Arts and Culture

The Center for the Arts at the University at Buffalo will present the Monterey Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary Tour at 8 p.m. on March 11, 2008, in the Mainstage Theatre in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

The Center for the Arts at the University at Buffalo will present Barrage at 8 p.m. on Nov. 2 in the Mainstage Theatre in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

If you're in the market for a weird, intriguing and exciting Saturday night, head down to Buffalo's Central Terminal, 495 Paderewski Drive, for a multi-media marriage of ghosts, puppets, mechanical spiders, robotic dance partners, hallucinatory discovery and industrial progress -- together at last at an event produced by University at Buffalo robotic artist Don Paul Swain.

In the name of raising environmental awareness, enterprising University at Buffalo students are turning their campus into a virtual -- and real -- playground this week as they conduct a final project for their class in "Pervasive Gaming," an emerging game genre in which virtual and real-life play come together.

The work of African-American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, one of the most acclaimed and exciting playwrights working today, will be the focus of two free public events at the University at Buffalo on April 26 and 27.

The University at Buffalo's Center for 21st Century Music will continue its impressive offerings this month with a concert featuring the Slee Sinfonietta, UB's professional chamber orchestra, presenting an intriguing program of computer music.

The critically acclaimed Ives Quartet will be in residence at the University at Buffalo April 20-22, performing two concerts -- including the sixth concert of the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle -- as well as conducting a master class.

New and exciting ideas about our built surroundings will be on exhibition this week when the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning presents its annual Atelier, an extensive exhibition of work produced during year by the undergraduate and graduate students in architecture and planning studios.

It is clear that Congress and the major American political parties are more ideologically polarized than they were a generation ago, but are Americans themselves more deeply polarized? This and other questions about America's political identity will be discussed in "America Divided: The Polarization of American Politics," a symposium to be held April 17.

Mark D. Gottdiener of Buffalo, professor in the Department of Sociology in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, will present the 2007 Roth and Symonds Endowed Lecture at the Yale School of Architecture on March 30.