Concerts-Dance-Music, February-March, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover

Winter Concerts, Music, Entertainment!

Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College

Here are the highlights through March 17th

Sat, 2/16: Free afternoon concert by the Dartmouth College Glee Club. Led by interim director Filippo Ciabatti, the chorus will perform excerpts from Rossini’s Petit Messe Solennelle, which the group will perform in its full glory in May, with guest soloists and instrumentalists.

Sun, 2/17: The Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble presents “Let This be Our Response,” which eloquently addresses violence, racism and oppression with pieces including a tribute to Rosa Parks, an elegy to Sandy Hook and a work that defied Cold War censors. The Wind Ensemble is made up of Dartmouth students alongside a few community members (many of them school music teachers), and many of those students are also volunteering this term as mentors in the Dartmouth Youth Wind Ensemble.

Thur, 2/21: Thursday Night Live series, Dartmouth’s African dance troupe Soyeya partners with a HOPSTOP favorite, Jeh Kulu, an African dance and drum performance group from Burlington, VT. The free event starts at 9 pm with live performance and then is followed by a DJ.

Fri, 2/22-Sun, 3/3: Into the Woods is the Theater Department’s winter offering. With direction by Keith Coughlin, an adjunct Dartmouth theater professor and Artistic Director of the New London Barn Playhouse, this production of Stephen Sondheim’s mash-up and deconstruction of Grimm’s fairy tales will refresh your appreciation for this musical and the stories it explores.

Sat, 2/23: The Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra teams up with Hop pianist-in-residence Sally Pinkas for all-Beethoven concert that includes—duh-duh-duh-DUH—his Symphony No. 5! Sally plays the solo on Beethoven’s “Emperor” piano concerto, another of his most popular and important works. They round out the program with his Coriolan Overture, inspired by the Shakespeare play Coriolanus, which was brought to the Hop this fall by the Stratford Festival.

Fri, 3/1: The Dartmouth Idol Finals is an extravaganza, for sure. Back-up singers, dancers, big band, lights, shiny clothes, and the half-dozen finalists singing their hearts out.

.Sun, 3/3: Get a free sneak peek at the work being developed this season by the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble. Director John Heginbotham and choreographer-in-residence Rebecca Stennhave been working with the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble on improvisatory material, so expect the unexpected!

Mon, 3/4: The mother of all taiko groups, Kodo, brings its new show Evolution to the Hop. Based on Sado Island in northern Japan, Kodo has been dazzling audiences worldwide for over three decades, both preserving and reinterpreting traditional Japanese performance. Evolution showcases the group’s perpetual creative growth and the mesmerizing precision and endurance of the ancient drumming tradition, taiko. 

Wed, 3/6: Part of celebrating Dartmouth’s 250^th birthday is to appreciate Dartmouth as a place. Related to that, Deirdre Brenner, piano & Sarah Nelson Craft, mezzo-soprano — two 2001 graduates of the college who have gone on to successful music careers — bring a program of German lieder, American art songs and other works reflecting on the beauty and abundance of the natural landscape.

Information at hop.dartmouth.edu