BEST-SELLING AUTHOR DIANA HENRIQUES PRESENTS “FROM BLACK MONDAY TO BERNIE MADOFF: LEGENDS AND LIES ON WALL STREET,”

THE 2018 O’NEIL LECTURE AT SMU, APRIL 17

Talk by award-winning financial journalist examines the “hubris and delusions” of the finance world

            Award-winning financial journalist and New York Times best-selling author Diana Henriques will deliver the 2018 William J. O’Neil Lecture in Business Journalism at SMU at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 17. Henriques’ talk, “From Black Monday to Bernie Madoff: Legends and Lies on Wall Street,” examines the finance world’s hubris, romantic delusions, willful blindness and regulatory deficiencies. The lecture takes place in O’Donnell Hall, Room 2130 of the Owen Arts Center, 6101 Bishop Blvd. on the SMU campus. Admission is free, and tickets are not required. For further information call 214-768-3695. The O’Neil Lecture Series is presented by the Division of Journalism at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.

            Henriques is the author of A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History, a major new book about the 1987 stock market crash released in September 2017. She also wrote the New York Times bestseller The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, and starred as herself opposite Robert De Niro in the hit HBO movie based on the book. An avid reader and reviewer of financial histories, Henriques is also the author of The White Sharks of Wall Street: Thomas Mellon Evans and The Original Corporate Raiders (2000), Fidelity’s World: The Secret Life and Public Power of the Mutual Fund Giant (1995) and The Machinery of Greed: Public Authority Abuse and What To Do About It (1986). As a staff writer for The New York Times from 1989 to 2012 and as a contributing writer since then, she has largely specialized in investigative reporting on white-collar crime, market regulation and corporate governance.

Henriques was a member of a reporting team that was named a Pulitzer finalist in 2003 for its coverage of the aftermath of the Enron scandals. She was also a member of a team that won a 1999 Gerald Loeb Award for covering the near-collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose troubles rocked the financial markets in September 1998. She was one of four reporters honored in 1996 by the Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of the Sigma Delta Chi professional journalism society, for a series on how wealthy Americans legally sidestep taxes. She has explored the expansion of tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and Congressional earmarks for religious nonprofits, and helped monitor commodity markets and money market funds in the financial turmoil of late 2008.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Henriques widened her focus to work with her colleague at The New York Times, David Barstow, in covering the management of billions of dollars in charity and victim assistance as part of the paper’s award-winning section, “A Nation Challenged.” She also chronicled the fate of Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm that suffered the largest death toll in the World Trade Center attacks.

She says she is proudest of her 2004 series exposing the exploitation of American military personnel by financial service companies. Her work prompted legislative reform and cash reimbursements for tens of thousands of defrauded service members, drawing recognition and thanks from military lawyers and families across the country. For that series, she was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 and received Long Island University’s George Polk Award; Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting; and the Nieman Foundation’s Worth Bingham Prize.

A native of Texas, Henriques is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of what is now the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has been a trustee of the university since 2011. She was awarded a Ferris professorship in writing at Princeton University for the 2012-13 academic year, and is a frequent guest lecturer for business journalism classes and workshops elsewhere. From 2003 to 2016, she served on the board of governors of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW). She and her husband live in Hoboken, N.J.

About the William J. O’Neil Lecture Series in Business Journalism

The William J. O’Neil Lecture Series in Business Journalism brings outstanding business journalism professionals to the SMU campus each semester. It is part of a cooperative program in financial reporting developed in 2007 by the Meadows School Division of Journalism and the Cox School of Business at SMU, through funding from William J. O’Neil, an SMU alumnus and chairman and CEO of Investor’s Business Daily.

The Division of Journalism, under Belo Distinguished Chair Tony Pederson, offers concentrations in all media – broadcast, print and internet – through its convergence journalism program. With the help of a gift from The Belo Foundation, the Division has become one of the few journalism schools in the country that provides hands-on experience through a high-definition television studio, digital newsroom and website.

SMU MEADOWS 2018 SPRING DANCE CONCERT PRESENTS RETROSPECTIVE OF WORKS

BY RETIRING JAZZ DANCE FACULTY ARTIST DANNY BURACZESKI 

DALLAS (SMU) – The SMU Meadows 2018 Spring Dance Concert will honor award-winning jazz dance faculty artist Danny Buraczeski, who retires in May after 13 years of teaching at SMU, with a retrospective of seven of his works. Featured will be dances created over the past 30 years for professional companies and for SMU students, ranging from 1989’s Merry Go Round to In the City, which premiered in 2013 at SMU’s “Meadows at the Winspear” concert. Performers will include current students; alumni Albert Drake and Adrián Aguirre; and the Zenon Dance Company from Minneapolis, long-time collaborators of Buraczeski’s who performed his critically acclaimed Ezekiel’s Wheel in 2016 in Cuba. The concert will be presented in two alternating programs, April 4-8, in the Bob Hope Theatre at SMU.

Concert program A, to be performed April 4, 5 & 7, will include five works. It opens with In the City (2013), based on “Three Dance Episodes” from the popular Leonard Bernstein musical On the Town. Inspired by the urban rhythms and textures of Bernstein’s remarkable music, the work features 15 dancers celebrating youth, optimism and the vibrant new energy that the Dallas Arts District has brought to the city. It’s followed by Scene Unseen (1998), set to music by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, featuring a duet with alumni Albert Drake, a founding member of Bruce Wood Dance Project, and Adrián Aguirre, a current member of the company. Song Awakened (2001) follows, a sparingly elegant, richly detailed work set to the songs of the late Cesária Évora, a noted singer of Creole-Portuguese soul music. The work, which debuted to critical acclaim at New York’s Joyce Theater, will be performed by eight Zenon Dance Company members. The next piece, Points on a Curve (1998), is danced to music by Ornette Coleman; The New York Times said the low-key choreography evoked the music “in often witty and thought-provoking ways.” Program A concludes with Swing Concerto (1994), an athletic and ebullient exploration of the relationship between two great vernacular musical traditions, European Klezmer music and the American swing of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. The piece synthesizes the grounded qualities of folk dance with the exuberance of swing era movement. The Times wrote, “Swing Concerto is Mr. Buraczeski’s choreography at its most inventive, perceptive best.”

Program B, to be performed April 6 & 8, will include four works. The program opens with the aforementioned In the City, followed by Merry Go Round (1989), set to music by Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band and featuring Zenon company dancers Scott Mettille and Sarah Steichen Stiles. Next is Points on a Curve (noted above).  The final work in Program B will vary. On April 6, it will be Ezekiel’s Wheel (1999), an emotional piece for eight dancers that was inspired by the life and work of author and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin. The work, exploring the themes of recognition, responsibility and redemption, will be performed by Zenon Dance Company. Commissioned when Buraczeski was artistic director of the acclaimed Minneapolis-based JAZZDANCE, Ezekiel’s Wheel was praised by The Times as “a balm for the soul in troubled times.” On April 8, the concert program will conclude with the aforementioned Swing Concerto.

“Danny Buraczeski has for years been one of the country’s leading jazz dance choreographers,” said Samuel Holland, Algur H. Meadows Dean of the Meadows School. “His artistry, passion and dedication to jazz music and dance have inspired both students and professional dancers for four decades. We will miss him greatly, but our dance department will continue to perform his exciting and inventive works and carry on his legacy for future generations of SMU dancers.”

“Danny is one of the most prolific and significant voices in the world of jazz dance,” said SMU Dance Chair Patty Delaney. “This retrospective allows us to experience his seminal works live and, through discussion with those who worked with him during their creation, we have the opportunity to fully appreciate the artistic contributions Danny has made to the field of dance. The SMU Dance Division is exceptionally fortunate to have had Danny on our faculty for 13 years.”  

Buraczeski joined the SMU faculty in 2005 and rose to the rank of full professor. At SMU he taught classic jazz dance technique, composition and choreography and launched a national, biannual Teaching Jazz Dance Symposium, drawing educators, choreographers and dancers from around the country to SMU. He also served as artistic director for the Dance Division’s Brown Bag Concerts.  He was named Dance Educator of the Year by the Dance Council of North Texas in 2010 and Meadows Foundation Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2017. He retires as Professor Emeritus of Dance.

About Danny Buraczeski

As a classic jazz stylist for over three decades, Buraczeski has traced a clear and deep investigation of jazz – its sources and ongoing evolution – withkeen attention paid to the rich lineage of individual performers and movement makers. Rhythm drives Buraczeski’s choreographic explorations. Respect and enthusiasm for his musical collaborators is evident in the thorough research, extensive knowledge and advocacy for jazz makers and the vernacular sights, sounds and environments that are his wellspring. After a career on Broadway appearing in such musicals as Mame with Angela Lansbury and The Act with Liza Minnelli, Buraczeski formed the original New York City-based JAZZDANCE in 1979. Based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul from 1992 to 2005, the company performed at leading concert halls and festivals in more than 35 states and in Europe and the Caribbean. Many of Buraczeski’s works for JAZZDANCE were commissioned by presenters around the country, including the Walker Art Center, Bates Dance Festival and the Library of Congress, whose 1997 support of Among These Cares was that institution’s first dance commission in 50 years. The Joyce Theater (where the company performed regularly beginning in 1987), the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, American Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bucknell University, Penn State, Palm Beach Community College and the University of Minnesota have also supported the creation of new work. Buraczeski has created works for the Boston Ballet, Ballet Memphis, the Zenon Dance Company and many repertory companies and universities around the nation. He has taught at each of the nation’s major dance festivals. Among other awards, he has received multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, for whom he is now a regular panelist/consultant.

Ticket Information

Spring Dance Concert performance times are 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.  Tickets are $14 for adults, $11 for seniors and $8 for students, SMU faculty and staff.  The Bob Hope Theatre is located inside the Owen Arts Center, 6101 Bishop Blvd. on the SMU campus. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 214-768-2787 or click here.

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Event to honor philanthropist and arts advocate Sarah Fullinwider Perot

DALLAS (SMU) – SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts will present its 25th annual “Meadows at the Meyerson” concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 28 in the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. in Dallas. The event will feature works by Barber and Mahler, performed by the critically acclaimed Meadows Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Paul Phillips. The event supports talented Meadows students through the Meadows Scholars Program.

The annual spring concert also honors a community leader. This year, the honoree is noted philanthropist and arts advocate Sarah Fullinwider Perot, and the event chair is Melissa Fetter. SMU President R. Gerald Turner and Algur H. Meadows Dean Sam Holland will provide remarks at the event.

The program opens with Samuel Barber’s First Essay for Orchestra, op. 12, a short, lyrical work premiered in 1938 at a concert of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. The concert broadcast helped propel the 28-year-old composer to fame and a career that included a Rome Prize and two Pulitzer Prizes.

Barber’s Toccata Festiva, op. 36 follows; it’s a celebratory work for organ and orchestra composed in 1960 for the inauguration of a new organ at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. Toccata Festiva incorporates modernistic and rhythmic sections that contrast with lush and lyrical Romantic melodies, allowing the organist to show off the myriad colors of the instrument. Award-winning organist Stefan Engels, Leah Young Fullinwider Centennial Chair in Music Performance at the Meadows School, will be guest soloist.

Following intermission, the MSO will perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. The dynamic work incorporates sounds of nature, folk music, a funeral procession and a heroic, triumphal ending. The symphony went through multiple revisions after an initial chilly reception by audiences in 1889, and today it is considered one of Mahler’s most thrilling orchestral works.

“Meadows at the Meyerson celebrates its 25^th anniversary in 2018, and has continued to be a musical highlight of the year,” said Dean Holland. “It is an opportunity to showcase the skill and dedication of our gifted students and the critically acclaimed Meadows Symphony on a world-class stage, and to raise scholarship funds for our Meadows Scholars Program. Now in its tenth year, the Meadows Scholars Program’s ever-increasing impact over the past decade can be measured by rising test scores, artistry and diversity with each incoming class. We are also thrilled this year to honor Sarah Fullinwider Perot, who works tirelessly to give, lead and advocate for arts and culture in Dallas. We are proud to claim her as a Meadows alumna.”

Event honoreeSarah Fullinwider Perotgraduated from SMU in 1983 with a B.A. in journalism and broadcast film, and is currently president of the Sarah & Ross Perot, Jr. Foundation, which focuses on education, basic human need and patriotic philanthropy. She serves on the SMU Board of Trustees, as well as the executive boards of the SMU Meadows School, Dedman College and Tower Center for Political Studies.  Her service to the Dallas community includes fundraising efforts for the AT&T Performing Arts Center, Dallas Symphony and as chair of The Sweetheart Ball. She has been recognized with the TACA Silver Cup Award for her contributions to the arts in North Texas and was the recipient of the 2016 SMU Distinguished Alumni Award. Nationally, she is an active member of the Madison Council at the Library of Congress as well as The Blue Ribbon in Los Angeles. She also is a trustee for the Blair House Restoration Fund in Washington, D.C., and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. Mrs. Perot recently concluded her term as vice chair for The Global Fund for Children, directing micro-grants in education and safety benefiting over a million vulnerable children in 70-plus countries. She and her husband, Ross Perot, Jr., have two sons and two daughters.

The annual Meadows at the Meyerson concert provides important funding for the Meadows Scholars Program, inaugurated in 2008 to recruit the brightest and most talented students nationwide to the Meadows School of the Arts. It is targeted to applicants who are accepted to Meadows and who meet both stringent academic and artistic/leadership criteria. While such high achievers often receive SMU academic scholarship awards, many of them are still unable to afford full tuition. The Meadows Scholars Program offers an additional annual scholarship, plus an exploration grant that can be used any time during their years at Meadows for a creative project, providing a significant incentive for them to choose SMU and Dallas. Now in its tenth year, the program has supported the academic careers of nearly 200 students. This year, proceeds from the event will benefit both the Meadows Scholars Program and the Sarah F. Perot Endowed Meadows Scholar Fund.

Ticket and sponsorship information

Tickets to the Meadows at the Meyerson concert are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors, and $17 for students and SMU faculty and staff. A $10 discount is available for Meadows subscribers. For tickets, contact the Meadows box office at 214-768-2787.

Patron and corporate sponsorships with special benefits and seating packages are available from $2,000 to $30,000.  In addition, the Meadows Scholars level recognizes those who either permanently endow a Meadows Scholar at $150,000 or who make a $30,000 commitment to fund an individual Meadows Scholarship over four years. For more information, call the Meadows Development Office at 214-768-4189.

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With rhythmic pulsing and ever-changing shades of consonant harmony, Music for 18 Musicians is regarded as a high-water mark in traditional minimalist composition. It incorporates pianos, keyboard percussion, winds, strings and vocalists, transforming into a wide variety of textures and colors over its hour-long running time, resulting in an almost hypnotic effect on the listener. First performed in 1976, the work is considered a masterpiece by Reich, whose numerous awards include the Pulitzer Prize. The concert will also include video projections of abstract images that take shape depending on what musical sounds are made. The algorithms for the projections are designed by Ira Greenberg, director of SMU’s Center of Creative Computation.

“Music for 18 Musicians is the finest musical representation of pure joy ever written,” said Jon Lee, director of the Meadows Percussion Ensemble.

“The piece has widespread appeal – fans of contemporary art music, hip hop, indie, electronic music, and classical music all point to it as among their absolute favorites,” said Lane Harder, director of SYZYGY. “The experience of hearing it shares the immediacy and visceral quality that a lot of pop or world music has.” 

Harder added that most people know the work from the Grammy-winning 1978 recording by Steve Reich and Musicians. “It was released on a label known for selling pop and rock recordings, ECM, and it sold over 100,000 copies in the first year. In recent years, scores and parts have been made available to the public, and for the first two years after its availability, it was the biggest seller in the Boosey & Hawkes classical music catalog.”  

Ticket Information:

Moody Performance Hall is located at 2520 Flora St. in downtown Dallas (75201). Tickets are $14 for adults, $11 for seniors and $8 for students and educators. For tickets and more information, contact the Meadows box office at 214-768-2787 or visit the Meadows event website.

About the Performers:

SYZYGY is the contemporary music ensemble of the Meadows School of the Arts, directed by Lane Harder. It performs new music and music of the recent past with an emphasis on the music of living composers. SYZYGY’s performance events aim to create encounters with contemporary music that are innovative and engaging for diverse audiences. The ensemble’s repertoire includes aggressive programming on many important themes including gender identity, domestic violence, gender roles, human connections, existentialism, and the effects of politics on individuals, among others. Under Harder’s direction, SYZYGY has collaborated in and on live performances with DJ Spooky, Cezanne Quartet, Dallas Neo-Classical Ballet, Artists for Animals, and many others. Through SYZYGY, Lane Harder curates the SYZYGY@131 concert series at Site131, a contemporary art gallery in the Design District of Dallas.

The Meadows Percussion Ensemble, directed by Jon D. Lee, is dedicated to the performance of new and traditional percussion ensemble literature. The ensemble has performed at a number of national and international conferences, including those for the Texas Music Educators Association, Percussive Arts Society and World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles. Recent collaborations have included performances with the SYZYGY ensemble at the Meadows School of the Arts and the Dallas Neo-Classical Ballet. The ensemble has also premiered a number of works, including Lane Harder’s La Razon del Viaje, Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s Xochiquetzal, John Gibson’s Aqalani and Koda, Warren Benson’s Drums of Summer, Stephen Jones’ strike 2, Anne Strickland’s Fascinating Notions, Kevin Hanlon’s Kickin’ It, Jenny Olivia Johnson’s I Refuse to Mourn and G. Bradley Bodine’s Namaste: Concerto for Marimba and Percussion Ensemble. The ensemble has recorded two CDs on the Gasparo label, Strike: the Music of Motion and Contact. 

For more information, visit https://www.smu.edu/Meadows/AreasOfStudy/Music/Ensembles.

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SMU Professor, Local Agencies To Launch New Seedling Farm at MLK Community Center, Nov. 21

Farm to provide gardening advice and healthy, low-cost plants to

community gardeners in South Dallas

In the ongoing effort to combat South Dallas’ food desert, a new source of low-cost plants for individual and community gardeners will launch with the grand opening of the new Seedling Farm at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center’s Freedom Garden on Tuesday, November 21 at 11:30 a.m. The center is at 2922 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Dallas (75215). The free public event will include presentations and family activities and provide information about the farm’s offerings.

The Seedling Farm is a collaborative effort by Owen Lynch, associate professor of  organizational communication at SMU Meadows School of the Arts and senior research fellow at SMU’s Hunt Institute for Humanity and Engineering, and numerous local Dallas urban farm organizations.

“A food desert is a community without close access to fresh, healthy foods at grocery stores or other retail outlets, and in South Dallas, many residents live at least a mile away from a grocery store,” says Lynch, who also serves as president of the nonprofit, urban farm consulting agency Get Healthy Dallas. “In fact, South Dallas is one of the largest food deserts in the country. While there have been positive results with the many new urban farming and gardening efforts in recent years, there is still work to be done. The Seedling Farm aims to overcome some of the barriers to successful local agricultural production and help boost garden yield in South Dallas. It helps everyone in the urban farm system, facilitating others to grow their businesses.”

The Seedling Farm will be open year-round and will provide a variety of seasonal fruit and vegetable plants at a nominal cost, along with professional in-person advice. Community members – both individuals and groups – can participate via four steps: “meet, select, grow and go.” Step one is to meet with Seedling Farm manager Tyrone Day, an urban farm expert with a horticulture degree and more than 20 years of experience. Step two is to select the best types of plants for the resident’s garden, with Day’s counsel. In step three, the selected seeds will be grown at the farm until they have matured into young seedlings ready for planting. In step four, the gardener picks up the plants at the MLK Center and raises them in his or her own garden. The resulting crop can be for the gardener’s personal use, or shared with friends or community centers.

The Seedling Farm’s goal is to produce 20,000 young plants each year.

Overcoming Barriers, Creating Impact

Access to fresh produce translates to healthier, more vibrant communities, says Lynch, but studies show that community gardens have high closure rates and are often not economically viable. Lynch has been researching urban food systems with a focus on how to remove barriers and create a viable farming system. He has worked closely with the Hunt Institute on the issue, because one focus of the institute is to research and pilot farming systems with the potential for aggregation to co-develop and encourage a sustainable food economy.

“Research shows that community gardens can achieve bigger gains if the community gardeners have access to local experts and seedlings to better manage their gardens,” says Lynch. “That is a big part of what the Seedling Farm is about: to encourage, support and – if needed – teach local residents how to get the most from their urban gardens. It also serves as a source of healthy, low-cost plants.”

Providing seedlings instead of seeds is an important factor. “The process of going from a seed to a seedling is the most vulnerable stage in a plant’s life,” says Seedling Farm manager Day. “At the farm, we raise them in controlled conditions with constant monitoring, and also prepare them for transportation to community and home gardens.” Jump-starting gardens by planting viable young seedlings, instead of seeds, means the plants are more likely to survive, mature faster and produce fruits or vegetables more quickly, says Day. “Gardeners can see more growth cycles per season, which means more product. All of that translates into a healthier community.” The seedlings are grown in an industrial hoop house – a simple greenhouse structure – funded by a grant from SMU Lyle School of Engineering’s Hart Center for Engineering Leadership.

Another expected benefit of the Seedling Farm is job training. With the support of Miles of Freedom, a nonprofit that helps previously incarcerated men and women gain employment and re-entry into society, Dr. Lynch and his partners are using the Seedling Farm to help identify and train community members to become future urban farmers. By increasing production and coordinating the capabilities of the local emerging agriculture system, the hope is the farm will not just seed gardens but have a multiplier effect, contributing to economic activity and well-being throughout the community.

Seedling Farm Opening Day Activities

The opening event will include presentations at 11:30 a.m. by Dr. Lynch, Tyrone Day, Pamela Jones, manager of Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center, and DeVincent Martin, a South Dallas native and master’s student in SMU Lyle School of Engineering doing research on urban farming, as well as a variety of family activities. Farmers from the State Fair of Texas Big Tex Urban Farms will be on hand to demonstrate how they grow produce in pallet-sized, portable, stackable boxes on the fairgrounds during the fair’s off-season. Tours of the hoop house will be offered, and attendees can take home a seedling for their own gardens.

Community Partners

The new Seedling Farm is a collaboration of multiple organizations. Partners include the MLK, Jr. Community Center, Big Tex Urban Farms, The State Fair of Texas, Texas A&M AgriLife,  and the Hunt Institute for Humanity and Engineering and Hart Center for Engineering Leadership, both at SMU Lyle School of Engineering. Community supporters include the Austin Street Center, Café Momentum, Connecting City to Farm, and Miles of Freedom. The local community garden network includes Behind Every Door – Village Oaks, Bonton Farms, Jubilee Park Community Center, Lincoln High School, Mill City Gardens, St. Philip’s School Garden, and Sunny South & Nella Roots.

For more information about the Seedling Farm, contact Dr. Owen Lynch at olynch@smu.edu.