23 April 2012: A seminar with Prof. Julia Trubikhina, Substitute Associate Professor of Russian in the Department of Classics and Oriental Studies and Acting Head of the

Division of Russian and Slavic Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, and James Melo, musicologist for the Ensemble for the Romantic Century and
Senior Editor at RILM.

The seminar will examine the troubled relationship between artistic creation and totalitarianism through the perspective of the lives and careers of two emblematic artists working in Stalinist Russia: the poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Akhmatova’s status as an icon of Russia culture will be discussed in light of a flourish of recent popular biographies that attempt to rework the past and challenge the cult of personality in Russian art. Shostakovich’s career as a composer who worked under the auspices of the regime provides another angle on the relationship between art and politics, as an illustration of the power of music to convey political ideology.

Monday, April 23

5:30-7:30
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Skylight Room, 9th floor

FREE ADMISSION
For more information:
jmelo@gc.cuny.edu; 212-817-8606

Presented by the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, CUNY, and the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in connection with ERC’s series of theatrical concerts Portraits

To find out more about ERC’s theatrical concerts, visit our website: www.romanticcentury.org

Julia Trubikhina received her PhD in Comparative Literature with a specialization in Slavic studies from New York University. Until Fall 2008 she taught in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University where she also coordinated the Russian Program. Since 2009, Julia Trubikhina teaches in the Department of Classics and Oriental Studies at Hunter College, CUNY, where she is currently Acting Head of the Division of Russian and Slavic Studies. Julia’s book The Translator’s Doubts: Vladimir Nabokov and the Ambiguity of Translation is coming out this year at Academic Studies Press. She has two other book projects in progress. In addition to articles and reviews in academic journals, Julia Trubikhina also published translations and contributed original poetry to Russian, European, and American anthologies and literary journals.

James Melo has written extensively for scholarly journals and music magazines in Brazil, Uruguay, Austria, and the United States, and has been invited to participate as a panel discussant in conferences in Indiana, New York, and Canada. He has written program notes for several concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and for over 60 recordings on the Chesky, Naxos, Paulus, and Musikus labels, among others. He is the New York correspondent for the magazine Sinfonica in Uruguay, and senior editor at RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale) at CUNY. Mr. Melo is the program annotator for the recording of Villa-Lobos’s complete piano music and Camargo Guarnieri’s complete piano concertos on Naxos. He has written program notes for all of ERC’s original productions and authored several scripts.