Last weekend was Eastman Weekend and with over 550 alumni in town there was much to celebrate! Since it was Steve's and my first time attending alumni events as alumni (and not just students), we tried to take advantage of as much as we could. Here's a glimpse of our first Eastman Weekend experience: On Friday night, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of Eastman's Arts Leadership Program (of which Steve and I are both alums), attended a welcome reception with the dean, and enjoyed a jazz concert in tribute to Rayburn Wright (who taught at Eastman from 1970-1990). Many of his students returned to play on the concert so there were many wonderful guest artists. We may have snuck out for pizza at intermission - it was a long day!
On Saturday morning, we were interviewed as alumni to discuss the role the Arts Leadership Program has played in our careers and then we scrambled to get to the market, do our shopping, grab lunch, and be back at school by 1 p.m. In the afternoon, we attended an awesome workshop with Fifth House Ensemble out of Chicago (the Executive Director and her husband are both Eastman alums!). They talked about innovative programming, interdisciplinary performance, and the nuts and bolts of building a business and gave us lots of good things to think about.
Later in the evening, we attended the opening concert of the Prismatic Debussy Festival. This month, we're celebrating what would have been Debussy's 150th birthday and Eastman has put together a month-long festival of scholarship, concerts, and visual presentations to celebrate the occasion. It was so exciting to witness the first concert! Many of Eastman's large ensembles performed and Eastman's graduate dean shared insightful narration and video projections throughout the program. It was a wonderful concert!
If you're in the area and would like to attend some of the Prismatic Debussy events this month, see the schedule here.
