:30 p. m. in Kiplinger Theatre, will feature traditional dance, original choreography and live music, with a small ensemble of dancers and musicians, and informal staging. Tickets are $15, at the Schwartz Center box office 12:30-4 p.m. weekdays; by calling 607-254-ARTS; or online at http://www.schwartztickets.com.

Founded in 1983, Flamenco Vivo promotes flamenco as a living art form as part of Hispanic heritage. The company conducts an intensive arts education program, Project Olé, reaching thousands of school-aged children around the country. Their visit is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts Dance Program.

Eighty-eight, times two

The Department of Music welcomes guest piano duo Winston Choi and Amy Williams, playing solo, four-hand and two-piano works in a tribute to 20th-century Hungarian composer György Kurtág, Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Free and open to the public.

The program juxtaposes Kurtág's mid-1970s "Játékok" ("Games") pieces with his early-music transcriptions, along with Amy Williams' solo piece "Brigid's Flame," György Ligeti's "Sonatina," six movements from Roberto Sierra's "Treinta y tres formas de observar un mismo objeto," and Conlon Nancarrow's "Two Canons for Ursula." Xak Bjerken and graduate student pianist Andrew Zhou will join Williams and Choi for French composer Edgard Varèse's "Amériques," originally written for a large Romantic orchestra. A transcription by Varèse for two pianos, eight hands surfaced in 2004.

Tale of the city

The Department of Theatre, Film and Dance will present "I'm a Frayed Knot," written and directed by senior lecturer in dance Byron Suber, Sept. 28-Oct. 1 in the Black Box Theatre at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

First staged in 1988 at Performance Space 122 in New York City, Suber's play/performance work is a postmodern adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," reflecting the artistic and cultural scene of New York's East Village in the 1980s, and a community coping with the emerging AIDS epidemic. The Cornell production features students and community members. "Some of the jokes still work for everyone, while some will only be understood by those of us who are familiar with such antique media references as 'The Gong Show,'" Suber said.

Tickets are $4 each, with evening performances Sept. 28-Oct. 1 at 7:30 p.m. and a matinee, Oct. 1 at 2 p.m. Seating is on padded mats on the floor in the center of the theater. Special seating is available for those who need it; call the box office (607-254-ARTS) in advance to request a chair.

Expanding cinema

Experimental filmmaker Roger Beebe comes to Cornell Cinema Sept. 29 at 7:15 p.m. with "Films for One to Eight Projectors," a program in Willard Straight Theatre exploring the possibilities of using multiple projectors simultaneously -- not as a free-form experience, but to create discrete works of expanded cinema.

Beebe will show relatively straightforward two-projector films "The Strip Mall Trilogy" and "TB TX DANCE"; the more elaborate three-projector studies "Money Changes Everything" and "AAAAA Motion Picture"; and an eight-projector meditation on the mysteries of space, "Last Light of a Dying Star." Beebe has shown his work around the world, from McMurdo Station in Antarctica to the Museum of Modern Art and CBS's Times Square Jumbotron in New York City.

Prize fiction

Daniel Alarcón will read from his fiction Sept. 29 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, as part of the Creative Writing Program's Fall Reading Series. Free and open to the public.

Alarcón was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Alabama. His first book, the story collection "War by Candlelight" (2005), was a finalist for the 2005 PEN-Hemingway Award. His first novel, "Lost City Radio," won the 2009 International Literature Prize and the 2008 PEN USA Novel Award. His honors include a 2001 Fulbright fellowship, the 2004 Whiting Writer's Award, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and inclusion on The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of fiction writers.

Lecture on women's rights

Catharine A. MacKinnon will give a University Lecture, "Women's Status, Men's States," Sept. 29 at 4:30 p.m. in 390 Myron Taylor Hall.

MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her one-hour talk will explore the progress of women's human rights around the world and why more progress has been made internationally, in some respects, than on any other level of law.

Monae in concert

The Cornell Concert Commission brings R&B/soul singer Janelle Monae and opening act fun. to Barton Hall on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 7 p.m. General admission advance tickets are on sale at http://www.CornellConcerts.com, $13.50 for students, $17.50 for all others. Admission at the door costs $20 and $25. Monae, a three-time Grammy nominee, has earned praise from The New York Times, MTV and Pitchfork for her debut album, "The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)."