On Sunday, November 3rd, Baton Rouge Gallery’s Sundays@4 series is delighted to host a presentation and discussion by Hannah Palmer on her book “The Pool is Closed”. As with all Sundays@4 experiences, this will be free and open to the public.

Hannah S. Palmer is a writer and designer from the Southside of Atlanta. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Sewanee: The University of the South, and she is the author of Flight Path: A Search for Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport (2017). Through essays, memoirs, and public art projects, she explores how hidden histories and wildness shape our lives in the urban landscape.

In 2018, while teaching her kids to swim and working on urban river restoration projects, Hannah S. Palmer began a journal of social encounters with water. As she found herself dangling her feet in a seemingly all-white swimming pool, she started to worry about how her young sons would learn to swim. Would they grow up accustomed to the stubbornly segregated pools of Atlanta? Was it safe for them to wade in creeks laced with urban runoff or dive into the ever-warming, man-made swimming holes of the South? Should they just join the Y?

But these weren’t just parenting questions. In the South, how we swim—and whether we have access to water at all—is tied up in race and class. As she took her sons pool-hopping across Atlanta, Palmer found an intimate lens through which to view the city’s neighborhoods. In The Pool Is Closed, she documents the creeks behind fences, the springs in the sewers, the lakes that had all but vanished since her own parents learned to swim. In the process, she uncovers complex stories about environmental history, water policy, and the racial politics of public spaces.

Nothing prepared Palmer for the contamination, sewage, and bodies that appear when you look at water too long. Her search for water became compulsive, a way to make sense of the world. The Pool Is Closed is a book about water: where it flows and where it floods, who owns it, and what it costs. It’s also a story about embracing parenthood in a time of environmental catastrophe and political anxiety, of dwindling public space and natural resources. It chronicles a year-long quest to find a place to swim and finding, instead, what makes shared water so threatening and wild.

Sundays@4 is presented in partnership with the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area whose mission is to enhance the identity of our unique American landscape by preserving and promoting our heritage and by fostering progress for local champions that create authentic, powerful connections between people, culture, and the environment.

On Sunday, August 18, Baton Rouge Gallery’s Sundays@4 series is delighted to host a presentation and discussion about evolution, through the study of fishes, with Dr. Prosanta Chakrabarty. As with all Sundays@4 experiences, this will be free and open to the public.

Audiences can expect a short reading and presentation as well as a chance to view some deep-sea fishes and other natural history specimens from the Fish Collections at the LSU Museum of Natural Science. Dr. Chakrabarty will be signing copies of his book ‘Explaining Life Through Evolution’ which will be available for sale.

Dr. Prosanta Chakrabarty is the E.K. Hunter Chair for Communication in Science Research, Professor and Curator of Fishes at the Museum of Natural Science and Department of Biological Sciences at Louisiana State University. He is also a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. He is a systematist and an ichthyologist studying the evolution and biogeography of fishes, his work has taken him to more than 35 countries around the world (including Japan, Australia, Brazil, Taiwan, Madagascar, Panama, Kuwait and the Galapagos). He has published more than 150 scientific papers and four books including most recently ‘Explaining Life Through Evolution’. He grew up in New York City, his undergraduate degree is from McGill University in Montreal (the city where he was born) and his PhD is from the University of Michigan. He is a former Program Director at the National Science Foundation, a National Geographic Certified Educator, an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a TED Senior Fellow and a Fulbright Distinguished Chair. He is the Faculty Director for the LSU Center for Collaborative Knowledge and Past President of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and has described more than 15 species of fishes that are new to science including cavefishes and deep-sea fishes. Learn more about him from his website www.prosanta.org or follow him on Twitter @PREAUX_FISH

On Sunday, July 28, Baton Rouge Gallery’s Sundays@4 series is honored to welcome the Women in Music Concert Series, by the Homegrown New Music Ensemble, for a musical performance and discussion. As with all Sundays@4 performances, this will be free and open to the public.

The Women in Music series started by Rachel Reese-Kollmeyer, Eduard Teregulov, and Albina Khaliapova in 2020, showcases the music and stories of early and modern female composers who have historically been underrepresented in classical music. This concert will feature music written for violin, cello, and piano by Mel Bonis, Amanda Maiers, and Cecile Chaminade.

Albina Khaliapova

Pianist Albina Khaliapova is a winner of international competitions and festivals in Europe and the United States, including International Competition for Young Performers 21st Century Art (Ukraine), International Competition Music without Limits (Lithuania), Young Musician International Competition Citta di Barletta (Italy), and International Keyboard Oddysiad 2015 (United States).

Influenced by her mother, who is also a pianist, she received her first music lessons at home at the age of four. Growing up in a musical environment from the early days of her life, she developed an acute musical sensitivity and a natural aptitude for the piano. Being accepted at Secondary Special Music School, one of the elite music schools in Russia, by the age of five, she was committed to being a professional musician from her childhood years. Upon completing her undergraduate studies at Ufa State Academy of Arts, Albina was invited to the positions of piano instructor and collaborative pianist at the top music schools in her hometown.

In 2018, Albina completed her Master's Degree in Piano Performance and Chamber Music at the University of South Florida where she studied in the studio of Steinway artist Dr. Svetozar Ivanov. At USF Albina held a teaching assistant position and was awarded a President’s Piano Trio fellowship. While working on her master's degree, Albina became a winner of the USF School of Music Young Artist Competition.

In 2021, Dr. Albina Khaliapova graduated from the class of Pr. Willis Delony at Louisiana State University and awarded a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance. During her studies at LSU, she became a recipient of multiple scholarships and held a teaching assistant position at the collaborative piano department.

As a current president of the Homegrown New Music Ensemble, Dr. Albina Khaliapova is an active advocate for contemporary music and music by living composers in the United States. Her special topic project Women in Music celebrates the music of outstanding female composers from around the world.

Eduard Teregulov

Cellist Eduard Teregulov is a soloist, chamber performer, and educator. Winner of local and international competitions in Russia, Europe, and North America, Eduard finds great inspiration in both performing and teaching. Eduard has worked and played with orchestras in both the United States and Russia including the National Symphony Orchestra of Bashkortostan, Symphony Orchestra of Opera and Ballet Theater of Bashkortostan, Chamber Orchestra “Bashkortostan”, Youth International Symphony Orchestra of the Volga Region, Boston Civic Symphony Orchestra, Wellesley Symphony Orchestra, South Shore Symphony Orchestra in Tampa Bay, Baton Rouge Civic Orchestra, Rapides Symphony Orchestra, Acadiana Symphony, and others. He appears as a guest artist on commercial recordings for Daniel Giron (USA), Bj Davis (USA), and Charly Muñoz (Mexico).

Dr. Teregulov is a founding member of Homegrown New Music Ensemble, where he gets to advocate for and promote music by living composers in collaboration with his colleagues Michelle Kim-Painter, Michael Standard, Albina Khaliapova, and Tyler Webster. Teregulov and Khaliapova are also performing regularly as a duo.

Rachel Reese-Kollmeyer

Violinist Dr. Rachel Reese-Kollmeyer is an avid soloist, chamber performer, and collaborator. In the summer of 2018, her piano quintet, Zizique, was awarded a scholarship to study in Orvieto, Italy. In 2019, she won a position with the Rabin String Quartet to study with the Pro Arte Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

After completing her doctorate in May 2022, She won a position with The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra as an assistant principal violin for the 2022-2023 season and also plays with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

During her Master’s degree studies, she worked with the Constantinides New Music Ensemble and Homegrown New Music Ensemble. Rachel has studied and performed internationally in Peru, Italy, and Japan collaborating with local musicians, composers, and dancers. She has performed with orchestras in the United States, Peru, and Japan including the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, La Orquesta Sinfonica de Trujillo, and The Euodia Orchestra in Japan.

In addition to performing, she is dedicated to teaching. She has taught through the non-profit Asociación Cultural Arpeggio, conservatory students in Trujillo, Peru, and tsunami survivors in Japan and currently teaches in her private studio in Baton Rouge. Her latest interests include a concert series featuring female composers.

On Sunday, June 23, Baton Rouge Gallery’s Sundays@4 series is delighted to welcome the Opus Vocal Ensemble, for a musical performance and discussion. As with all Sundays@4 performances, this will be free and open to the public.

Opus Vocal Ensemble presents Sea.Star, a choral soundscape inspired by the Ave Maris Stella hymn, the ocean, and journeys. The program features works by the infamous John Cage (the 4’33” Guy wrote some notes we promise!) and historical footnote, Giovanni Animuccia, nestled among music by brilliant living composers Joanne Metcalf, Fahad Siadat, and Kathryn Rose. Joanne's work diffracts the medieval chant through a mid-90s lens while Kathryn offers an entirely new chant, setting a medieval English translation of the original Latin. Fahad offers us the opportunity to travel across the ocean's tumultuous waves, carried on his modern interpretation of the original prayer, tone clusters, and rich overtones.

Both performance and interactive installation, Sea.Star offers the audience an opportunity to participate in creation, to listen intently, to let the mind wander, to pray, to doodle, to catch up on some sudoku puzzles, perfectly at home surrounded by this month's combination of artists at the gallery. This concert combines familiar sounds of Renaissance polyphony and chant with some of the weirdest mouth sounds we can make.

Opus is a collaborative chamber choir dedicated to sharing choral favorites as well as vocal music from the fringes: long-forgotten gems and cutting-edge compositions by living composers. We marry these works to explore a narrative, concept, or vague vibe, often to widespread praise. The ensemble has been featured by the Louisiana ACDA conference and Christ Church's Third Sunday Series as well as in weddings, funerals, recitals, concerts, and classrooms throughout Southeast Louisiana.