*** THE LINNAEAN SOCIETY OF NEW YORK - MEETING PROGRAM - AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK CITY ***
This coming Tuesday evening (November 12, 2013) the Society will host another back-to-back presentation. 6:00 pm — Concert: “Islands in the City” Linnaean member Elijah Shiffer is a senior at the Manhattan School of Music, a composer, and a virtuoso performer on flute, clarinet, and alto saxophone. Since he was thirteen he has been performing his own and others’ compositions in numerous venues around the city, including Jazz at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. He won DownBeat magazine Student Music Awards in 2009 for original song and original extended composition and received the Young Jazz Composer Award in 2008 and 2010 from ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and was a finalist in 2012. For tonight’s concert, he will be joined by several other Manhattan School students. He writes, “We will be playing pieces that I have written that are influenced by the nature of NYC parks; they present musical portraits of Riverside Park, Central Park, Jamaica Bay, and Orchard Beach/Pelham Bay Park. The images and events I am influenced by focus on the small insights the parks offer into, respectively, the river, the woods, the ocean, and the Sound. Each piece is also influenced by a change of season, especially as it relates to bird migration; together the pieces represent a year in the life of the natural areas of New York City. I will be explaining what each piece represents, and how I translate my influences into music.” 7:30 pm — The Unfeathered Bird, Katrina van Grouw Katrina van Grouw, whose early work appears under her maiden name, Katrina Cook, is a licensed taxidermist and bird bander, a natural history illustrator for magazines and books, an author and a successful fine artist. She graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art, spent seven years as a curator of birds at London's Natural History Museum and left to work on the book that became The Unfeathered Bird, the subject of tonight's talk. Twenty-five years in the making, the book, in her drawings of birds without their feathers and in her text, makes clear how birds’ “appearance, posture and behavior influence, and are influenced by, their internal structure.“ The Editorial Reviews section of the book's Amazon page lists excerpts of reviews from 42 publications, containing such words and phrases as “extraordinary,” “fascinating,” “captivating,” “simply superb,” “genuinely new insights into the behavior of living species,” “an adventure,“ “a remarkable blend of science and art,” “a treasure trove of 385 stunning anatomical drawings,“ ”haunting,“ ”seductive,“ ”magnificent,“ ”a monumental achievement,“ ”wonderful and enlightening,“ ”a classic,“ ”a precious thing,“ ”utterly unique,“ ”gorgeous,“ ”truly a magnum opus,“ ”astounding,“ ”[u]nsettling and irresistible.“ She writes, "Originally intended as a tool for artists, The Unfeathered Bird gradually evolved into something more ambitious, and every day my eyes were opened to some new discovery. The book became a work intended equally for scientists and artists, but also for anyone with an appreciation of birds or an interest in their adaptations and behavior. Its 385 illustrations of 200 species were made from actual skeletons, virtually all of which were prepared and reconstructed at home from specimens donated from zoos, wildlife hospitals and conservation charities. In this talk I will explain my aims and inspirations and share what I've learned about birds beneath their feathers, from where to find a toucan's nostrils to why it is that birds have proportionately longer necks than almost any other animal." *WHERE & WHEN* Both programs are open to the public FREE OF CHARGE and will be held in the Linder Theater of the AMNH. Enter the museum from the 77th Street entrance, where the route to the auditorium will be sign posted. The first program will last approximately one hour with time before the second program to talk to the speakers, and mingle with TLS officers and council members, who can provide information on becoming a part of this thriving natural history society. * * *MORE INFORMATION ON TLS PROGRAMS* Please check out (and bookmark) our website: http://linnaeannewyork.org/ or visit us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/*Linnaean*-*Society*-of-New-York/335385365977?ref=ts Look forward to seeing you on Tuesday (no reservations necessary). Anders Peltomaa, Council member, The Linnaean Society of New York -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
