Grammy-winning guitarist and composer Bill Frisell, along with his newly formed trio — steel guitarist Greg Leisz, violinist Jenny Scheinman, and bassist Viktor Krauss — paid tribute to Mike Disfarmer’s black-and-white photographic work on the evening of Wednesday, March 5. The quartet played on the Flynn Main Stage between two approximately six-foot-high, four-foot-wide screens, which were broken up into quarters. As the group played an electric-acoustic mix of folk, rock, blues, and even avant-garde jazz, Disfarmer’s so called “penny portraits” (black-and-white portraits of residents from the rural town of Herber Springs, Arkansas taken between 1939 and 1945), were projected onto the screens.

Often, to show greater detail, perhaps to those audience members in the back of the theatre, the photographs were shown in one quarter and then magnified to show a close-up of a face or detail of clothing. The portraits consisted of mothers or fathers holding their children, couples, whole families, a single child or a trio of friends or siblings, wearing what was probably their Sunday best. All photographs featured the individuals standing or sitting against a simple, black, no-frills background, occasionally with a chair or table present.

On Thursday March 6, JSC welcomed Minneapolis poet J.P. White, who read from several of his published books of poetry, including his two most recent, “Salt Hour,” and “My Crocodile.”

Sponsored by the Writing and Literature Department, the reading was the culminating event for two JSC classes, Professor Ken Leslie’s book making class and Professor Neil Shepard’s poetry workshop, which White had visited the day before.

The two classes are soon to be embarking on a collaborative project in which poetry students will pair up with student artists to create a book of poetry and visual art. White came prepared with some examples of this type of collaboration between formerly published artists and poets, which he presented in the two classes.

By Jessie Forand
The Steve Blair Septet performed for about 50 jazz enthusiasts at Dibden Center on Thursday, March 6, in an intimate on-stage seating arrangement with artwork from Blair’s uncle, Robert Blair, projected in the background.

The show was part of a Faculty Fellowship award, which Blair received this year. Only two people in the entire Vermont State Colleges system receive this honor annually.

Blair kicked off the evening with a recording info session, in which he did a show-and-tell of his recording equipment. Then the music began.

It all begins with an angry rant. Then… a gunshot.
Love. Sex. Bullets. Protesting radicals. All of these things will come together when JSC senior Amber Couture directs “The Altruists” on the Dibden stage later this month.

Every senior working towards a B.A. in theater must complete a senior project of some sort, which means acting or directing. “If you think about it, it’s almost like a senior thesis,” Couture said. “At the end you kind of sum of everything you’ve learned and this is my last thesis/project that I’m doing to finalize my degree.”

The Discovery Channel has two basic kinds of programming: documentaries and reality shows. Not all of the documentaries are really documentaries; for instance, the ones that show dinosaurs are, of course, recreations based on the best guesses of paleontologists, archaeologists and the 3-D design crew (“What color should the triceratops be?” “I like purple.” “Purple it is, then.”) And thus the triceratops is purple because that happened to be the animal the design guy was working on during Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.