Main Library

Upbeat with Alasdair, featuring Guest Speaker Mason Bates, Musical America’s Composer of the Year

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Sun Valley Summer Symphony Music Director Alasdair Neale returns to host his popular “Upbeat with Alasdair” speaking series on Wednesday, March 20, 2019. Titled Meet Mason Bates, Musical America’s Composer of the Year, the conversation between Neale and Bates will provide an overview of Mason Bates’s work, including three pieces the Symphony will feature during Bates’s residency this coming summer.

The “Upbeat with Alasdair” speaking series is held every winter and spring at The Community Library, located at 415 Spruce Ave., Ketchum. It provides an intimate platform for Maestro Neale to share his passion for music-making and his personal take on specific works with the community. For this March’s talk, Mason Bates will join Maestro Neale for a conversation about Bates’s compositions. Symphony fans may recall that the Sun Valley Summer Symphony commissioned Bates to write “Devil’s Radio” five years ago, for the occasion of its 30th anniversary. He will return this summer for performances of his pieces “Liquid Interface” and “Passage,” as well as an encore performance of “Devil’s Radio.”

“I’m tremendously excited to welcome my friend Mason Bates back to Sun Valley and to have the chance to talk with him about his musical influences and compositional style as part of our ongoing ‘Upbeat with Alasdair’ series,” commented Alasdair Neale.

Bates is the most-performed composer of his generation and serves as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His recent opera “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” was hailed as one of the best-selling productions in the history of Santa Fe Opera, and it just won the Grammy® Award for Best Opera Recording. His pieces for orchestra often blend classical instruments with electronica and recorded sounds, and in his spare time, Bates works in several clubs as a DJ where he integrates classical music and electronica to packed crowds.

The program will begin at 6:30 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. Admission is free, but space is limited, and the event is often full. Those interested are encouraged to make reservations and arrive early. Reservations can be made by emailing or calling the Symphony office at info@svsummersymphony.org or 208-622-5607.

Film Screening of acclaimed war documentary “Restrepo” (in partnership with Higher Ground)

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Please join The Community Library, in collaboration with Higher Ground, for a screening of Sebastian Junger’s award-winning war documentary, Restrepo.

Renowned journalist and documentarian Sebastian Junger is dedicated to helping all understand the reality of war, more specifically of war veterans.  Junger thundered onto the media landscape creating a new interest in non-fiction.  A correspondent for Vanity Fair and ABC News, Junger has covered stories all across the globe.

Higher Ground will be welcoming Junger as the keynote speaker at its Journey Gala in Sun Valley on July 2, 2019.

“Celebrating 20 years, Higher Ground serves and supports those who are overcoming disabilities, from military veterans to children, to help all become confident and productive members of their community. We do this by bringing those we serve into nature; with the support of family, friends, and community, bringing the discipline of recreational therapy and loving care to the challenge of recovery, and the achievement of confidence.”

The Limits of Presidential Power with Dr. David Adler

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Join President of the Alturas Institute, author and scholar, Dr. David Adler, for a talk on the limits of Presidential Power. Many commentators have discussed at length the broad authority exercised by American Presidents.  Taking a different tack, this talk explores the constitutional and statutory limits imposed on the scope of presidential power. Adler will focus on some of the subjects that dominate page one news and make headlines, including war making, executive privilege, impeachment, judicial review, national security and foreign affairs, as well as President Trump’s  invocation of statutory authority to declare a national emergency on our nation’s southern border.

A frequent commentator on state and national events, Dr. Adler’s lectures have aired on C-Span, and he has done interviews with reporters from the New York Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, National Review, The Nation Magazine, Mother Jones, Fox News, NPR, NBC, CNN and the BBC.  Adler has served as a member of the Board of Directors of various academic, corporate and civic organizations, and is a founding member of the City Club of Idaho Falls. He earned a B.A. from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Utah.

“Thomas Jefferson’s Nature” with Dr. Peter S. Onuf (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Virginia)

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A leading scholar of Jefferson and the early American republic, Dr. Onuf is the author, coauthor,
and editor of numerous books including the New York Times bestseller, Most
Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination, coauthored
with Annette Gordon-Reed (who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hemingses of
Monticello: An American Family which revealed Jefferson’s relationship with his slave,
Sally Hemings). Other books include: Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American
Nationhood (2001), The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (2007). He is also a co-host (with Brian
Balogh and Edward Ayers) of the weekly public radio program and podcast “Backstory
with the American History Guys”.

Presented in collaboration with Boise State University and The Nature Conservancy.

Fighting the Odds : Frank Church

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Join Garry Wenske, Executive Director of the Frank Church Institute, for an evening of history and storytelling focused on the venerable Frank Church, Idaho Senator and wilderness advocate.

Garry V. Wenske is the Executive Director of the Frank Church Institute and Adjunct Professor at Boise State University.  President of the Boise Committee on Foreign Relations; board member of the Idaho Humanities Council, and the Idaho Council for International Visitors. Previously a counsel to several U.S. Senators, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and two Presidential campaigns; chief of staff to several Members of Congress.  Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State.  Graduate of the George Washington University Elliott School of International Relations, the Foreign Service Institute, and the University of Idaho Law School.

Write What You Want to Read: Rebecca Makkai and Nafissa Thompson-Spires

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With scores of books coming out each year and the seemingly endless expansion of the internet, the publishing landscape is more saturated with stories than ever before. Yet it can still feel difficult to find the types of books that speak to you in subject matter, style, and theme. Join 2018 National Book Awards–honored authors Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers) and Nafissa Thompson-Spires (Heads of the Colored People) at The Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho for a discussion on writing the stories you want to see in the world, creating the conversations we should be having, and centering the lives of characters often neglected in literary fiction. The conversation will be moderated by author, teacher, and critical theorist Sarah Sentilles.

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novel The Great Believers, one of the New York Times’ top ten books for 2018, a finalist for the National Book Award and the ALA Carnegie Medal, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award, and a pick for the New York Public Library’s 2018 Best Books. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime — four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of a 2014 NEA Fellowship, Rebecca has taught at the Tin House Writers’ Conference and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University. She is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. Visit her at RebeccaMakkai.com or on twitter@rebeccamakkai.

Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeny’s “The Organist,” The Paris Review Daily, Dissent, Buzzfeed Books, The White Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, and other publications. Her short story “Heads of the Colored People…” won StoryQuarterly’s 2016 Fiction Prize, judged by Mat Johnson. Her writing has received support from Callaloo, Tin House, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She currently works as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. Her first book, Heads of the Colored People, was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize; and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

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