The new year begins with an exciting line-up of January arts events, including the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta kick off a year-long celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday on Jan. 18. Other notable events include yoga classes in the gallery at the Carlos Museum and the first two screenings in the spring Cinematheque series celebrating African Americans in film.
Film
Emory Cinematheque recommences this month on Wednesday, Jan. 22, at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall 208. The first film in the Spring 2020 Emory Cinematheque series “African-Americans in American Film” is the pioneering silent film “Within Our Gates.” A screening of “Carmen Jones” will follow on Wednesday, Jan. 29. All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.
Music
As part its Beethoven 2020 celebration, the ECMSA presents Beethoven’s String Quartet Cycle I with the Vega Quartet on Saturday, Jan. 18. Other events include the Violin Sonatas at noon on Friday, Jan. 24. Violinist David Coucheron and pianist William Ransom will perform Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 in Ackerman Hall at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. The events are free and open to the public.
Emory welcomes Schwartz artists-in-residence Lomazov Rackers Piano Duo on Friday, Jan. 24, at 8 p.m. in Emerson Concert Hall. Praised for “demon precision and complete dedication,” the duo has performed as recitalists and in concert with orchestras throughout the United States and Europe. “Fanfare” praises them for “a superb demonstration of piano playing” and “American Record Guides” writes, “the ensemble between Lomazov and Rackers is dead on." This event is free and open to the public.
Michael C. Carlos Museum
The newest exhibit at the Carlos Museum, “Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Occurrence of the Divine,” opens Jan. 18 and runs through May 17, 2020. “Transcendent Deities of India” explores the visual communion between human and divine. Through prints, photographs, graphic art, paintings and illustrations, artists Raja Ravi Varma, Manjari Sharma and Abhishek Singh offer modern and contemporary interpretations of traditional imagery that position Hindu gods and goddesses within viewers’ frames of reference, ensuring their seamless applicability in new eras.
In conjunction with the new exhibit, artist-in-residence Abhishek Singh will conduct live painting sessions during a weeklong residency Jan. 14-20. Singh reimagines subjects drawn from the major epic narratives of India through drawings, paintings, graphic novels and animations, connecting the spiritual and the symbolic, the temporal and the sacred. While in Atlanta, Singh will paint at various locations on campus and around the city. The completed work will join his other images in the exhibition.
As part of Emory's Embodied: A Celebration of Human Health and the Arts series, the Carlos Museum invites patrons to begin or end their day with yoga surrounded by Manjari Sharma’s large-scale images of Lakshmi, Vishnu, Shiva and other Hindu gods and goddesses. Attendees may restore their body and spirit with Transcendent Yoga on Tuesday afternoons at 5:30 p.m. from Jan. 21 through Feb. 25 with Marck Maroun from The Yoga Source. Alternatively, yogis may salute the sun on Thursday mornings Jan. 23 through Feb. 27 with Anna Leo of Emory’s Dance Department, who studied at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India. Register for each six-week session online (Tuesdays or Thursdays).
Theater
Theater Emory presents a reading of the new musical “For Peace I Rise” on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Theater Lab at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. The program is based on the book and lyrics by Thomas W. Jones II and composed by William Knowles and S. Renee Clarke. “For Peace I Rise” is the musical love story of American civil rights activists C.T. Vivian and Octavia Geans Vivian.
This event is sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in collaboration with the Office of the Provost, Emory Libraries and Emory College of Arts and Sciences. It is part of the David Goldwasser Series in Religion and the Arts. The reading is free and open to the public.
Creative Writing
The Emory University Creative Writing Program Reading Series presents Heather Christle, poet, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 6:30 p.m. in the Woodruff Library Jones Room. Christle, assistant professor of English and creative writing at Emory, is the author of four poetry collections; her first work of nonfiction, “The Crying Book,” was published in November 2019 and has received widespread acclaim from The New York Times, The New Yorker and other outlets. The reading is free and open to the public. A book signing and reception will follow.