UAB Musicians Perform Chamber Music In AEIVA Art Galleries

From the University of Alabama at Birmingham:

October 13, 2020

By Shannon Thomason

A Chamber Music @ AEIVA performance, just filmed in the galleries of UAB’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, will be at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15. Register for the event online and receive a link one hour before showtime.

Chamber Music @ AEIVA is presented by the UAB College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music. For this celebrated free series, hear chamber music thoughtfully curated in response to artworks in the “A la carte” exhibition and performed by some of Alabama’s top musicians. While in-person and indoor events are limited, the virtual format allows for an unlimited audience.

Featured music selections include works by Bach, Purcell, Offenbach, Bernstein, Nicolai and more. Performing artists are Associate Professor of Voice and Director of Opera Kristine Hurst-Wajszczuk, soprano; Assistant Professor Emily Jaworski, mezzo-soprano; Associate Professor Won Cho, bass; staff pianist and instructor Chris Steele, piano; and adjunct faculty members Laura Usiskin, cello, and Julianne Odahowski Steele, violin.

For this iteration, the musical performance was prerecorded inside the AEIVA galleries with minimal staff and strict adherence to UAB safety protocols. The night of the event, the recorded performances will be streamed via Zoom while AEIVA staff and the musical performers — broadcasting from their respective homes —facilitate a discussion about the exhibition and selected compositions. Each musician will announce the work they are performing, then after all of the performances, there will be a Q-and-A between the singers and audience.

There will be three performances, each featuring a different group of performers in a different AEIVA gallery. All musicians were positioned at least 10 feet apart, with vocalists facing away from others. The doors between the galleries, as well as the doors between the galleries and lobbies, remained closed throughout the performances.

Personnel involved with the management of the recording sessions are UAB staff or faculty and have followed all UAB protocols. All approved COVID-19 management protocols currently in use for UAB Department of Music classes — particularly those related to live performance and the mitigation of aerosol spread — have been observed, including masks, face shields, temperature checks, and social distancing.

This press release was produced by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The views expressed here are the author’s own.