Grace A. Tanner Lecture in Human Values Presents Vijay Gupta
Published: September 19, 2019 | Author: Southern Utah University | Read Time: 2 minutes
Musician and social justice advocate Vijay Gupta will deliver the 2019 Grace A. Tanner Lecture in Human Values. In partnership with the A.P.E.X. event series, the lecture will take place on October 3 at 11:30 a.m. in the Gilbert Great Hall on the campus of Southern Utah University.
A celebrated speaker, Gupta is a leading advocate for the role of the arts and music to heal, inspire, provoke change, and foster social connection. Gupta’s lecture titled “Music, Community, and the End of Apathy” will draw on his experiences as the founder of Street Symphony, a non-profit organization that provides musical engagement for homeless and incarcerated communities in Los Angeles. A Q&A session with Gupta will take place that afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in the Huntsman Reading Room on the second floor of the Library. Both the lecture and the Q&A session are free and open to the public.
Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at age 19, after having completed an undergraduate degree in biology from Marist College and a Master’s degree in violin performance from the Yale School of Music. Gupta has been named one of six national Citizen Artist Fellows by the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Alex Ross of The New Yorker named him “one of the most radical thinkers in the unradical world of American classical music,” and “a visionary violinist.” Gupta has performed as a recitalist, soloist and chamber musician on an international scale since the age of eight. He serves on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, which prepares musicians to become agents of change through the study of performance, music pedagogy and social justice. He also serves on the board of directors of the DC-based national arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts, as well as Los Angeles’s beloved 24th Street Theatre. Gupta was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of La Verne, and at age 29, he was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. In 2018 Vijay Gupt was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
“We invite members of SUU and the Cedar City community to attend the 2019 Tanner Lecture and join us for a reception with Vijay Gupta afterward,” said Dr. Danielle Dubrasky, director of the Tanner Center.
The Grace A. Tanner Center at Southern Utah University has hosted the Tanner Lecture in Human Values since 1980. The Tanner Center seeks to promote access to scholarly and scientific learning in all areas of human values which embrace moral, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual concepts. This year the center is exploring the theme of “Self, Community, and Human Values.