The CSU Summer Arts Festival — returning for its 4th year at California State University, Fresno — begins on campus Sunday, June 30, with the first of 55 public events.
Master steelpan artist, Liam Teague, will open the festival with a concert at 7 p.m. in the Music Building Concert Hall (2380 E. Keats Ave.) at Fresno State.
The festival, hosted by Fresno State’s College of Arts and Humanities from June 30 to July 27, offers 55 public events throughout the community.
The internationally-acclaimed residency program features 18 intensive 2-week Summer Arts workshops bringing almost 500 students – 70 of them local – and 120 guest artists from around the world to the campus and to various locations around town.
An additional 34 students are completing a nineteenth Summer Arts class in Italy called, “Drawing and Painting in Florence.”
Most of the public events will be at Fresno State but some will be held at the Tower Theater, Arte Americas, the Fresno African American Museum and the Fresno Art Museum.
Highlights will include the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra; Jimmy Heath and the Billy Childs Trio; the Alexander String Quartet; and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago’s performance of William Saroyan’s works.
Also planned are a mini-festival of films from India; dance performances by Risa Steinberg and Colin Conor and by San Diego’s Lower Left; musical theater; and lecture/demonstrations by animators, photographers, children’s authors and glass sculptors.
The CSU Summer Arts Program recently extended its contract with Fresno State through the 2005 season – the second extension since the program came to Fresno in 1999.
Teague is a returning guest artist in the Summer Arts program, where he will join with other world class percussionists to teach an intensive workshop called Percussion in World Music.
A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Teague is on the music faculty of Northern Illinois University. He has recorded three compact discs: “Hands Like Lightning (1993),” “Emotions of Steel (1996),” and “Impressions (1998).”
Teague is often called the “Paganini of the Pan.” He has won numerous awards and has played in concert halls around the world, as well as appearing as soloist for the MC Hammer tour of Trinidad. He will play original compositions as well as selections from a modern and classical repertoire.
To register for a course or to find out more about the public performances, call (559) 241-6090. For links to the website, log-on to www.fresnostatenews.com or visit the CSU Summer Arts office in Room 186 in the Kremen Education Building (5005 N. Maple).
For Festival details: 241-6090. For tickets: 278-5109
