UAB Briefs: Two choirs, a 3-minute winner, A Little Night Music
Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs, in which we keep track of interesting people and events on campus.
Know people, places and programs on the UAB campus that deserve a mention?
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Free concert for Palm Sunday
The UAB Gospel Choir will present its annual spring concert at the historic 16th Street Baptist Church on Palm Sunday, April 9, at 5 p.m.
The choir will perform music from their “MIRRORS” and “Nu-Soul City” recordings, as well as music by Joe Pace, Thomas Whitfield, Hezekiah Walker; Deitrick Haddon, Ricky Dillard and Kierra Sheard, according to a UAB news release.
They will also perform “You Don’t Know What I Could Have Been,” a piece written by Gospel Choir director Kevin P. Turner to honor the memory of the four young girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair and Carole Robertson -- who died when 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in 1963 at the peak of the Civil Rights Movement.
The 90-minute concert will be free and open to the public.
“We are hoping that, by making this concert free, families on a tight budget can come out and enjoy an incredible concert at no charge during the Easter holiday season,” Turner said.
For more information, call 251-9402 or go to 16thstreetbaptist.org.
A special trip
The UAB Concert Choir, an ensemble in the Department of Music, will perform in some choral festivals and historic venues in England and the Netherlands in May.
And the group is raising money through a crowdfunding drive to help make the trip possible for the students who otherwise cannot afford to go.
Nearly $7,000 has been raised toward a $20,000 goal, according to Brian Kittredge, the choir’s director.
At least 42 students will leave May 17 and travel first to London, where the group will perform a recital in Canterbury Cathedral and participate in the London Sangerstevne Festival. They will also do some sightseeing and perform at some other locations in England.
The choir will travel to the Netherlands on May 22 to take part in the CantaRode Festival in Kerkrade and give some other performances.
“This is a very exciting opportunity for our choir members, as these are some of the finest sites in the world, especially for singers,” Kittredge said.
The group will also have the chance to do some sightseeing in Cologne, Germany.
The Concert Choir also performed at the 2014 World Choir Games and at venues in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Italy and Latvia.
Contributions to the current fund drive can be made at crowdfund.uab.edu/project/6105.
Still time for Night Music
Area theatergoers can still catch the Theatre UAB production of the classic Stephen Sondheim musical, “A Little Night Music.”
Shows in the Sirote Theatre at the Alys Stephens Center are Friday, April 7, and Saturday, April 8, at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, April 9, at 2 p.m.
The play, which won four Tony Awards and includes the classic Sondheim song, “Send in the Clowns.” explores the tangled relationships of actress Desirée Armfeldt and the men who love her.
Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics, and Hugh Wheeler wrote the book.
Students and faculty in the UAB Costume Shop created many of the 270 intricate costume pieces required for the show, according to a UAB news release.
This play has adult themes. Tickets are $15 and $20, $6 for students, and $10 for UAB employees and senior citizens.
Getting to the point
A UAB graduate student recently won first prize in a regional three-minute thesis competition, beating out students from 45 universities.
Kathryn Henley -- a doctoral candidate in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the School of Medicine -- won the 3MT Regional Competition at the Conference for Southern Graduate Schools in Annapolis, Md., on March 5.
The purpose of the competition -- now held at about 200 universities in 18 countries -- is to challenge students to communicate the significance of their projects to a general audience in only three minutes.
Henley won first place and a $1,000 prize in the UAB Graduate School’s first-ever 3MT competition in October and moved on to the regional competition.
Henley’s research focuses on developing two methods to assess pain in pigs, using the science of animal communication. Her interest in relieving chronic pain began nine years ago, after her father fell from a ladder and sustained a spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the shoulders down. She hopes to develop better pain medications for people living with chronic pain.
“This exercise cultivates students’ academic, presentation and research communication skills,” Graduate School dean Lori McMahon said in October. “This is an important skill for graduate students to develop so that they can communicate their research to policymakers who will make decisions regarding new laws and funding, journalists who will write about the implications of their research for the general public, and even friends and family.”
Call 975-2787 or go to alysstephens.org.