Southeastern NEWS
Southeastern Louisiana University
Public Information Office
publicinfo@selu.edu
SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
Date: 8/17/00
Contact: Christina Chapple 52N
Editors: Photo accompanies release
FANFARE CELEBRATES 15TH ANNIVERSARY
HAMMOND -- As Southeastern Louisiana University celebrates its 75th anniversary,
Fanfare is marking its own milestone.
This is the 15th birthday of the annual fall festival of the arts, humanities and sciences.
Founded in 1986 by three faculty friends, Fanfare has brought guest performers and scholars of
national and worldwide fame to the Hammond campus. The luminaries have included literary
greats Maya Angelou, Robert Waller ("The Bridges of Madison County"), Ray Bradbury, and
Thomas Keneally ("Schindler's List"); the popular political satire troupe the Capitol Steps, and
New Orleans blues and jazz queens Charmaine Neville and Marva Wright.
The October festival has become famous for a stellar offering of art, children's programs,
dance, film, jazz, lectures, music and theater with a twist of the unusual. There probably aren't
many arts festivals that can boast of having hosted both country singer Louise Mandrell and the
Bulgarian State Female Vocal Choir.
Fanfare Artist Director Donna Gay Borden Anderson said that Frank McCourt, the
Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Angela's Ashes" and "'Tis," is the top head liner of the
festival's first new millennium season. McCourt's poignant memoir of his Irish childhood won
the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for biography and has been made into an acclaimed film.
In a salute the Southeastern's 75th birthday, Fanfare will also host the performance of an
original ballet in honor of the university's special anniversary, choreographed by dance program
director Martie Fellom to music by composer in residence Stephen Suber. The university's Sims
Memorial Library also will feature an exhibit of Charles Rodrigue's famous "Blue Dog" prints,
which are printed by Hammond silk screener Thom Barlow, whose family has deep Southeastern
roots.
Fanfare 2000 highlights also include Ballet Stars of Moscow, a stellar company of
classical dancers led by the ballet master of the Bolshoi Ballet; Irish fiddler Eileen Ivers, the
original fiddler from Riverdance and seven-time Irish National Fiddling Champion; Five by
Design's "Club Swing," a 1940s instrumental and vocal retrospective; Empire Brass, North
America's finest brass quintet; and Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which will present "Fair and
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FANFARE 2000 Add One
Tender Ladies," a new southern American play.
Musicians from around the country and world will bring their talents to Fanfare 2000,
including tenor Daniel Weeks, a Metropolitan Opera national finalist; Austrian pianist Jure
Rozman; 21-year-old Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle de Niese, and Le Trio Gershwin,
three Parisians who perform classic Gershwin on piano, violin and guitar.
For those who find classical music a little hard to swallow, two Fanfare acts will use
comedy to help the notes go down. The all-female quintet Bimbetta makes Baroque music
accessible and appealing through humor, while four funny musicians from Canada, Quartetto
Gelato, mix the classics with familiar tunes such as "Oh, Danny Boy" and "O Sole Mio."
Musical guests also include the Kammermusik String Quartet, a world renowned young
string quartet from Ontario, Canada, and Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir, an all
female African American a capella choir that performs everything from gospel to field hollers
and slave tunes.
Fanfare 2000 also will feature the return of popular events such as Gallery Stroll and Jazz
Downtown, which will star the New Leviathan Oriental Fox Trot Orchestra, Cajun music king
Bruce Daigrepont and the SLU Jazz Ensemble; the Missoula Children's Theatre, which will cast
local children in a production of "Rumpelstiltskin," and Picnic-n-Pops, featuring the Louisiana
Philharmonic Orchestra.
Guest lecturers include Christine Wiltz, author of a biography, "The Last Madame,"
about Norma Wallace, the politically savvy madam from the French Quarter; and Ursula
Goodenough, one of America's leading cell biologists.
Area contributors to Fanfare 2000 include organist Cheryl Brothers; the SLU Wind
Symphony's "American Salute," conducted by Glen Hemberger and featuring soloist Brian
Bowman, euphonium, and Willis Delony, piano; the Southeastern Chamber Orchestra, with
Yakov Voldman wielding the conductor's baton; Danceworks' production of an original modern
dance work, "Unicorn"; and Southeastern Theatre's production of "What the Butler Saw."
Southeastern English professor Wade Heaton, dressed in an authentic Roman toga, will
present "The Toga: It's not Just Clothing, it's a Concept," while physicist David Norwood will
explain the amazing laser in "So What's a Laser Anyway?" Art educator and artist Denise
Tullier-Holly and historian Howard Nichols will present a multi-media lecture, "The Columbia
Theatre: Turning the Past into the Future," detailing the history of Hammond's historic
downtown theatre and its upcoming rebirth through renovation. Southeastern faculty guitarist Pat
Kerber will partner with faculty singers Dirk Garner and Emily Truckenbrod for "An Afternoon
of Guitar and Song." The Foreign Languages and Literatures Department will host a special
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musical group from France at "French Cabaret" and a three-day storytelling workshop for
teachers. Southeastern music faculty will unite their talents in the "Copland Centennial Concert,"
honoring one of America's most important composers.
Clark Hall Gallery and Sims Memorial Library will host a special Fanfare exhibit, "Fire:
Louisiana Hot Glass," featuring 20 of the states finest artist in the medium of blown glass. Also
on the art scene, Southeastern artist Roy Blackwood and Gary Keown will host a panel
discussion, "Toys and Art Playground," focusing on the influence childhood toys have on an
artist's creations
On the "big screen," Fanfare flicks will include "Angela's Ashes," the foreign films "La
vita e bella," "Run, Lola, Run," "Marius et Jeanette" and "Tango," and a special showing of
"Evangeline," the only silent movie filmed in Louisiana.
Fanfare will bring to Southeastern stages the one-man play "Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You
Write?," starring John Maxwell, and Joan Vail Thorne, a Southeastern Lab School alumnus,
whose much-acclaimed New York production, "The Exact Center of the Universe," is based on
Hammond area residents.
The arts festival will expand to the community with the musical "A Closer Walk with
Patsy Cline," which will be performed at Ponchatoula High School; Amite's second annual
"Explosion of the Arts," the Hungarian Settlement Celebration in French Settlement, and the
Sweet Home Folk Life Days at Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church in Kentwood..
Children of all ages! will enjoy Theatreworks USA's production of "Charlotte's
Web"; Garry Krinsky's "Toying with Science," which demonstrates various laws of physics with
the fun and flair of a circus; "Masked Marvels and Wondertales," featuring dance, storytelling
and acting and wonderful, flamboyant masks; story time with Miss Karen at the Hammond
Library, and the Family Arts Festival at Hammond Square Mall.
Fanfare is offering a special "Take 5" ticket package. For $50, patrons can get tickets to
either Take 5 Series A ("Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write?", Frank McCourt, Linda Tillery and
the Cultural Heritage Choir, Bimbetta and Eileen Ivers) or Take 5 Series B (Daniel Weeks,
Danille de Niese, Frank McCourt, Le Trio Gershwin and Quartetto Gelato.) Groups of eight or
more also can get discounted tickets.
For a Fanfare brochure and ticket order form or for additional information about Fanfare
events, call the SLU Public Information Office, 504-549-2341, or e-mail publicinfo@selu.edu.
Fanfare information is available online at www.selu.edu/fanfare. Fanfare tickets will be available
at Gate 1 of the SLU University Center on University Ave., beginning Sept. 18, 504-549-2323.
-SLU-
Press release available online at www.selu.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/newsm00.htm