Lawrence
Today magazine, Summer 2007
Robert Below, pianist and professor emeritus of music, performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra of Traverse City, Mich., in November. In the past five years, he has made five privately issued compact discs, including all of his own compositions for the piano.
Marcia Bjørnerud, professor of geology, in February, was a guest on Wisconsin Public Radio’s program “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” Author of Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth, Bjørnerud led the audience on a radio tour to read the rocks in Cave of the Mounds, a national natural-landmark site in Blue Mounds, discovered in 1937. Read more.
Burcu Göker ’07, violin, and Eric Jenkins ’07, piano, were invited by the Austrian government to perform a concert at the Austrian Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. The appearance, in December, was an “encore” of sorts for their 2005 performance as part of the annual memorial tribute to former president and prime minister Ismet Inönü (Lawrence Today, Summer 2006). Since then, Göker, a native of Turkey, has been the subject of a story in Butun Dunya, the Turkish edition of Reader’s Digest; a profile in the national Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet; and an article in Andante, an international classical-music magazine.
Author Jane Hamilton, mother of Benjamin Willard ’07, visited the campus in January to read from her latest book, When Madeline Was Young. Honors for Hamilton’s work have included the PEN/Hemingway Award; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year mention; inclusion in Top Ten Books of the Year lists by Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, the Miami Herald, and People magazine; the Chicago Tribune’s 1998 Heartland Prize; and three books in Oprah Winfrey’s book club.
Amy Thorstenson ’07 won first prize in the adult division of the One Minute Play Contest, a scriptwriting competition sponsored by the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis. Her 60-
second oeuvre, a comedy titled “From Russia with Love,” was performed in September at the Ivey Awards, which honor theatre in the Twin Cities.
Lee Tomboulian, instructor in music, and his Uruguayan-Brazilian jazz group, Lee Tomboulian and Circo, were nominated for an Independent Music Award for the song “Weather Ornette” from their album Return to Whenever.
Valerie Zimany, Lawrence Postdoctoral Fellow in Art, received an American Craft Council 2007 “Searchlight Artist” award for her original porcelain vessels. Her sculptures and wall pieces are informed by her years of studying ceramics in Japan as a Fulbright Scholar. Zimany’s work was featured in a December-January exhibition at the Cross Mackenzie Ceramic Arts Galley in Washington, D.C
