Juilliard pianist and vocalist to perform Feb. 10

Acclaimed Juilliard musicians Brian Zeger, pianist, and Lacey Jo Benter, vocalist, perform at 2:30 p.m. Friday, February 10, during the Penn State School of Music Common Hour at Esber Recital Hall in Music Building I on University Park campus. The one-hour concert is free and open to the public.

Zeger and Benter perform “Afraid Am I Afraid” from Menotti's The Medium, “Parto! ma tu ben mio” from Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, “Freudvoll und leitvoll” by Franz Liszt, and “Fable” from Stephen Sondheim’s The Light in the Piazza.

The presentation is a component of the Center for the Performing Arts Classical Music Project. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project provides opportunities to engage students, faculty, and the community with classical music artists and programs.

Zeger has appeared in distinguished concert venues throughout the United States and Europe. He has collaborated with artists including Kiri Te Kanawa, Susan Graham, Marilyn Horne, Joyce DiDonato, and Bryn Terfel.

In addition to being a piano soloist, Zeger enjoys a career as a chamber musician. He’s also artistic director of Vocal Arts Department at The Juilliard School in New York City and executive director of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Development Program.

Zeger’s writings have appeared in Opera News, The Yale Review, and Chamber Music, and he has been heard on the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.

Mezzo-soprano Benter graduated from Juilliard in 2011 with a master’s degree in opera performance. She has appeared in numerous productions including The Tender Land, where she played the role of Ma Moss. The New York Times praised her performance, writing that “… with a rich, warm tone (Benter) sang the role affectionately and had the broadest emotional palette of any of the young singers here.”

Benter also appeared in Les Dialogues des Carmelites, Gianni Schicchi, and Les Mamalles de Tiresias. She recently appeared in the American premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Kommilitonen! and on the Castleton Festival stages in L’enfant et les sortileges and Gianni Schicchi. This summer she’s scheduled to be an apprentice artist with the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program at Central City Opera.

A question and answer session with the artists follows the public performance. A master class with graduate singers is slated for room 110 Music Building I from 3:30 to 5 p.m. February 10. Both events are free and open to the public.

Green Day's AMERICAN IDIOT on stage Feb. 28, 29

The smash-hit musical AMERICAN IDIOT, based on Green Day’s Grammy-winning multiplatinum album, tells the story of three lifelong friends forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia. The touring Broadway musical makes its Penn State debut with two performances at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, February 28 and 29, in Eisenhower Auditorium.

Purchase tickets for the show, which are $59 and $53 for an adult, $44 and $38 for a University Park student, and $54 and 48 for a person 18 and younger.

Featuring the hit songs “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “21 Guns,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” “Holiday,” and the blockbuster title track, AMERICAN IDIOT takes the American musical where it’s never gone before. With direction by Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening), choreography by Steven Hoggett (Black Watch), and orchestrations and arrangements by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), the result is an experience Charles Isherwood of The New York Times declares “thrilling, emotionally charged, and as moving as any Broadway musical I’ve seen this year!”

“Convulsive movement is interspersed with mime and jerky ballet, all of it unmistakably channeling the youthful feelings — of elation, but more often of rage and despair, fear, and longing — that are the heart of the show,” writes David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter.

AMERICAN IDIOT includes mature themes and language.

ABC 23, FOX 8, and MAJIC 99 are the media sponsors. Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring a visiting artist or local expert, is offered in Eisenhower one hour before each performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints seating is available on a first-arrival basis.

Humorist Sedaris comes to Eisenhower April 13

David Sedaris, a regular National Public Radio contributor and author of the previous bestsellers Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, comes to Eisenhower Auditorium at 8 p.m. Friday, April 13.

Celebrating the release of his new title Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, a book of acerbic, outrageously funny fables that features animals with unmistakably human failings, Sedaris visits State College for an evening of engaging recollections and all-new readings.

Purchase tickets for An Evening with David Sedaris, which are $45 for a seat in the orchestra section and $40 for a seat in the grand tier or balcony.

Tweaking the familiar until it warps, Sedaris mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood, his bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France. Including his last release, the New York Times No. 1 bestselling book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Sedaris’ wickedly witty observations of the ordinary-bizarre are always sure to deliver insights and laughs.

One of six children in a second-generation Greek-American family, Sedaris grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1977, he dropped out of Kent State University to hitchhike around the country. Aside from working as an elf, Sedaris has had a number of charmingly quirky jobs as a house painter, an apple picker, an aide in a mental hospital, a creative writing teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, and an apartment cleaner.

Sedaris made his comic debut recounting his strange-but-true experiences of being a Macy’s elf, reading his “Santaland Diaries” on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in 1992. His sardonic humor and incisive social critique have made him one of NPR’s most popular and humorous commentators. In 2001, he was named Humorist of the Year by Time magazine and received the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

The Sedaris appearance is a promoter event. Parking in the Eisenhower Parking Deck is $4 per vehicle for this event. Patrons with Penn State faculty/staff parking permits will not be charged for parking.

Recycle candy wrappers at Eisenhower Auditorium

The Center for the Performing Arts is participating in a new “green” initiative by collecting candy wrappers that are recycled and converted into various products. Through a TerraCycle® program called the Candy Wrapper Brigade®, which awards points for each wrapper collected, the Center for the Performing Arts plans to use accumulated points to provide clean drinking water for families in a developing country.

Patrons attending Center for the Performing Arts and other presentations at Eisenhower Auditorium are encouraged to place used candy wrappers in lobby collection boxes. Eligible waste — from auditorium concession sales or from home or office use — includes individual candy wrappers, large candy bags, and multi-pack candy bags.

Each year millions of candy wrappers are needlessly thrown away, and most end up in landfills. TerraCycle partners with Mars®, Wrigley®, and Cadbury® to create a second life for candy packaging, but all brands of wrappers are accepted for the recycling program.

The clean water initiative provides safe drinking water, through construction of water projects, to people living in poverty who otherwise lack access to the essential element. The charity partners with local organizations in seventeen developing countries, mainly in Sub-Saharan African and South Asia.

Learn more about TerraCycle.