Guest lecturer on "Breaking Some Eggs"
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Guest lecture for students who want to turn their passion into paycheck
Claudia Stevens, trained pianist, musicologist and composer, will be the featured speaker as part of the School of Entrepreneurship’s fourth annual Arts and Entrepreneurship Lecture Series, sponsored by the Institute for Creativity and Innovation in Oklahoma State University’s Spears School of Business.
“Breaking Some Eggs,” is a presentation for students in the arts and in business about creative strategies in career development. The lecture by Stevens is scheduled from 10:30-11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 6, in the Seretean Center Concert Hall on OSU’s Stillwater campus.
Admission is free and open to the public.
“Although she is in the arts, her talk is for all students wanting to learn how to turn their passion into a paycheck.” said Melanie Page, director of the Institute for Creativity and Innovation (ICI). “We are really excited to be able to bring the students of OSU such outstanding practicing professionals to network with and learn from.”
Building upon the skills and disciplines acquired in her own rigorous academic and music studies, and 30 years of practical experience maintaining and promoting a high profile national career, Stevens will engage students in a lecture and discussion about a variety of topics.
She will discuss entrepreneurship and the process of renewing and redefining one’s “product,” self-management and the marketing of one’s own particular abilities and interests, the crossover career (using as an example her own path from musical scholar and new music pianist to performance artist and playwright), networking, strategic program development, creative collaboration, staying the course in difficult times, and other topics.
Trained as a pianist, musicologist and composer, Stevens holds degrees from Vassar College (summa cum laude), California at Berkeley, and the Doctor of Musical Arts from Boston University. Her academic positions have included Williams College and the College of William and Mary.
Among her numerous honors as a creative and performing artist are 12 consecutive touring grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the International Theater Institute, residencies including Tanglewood, the MacDowell Colony, the Gitameit Art Center in Rangoon, Burma, the RS9 Studio Theater in Budapest, Brandeis University, and numerous others.
She has created some 15 solo plays for her own performance as musician/monologue artist, a number of them published. She has performed her own works, and given accompanying lectures and workshops at more than 200 colleges and universities in the United States, as well as at community art centers and in schools. The newest phase of her career is as the librettist of four chamber operas, all of which have been produced in the San Francisco area within the last three years.
For more information, phone (405) 338-8710 or email melanie.page@okstate.edu.