Sir Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the concertina.           

The Science, History and Music of the Concertina

ALLAN ATLAS teaches musicology at The Graduate Center/CUNY, where he serves as director of The Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments and editor of The Free-Reed Journal. His many publications range widely over such topics as music of the Renaissance (his Renaissance Music [W.W. Norton, 1998] is the standard undergraduate textbook on the subject), the operas of Puccini, Pergolesi's sacred music, and music as represented in Victorian literature. Among his concertina-related publications are The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England (Clarendon Press, 1996), "George Gissing's Concertina," Journal of Musicology, 17 (1999), and "Giulio Regondi: Two Recently Discovered Letters," The Free-Reed Journal, 4 (2002).

ALLA BORZOVA holds degrees from the Moscow Conservatory, and taught composition at the Belarussian Academy of Music before emigrating to the United States in 1993; she currently teaches at Lehman College, CUNY, and is completing the Ph.D. at The Graduate Center. A composer of national and international standing, she has received commissions from the Aspen Music Festival, Delius Music Festival, Guggenheim Museum, Da Capo Chamber Players, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, and the Belarus Radio-TV Symphony Orchestra, to name just a few, as well as fellowships, grants, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship), ASCAP, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Jerome Foundation, the American Music Center, and Yaddo.

DAVID B. CANNATA is on the Music History faculty of the Boyer College of Music, Temple University. He is an internationally recognized authority on the music of both Liszt and Rachmaninoff, and was one of the major contributors to the program notes that accompanied the Lincoln Center Rachmaninoff Festival in 2001-2002. Among his many publications are Rachmaninoff and the Symphony. Bibliotheca Musicologica IV (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 1999), and "Perception and Apperception in Liszt's Late Piano Music," Journal of Musicology, 15 (1997). He is also the general editor of the Sikorsky Rachmaninoff Edition and is currently working on a book about the relationship between Liszt's music and Roman Catholic theological currents of the nineteenth century.

WIM WAKKER is on the faculty at a number of music schools in The Netherlands, including the prestigious Schumann Academy of Music, where he directs the B. Mus. in Concertina Program (the only such program in the world). He is the founder and director of the CONCERTINA CONNECTION, which is dedicated to reissuing music from the English concertina's Victorian repertory, commissioning and publishing new repertory for the instrument, and restoring nineteenth-century concertinas, as well as developing new hybrid instruments of the free-reed class. He is a leading authority on the acoustical properties of Victorian concertinas, and has recently recorded a CD of James Cohn's Concerto for Concertina and String Orchestra with the Latvian Radio Orchestra (to be issued in Fall 2002).

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The Science and the Arts Series is presented by the Science Center and is part of the Continuing Education and Public Programs at The Graduate Center. Einstein's Dreams is presented in cooperation with the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. The Science History, and Music of the Concertina is presented in cooperation with the CUNY Graduate Center's Ph.D. Program in Music. ArtSci2002: New Dimensions in Collaboration is presented by Arts & Science Collaborations, Inc (ASCI) in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History and Continuing Education & Public Programs. The presentations and performances bridge the two worlds of art and science. For the fall 2002 schedule, scientists, actors and performers present clear, entertaining and informative examples of science and the arts in theater.

All events are held at The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave (at 34th Street)

The Science and the Arts series is presented by the Science Center and is part of the Continuing Education and Public Programs at The Graduate Center. Free and open to the public. For tickets contact: phone: (212) 817-8215, email: continuinged@gc.cuny.edu or visit the web site http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cepp