The Richner-Strong Church Music Institute at Colby College has announced organ concerts, a piano concert and a festival service in August. All performances are open to the public free of charge, though a donation is requested at the August 14 performance in Portland.
A series of string quartet concerts will be held July 31 through August 11 at Colby College in Waterville. Two formal concerts by the Portland String Quartet are set for July 31 and August 7; two performances by participants in the 26th annual Portland String Quartet Workshop at Colby will be presented August 11.
Sevdie Ahmeti, a 56-year-old Albanian Kosovar who has risked her life helping women and children war victims in Kosovo, has been chosen as the 2001 Oak Human Rights Fellow by the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Ahmeti will arrive at Colby in August and will remain on campus for the fall semester.
Al Corey's Big Band will perform a free outdoor concert at Colby College in Waterville on Sunday, July 8, starting at 6 p.m. The concert will be held at the Gould Music Shell adjacent to the Colby baseball field and tennis courts. The public is invited to attend and is encouraged to bring lawn chairs.
Acclaimed pianist Anthony di Bonaventura will hold a recital at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, July 9, in Colby College's Lorimer Chapel on the Waterville campus. The performance is open to the public and will include works from Bach, Schubert, Granados and Liszt.
The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture's summer show and "Sol LeWitt: Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes" will be on exhibit at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville starting July 8. "Incomplete Open Cubes" is the most comprehensive exhibition devoted to LeWitt's open cube series and will be on view through August 26. "Skowhegan School 2001" will be on view through October 28.
Approximately 1,400 Colby College alumni and guests are expected to visit Waterville from Thursday, June 7, through Sunday, June 10, for 2001 Reunion Weekend. Colby graduates from the 1920s to the 1990s will participate in scheduled campus events such as class dinners, book signings with Colby authors, swing dance classes and educational panels with alumni and faculty. Golf outings, picnics, a museum tour and boat trips are among off-campus activities.
In a commencement address on Sunday at Colby College, Reverend Peter J. Gomes, spoke to the 466 graduating seniors about the necessity of virtue and the inevitability of failure. "The fine art of failure is the means to the greater art of endurance and ultimately perseverance and success," said Gomes.
The Colby College Museum of Art will be closed on Monday, May 28. The museum will be open regular hours Saturday, May 26, and Sunday, May 27, for commencement weekend.
The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in Harvard University's Memorial Church, will be the commencement speaker at Colby College in Maine on Sunday, May 27.
On Wednesday, May 16, Colby College alumnus David Rea, a teacher at Laconia (N.H.) High School, will receive the Colby Outstanding Educator Award at a school assembly. Representatives of Colby's Alumni Relations Office will present Rea with the award for exceptional distinction in the classroom.
The second annual Colby Undergraduate Research Symposium will be held Thursday, May 3, and Friday, May 4, on the Waterville campus. Jonathan Foley, director of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin, will present the keynote address, "Human Activity and a Changing Biosphere: An Interdisciplinary Study of Planet Earth," at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 3, in room 1 of the F.W. Olin Science Center. All of the events are open to the public and free of charge.
To show off some of its work, the Colby College Computer Science department will hold a computer science festival from 3 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 10, on the fourth floor of Colby's Mudd Building. The festival is open to the public and refreshments will be served.
The Friends of Art at the Colby College Museum of Art are sponsoring a Tuesday, May 22, trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for a guided tour of the "American Folk" exhibition. A bus will leave Colby's Roberts Building parking lot at 7 a.m. and will return at 10 p.m. The cost of the trip is $48 per person.
On Monday, April 30, Colby College alumnus Elmer C. Bartels, commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, will receive the 2001 Carl Nelson Sports Achievement Award.
Eight seniors working in the studio arts at Colby College in Waterville will exhibit their work at the Colby College Museum of Art May 10-27 in the college's annual Senior Art Show. The students will exhibit paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures. An opening reception will be held Thursday, May 10, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. and the public is invited.
Sculptor and painter Brenda Garand will present a slide show talk about her art on Monday, April 30, at 4:30 p.m. in room 154 of Colby College's Bixler Art and Music Center on the Waterville campus. The event is open to the public and free of charge.
Nearly 250 Colby College students, staff, faculty and family volunteers are signed up for the fifth annual Colby Cares Day, which will take place in the greater Waterville area on Saturday, April 28.
Margaret McFadden, assistant professor of American studies at Colby College, will receive the Senior Class Charles Bassett Teaching Award and will deliver the college's final Spotlight Event lecture of the year on Thursday, May 3. McFadden's talk, "It's Hard to Be Good," will take place at 7 p.m. in the Page Commons Room of Cotter Union at Colby in Waterville, Maine.
U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross, one of America's key negotiators in the Middle East for more than a decade, will present the inaugural Goldfarb Lecture on Tuesday, May 1, at Colby College in Waterville. The 7:30 p.m. lecture will be held in the Page Commons Room of Cotter Union and is open to the public free of charge.