FM Cultural Calendar | Starting Saturday, February 25, 2012

Samite
World-renowned musician Samite was born and raised in Uganda, where he learned to play the traditional flute. Immigrating to the U.S. in 1987, Samite has released eight CDs internationally and composed an original score for the film Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, which aired on PBS. Samite's vocals, as accompanied by the kalimba, marimba, litungu, and various flutes have mesmerized audiences throughout the world.
02/25/2012
Time: 7:30 pm

Location: Carnegie Lecture Hall, 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA
website

Music on the Edge - JACK Quartet
JACK Quartet has played to critical acclaimaround the globe. Their concert features the premiere of Pitt faculty composer Amy Williams’ Richter Textures “loosely inspired by paintings by Gerhard Richter,” along with Michael Gordon’s Potassium for amplified instruments (with distortion), Jason Eckardt's Subject, which tackles the issue of torture with complex lighting effects; and Philip Glass’s String Quartet #5.
02/25/2012
Time: 8:00 pm

Location: Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA
website

ProMusica Pittsburgh Presents: Make Them Hear You
Honoring the past, preserving the present, dreaming a bright future. This recital honors African-American advancement in classical music featuring Pittsburgh native bass-baritone Michael Jackson performing in the Negro Spiritual tradition and joined by soprano Anqwenique Wingfield in music from Slavery to Freedom and Beyond.
02/25/2012
Time: 7:30 pm

Location: Eastminster Presbyterian Church, 250 N. Highland Ave, Pittsburgh, P
website

The Way Back Home
Ages 3-10. Oliver Jeffers, award-winning author of 'How to Catch a Star' and 'Lost and Found,' returns with an intergalactic tale about seeking adventure staged by Big Wooden Horse Theatre Companu. One day a boy finds a plane in his cupboard. He doesn't remember leaving it there but he decides to take it out for a go. He flies until he runs out of gas and lands on the moon. Frightened and lost, he meets a Martian. But which one is the strange alien? Can they really be friends? And how will they find their Way Back Home?
02/26/2012 - 03/04/2012

Location: various
website

The Art of Song
Opera singer Amy Stabnau, with assisting artists Rebekah Hill and Dr. Alastair Stout, will perform art songs, classical arias, and a song cycle written for her by Alastair Stout titled "A Fire for Old Stories." Pre-concert at 2:30 features Pittsburgh Music Academy students.
02/26/2012
Time: 3:00 pm
Saint James Church, 200 Walnut St., Sewickley, PA
website | map

Matthew Bengtson, piano
Critically acclaimed as a "musician’s pianist," Matthew Bengtson has a unique combination of musical talents ranging from extraordinary pianist, to composer, analyst, and scholar of performance practice. His program will include works by Schumann, Scriabin, Szymanowski and Albeniz. He has performed in France, Italy and Hungary, at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and in solo recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.
02/26/2012
Time: 3:00 pm
CAPA Auditorium, 111 Ninth St, Pittsburgh, PA
website | map

Chatham Baroque with Sara Botkin
"One of Pittsburgh's greatest treasures," says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Chatham Baroque continues to excite local, national, and international audiences with dazzling technique and lively interpretations played on instruments of the Baroque period. Soprano Sara Botkin is known for performances with Chatham Baroque and the Bach and Baroque Ensemble, and for her solo CDs "Breath of Heaven" and "An Angel's Christmas."
02/26/2012
Time: 4:00 pm

Location: Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2040 Washington Rd., Pittsburgh, PA
website

Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger, award-winning journalist and best-selling author of "The Perfect Storm," is fascinated by “extreme situations.” He has covered everything from war crimes in Kosovo to wildfires in the American West, and now he tackles the trenches of Afghanistan in War, a powerful on-the-ground account of combat, fear, and survival.
02/27/2012
Time: 7:30 pm
Carnegie Music Hall, 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA
website | map

Imani Winds
The Grammy-nominated and ASCAP award winning Imani Winds return with hometown girl, Monica Ellis, bassoon. Their program includes the East Meets West Suite by Miguel del Aguila, Valerie Coleman, and Manuel de Falla, arr. By Wayne Peterson, the Wind Quintet, Op. 10 by Pavel Haas, Tzigane by valerie coleman, Zafir by Simon Shaheen, Drones and Nanorhythms by Nikola Resanovic, and Shaheen's Dance Mediterranea.
02/27/2012
Time: 7:30 pm

Location: Bellefield Hall Auditorium, 315 S. Bellfield Ave., Pittsburgh, PA
website

Azar Nafisi
An avid believer in the "republic of the imagination," her best known book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, spent 117 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List, and has been translated into 32 languages. It paints a vivid portrait of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and its effect on Nafisi as a secular woman and university professor, and its effect on her students.
02/29/2012
Time: 8:00 pm
Heinz Hall, 600 Penn Ave. Pittsburgh, PA
website | map