Disappointed by Valentine’s Day? Don’t worry: the arts will always love you!

New York City is packed with amazing culture and inspiring art, but sometimes it’s difficult to break the Morningside-bubble and experience it all first-hand. “This Week in the Arts” is a weekly guide to interesting and notable lectures, events, and performances for the literary/musically/ theatrically-inclined on campus.

Monday, February 15

• Playwright Talk: Mahesh Dattani, 4:00 PM, Knox Hall in Room 208 –  “An Indian playwright’s perspective on theatre making in India.” Author of plays such as Dance Like a Man, Final Solution, Thirty Days in September, Brief Candle, and Gauhar.

Tuesday, February 16

• Pop-Up Concert: loadbang, 6:00 PM (doors open at 5:30 PM), Miller Theatre – loadbang is a quartet of “lung-driven” musicians (baritone, trumpet, trombone, and bass clarinet) and will be performing a repertoire of Taylor Brook’s Ouaricon Songs: Volume 2, Adam Zahller’s Ledascape, Evan Johnson’s my pouret and goyng ouer, Guillaume de Machaut’s (arr. Gavett) Messe de Nostre Dame: Kyrie, David Lang’s Waiting for the Man, and loadbang’s own Andy Kozar’s Mass: Kyrie.

Wednesday, February 17

• Mid-Day Music featuring Dongwon Lee, 12:00 PM, Garden Room at the Faculty House – Columbia University and Juilliard School pianist Dongwon Lee will be performing Schumann Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13, Schubert Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959, I. Allegro and IV. Rondo. Allegretto, and Scriabin Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 as part of the Mid-Day Music recital series.
• “I Can’t Define Love Like It Should Be. . . And That’s Alright. –Stevie Nicks”, 7:00 PM, The LeRoy Neiman Gallery (Dodge Hall) – “Join us for the closing night of the LOVE 2016 exhibition. The evening will feature artists Paul Legault and Natasha Ochshorn, as well as MFA candidates from the Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts, reading selections of poetry on the topic of love and eros.”

Thursday, February 18

• The Remaking of Aleppo under Nur al-Din and the Early Ayyubids, 6:00 PM, Schermerhorn Hall in Room 612 – Part of the lecture series on titled ‘Islamic’ Art: Disrupting Unity and Discerning Ruptures that will focus on the city of Aleppo from the medieval to the contemporary this semester, this event is hosted by the department of art history and archaeology and will feature independent scholar Yasser Tabbaa.
• Chapter & Verse: Screening + Conversation, 6:30 PM, Miller Theatre – A screening of Jamal Joseph’s film Chapter & Verse, followed by an interdisciplinary conversation on race, justice, and the carceral continuum. (Free, but must RSVP here.)

Friday, February 19

• An Aesthetic of Indifference: Poems/Photos/Graphs, 4:00 PM, The Heyman Center in the Common Room – Professor of American Literature and Literature Theory Walter Benn Michaels of the University of Illinois at Chicago will speak, “developing a problematic at work in figures like the poet Stéphanie Mallarmé and the photographer Robert Frank” and extending “some of the arguments about the political economy of form developed in Michael’s recent book, The Beauty of a Social Problem.”

Saturday, February 20

• Jazz: Miguel Zenón Quartet, 8:00 PM, Miller Theatre – “Pairing his love for the folk music of his native Puerto Rico with a strong, innovative style, saxophonist Miguel Zenón was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant for “at once reestablishing the artistic, cultural, and social tradition of jazz while creating an entirely new jazz language for the 21st century.” Zenón is an artist who thinks and listens. The voice of his sax—soaring over the band’s rhythmic pulses—tells a musical story that resonates with all jazz-lovers.” (Tickets: $7 with CUID or BCID)

Broken Love via Aslysun/Shutterstock.com