Fellows Events Spring 2016

May 5, 2016

This year’s fellows have been fully engaged in their fields of endeavor in the ISM community, at Yale, and beyond: teaching, writing, doing research and creative work. They have presented works in progress at Fellows Lunches throughout the year and five of them have taken the initiative to organize and produce events of various kinds during the spring semester.


Tyler GathroJohn Graham brought members of the Anchiskhati Church Choir from Tbilisi (Georgia) to Yale for workshops, masterclasses, and a symposium, all culminating in a public performance in Christ Church  of “The Orthodox Paschal Cycle,” three-voiced liturgical chant in the little-known Georgian tradition. Inherited through oral transmission, this music was only notated at the turn of the last century, but those transcriptions remained locked in Soviet archives until Anchiskhati members gained access to it in 1988.

 

(image: Members of the Anchiskhati Church Choir in Christ Church, New Haven. Photo by Tyler Gathro)

 

Eben Graves’ scholarship focuses on padāvalī-kīrtan, a genre of Hindu devotional song from eastern India. When visas were denied to the performers of this tradition, Graves decided to explore another regional tradition, and invited performers of Gurbānī-kīrtan, which was established in northwest India during the late 15th century by Gurū Nānak, the founder of Sikhism. The group presented a lecture-demonstration and public performance that coincided with the April meeting at Yale of the United Nations Global Colloquium of University Presidents, whose theme this year was cultural heritage preservation.  (Image (c) Francesca Cassio)

 

Andrew Albin is working on critical commentary, translation, marginalia transcription, and musical recording of the fourteenth-century mystical treatise Melos amoris. In connection with this work, the Canadian medieval music ensemble Sine Nomine came to Yale to perform a program entitled Melos amoris: music from a mystical manuscript.

{Sine Nomine photo courtesy of the artists)

(Image: Mar Elian Monastery, al-Qaryatain, Syria)

Tala Jarjour organized a working-group conference on Religiosity, Relationality, and Musicality in the Twenty-first Century. Guest speakers included Nicholas Cook, Jeff Warren, Aku Vasala, Morag Josephine Grant, Jonathan Shannon, Mark Slobin, Susanne Fürniss, Braxton Boren, and Anthony Seeger.

In Teesri Dhun (the Third Tune), four transgender performers from Pakistan shared their experiences of their search for God, love, and identity through music, dance, and storytelling. Claire Pamment, who works in South Asian theater and popular performance, first co-produced this live documentary theater-piece in Lahore last year, and brought it to Yale this April. (Above: the cast and crew of Teesri Dhun, photo by Nicole Klosterman)