Press Release

Contact:
Doug Stone or Barbara Laskin
651-696-6203

Macalester’s Fourteenth Annual International Roundtable
“The Musical Imagination in the Epoch of Globalization”
October 11 - 13

St. Paul, Minn. – Macalester College presents its 14th annual International Roundtable titled, “The Musical Imagination in the Epoch of Globalization,” Thursday – Saturday, Oct. 11 – 13, in Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center Concert Hall, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, Minn.

The musical imagination has been an original and crucial aspect of the making and evolution of human culture. Despite the variability of composition, instrumentation, tone, and context, musical performance not only speaks to an inner aesthetic of individuals but also has the potential to travel across communities and societies and, therefore, induce a sense of appreciation and meaning.

The current phase of globalization brings forth a set of new developments that suggest such possibilities as these: (a) the discovery and wide distribution of culturally specific forms of music that enrich aesthetic diversity, (b) co-mingling and cross-fertilization that add to growing hybrids, and (c) instant commodification and the danger of homogenization.

On Friday night, eighth blackbird, an engaging and accomplished sextet that performs a wide range of contemporary music, will perform at 8 p.m. in the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center Concert Hall on campus. Founded in 1996, eighth blackbird has commissioned new works from eminent composers and has performed across the globe.

This year’s participants include:

• Martin Stokes, university lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, whose keynote is titled "On Musical Cosmopolitanism." (4:30 p.m., Thu., Oct. 11).
• Joseph Lam, music professor at the University of Michigan, whose talk is titled "Chinese Music and its Globalized Past and Present.”  (9:30 a.m., Fri., Oct. 12).
• Ingrid Monson, the Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music at Harvard University whose talk is titled "Global (Re)vision: Musical Imagination in African America,” in the Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center, John B. Davis
  Lecture Hall, on campus. (1:30 p.m., Fri., Oct. 12).

The Roundtable will conclude with a discussion featuring Martin Stokes, Joseph Lam, and Ingrid Monson.   (10 a.m., Sat., Oct. 13).

The roundtable begins at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 11, with opening statements from Macalester’s Ahmed I. Samatar, James Wallace professor and Dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship, and Macalester College President Brian C. Rosenberg. 

The Macalester International Roundtable is held every October on campus. A community-wide intellectual forum, the roundtable explores crucial global issues with prominent international scholars who are also commissioned to write major papers that are presented at Macalester and published in the Macalester International journal. Previous roundtables have featured:

• 1994 The International Community and the Emerging World (Dis) Order
• 1995 Literature, the Creative Imagination, and Globalization
• 1996 The Divided Self: Ethnicity, Identity, and Globalization
• 1997 Nature, People, and Globalization
• 1998 Globalization and Economic Space
• 1999 Contending Gods: Religion and the Global Moment
• 2000 International Feminisms: Divergent Perspectives
• 2001 The Body: Meditations on Global Health
• 2002 Prometheus’s Bequest: Technology and Change
• 2003 Complex Contradictions: African, American, and Middle Eastern Perspectives       
• 2004 America and Global Power: Empire or . . . ?
• 2005 Quixotic Offspring: The Global Legacy of Don Quixote
• 2006 The United Nations Organization (UNO): What Future?”

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,884 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement.