Arts & Entertainment
After performing at opera festivals around Europe, tenor Chase Henry Hopkins ’12 wanted to create the same musical atmosphere in his hometown, Edwardsville, Ill. So in 2018 he founded Opera Edwardsville to develop performances, arts education and community collaborations through live opera.
Danny M. Cohen ’06 MA, ’11 PhD, an associate professor in both the School of Education and Social Policy and the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, teaches social change, human rights and Holocaust history.
After graduating from Northwestern with an undergraduate business degree, Alan Tripp ’37 worked in broadcasting and advertising, at one point running his own ad agency. Now, from his retirement home in Bryn Mawr, Pa., the 102-year-old has achieved a lifelong dream with the release of Senior Song Book — a mix of ’40s- and ’50s-style tunes with modern lyrics that he calls “grown-up music.”
Northwestern theater alumnus Austin Harvey, an advanced cicerone and curator and co-owner at Beermiscuous, shares his favorite new beer trends.
John Stoops performed with Second City and then joined Boom Chicago, a comedy club and improv group founded by Northwestern alumni in Amsterdam. Now Stoops runs The Revival, a theater and education company that focuses on improvisational skills.
On a Saturday afternoon in late March, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Genevieve Thiers ’04 MMus opens the balcony doors of her home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. She sets her iPhone on a music stand and cues up the app that will be her accompaniment.
Kristen Schaal ’00 makes an indelible impression. Her sweet, singsong and slightly manic voice belies the many comically subversive roles she has played, but no matter how sly her portrayals, you always feel like Schaal is letting you in on the joke.
Jasmine Warga ’10 won a John Newbery Honor in January for her recent book "Other Words from Home," a story about a 12-year-old Syrian refugee named Jude who lives in Ohio with her mother while her father and brother remain in Syria. The award-winning young adult author shares how her family’s immigrant background shapes her writing.
Northwestern alumni and faculty were well represented at the 62nd annual Grammy Awards. The all-alumni quartet Third Coast Percussion was nominated for the second time, for best chamber music/small ensemble performance for Perpetulum (the group won the award in the same category in 2017).
Kevin Salwen had a question: How did Richard Jewell, a man who should be lauded as an American hero, become convicted in the court of public opinion and forever remembered as the primary suspect in the Atlanta Olympic bombings? Salwen ’79, a former Wall Street Journal columnist and editor, and his co-author, former US attorney Kent Alexander, spent more than five years digging into that question for their narrative nonfiction book, The Suspect.