utah state university
visiting artists
Creators visit USU with workshops and seminars
Kraemer is Principal Guest Conductor of Music of the Baroque, Chicago Kraemer and has held the positions of Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the London Bach Orchestra and the Bath Festival music programme; Permanent Guest Conductor of the Manchester Camerata; Principal Guest Conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and Musikkollegium Winterthur and Associate Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He was the first Music Director of Opera 80, now English Touring Opera.
Appearing worldwide with many prestigious ensembles Nicholas Kraemer has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The Hallé, Gothenburg, City of Birmingham, Detroit, Toronto, West Australia and Colorado Symphony Orchestras and the Minnesota Orchestra. In addition, he has directed specialist ensembles such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Baroque and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He has conducted Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the London Mozart Players and is regularly invited to perform with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia and Musikcollegium Winterthur.
Kraemer’s Opera engagements have taken him to Paris, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Geneva and Marseilles with repertoire ranging from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and L’Incoronazione di Poppea to nineteenth- and twentieth-century works including Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos; Britten’s Albert Herring, Noye’s Fludde, and Paul Bunyan and Stephen Oliver’s Tom Jones. He has conducted many Handel operas including Arianna in Creta, Lotario, Tolomeo, Arminio, Ariodante, Il Pastor Fido, Rinaldo, and Orlando, as well as the major Mozart operas. Elsewhere he has conducted The Magic Flute and Handel’s Jeptha at English National Opera, Agrippina for Theater Aachen, Le Nozze di Figaro for Den Nye Opera, Bergen, Idomeneo for Grange Park Opera, La Finta Giardiniera at the Buxton Festival and Ariodante for Scottish Opera.
Daines Concert Hall
One of the most lyrical and intimate voices of contemporary jazz piano, Brad Mehldau has forged a unique path, which embodies the essence of jazz exploration, classical romanticism and pop allure. From critical acclaim as a bandleader to major international exposure in collaborations with Pat Metheny, Renee Fleming, and Joshua Redman, Mehldau continues to garner numerous awards and admiration from both jazz purists and music enthusiasts alike. His forays into melding musical idioms, in both trio (with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums) and solo settings, has seen brilliant re-workings of songs by contemporary songwriters like The Beatles, Cole Porter, Radiohead, Paul Simon, Gershwin and Nick Drake; alongside the ever evolving breath of his own significant catalogue of original compositions. With his self-proclaimed affection for popular music and classical training, “Mehldau is the most influential jazz pianist of the last 20 years” (The New York Times).
Caine Performance Hall
Named “America’s Best Interior Designer” by CNN and Time Magazine, Sheila Bridges founded her own interior design firm in 1994. As Creative Director, Sheila has thoughtfully designed residences and offices for many prominent entertainers, entrepreneurs and business professionals including the 8,300 square foot Harlem offices for former President Bill Clinton and his staff. Sheila Bridges Design, Inc has also completed projects at Columbia University and Princeton University, bringing Sheila’s signature design aesthetic to interior spaces at both of these prestigious academic institutions.
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. She studied photography at the New England School of Photography and the Maine Photographic Workshops. Matar's work focuses on girls and women. She documents her life through the lives of those around her, focusing on the personal and the mundane in an attempt to portray the universal within the personal. Her work has won several awards, has been featured in numerous publications, and exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Her images are in the permanent collections of several museums worldwide.
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.
In a New York Times review of her retrospective, Holland Cotter wrote, “Ms. Weems is what she has always been, a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible.``
Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain.
Chase Fine Arts Center | FAV150
April Greiman is a thinker and artist, whose transmedia projects, innovative ideas and projects, and hybrid-based approach, have been influential worldwide over the last 30 years. Her explorations of image, word and color as objects in time and space are grounded in her singular fusion of art and technology. Greiman has been instrumental in the acceptance and use of advanced technology in the arts and the design process since the early 1980s.
Greiman has been included in various group shows- 'Typeface to Interface' at SFMOMA (2016,) and recently in 'Physical: Sex and the Body in the 1980s' at LACMA (2016;) 'Designing Modern Women' at MoMA (2013;) 'Elle@Centre Pompidou' at Centre Pompidou (2009,) and solo exhibitions that include Visual Arts Gallery at the School of Visual Arts, New York (2008;) Pasadena Museum of California Art (2006.) She has exhibited in varied cultural institutions, lectured academically and professionally, generated public artworks and participated in juries worldwide. Her ideas and work have appeared in articles, interviews, reviews and broadcasts in the media, ranging from Newsweek and Time, to The New York Times and USA Today to CNN, PBS and ESPN. Books have included April Greiman: Floating Ideas into Time and Space, Hybrid Imagery: The Fusion of Technology and Graphic Arts, It’snotwhatAprilyouthinkitGreimanis, and Something from Nothing. April Greiman was born in Metropolitan New York City and studied at the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule (General Arts Trade School) in Basel, Switzerland and the Kansas City Art Institute. She moved to Los Angeles in 1976, establishing her multi-disciplinary practice, currently called Made in Space.
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Tanja Softić is a Professor of Art at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Sarajevo, she moved to the United States and in 1992 earned an M.F.A. in Printmaking from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Softić collaborated with colleagues at the University of Richmond to produce a series about the situation of her native Bosnia. The series marks the anniversaries of both the Srebrenica Massacre and the anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 which ended the three-and-a-half years of genocidal war.
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Kelli O’Hara has unequivocally established herself as one of Broadway’s great leading ladies. Her portrayal of Anna Leonowens in the critically acclaimed revival of The King and I recently garnered her a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, along with Drama League and Outer Critics nominations.
2014 was an exceptionally busy year. Her performance as Francesca in the musical adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County earned her Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle nominations. Additionally, she starred as Mrs. Darling in NBC’s live telecast of “Peter Pan” alongside Allison Williams and Christian Borle, and on New Year’s Eve, Kelli made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the production of The Merry Widow with Renee Fleming.
A native of Oklahoma, Kelli received a degree in opera, and after winning the State Metropolitan Opera Competition, moved to New York and enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Institute. She made her Broadway debut in Jekyll & Hyde and followed it with Sondheim’s Follies, Sweet Smell of Success opposite John Lithgow, and Dracula. In 2003 Kelli committed to a production of The Light in the Piazza at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre. The show landed on Broadway in 2005 and earned Kelli her first Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations. She moved from one critical and commercial success to another when she joined Harry Connick on Broadway in the 2006 Tony award-winning production of The Pajama Game, for which Kelli received Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Award nominations. Kelli starred in the Tony Award-winning revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center, enrapturing audiences and critics alike with her soulful and complex interpretation of Nellie Forbush, and garnering Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Award nominations. She later teamed up with Matthew Broderick in Broadway's musical comedy Nice Work if You Can Get it, earning Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations, as well as the Fred Astaire Nomination for dance.
Kelli has worked regionally & Off-Broadway in Far from Heaven at Williamstown Theater Festival & Playwrights Horizon, King Lear at the Public Theater, Bells Are Ringing at City Center Encores, Sunday in the Park with George at Reprise, My Life With Albertine at Playwright’s Horizons & Beauty at the La Jolla Playhouse. Kelli received critical acclaim for her performances at the New York Philharmonic’s productions of Carousel & My Fair Lady as both Julie Jordan & Eliza Doolittle respectively. She has sold out her solo show at Carnegie Hall & Town Hall and performed with symphonies and orchestras across the country. She is a frequent guest artist on the PBS Memorial Day and July 4th telecast and has performed several times as part of the Kennedy Honor tributes for Barbara Cook, Jerry Herman and Barbra Streisand.
Among her film and television credits are Sex & The City 2, Martin Scorsese’s short The Key to Reserva opposite Simon Baker; The Dying Gaul, Blue Bloods (NBC pilot), All Rise (NBC pilot), Alexander Hamilton (Maria Reynolds) starring Brian F. O’Byrne (PBS), NUMB3RS (CBS), All My Children, the animated series Car Talk, and numerous live performances on national television shows. Kelli’s voice can be heard on many cast album recordings including The Bridges of Madison Country, Nice Work if You Can Get it, South Pacific (Sony), The Light in the Piazza (Nonesuch records; Grammy nomination), The Pajama Game (Sony; Grammy nomination), The Sweet Smell of Success (Sony), My Life with Albertine (PS Classics), Dream True (PS Classics), Jule Styne Goes Hollywood (PS Classics). She has released two solo albums including Always & Wonder in the World.
Kelli currently resides in New York City.
Caine Performance Hall
Bronze Medal, Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2017)
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Her installations combine xeroxed drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative and identity. She uses installation and performance to honor the past while revising historical memory. Vernon has most recently exhibited with Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Seattle Art Museum, Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Emery Community Arts Center at the University of Maine, Farmington, MoCADA, or the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn.
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Stephen Karam‘s plays include The Humans (Tony Award, Obie Award for Playwriting and Pulitzer Prize finalist), Sons of the Prophet (Pulitzer Prize finalist), and Speech & Debate. His adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard premiered on Broadway as part of Roundabout’s 2016 season; his film adaptation of The Seagull starring Annette Bening will premiere in 2017.
Recent honors include two Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards; a Lucille Lortel Award, Drama League Award and Hull-Warriner Award.
Stephen is a graduate of Brown University and grew up in Scranton, PA.
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Malcolm Mobutu Smith is Associate professor of Ceramic Art at Indiana University
in Bloomington, Indiana. He earned his MFA from the New York College of ceramics at Alfred
University and he studied at both the Kansas City Art Institute and Penn State University receiving
where he earned his BFA in ceramics. Smith’s professional activities include workshops,
lecturers and residencies including visits to Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Watershed
Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine, The Robert McNamara Foundation also in Maine. His works
are represented in numerous private and public collections including the Nerman Museum of
Contemporary Art, FuLed International Ceramic Art Museum, Beijing, China and Indiana State
Museum. Other areas of research and lecture interest for Smith include the study of graffiti art and comic books.
Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Dougherty was raised in North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina in 1967 and an M.A. in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Iowa in 1969. Later, he returned to the University of North Carolina to study art history and sculpture.
Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, Patrick began to learn more about primitive techniques of building and to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. In 1982 his first work, Maple Body Wrap, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artists’ Exhibition, sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of Art. In the following year, he had his first one-person show entitled, Waitin’ It Out in Maple at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
His work quickly evolved from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumental scale environmental works, which required saplings by the truckloads. Over the last thirty years, he has built over 250 of these works, and become internationally acclaimed. His sculpture has been seen worldwide---from Scotland to Japan to Brussels, and all over the United States.
He has received numerous awards, including the 2011 Factor Prize for Southern Art, North Carolina Artist Fellowship Award, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, Japan-US Creative Arts Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Princeton Architectural Press published a major book about Patrick and his work in 2009. This monograph, Stickwork, has received excellent reviews and is available at www.stickwork.net.
Photo Credit:
Portrait (2015) Photo: Brianna Brough/Chapel Hill Magazine
Ready or Not (2013) North Carolina Zoo, Asheboro, NC. Photo: Juan Villa
Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall
Gold Medal, Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2017)
