(Photo credit: Alain Barker for the Jacobs School of Music)

The Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University is celebrating its 100th anniversary the best possible way, by commissioning an opera.  That opera is VINCENT, by the formidable Pulitzer prize-winning composer Bernard Rands. With a libretto by J.C McClatchy, the work explores the mind of the iconic artist Vincent van Gogh, its creative goals, spiritual obsessions, and ultimate disintegration. A beautiful design by Barry Steele includes digital images and projections as an allegory of Van Gogh’s psyche.

The marvelous new music online journal Sequenza21.com has posted my chronicle of this event.  Anyone who is close to Indiana University is encouraged to see the last two performances, April 15 and 16, at the Musical Arts Center in Bloomington, Indiana.  It will be worth your time.