Events Calendar

Gary Malvern, conductor
Bronwen Forbay, soprano
Keith Jameson, tenor
Bruce Schoonmaker, baritone

A smorgasbord of some of the most virtuosic works composed for the human voice, this experience is composed of arias that are quite simply Olympic feats of singing.  Come and wonder at the impossible beauty of these works by Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart, including an aria from his iconic character the Queen of the Night, have a good laugh at Figaro’s expense in Rossini’s Largo from The Barber of Seville, hear operetta and even some selections from the golden age of Broadway.  This is an hour of operatic goodness you won’t want to miss.  And the crazy thing is, they make it look easy!

Gary Malvern, professor of music at Furman University, is a native of Buffalo, New York. He received a bachelor’s degree in performance and music history from Oberlin College Conservatory, and a master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University. Dr. Malvern has served as principal trumpet of the National Repertory Orchestra and the American Wind Symphony, and he served for 25 years as principal trumpet of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra.  Malvern has been artist in residence at universities in Western Australia, and at conservatories in Northern Italy. Dr. Malvern frequently records for Nuovo Musiche per Tromba (New Music for Trumpet).

Dr. Malvern was the recipient of Furman’s Meritorious Teaching Award in 1999.

Bronwen Forbay
Hailed by Opera Magazine as “At once powerful, radiant, timbrally beautiful, and balanced throughout the range, her soprano is that of a singer at the top of her game”, South African-born Fulbrighter BRONWEN FORBAY’s operatic successes include critically acclaimed performances of Mozart’s Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute) with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, Eugene Opera, and Tulsa Opera. Other celebrated roles include Orasia, Queen of Thrace (US premier of Telemann’s Orpheus), Velmyra (Wading Home) by Mary Alice Rich, Violetta (La Traviata), and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor with the Cape Town Opera. A Visiting Associate Professor of Voice at Furman University, Dr. Forbay holds degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Manhattan School of Music, Southern Methodist University, and

Keith Jameson has enjoyed a 28-year career as a professional opera and concert singer. He has been heard nationally at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, New York City Opera, The Santa Fe Opera; and internationally with opera companies in Italy, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, England, and Japan. He can be seen in Carmen and Falstaff, on DVD with the Metropolitan Opera, and heard with Boston Baroque in Haydn’s The Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, on CD. He is a graduate of Furman University and the Eastman School of Music.

Bruce Schoonmaker
A native of Charlotte, N.C., Bruce Schoonmaker has performed in operas, recitals, and with orchestras and choruses in the USA, France, Italy, Australia and Japan. His combination of vocalism and dramatic ability has endeared him to audiences of the Charlotte Symphony, Columbia Lyric Opera, Brevard Music Festival, Opera Carolina, and the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte. Last October he sang the baritone solos in a rousing performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Greenville Chorale and Greenville Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bing Vick.

While a student at Northwestern University, he won the Bel Canto Competition and studied with Tito Gobbi at the Tito Gobbi Opera Workshop in Florence, Italy.  A few years later, he studied with Carlo Bergonzi and Renata Tebaldi at the Bel Canto Seminar in Verdi’s hometown, Busseto, Italy. He made his New York City debut with the New York City Chamber Orchestra, as soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.

Schoonmaker taught voice and directed opera at Furman University until 2018 and now resides, performs, and teaches in Richmond, Virginia.

Take your senses on an adventure and take in some awesome art and mind blowing music with…
Bellizia (prog-rock punkgrass from Asheville)
Strange Orchard modern rock with a retro flair
and special guest Foxy J will kick the night off with his powerful rootsy rock

Show starts at 8 pm. $15 at the door, which includes your first drink!

Join us on a journey into the world of butterflies and plants, and see the complex relationship between monarchs and milkweed. “Monarchs and Milkweed” explores how very survival of these majestic creatures has been shaped over time by one another, traveling through the seasons of a calendar year and revealing how both insect and plant grow and interact, culminating in a massive migration that crosses a continent.

First Sunday Sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina

*General admission allows museum guests entry into all four floors of permanent exhibit space but does not include planetarium shows or 4D theater films.

Gary Malvern, conductor
Bronwen Forbay, soprano
Keith Jameson, tenor
Bruce Schoonmaker, baritone

A smorgasbord of some of the most virtuosic works composed for the human voice, this experience is composed of arias that are quite simply Olympic feats of singing.  Come and wonder at the impossible beauty of these works by Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart, including an aria from his iconic character the Queen of the Night, have a good laugh at Figaro’s expense in Rossini’s Largo from The Barber of Seville, hear operetta and even some selections from the golden age of Broadway.  This is an hour of operatic goodness you won’t want to miss.  And the crazy thing is, they make it look easy!

Gary Malvern, professor of music at Furman University, is a native of Buffalo, New York. He received a bachelor’s degree in performance and music history from Oberlin College Conservatory, and a master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University. Dr. Malvern has served as principal trumpet of the National Repertory Orchestra and the American Wind Symphony, and he served for 25 years as principal trumpet of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra.  Malvern has been artist in residence at universities in Western Australia, and at conservatories in Northern Italy. Dr. Malvern frequently records for Nuovo Musiche per Tromba (New Music for Trumpet).

Dr. Malvern was the recipient of Furman’s Meritorious Teaching Award in 1999.

Bronwen Forbay
Hailed by Opera Magazine as “At once powerful, radiant, timbrally beautiful, and balanced throughout the range, her soprano is that of a singer at the top of her game”, South African-born Fulbrighter BRONWEN FORBAY’s operatic successes include critically acclaimed performances of Mozart’s Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute) with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, Eugene Opera, and Tulsa Opera. Other celebrated roles include Orasia, Queen of Thrace (US premier of Telemann’s Orpheus), Velmyra (Wading Home) by Mary Alice Rich, Violetta (La Traviata), and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor with the Cape Town Opera. A Visiting Associate Professor of Voice at Furman University, Dr. Forbay holds degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Manhattan School of Music, Southern Methodist University, and

Keith Jameson has enjoyed a 28-year career as a professional opera and concert singer. He has been heard nationally at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, New York City Opera, The Santa Fe Opera; and internationally with opera companies in Italy, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, England, and Japan. He can be seen in Carmen and Falstaff, on DVD with the Metropolitan Opera, and heard with Boston Baroque in Haydn’s The Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, on CD. He is a graduate of Furman University and the Eastman School of Music.

Bruce Schoonmaker
A native of Charlotte, N.C., Bruce Schoonmaker has performed in operas, recitals, and with orchestras and choruses in the USA, France, Italy, Australia and Japan. His combination of vocalism and dramatic ability has endeared him to audiences of the Charlotte Symphony, Columbia Lyric Opera, Brevard Music Festival, Opera Carolina, and the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte. Last October he sang the baritone solos in a rousing performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Greenville Chorale and Greenville Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bing Vick.

While a student at Northwestern University, he won the Bel Canto Competition and studied with Tito Gobbi at the Tito Gobbi Opera Workshop in Florence, Italy.  A few years later, he studied with Carlo Bergonzi and Renata Tebaldi at the Bel Canto Seminar in Verdi’s hometown, Busseto, Italy. He made his New York City debut with the New York City Chamber Orchestra, as soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.

Schoonmaker taught voice and directed opera at Furman University until 2018 and now resides, performs, and teaches in Richmond, Virginia.

Join us on a journey into the world of butterflies and plants, and see the complex relationship between monarchs and milkweed. “Monarchs and Milkweed” explores how very survival of these majestic creatures has been shaped over time by one another, traveling through the seasons of a calendar year and revealing how both insect and plant grow and interact, culminating in a massive migration that crosses a continent.

For so many of us, our family story is what defines our lives—what we run from or toward in the decades after leaving home. In this course, we will dive into family narratives together. The events we hope to discuss can include those that seem to haunt family struggles: trauma, abuse, neglect. Yet those blessed with stable families have plenty of stories to tell, too—a glorious summer road trip that reveals the love between siblings, or a tender reckoning with a parent’s humanity. As guidance for methods of writing on experiences with family, we will read poetry of Ai, Aria Aber, Catullus, Victoria Chang, Lucille Clifton, Natalie Diaz, Tarfia Fiazullah, Joy Harjo, Robin Coste Lewis, Vi Khi Nao, Sylvia Plath, Carmen Giménez Smith, and others. In order to consider different approaches to the idea of “family histories,” the assigned work will roughly fall in one of the following topics: parents and guardians, siblings and those of our youth, ancestors, and continuing the cycle. These are delineated by the familial figures the authors address in their works, leading up to the writers’ own enactment of parenthood.

In each class, we will discuss the methods the authors have employed, and their methods of engagement with their creative production. In addition, we will consider the effects assigned texts have on you as a reader and, just as important, how you think the writer accomplishes these effects. You will create your own works with these methods in mind. Beyond merely creating new work, we will also revise with help from the discussions.

This four-part course will take place on Mondays, October 2, 9, 16, & 23 from 5:30 – 7:30 PM ET.

*

Diana Arterian is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Agrippina the Younger (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone, 2025). Her first book, Playing Monster :: Seiche (1913 Press), received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was a Poetry Foundation Staff Pick. A Poetry Editor at Noemi Press, Diana’s creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. Her poetry, nonfiction, criticism, co-translations, and conversations have been featured in BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR, The New York Times Book Review, and The Poetry Foundation website, among others. She curates and writes “The Annotated Nightstand” column at LitHub. Diana holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and she splits her time between Cambridge and Los Angeles.

Join us on a journey into the world of butterflies and plants, and see the complex relationship between monarchs and milkweed. “Monarchs and Milkweed” explores how very survival of these majestic creatures has been shaped over time by one another, traveling through the seasons of a calendar year and revealing how both insect and plant grow and interact, culminating in a massive migration that crosses a continent.

The Roper Research Room is open each Tuesday from 1 – 7 p.m. or by appointment with the curator. Find photos and documents about Anderson County or your ancestors from the area. The holdings in our library are more than 2,800 strong making it a wonderful resource for teachers, students and researchers. From city directories, maps and photographs, to many family genealogies, we have information that can help with your research.

Can’t make it on Tuesdays? Request an appointment here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSGAMAkcsuvo7791ZfmlpDwd-GqTJc-Py-WR-bvHcQ4cLotA/viewform

Artistic powerhouses cellist Johannes Moser, “radiant playing” (The Baltimore Sun), and pianist Marc-André Hamelin, praised for his “Near superhuman technical prowess” (New York Times), join forces for a memorable and illuminating duo recital. They perform works by Hamelin himself and Nadia Boulanger, a paragon of 20th century classical music, plus sonatas by Claude Debussy and César Franck, two of the great masterworks of the cello-piano repertoire.

Canadian cellist Johannes Moser won silver at the 2002 International Tchaikovsky Competition and has since had a phenomenal touring career, from soloing with the New York, Los Angeles, and BBC Philharmonics, as well as the orchestras of Chicago, London, Tokyo NHK, and Bayerischen Rundfunks, to chamber appearances with the likes of Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Midori, and Menahem Pressler. He’s also a prolific recording artist and a champion of new music who is heavily involved in commissioning.

Marc-André Hamelin is not only a pianist known worldwide for his unrivaled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique who has performed wide-ranging repertoire in the world’s great halls, he is a well-known composer with more than 30 pieces to his name, including the commissioned work for the 2017 Cliburn Competition (where he was also a juror). His discography spans more than 70 recordings which have earned him 11 Grammy® nominations, seven Juno Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association.

PROGRAM

Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) 3 Pieces for Cello and Piano

Marc-André Hamelin (b.1961) Four Perspectives for Cello and Piano

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Cello Sonata

— Intermission —

César Franck (1822-1890) Sonata in A major for Cello and Piano

Auditorium seating is reserved.

Join us on a journey into the world of butterflies and plants, and see the complex relationship between monarchs and milkweed. “Monarchs and Milkweed” explores how very survival of these majestic creatures has been shaped over time by one another, traveling through the seasons of a calendar year and revealing how both insect and plant grow and interact, culminating in a massive migration that crosses a continent.

Open Mic Night

Join us on a journey into the world of butterflies and plants, and see the complex relationship between monarchs and milkweed. “Monarchs and Milkweed” explores how very survival of these majestic creatures has been shaped over time by one another, traveling through the seasons of a calendar year and revealing how both insect and plant grow and interact, culminating in a massive migration that crosses a continent.

Join us on a journey into the world of butterflies and plants, and see the complex relationship between monarchs and milkweed. “Monarchs and Milkweed” explores how very survival of these majestic creatures has been shaped over time by one another, traveling through the seasons of a calendar year and revealing how both insect and plant grow and interact, culminating in a massive migration that crosses a continent.