‘Konzert zur Einweihung’: Yotam Haber FAAR’08 composes for architect Peter Zumthor RAAR’08

Yotam Haber and Peter Zumthor at Leis. Credit (all photographs): Luca Nostri

Peter Zumthor RAAR’08—and 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner—recently designed and built a new house for his wife Annalisa in Leis, a tiny five family settlement high up in the mountains above the town of Vals in Switzerland. He celebrated the event by commissioning two pieces of music from Yotam Haber FAAR ’08, which were perfomed in an intimate concert in Leis on 21 June. Roberto Caracciolo, Visual Arts Liaison to the American Academy in Rome, was there, as was incoming Italian Fellow in the Arts, Luca Nostri, who photographed the occasion. Roberto Caracciolo writes:

“The concert took place in Leis’ St. Jakob Kapelle, a very small and charming church, decorated with simple frescoes. Before the music started Annalisa Zumthor introduced and thanked the audience which was a unique way of welcoming all present.”

New memoir ‘Goat Song’ wins instant accolades for writer Brad Kessler FAAR’09

Credit: Dona Ann McAdams

It’s been out only a month, but Brad Kessler’s new memoir is set to go into a second printing. Quite an impressive achievement for any author—and even more striking since Kessler’s book is essentially an elegy to goats.

This past year Brad Kessler FAAR’09 has been the recipient of the John Guare Writer’s Fund Rome Prize, a gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman. It was at the American Academy that he completed Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese (Scribner). He also is the author of the novel Birds in Fall (Scribner), winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Goat Song, writes Kessler, is “a story about what it’s like to live with animals who directly feed you. I tell of cheese and culture and agriculture, but also of the rediscovery of a pastoral life.”

For the latest from the AAR and its alums, Spring 2009 SOF News now online

The odd thing is that it feels even quicker than a semiannual. Just a few short months ago—or at least it seemed that way—the Winter 2008/9 edition of the Society of Fellows News rolled off the presses and into our mailboxes. And at the same time a downloadable .pdf version on the SOF webpage joined seven year’s worth of archived back issues.

And then last month the latest number popped up, again in large format and blazing full color. You can read the Spring 2009 SOF News here in .pdf format. On the cover (and inside): Stephen Harby FAAR’00 shares an evocative portfolio of sketches from his journey to some of the less well known places of Rajasthan in northern India.