Harvard University’s 14th Annual ARTS FIRST Festival Creates a Spring Splash

One of the nation’s largest university arts festivals showcases over 200 works from May 4-7, 2006

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 30, 2006) -- ARTS FIRST, Harvard’s annual celebration of student and faculty creativity, offers art from A to Z on Thursday, May 4, through Sunday, May 7, 2006. From Mariachi and Capoeira to Mozart and Copland, ARTS FIRST spans disciplines and styles with over 225 music, theater, dance, film, and visual arts events (most free of charge and open to the public). The festival is sponsored by the University’s Board of Overseers.

2006 ARTS FIRST Festival highlights include:
· A conversation, moderated by actor John Lithgow ’67, with 2006 Harvard Arts Medal recipient Christopher Durang ’71, Obie-winning playwright and co-chair of the Playwriting Program at Julliard
· Performance Fair with over 100 free music, dance, and film events in four hours at 12 sites
Barbeque picnic with music by the Harvard Sunday Jazz Ensemble
· A concert by the Brattle Street Chamber Players, with works by Mozart, Bruch, and Ravel·Handel’s “Messiah,” with the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, accompanied by the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music
·Productions of The Playboy of the Western World, Alice in Wonderland, Footloose, Inherit the Wind, and an adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
· The Harvard University Powwow, a celebration of Native American song and dance
· Children’s art-making
· Outdoor art installations
· Outdoor Stage and Bandfest at Holyoke Center in the heart of Harvard Square
· The ARTS FIRST Art Walk, highlighting exhibitions in Harvard’s residential houses

Office for the Arts director Jack Megan declares, “ARTS FIRST is the culmination of the academic year and an affirmation of the creative power in each of us.”

“The arts are an enormous part of the undergraduate experience at Harvard, with approximately half of our 6,600 students participating in the joys and rigors of learning about and creating art,” says Harvard President Larry Summers. “Whatever your artistic passion, you’ll find it in abundance at ARTS FIRST.”

For more information on ARTS FIRST 2006, please contact the Office for the Arts at Harvard at 617.495.8676, or visit www.fas.harvard.edu/arts to confirm event schedules. All Performance Fair events and most ARTS FIRST events are accessible to those with disabilities.