THOMAS LARSON

This multimedia talk is appropriate for those participating in—and bewildered by—the new digital forms of reading and writing; it will appeal to college students, writing groups, literary guilds, community writing centers, literacy scholars, and library programs.

In the digital age, writers are the last artists to be transformed by the tools of the Internet and electronic communication. We are losing traditional protocols of print and bound book as well as facing challenges to the standard literary forms of poem, novel, and narrative history. As reading and writing changes its platform from one-dimensional print to interactive screens, we are also being pushed toward new forms of expression: memoir, blog, mosaic, hypertext, and collaborative writing with video. A new environment dominates our work: self-publishing and self-promotion, personal websites and sound/video presentations, direct sales and interactive readers. What are the changes this new digital environment is asking of us younger and older writers and how are we and those we write for going to thrive in it?

This popular program is for music groups, music students, orchestras, chamber music societies, library programs, and general audiences.

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is America’s great secular hymn, an icon for our national soul. Written in 1936, Barber’s elegy has been used to memorialize the deaths of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, honor the victims of 9/11, and grieve the tragedy of the Vietnam War in the film Platoon, 1986’s best picture.

Join author and essayist Thomas Larson for his multimedia presentation of the Adagio’s musical and cultural history in sound, video, image, and text. Mr. Larson will also discuss the emotional power of music, answer questions, and sign copies of his book.

Mr. Larson has presented his "Saddest Music" multimedia program at some forty venues across the country. Seven of these programs opened with performances of Barber's "Adagio" by string quartets or by symphony orchestras.