LESSONS FOR LEARNING: Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is the focus of a week-long series of events that begins at The College of New Jersey Monday, March 2 and ends Saturday, March 7. A highlight will be performances of the 65-minute dramatic song cycle for orchestra and voice “Katrina Ballads” by Ted Hearne on Friday, March 6, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, March 7, at 1 p.m. The piece will be performed by X Trigger, a contemporary music ensemble based in the greater Princeton area and founded by TCNJ Director of Bands David Vickerman. (Photo by Lynda Rothermel, Courtesy of TCNJ)

Next week The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) will focus on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a variety of interdisciplinary events open to the campus community and the general public.

The series begins with a free screening of Spike Lee‘s 2006 documentary film, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, on Monday, March 2, at 7 p.m., and culminates with a full day of workshops for high school students on Saturday, March 7.

A highlight of the activities will undoubtedly be the two performances of composer Ted Hearne’s award-winning Katrina Ballads by X Trigger, a contemporary music ensemble based in the greater Princeton area.

The group’s founder, artistic director, and conductor David Vickerman is TCNJ’s director of bands and a champion of contemporary music.

A 65-minute dramatic song cycle for orchestra and vocalists, Katrina Ballads is set entirely to primary-source texts from the week following Hurricane Katrina. It uses the words of politicians and celebrities, survivors and relief workers, taken directly from media footage as experienced by those outside the Gulf Coast, as it unfolded via a constant and real-time stream of national media. The performance will be accompanied by a film created by Bill Morrison.

Performances will take place on Friday, March 6 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, March 7 at 1 p.m. Composer Ted Hearne will be the guest speaker at a free public brown bag lecture in the Mayo Concert Hall on Friday, March 6, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Sometimes raw and shocking, the Katrina Ballads text draws upon commentary from Anderson Cooper, Barbara Bush, Kanye West, and Dennis Hastert and includes George W. Bush’s “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” The score is a multi-stylistic combination of gospel, jazz, classical, and electronic elements.

A call to remember shared history, Katrina Ballads conjures anger, shame, rebuilding, and a commitment to truth. The work, which premiered at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival, received the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize for composition. It premiered in New York in 2008 and was included in the New York City Opera’s 2009 VOX Festival.

In 2010, when a full recording was released on New Amsterdam Records (distributed through Naxos of America), the work garnered rave reviews including a place on The Top 10 Classical Albums of 2010 of The Washington Post and Time Out Chicago.

Social Justice in the Arts and Humanities

According to a press release from the The Institute for Social Justice in the Arts and Humanities, Mr. Hearne’s work ties into TCNJ’s 2014-15 justice theme by “exploring how justice is perceived and defined across time or cultures, if justice is contextually bound or if it represents a universal truth, and how justice is related to notions such as fairness, equality, generosity, opportunity, and love.”

“In 2015 TCNJ was selected by the Carnegie Foundation to be a Community Engaged Campus, as part of that we have chosen to focus on the theme of justice for the year and established an Institute for Social Justice, which will focus on the issues raised by the responses to Hurricane Katrina,” explained Dean of the School of the Arts and Communication John Laughton.

Part of that focus includes the “Teaching the Levees” curriculum that was developed in response to Katrina’s devastation to promote democratic dialogue and civic engagement. It uses Mr. Lee’s documentary about the devastation of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina to prompt discussions about citizenship, economics, democracy, media, and systemic injustice. The film will be shown again in the Kendall Screening Room on Tuesday, March 3, at 7 p.m.

“We want our students to engage in a dialog about race and class and have the ability to articulate well-informed judgments rather than mere opinion about where they stand in relationship to these issues,” said Mr. Laughton.

The college is working with local educators to develop a corresponding K-12 curriculum.

Among the other activities are a visit to the campus by a New Orleans chef who will cook a regional specialty for the community to enjoy on Wednesday, March 4, from 11 to 4 p.m. in the Eickhoff Dining Hall. Tickets, $8, for “Cooking Cajun: Celebrating Creole Culture,” a lunch buffet celebrating the food and music of the people of Louisiana can be had at the door. Later that evening, there will be a panel discussion in the library auditorium from 6 to 7:30 p.m. with the contributing authors of the “Teaching the Levees” curriculum.

A public lecture by Katrina Ballads producers David Vickerman and Colleen Sears will take place in the Mayo Concert Hall, on Tuesday, March 3, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

TCNJ’s Institute for Social Justice engages multiple disciplines to draw attention to the ways in which the arts and music can contribute to economic and social development and awareness.

Tickets for performances of Katrina Ballads in the Mayo Concert Hall on Friday, March 6, at 89 p.m. and Saturday, March 7 at 1 p.m. are free and available from the TCNJ Box Office, www.tcnj.edu/boxoffice.

For more information and the full schedule of events, visit tcnj.edu/katrinaballads, facebook.com/isjahTCNJ, or call 609-771-2065.