Provided

Belgian violinist Tatiana Samouil performs in the Department of Music’s Mayfest, May 19-23.

Graduation reading

MFA student poets and fiction writers in the Creative Writing Program will feature their work at the 2013 MFA Graduation Reading, Sunday, May 19, at 6 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free and open to the public.

Fiction writers Chris Drangle, Adam Price, Lauren Schenkman and Caroline Zeilenga, and poets Stevie Edwards, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, Emma Catherine Perry and Matthew Ritger (all MFA ’13) will share work from their theses-in-progress.

A reception will follow the reading, in the English Department Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English.

Chamber festival

The Department of Music presents Mayfest, its sixth annual springtime chamber music festival, May 19-23, with intimate concerts by local and international musicians in Barnes Hall Auditorium and the Milstein Hall dome on campus, and the nearby Carriage House Café, 305 Stewart Ave.

Bass Alexander Vassiliev (Germany) and violinist Tatiana Samouil (Belgium) will return to Mayfest as guest artists; to be joined this year by violist Natalia Tchitch (Russia), cellist Pavel Gomziakov (Portugal), flutist Eyal Ein-Habar (Israel) and horn player Chezi Nir (Israel).

Performances will feature J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2, Schumann’s Andante and Variations for two cellos, two pianos and horn; and a new work for dancer and percussion by graduate student composer Amit Gilutz. Mayfest also honors the passing this year of Elliott Carter at age 103 and the anniversary years of Poulenc and Britten. The festival’s artistic directors are pianists Xak Bjerken and Miri Yampolsky.

Single concert admission is $20, $10 for students. A festival pass, with one ticket for each concert, is $85. Tickets are available from https://mayfest.ticketbud.com/mayfest2013 and at the door. Information: http://mayfest-cornell.org

Museum Day

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art opens two new exhibitions and celebrates Art Museum Day 2013 May 18. Free admission.

“Summer Breeze: Paintings and Drawings by Alice Dalton Brown,” through Aug. 18, includes sketches, collage and preparatory works, Cayuga Lake scenes and paintings of houses in Ithaca, Aurora, Auburn and King Ferry. Brown grew up in Ithaca and attended Cornell.

“JAMuse: The Johnson Museum Turns 40,” through Sept. 1, features a series of photographs by Alan Chimacoff ’63, B.Arch. ’64 (who designed Sage Hall’s late 1990s renovation and addition); and archival material, highlighting I.M. Pei’s building design. The museum opened to the public on May 23, 1973.

Information: http://museum.cornell.edu

At the Art Museum Day 
drop-in workshop, 2-4 p.m., visitors can learn more about the design and creation of the museum’s Morgan Japanese Garden in 2011 and are invited to sketch or paint with provided pencils and watercolors. The event is part of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ Art Museum Day, which coincides with International Museum Day, May 18. Information, participating museums: https://aamd.org/our-members/from-the-field/art-museum-day-2013

The music of nature

Do birds make music? Can they keep a beat?

Hollis Taylor of the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, will discuss bird species native to Australia that prompt these questions in a free lecture, “Australian Songbirds, the Music of Nature, and the Nature of Music,” Monday, May 20, at 6 p.m. in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Auditorium.

Taylor’s research bridges the fields of zoömusicology, ornithology and music composition; she also is a violinist who composes and performs music based on the songs of the Australian pied butcherbird. She will present results from her fieldwork in the Australian outback with stories, photographs, films and recordings.

She will discuss the complex songs of butcherbirds; lyrebirds, among nature’s greatest mimics; and bowerbirds, which build, paint and decorate elaborate structures and sing and dance.

Information: http://birds.cornell.edu, 800-843-BIRD.

Engaged research conference

Engaged Learning + Research at Cornell and the Cornell Participatory Action Research Network are co-hosting the inaugural Graduate Student Engaged Research Conference, May 21-22in 525 ILR Conference Center. Conference registration is free and open to the public.

Types of research to be discussed include translational science projects, community-based design projects and participatory health initiatives, cooperative extension work and participatory action research. The conference kicks off a long-term collaboration between graduate student researchers and mentors across the Northeast and upstate New York.

Information: 607-254-4240, cek77@cornell.edu, http://www.elr.cornell.edu, http://www.cparn.org

Collecting castoffs

Cornell’s 11th annual Dump and Run program is seeking donations of clothing, furniture and other items through June 1.

Donations of nearly all useful items are accepted, including working appliances and electronics, shoes, sporting goods, coat hangers, organizational units, decorations, new toiletries, nonperishable food and textbooks. The program does not accept mattresses, pillows, underwear, socks or anything that is broken.

Dump and Run collection bins are located on campus in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Anabel Taylor Hall, Day Hall, Willard Straight Hall, Humphreys Service Building and in all university and Greek residential buildings.

This year’s Dump and Run sale, Aug. 24-25, in Helen Newman Gym, will benefit Cops, Kids and Toys; Loaves and Fishes, Shelter Outreach Services, the Greater Ithaca Activities Center, Finger Lakes ReUse and the Cornell United Way Student Campaign. To request off-campus donation pickups, email dumpandrun@cornell.edu. Information: http://living.sas.cornell.edu/explore/news/1305-dump-run-collection.cfm