‘Crossing the Boundaries’: Frost Art Museum introduces new lecture series

The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum presents Crossing the Boundaries: Art & Music, a new lecture series delving into the creative mind. Speakers will include Maestro Giora Bernstein and Fredrick Kaufman. Bernstein will host the first lecture of the series January 27, 2010, at 6 p.m. at The Frost Art Museum at FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

“Artists, in various medium, have been fascinated by music. This lecture series will explore the connection between art and music and how they influence each other,” said Carol Damian, director & chief curator of The Frost Art Museum.

Bernstein, born in Vienna and raised in Israel, came to the United States in 1955 to study at the Julliard School followed by Brandeis University (MFA in composition) and Boston University where he received his doctorate. A former member of the Boston Symphony, Bernstein founded the Claremont Music Festival and the Colorado Music Festival, the latter of which he directed for 24 years. A unique feature of the festival was the intercultural projects including concerts, lectures, exhibits and symposia on various themes. His lecture will focus on artists who were musicians as well as painters; the molding of the arts and music within parameters of melody rhythm, time, space, form, color, dynamics and movement with illustrations from Paul Klee, Arnold Schoenberg and George Braque.

The lecture series will continue Feb. 24, 2010, at 6 p.m. with guest lecturer Fredrick Kaufman, former director of FIU’s School of Music. Kaufman is the composer of more than 130 published compositions that have been performed worldwide by orchestras such as the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Kaufman, a former Fulbright Scholar, is the founder of FIU’s Music Festial and author of The African Roots of Jazz, a groundbreaking study that drew heavily on his early musical life as a jazz trumpet player with the Woody Herman Band. Kaufman continues to circle the globe with recent performances in Japan, Spain, Brazil, France, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Lithuania, Russia and Israel.