Audio Slideshows – @BC

One stop

@BC — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 21:40:14 +0000

In a change this year, members of the graduating class attended a Commencement Fair on March 24–25, held in the Murray Room. There they could order their caps, gowns, class rings, and yearbooks; meet with Career Center staff; contribute to their class gift; get acquainted with the Alumni Association; complete a financial aid exit interview; purchase Senior Week passes; and reserve their alumni football tickets for next fall.

Christmas times

@BC — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 17:29:15 +0000

Holiday scenes from recent years: Dormitory windows bestow cheer, Santa tries new transport, and dreidels spin. Also, dancers a’leaping, lords and ladies singing (on Newton Campus and in renovated St. Mary’s Chapel), and one colorful tree illuminated on O’Neill Plaza, December 2, 2014. The tableau of the Nativity abides alongside Bapst Library, on Linden Lane, as ever.

Piano: Steven Ruse ’16

Vocal chords

@BC — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 15:39:47 +0000

Shaan, the University’s South Asian–inspired a cappella group, held a “Winter Wonderland Café” concert in Higgins 300 on December 10. Its 12 members performed 11 songs, a mix of Bollywood tunes and Western pop mashups.

The vocalists: Shruthi Balasuryan ’14, Sourabh Banthia ’17, Priyasha Chaturvedi ’14, Kayla Costigan ’15, Andrew Lee ’16, Jessica Leong ’14, Kiran Mani ’15, Mat Thomas ’14, John Thompson ’14, Jordan Witter ’14, Lucy Xu ’17, and Haesoo Yoon ’17.

The music: “Tu Meri Dost Hai” (You Are My Friend); and Kanye West’s “Heartless” in a mashup with “Udi Teri Aankhon Se” (I Fly Through Your Eyes).

Sound bites

@BC — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:41:18 +0000

WZBC 90.3-FM, Boston College’s FCC-approved radio station, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Listeners today might be surprised to learn that for its first six years, the 1,000-watt station (heard within a 15-mile radius of campus) focused on commercial pop. As the seventies became the eighties, the wheel turned. In 1990 Rolling Stone magazine described the station’s DJs as gazing into “the abyss of rock’s avant-garde” while wearing black denim jeans “by the Gap.”

To become a DJ, an undergraduate must pass a test covering FCC regulations and station history; host a show on the AM station WVBC (broadcast online and through Boston College cable); intern with an FM DJ for one semester; pass an engineering exam; and submit an application to the program director (currently Erika Bjerklie ’14) to host a two-hour show. WZBC broadcasts 73 shows in all (some by non-students), 19 to 23 hours a day, seven days a week, from its studio on the first floor of McElroy Commons.

Guerrilla orchestra

@BC — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:02:05 +0000

On December 9 in Gasson 100, Stephen Drury, founder and director of the contemporary–music group Callithumpian Consort, led 10 musicians—three Callithumpians and seven undergraduates—in a rehearsal of Cobra (1984), an improvisational work by American composer John Zorn. Cobra is one of Zorn’s “game” pieces, in which rules substitute for a score. Hand signals, flash cards, and custody of a headband determine the order of playing, the dynamics, and who solos, but the music is the performers’ to invent, from off-kilter oboe intonations to brushed piano strings to percussive cello.

On December 10 in Gasson 100, the group performed Cobra (it’s different every time) in a concert that also included works by John Cage, Lukas Foss, and Harrison Birtwistle. The Callithumpian Consort has been named artists-in-residence for 2012–13, sponsored by the University’s Institute for the Liberal Arts and the music department.

‘Bells’ and St. Mary’s

@BC — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:42:16 +0000

The music is from “Christmas on the Heights,” with John Finney conducting the University Chorale in the “Carol of the Bells,” on November 30, 2012, in Trinity Chapel. The images are from St. Mary’s Hall chapel and the book Transforming Light: The Stained-Glass Windows of Boston College, with photography by Gary Wayne Gilbert, published by Linden Lane Press in 2009. The St. Mary’s chapel will close January 1 following the 8 a.m. Mass, as the Jesuit residence undergoes 24 months of renovations.

Christmas and holiday greetings from Boston College Magazine and @BC.

Plaza suite

@BC — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:35:59 +0000

After a summer-long hiatus during which its concrete-and-brick expanse was bulldozed and replaced by broad walkways, abundant seating, a verdant lawn, and a sheltering surround of flowering trees and shrubs, O’Neill Plaza reopened to the University community at the start of the academic year. It has since become not only a well-traveled thoroughfare but also an open-air study space, a hangout, a park. On the afternoon of October 11, @BC recorded, in images and sounds, the rhythms of the place.

Sloan rangers

@BC — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:01:18 +0000

Michelle
Meyer
Ying
Ran
Liane
Young
Dunwei
Wang

Biologist Michelle Meyer, physicist Ying Ran, psychologist Liane Young, and chemist Dunwei Wang are among 126 scientists nationwide who were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships in 2012. The fellowship, given by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, provides a two-year, $50,0000 grant to early-career scientists “who show the most outstanding promise of making fundamental contributions to new science.” It will provide support to the four at Boston College in their investigations of topics ranging from the molecular evolution of RNA to the neuroscience of moral judgment. Fourteen Boston College faculty members have previously received Sloan Research Fellowships—most recently, professors Sara Cordes (psychology, 2010) and Kian Tan (chemistry, 2011). It is highly unusual for a university without a medical school or an engineering program to be the beneficiary of four Sloans in one year. Boston College led all Massachusetts colleges and universities in Sloan Research Fellowships this year.

Ari Daniel Shapiro ’01 developed these audio slideshows. A biology major at Boston College with a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Shapiro is an independent producer of radio and multimedia pieces on scientific subjects.

Sacred sound

@BC — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:06:06 +0000

In preparation for a pair of evening concerts at Boston College celebrating the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria and the Jesuit musical heritage, 11 professional musicians and singers gathered for a rehearsal in St. Mary’s Chapel on October 11. The eight singers were members of Ensemble Plus Ultra, a London-based early music group cofounded in 2001 by Michael Noone, chair of the music department. Noone directed the performances, which focused on liturgical polyphony produced during the High Renaissance and Baroque eras at the Jesuit German College in Rome.

This rehearsal slideshow includes passages from the oratorio “Jephte” by Giacomo Carissimi (1605–74), who was maestro at the Jesuit German College for 40 years. The concerts were funded by the University’s Institute for the Liberal Arts. Accompanying the singers on the viol, positiv organ, and theorbo were, respectively, Emily Walhout, Michael Sponseller, and Charles Weaver.

Big tent

@BC — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:00:40 +0000

You are about to join a family of nearly 160,000,” John Feudo ’82, associate vice president for alumni relations, told more than 1,800 members of the Class of 2011 at a May 20 ceremony on Bapst lawn. Representing the golden jubilee Class of 1961, Peg Collins, a retired middle school teacher, bestowed a maroon eagle pin on Ashley Kallarakal, a biochemistry major and international studies minor representing the Class of 2011. Feudo then led the now traditional champagne toast.

Fr. Michael Himes, professor of theology, addressed the assembled classes: “It’s often said when people graduate that they’re leaving to enter the real world. I’ve got news for you. This is the real world . . . where people try ever to excel, where people try to be men and women for others.”