Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Balkan relief benefit concert set for Feb. 22

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – For centuries, ethnic, religious and political differences have divided the various groups of people who inhabit the Balkans, yet many of the Balkan people remain linked by shared aspects of musical heritage. That heritage will be celebrated during the Balkan Relief Benefit Concert Feb. 22 at the University of Illinois.

The concert, scheduled to take place at 7:30 p.m. in Smith Hall, 805 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, will feature the music of Balkanalia, the UI’s Balkan ensemble, as well as dances performed by a student group. A $5 donation is suggested for admission.

Proceeds from the concert will go to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and will be earmarked for humanitarian relief efforts in the Balkans and areas of Turkey devastated by last year’s earthquakes.

Ruth Fisher, wife of Ralph Fisher, a former director of the UI’s Russian and East European Center, is credited with the idea for organizing the benefit.

“I went to a [Balkanalia] concert last spring, and the group was so good, I just thought it was something more people should be aware of,” Fisher said. “And at the time, things were just a mess in the Balkan area. We were bombing, and there were unexpected consequences,” she said, such as attacks on refugees.

“I felt so bad about our involvement,” she said.

Instead of simply lamenting the situation in passive fashion, Fisher was moved to action. She floated the idea of organizing a fund-raising concert past Donna Buchanan, a UI professor of musicology and founder and director of the Balkan ensemble.

Buchanan, whose group had dedicated its spring ’99 concert to peace in the Balkans – “as a sort of an apolitical thing” – was indeed interested. The spring program, Buchanan said, “tried to stress the commonalities of the different countries represented.”

So when Fisher approached Buchanan about organizing a concert devoted to reconstruction and relief efforts, she agreed that the idea was not only a good one from a humanitarian perspective, but because “the philosophy [behind it] plays well into one of the reasons why ethnomusicology was founded in the first place.” One cornerstone of ethnomusicology, Buchanan said, is “the promotion of cross-cultural communication … music helps us communicate better with each other.”

The program for the relief concert will include instrumental music and songs from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Hungary and Serbia, as well as an Albanian-Kosovar piece and one from the Dalmatian part of Croatia. Members of a dance troupe affiliated with the UI Hellenic Student Association will perform a couple of numbers set to live and recorded music.

Sponsors of the event include the Russian and East European Center, School of Music, Hellenic Student Association, Turkish Student Association, Romanian Student Club, Serbian-American Student Organization, Rotary Club of Urbana and Community United Church of Christ.

Read Next

Life sciences Photo of Michael Ward standing in tall grass on a riverbank.

How are migrating wild birds affected by H5N1 infection in the U.S.?

Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects, distributing plant seeds and providing a variety of other ecosystem services to stopping sites along the way. Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. […]

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010