Jo More, Director of Texas Tech University’s Presidential Lecture and Performance series, joins The Front Row to talk about the upcoming series of lectures and performances.
What is the mission of the series and what do you do?
The presidential lecture and performance series is a sponsored program out of the president's office and it’s actually been around for 12 years. I’ve been lucky enough to be the director for 10 of the 12 of those years. Essentially the mission of the program is to enhance the cultural landscape of the south plains, not only to provide entertainment but educational opportunities for campus students, faculty, staff and the community.
You do academic connection as well. They might speak to students or speak to a campus organization while they’re here. Is that right?
Absolutely. One of the missions of this series is to actually provide outreach opportunities for our students and so with each performer or speaker that comes, we dovetail with faculty members to host them in class. So they might go to the music school or they might go to human sciences, or they might go to the journalism class. Our dance companies that come actually perform a master class for our dance students. We also provide outreach classes to the community, so when we do have dance companies come, it’s marvelous that we’re able to offer a class to Ballet Lubbock students.
We also have a visiting authors and visiting artists program that I’ve instituted with LISD and in large part we go to Lubbock High School or we might go to Talkington School for Young Women Leaders, or some of the other schools in LISD and actually offer an outreach class to them. In fact when we have Lyle Lovett come, he’s going to make a visit to one of the schools so that’s going to be really terrific.
He’s your first artist for this season. Is that correct?
Yes he is. We open our season with “Lyle Talking: An Evening of Conversation with Lyle Lovett.” Something a little bit different. But one of the initiates on campus right now has to do with creative process and creativity. So what we’re doing is we’re hosting Lyle Lovett and he’s going to be in conversation with Texas Tech Public Media, General Manager, Paul Allen Hunton of 24 Frames fame, and the two of them are going to have an on-stage conversation. They’re going to talk about the stories behind his music.
They’re going to talk about song writing, a little bit about his life, how he got started—sort of like an “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” We are so thrilled that he’s available to do this. And people are asking me, “so he’s not going to perform a concert?” Well he’ll have his guitar with him. I would bet that he’s going to bring that guitar and punctuate the conversation with music.
Listen to the full conversation at the top of the article.
