Stephen Tropiano had plans to enter the film industry when he began his double B.S. in cinema and photography and television-radio at Ithaca College. Halfway through his college career, though, he discovered another passion in teaching and decided to become a professor after graduating in 1984.
The Cornell Historical Society will weigh past vs. present in a discussion panel about renovations to Sage Hall, the first women’s dormitory at Cornell University, which is now home to the Johnson Graduate School of Management, this Saturday.
Under dozens of flashing lights and pounds of make-up, queens and kings will rule this weekend. But these royally talented performers don’t sit on thrones — they sing and dance.
There are bricks instead of cobblestones, Asian cuisine rather than porridge and sustainable dormitories in the place of decaying tenements. Ithaca may be a few centuries and an ocean away from Charles Dickens’ London, but that won’t stop Ithaca College’s English Department from celebrating his life and work this spring.
Vibrating with the hums of mandolin, fiddle and guitar, blues artist Andy Cohen awakens a nostalgic longing as he plays. Cohen invokes the spirit of folk and Dixieland jazz by appropriating melodies of artists like Muddy Waters, Etta Baker and Reverend Gary Davis. Fascinated by older instruments, he sees a sensibility in this genre that transcends time and location.
Rae Armantrout thinks of her poetry as a recycling process — she reuses the material the world provides to try to understand the big questions she’s had since she was young.
Using the musical styles he developed while growing up in Texas, Robert Ellis has gained international recognition for his old-time country sound.
