The Art of MIT: Leila Kinney & Evan Ziporyn of MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST)

Summary: Everyone is familiar with MIT and the university's reputation as a serious force in the world of science, tech, and research, but how many are aware of MIT's legacy in the arts? Did you know that MIT's founder had envisioned incorporating the arts from the very beginning? In this episode we speak with Leila Kinney and Evan Ziporyn of MIT's Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) about MIT's culture of creativity and exploration, the institution's mission to humanize science and tech, and the exciting projects that have emerged from CAST, like Tomás Saraceno's Arachnid Orchestra. -About Leila Kinney- Leila W. Kinney is the Executive Director of Arts Initiatives and of the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), working with Associate Provost Philip S. Khoury, the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P), the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), the Creative Arts Council, the Council for the Arts at MIT, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the MIT Museum, to advance the arts at MIT in the areas of strategic planning, cross-school collaborations, communications and resource development. Kinney is an art historian with experience in both SA+P, where she was on the faculty in the History, Theory and Criticism section of the Department of Architecture (HTC) and SHASS, where she taught in the Program in Women’s Studies and in Comparative Media Studies. She specializes in modern art, with an emphasis on media in transition, arts institutions and artists’ engagement with mass culture. She is a member of the Executive Committee of a2ru (Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities) and of the Advisory Committees of the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT, the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the MIT Museum. -About Evan Ziporyn- Evan Ziporyn makes music at the crossroads between genres and cultures, and between East and West. He studied at the Eastman School of Music, Yale University, and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He first traveled to Bali in 1981, studying with Madé Lebah, Colin McPhee’s 1930s musical informant. He returned on a Fulbright in 1987. Earlier that year, he performed a clarinet solo at the First Bang on a Can Marathon in New York. His involvement with Bang on a Can continued for twenty five years. In 1992, he co-founded the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Year), with whom he toured the globe and premiered over one hundred commissioned works, collaborating with Nik Bartsch, Iva Bittova, Don Byron, Ornette Coleman, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Thurston Moore, Terry Riley, and Tan Dun. He co-produced their seminal 1996 recording of Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports,” as well as their most recent CD, “Big Beautiful Dark & Scary” (2012). Ziporyn joined the MIT faculty in 1990, founding Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993, and beginning a series of groundbreaking compositions for gamelan & Western instruments. These include three evening-length works, 2001’s “ShadowBang,” 2004’s “Oedipus Rex” (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009’s “A House in Bali,” an opera which joins Western singers with Balinese traditional performers, and the Bang on a Can All-stars with a full gamelan. It received its world premiere in Bali that summer and its New York premiere at BAM Next Wave in October 2010. As a clarinetist, Ziporyn recorded the definitive version of Steve Reich’s multi-clarinet “New York Counterpoint” in 1996, sharing in that ensemble’s Grammy in 1998. In 2001, his solo clarinet CD, “This is Not A Clarinet,” made Top Ten lists across the country. His compositions have been commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road, Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, Wu Man, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with whom he recorded his most recent CD, “Big Grenadilla/Mumbai” (2012). His honors include awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2011); The Herb Alpert Foundation (2011); USA Artists Walker Fellowship (2007); MIT’s Gyorgy Kepes Prize (2006); the American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship (2004); as well as commissions from Meet the Composer/Commissioning Music USA and the Rockefeller MAP Fund. Recordings of his works have been been released on Cantaloupe, Sony Classical, New Albion, New World, Koch, Naxos, Innova, and CRI. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT. He also serves as Head of Music and Theater Arts, and in 2012 was appointed inaugural Director of MIT’s Center for Art Science & Technology. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with Christine Southworth, and has two children, Leonardo (19) and Ava (12). -About MIT CAST- The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures and publications. The Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.