Sarasota, FL 34243

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New Music New College will celebrate its 15th year with a five-concert series featuring artists who have resonated with past audiences, and with an expanded set of opportunities to meet and converse with the musicians.

 

Miranda Cuckson

"For our 15th anniversary season, we've chosen to deepen the conversation with artists who have made an especially strong impact here in recent years," said Stephen Miles, director of New Music New College and provost of New College of Florida.

 

As in past years, there will be a free "artist conversation" on the Thursday before each performance. This year, New Music New College is adding a "pre-concert talk," a 20-minute conversation with the artists that will explore the themes and context of the work.

  

  

To teach children about the history of the Sarasota Bay region in the 1800s, Prof. Uzi Baram took what at first appears to be a decidedly untraditional route: He developed a pair of computer video games.

 

It's a major leap of faith for Baram, professor of anthropology and director of the Public Archaeology Lab at New College of Florida. His opinion of video games: "a waste of time," much like a widely held view of television.

 

But he notes that television also brought us "Sesame Street," now accepted and praised for its educational aspects. And he points to "Oregon Trail," a 1980s computer game developed by educators to teach about the settling of the American West - and one of the most popular titles ever.

 

That thinking led him to develop "Rancho Race" and "Sarasota Bay Rancho," games that immerse children in the culture of the early 1800s seasonal Cuban fishermen who worked the Bay's waters, built settlements along the Southwest Florida coast and interacted with the Anglo American and Native Americans of the region.

 

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