For 31 BU students, summer will be a time for exploration, research and creativity. These students have been awarded stipends to participate in research, scholarship, or creative activities with faculty mentors through BU's Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (URSCA) program.
While many of the projects will be focused in science labs, others will take students into the community. Student Dan Copes will travel to China to study the effects of music on language and culture. Copes performed with the Chinese Club at BU's annual International Banquet in April.
The festival offers the high school students the opportunity to hone their skills with guest artists and clinicians.
BU's own ensemble, directed by music professor and department chair Stephen Clickard, has been earning a higher profile in the jazz world. The ensemble was invited to New Orleans this March to participate in the Crescent City Jazz Festival.
Clickard — a player, composer and arranger — has been playing professionally since high school when he was invited to join a college band.
These shots were taken during a rehearsal before the New Orleans trip.
The first shot on the right shows Christian Smith on percussion. A multi-instrumentalist, Smith was first in the rehearsal room that day and promptly sat down at the piano and played very beautifully. The center photo shows saxophonists Brittany Baselice and Beth Meyers and the last shot is guitarist Matt Leese warming up before rehearsal.
Below is a short video interview with Clickard about what makes jazz special. (Editing for this one was done by me, so the edges are a little rougher than normal. —EGF.)
The amplified metronome pumps out a continuous beat of 158 clicks a minute. Nearing weeks end, BU's band is breathing in time. Welcome to the Husky Marching band camp. To get ready for the fall semester, the band arrives on campus a week early and gets to work ... spending more than 40 hours over the next five days getting in synch.
Marching band director Gifford Howarth works with the students just outside the stadium. In addition to directing the band, Howarth is a well-known mallet percussionist whose conducted clinics around the world.
Below: One of the band's drum majors, Brittany Baselice (center, neon shirt), directs marching from the field. Senior Nathan Hawk works with the drum corps. Color guard captain Kayla Pipas demonstrates a routine.
Among the photo shoots I do in a given year, Bloomsburg's Gospel Choir would consistently rank among my top five favorites. I simply love going to the shows. The choir is very good and the energy of the shows is very high.
Rev. Marwin Reeves from the community is the director, but there's a lot of leadership by the students in making arrangements and publicizing the concerts.
For this show, I really wanted to focus on the conductor, student Keywuan Caulk, who exemplifies the kind of poise and charisma the choir seems to develop.
The trickiest part, was picking which photo to lead with. I selected the top photo because I think it conveyed a sense of seriousness and purpose that Keywuan exudes. But I've included some others to give a sense of what happens when the choir really gets cooking.
Technical Notes: This was a tricky shoot to do because there was not a lot of light to work with in the Kehr Union Ballroom. Focusing on the conductor brought some additional challenges because he's lit from behind. This was my first shoot down with the Canon 70-200mm f/4. The lens is magnificent to use. However, there's no IS, so it was a matter of pushing the ISO (to 3200 for the top pic on 7D), keeping the aperture at f/4, and handholding at 1/100th in bursts at 70mm. Shooting in bursts is a bit of hedge against camera shake. If there's some hand vibration in a given frame, the next may not show it.
The compromises of those choices can be seen. There's noise and detail loss to noise reduction, the depth of field is narrow, the edges aren't completely crisp. But it was still worth it.
This is a photo I took last spring while walking from one place to another after work and it stuck in my head. The guitar player on the far right is Kurt Smith, a philosophy professor, who was talking some time (between day and evening classes perhaps) to do some playing.
One guitar seems to attract another, and pretty soon there was another student and his friend in the McCormick Center lobby to trading lick. Besides playing, Smith gave the students a miniature lesson in the origins of the traditional Spanish classical guitar oeuvre and how it shows both Islamic and Catholic cultural influences. It was an interesting example of how seemingly separate disciplines relate to one another.
Bloomsburg seems to have a growing guitar culture on campus with a classical guitar specialization and a very nice Guitar Ensemble as one of the music department's featured ensembles. Several of my favorite photos from the past couple years feature classical players.
Technical Notes: The top shot was done with the Canon 7D at ISO 1600 and set to aperture priority and with a shutter speed of 1/400. The lens is a Tokina 16-50 f2.8 at 23 mm and f3.5 . Click on any of the photos to make them larger.
