Sam Kyzivat ’18 is a music major with a concentration in theory and composition who also studies Chinese. He composes and performs his own music and participates in the Meddiebempsters and jazz ensemble.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Delta Sigma/Delta Upsilon practice rooms in Smith Union had been empty prior to last year. They were funded and stocked with equipment in 2009.
For over 200 years, American colleges and universities have maintained a commitment to the public good that has outlasted cultural, economic and technological change, says Chuck Dorn, professor of education and associate dean for student affairs.
On Thursday, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library hosted the first in a series of humanities-focused faculty book launches.
Throughout the course of the year, six professors will introduce their newly published works, in a format intended to spark conversations.
Summers on Maine’s Midcoast justify the state’s Vacationland reputation. This year, seniors Julianna Burke and Maya Morduch-Toubman took advantage of Bowdoin’s summer fellowships to engage more deeply with the region’s communities through art, storytelling and photography.
Continuing their success from the summer of 2016, Maggie Seymour ’16 and Olivia Atwood ’17 returned to the stage to perform “15 Villainous Fools” —this time in New York City.
Based on William Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors,” “15 Villainous Fools” is a comedy that follows the adventures of two sets of twins.
“Lost in the Dream” is a fitting title for the fourth album released by The War on Drugs. On that album, back in 2014, the Philadelphia-based rock outfit embarked on a blurred journey through shoegaze, alt-country and ambient electronica with lyrics just as hazy to go along.
Death is far from the minds of most college students. With its newest exhibition, “The Ivory Mirror,” the College Museum of Art attempts to show just how relevant questions of mortality are to the lives of Bowdoin students.
Brunswick residents trickled into the Curtis Memorial Library’s Morrell Meeting Room on Tuesday evening, taking their seats in a circle of chairs for a facilitated discussion about racism and bias as part of the library’s “One Book, One Community” program.
This past week I read a book recommended by a person who I know more intimately through social media than through conversation. He’s someone I view with a mixture of admiration, curiosity and deep respect. I was nervous that he would recommend a book that was more statistics or Latin phrases than regular English sentences, but nonetheless eager to read anything that influences the man who so profoundly influences us at Bowdoin.
Comprised of all first-years, student band 20/20 arrived with a bang when they became one of the youngest bands ever to win Battle of the Bands, winning a $500 cash prize and the chance to open for the Smallpools Ivies kick-off concert.
The first image visitors see when they enter the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s newest exhibition, “Why Draw? 500 Years of Drawings and Watercolor,” is a seven-foot-tall portrait of pop culture icon Pharrell Williams, created with techniques that date back to the Renaissance-era drawings that are displayed alongside it.
Pillows and sleep, improvisation, site-specific choreography and being yourself—this year’s annual Spring Dance Concert will showcase a broad range of contemporary styles, themes and techniques from dancers enrolled in student soloists, special guest Rakiya Orange ’11 and Modern classes.
After being captivated by tales of Inuit life in Greenland, Arctic photographer Bryan Alexander received a travel scholarship in 1975 and set out to understand more about northern cultures. Using his camera to capture the indigenous people’s day-to-day lives, Alexander has traveled to dozens of spots around the Arctic each year for over four decades.
The other day I came to the uncomfortable realization that I am not as woke as I had once thought. I’ve always held the belief that music simply reflects the values, circumstances and realities of whatever environment it comes out of.
Senior visual arts majors presented their final exhibitions on Monday evening in an eclectic display of video monitors, sound art, photography and large oil portraits on canvas. In the culmination of their Senior Studio class, many students utilized both traditional and non-traditional mediums to reflect on their personal experiences at Bowdoin and at home.
Inuit artist, educator and designer Becky Qilavvaq uses innovative clothing designs to make traditional Inuit culture accessible to modern audiences. One of her pieces is currently on display in a new exhibit, “Threads of Change: Arctic Clothing and Identity in the North,” in the Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum.
My beloved friend Caroline likes writing, Craisins, GSWS Jeopardy and dancing. She dislikes the Chainsmokers, New England ignorance of Midwest geography and the modern commodification of feminism. As the result of more major/minor switches than anyone else I know, she is a proud Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS)/German double major with a math minor—Caroline leaves no stone unturned.
Raised in an immigrant household in North Carolina, George “G” Yamazawa was 17 years old when he decided to become a slam poet. Identifying as both Japanese and American, he often felt simultaneously at home and out of place.
In ways equally endearing and entertaining, student-run theater troupe Beyond the Proscenium (BTP) will present “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” this evening in an unconventional venue for a musical: Sargent Gymnasium. Following six preteens competing in a spelling bee run by three quirky adults, the show hopes to capture the perils of adolescence.
This evening, Bowdoin V-Day, an organization dedicated to fighting sexual violence against women and girls, will end nearly 20 years of performing “The Vagina Monologues” due to debate about the Monologues presenting a one-dimensional, outdated portrayal of womanhood. In its place, V-Day is debuting the student-written show, “RISE: Untold Stories of Bowdoin Women.”
One of Bowdoin’s student-run theater troupes, Curtain Callers, will subvert sexist and racist themes in a minimalistic, modified rendition of the 1966 play “The Apple Tree” by the writers of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The musical, which will open this evening and run all weekend, is divided into three overarching stories of man, woman and temptation, and will feature only seven cast members in an unconventional theater: Drake lobby in Memorial Hall.
I cut my teeth as a musician playing guitar in the worship band at a Southern Baptist church in Indianapolis. My guitar teacher, the wise and venerable Ms. Tracy, was the worship pastor at her church, and when she thought I was ready she invited me to join her in her church band.
Two local poets and friends, Christian Barter and Jeffrey Thomson, will be coming to campus to do a reading as part of a three-event book launch for both of their new books, “Bye-Bye Land” and “The Belfast Notebooks,” respectively.
Office Hours, Bowdoin’s longform improvisation group founded by James Jelin ’16, has been selected for a second time to perform at the Del Close Marathon, a festival hosted by Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (UCB) that brings 72 hours of uninterrupted, nonstop improv to New York City for one weekend in June.
When former Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music Emeritus Elliott Schwartz hired Director of the Concert Band John Morneau in 1988, he commenced 30 years of friendship and contemporary composition with the Bowdoin College Concert Band.
We come to Bowdoin to learn: about physics or Latin American studies; about what we want to be when we grow up; about the kinds of people we want to be friends with and the kinds of people we want to be.
With poems ranging from “Ode to My Resting Bitch Face” to “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” feminist spoken word poet Olivia Gatwood will confront topics of sexual assault, rape culture and gender inequity tomorrow evening in a performance in culmination of the Alliance of Sexual Assault Prevention’s (ASAP) annual Date Week programming.
This past Tuesday, Howell House hosted Maine Inside Out, a nonprofit group founded in 2007 with the goal of empowering currently and previously incarcerated youth through theater. The members performed compelling acts on topics like police brutality, racism, xenophobia and the school-to-prison pipeline. Phrases like “When schools neglect, the streets accept,” rang throughout the performance, giving the audience a personal perspective from the inside out.
When the College phased out the Greek system in 2000, the Delta Sigma/Delta Upsilon co-ed fraternity—known for fostering creativity in non-formal spaces on Bowdoin’s campus—channelled its funds into a support network for future Bowdoin artists. The fraternity’s funds work to support the arts at Bowdoin today.
The religious Festival of Dionysus in classical Athens transformed the art of storytelling when Thespis turned and spoke to someone else on stage instead of directly to the audience. That 90 degree pivot, said Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater in New York City and producer of Broadway hits “Hamilton” and “Fun Home,” is an important, destabilizing act in the creation of theatrical dialogue.
In the fall of my junior year, one of my recently graduated friends returned to Bowdoin to visit and brought his younger brother, Rogelio. I don’t remember everything about that night, but I distinctly remember finding Rogelio asleep in my bathtub at about two in the morning and that the floor, walls and somehow even the ceiling of my bathroom had a look reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s work, except only painted with little pieces of partly digested food and regurgitated Natural Lite.
In hopes of celebrating and sharing the cultures of African students on campus, Bowdoin Africa Alliance is hosting a Pan-African Fashion Show representing 18 countries tomorrow night. In addition to displaying the traditional clothing of students’ respective African heritage, the show will include performances such as a dance, song and slam poetry.
In conjunction with the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s exhibit, “Perspectives from Postwar Hiroshima: Chuzo Tamotzu, Children’s Drawings, and the Art of Resolution,” artists, historians and scholars will explore what it means to grow up in a city devastated by a nuclear weapon at the Museum of Art’s symposium today.
“15 Villainous Fools,” Maggie Seymour ’16 and Olivia Atwood’s ’17 two-woman clowning adaptation of Shakespeare’s play “The Comedy of Errors,” was recently picked up by the People’s Improv Theater (PIT) in New York City. The show will be performed at an off-off-broadway venue for two months this summer starting in July.
I met Harriet on the first day we got back from Pre-Orientation trips; she lived on the second floor of Maine Hall and I lived on the third floor. We were both from Brooklyn, so we talked about that, and I learned that she has a tendency to laugh while she talks, turning her sentences into word-laugh-noise mashups.
In a modern retelling of the classical Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Bowdoin’s Department of Theater and Dance will merge fantasy and innovative visuals this weekend in its production of “Eurydice.”
Written by playwright Sarah Ruhl, the play tells the traditional myth from the female perspective of Orpheus’ bride, Eurydice, and explores dimensions of the story that are not present in the original myth.
Tomorrow night, Israeli punk guitarist Yonatan Gat and his band will bring their improvisational, atmospheric and eclectic sound to Ladd House’s living room in what is expected to be an immersive, synergetic performance.
The concert is sponsored by WBOR and Bowdoin Hillel.
Comedian and internet superstar Chris Fleming, known for his viral YouTube series “GAYLE,” will perform stand up this Saturday night in Kresge Auditorium. Fleming is expected to poke at notions of gender and liberal arts colleges in his routine.
In an effort to explore the experiences of women of color within Bowdoin’s largely white student body, the Women’s Resource Center (WRC) has curated a photo gallery called “Beauty in Color,” which seeks to foster confidence for women of color and challenge traditionally accepted, white standards of beauty on campus.