The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir performs operatic choruses by some of the genre’s greatest composers in 8 p.m. concerts on Friday, Dec. 1, and Saturday, Dec. 2, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concerts are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. For reservations or more information, please call 207-786-6135.

With some 70 students participating, the choir is directed by John Corrie, lecturer in music and a member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty since 1982. Pianist James Parakilas, James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, will accompany the singers.

Eschewing more-typical long choral works in favor of varied short operatic pieces, Corrie’s program reaches back to the 17th century and English composer Henry Purcell. Other composers on the program include the Italian operatic giants Verdi and Puccini; Charles Gounod, who composed the opera Faust, and Georges Bizet, of Carmen fame; Mozart, represented by choruses from Idomeneo and The Magic Flute; and Wagner, whose “Bridal Chorus” from the opera Lohengrin is often heard at weddings but seldom associated with this composer.

“We’re singing opera choruses this fall to provide music that compliments the course that Jim Parakilas is teaching this semester, ‘Music and Opera,’ ” Corrie explains, pointing out that Parakilas is currently writing a textbook history of opera.

“From a choral point of view,” Corrie adds, “the choir is singing more in French and Italian than we ever have in the past. Previous concerts with choruses in German and in English are many.”

Sopranos all, students featured as soloists are Amy Lareau, a sophomore from Westborough, Mass.; Sidney Walker, a senior from Minneapolis; Alexandra Conroy, a junior from Windham; and Marsha Larned, a senior from Thornton, Pa., who will join tenor Corrie in a duet from Verdi’s La Traviata.

In addition to directing the college choir, Corrie teaches harpsichord, organ, voice and musicianship at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. He is organist and choir director of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin (Episcopal) in Falmouth, and artistic director of the popular Maine Music Society, which includes the Androscoggin Chorale and the Maine Chamber Ensemble. He performs throughout New England as a singer and on harpsichord and organ.

Parakilas is the chair of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ music department. As pianist, he performs in chamber groups with students and colleagues, and coaches student chamber groups. He is the editor of the acclaimed social history Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano (Yale University Press, 2000).

A $1.7 million gift to endow the new Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Center for Community Partnerships was announced Friday in a dedication ceremony on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Quad.

The gift was raised from members of the board of trustees, former trustees, parents of students, alumni, faculty and staff.

“At the core of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ tradition lies a commitment to serve society,” said trustee James L. Moody. “The Harward Center for Community Partnerships will provide new opportunities for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and students to learn through civic engagement, and for the Lewiston-Auburn community to benefit from true collaborations with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

Moody said the Harward Center will be located on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus and eventually will consolidate the existing assortment of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-community programs under one roof, with a director that reports to the dean of faculty. The trustees’ Committee on College and External Relations will provide support and oversight. The center will open in 2002-03.

The keynote speaker for the dedication was former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford, chairman of America’s Promise, an organization founded by Secretary of State Colin Powell to build character and raise aspirations of the nation’s youth. Wofford described President Harward as “a man of ideas, but ideas that must be turned into action.” He described the Center for Service-Learning set up during the Harward presidency as a national model, and he lauded the extension of this concept through creation of the comprehensive center.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College announced the creation of a new center for community partnerships last November to bring together service-learning and applied research in the community interest and to create a permanent structure for partnering with community projects. The naming and dedication Friday honors a primary legacy of the Harward presidency: a commitment to community engagement by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, according to Jill N. Reich, vice president for academic affairs.

“The Harward Center for Community Partnerships will become the college’s focal point for all partnerships with the community,” Reich said. “It will become the organizational home of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s highly effective and nationally recognized service-learning program. More than that, it is being organized as an academic program, in the heart of the institution, which underscores the commitment of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees to an enduring relationship between campus and community.”

Reich noted that the many existing relationships created through LA Excels and the Center for Service-Learning will remain operative. Eventually, the center will offer a single point of contact, making it easier for community members to approach the college with new ideas for relationships that have academic value and mutual benefit. The college plans to hire a director for the Harward Center during the next year.

The Harward Center for Community Partnerships will consolidate existing and new programs, current and future collaborations, personnel and resources.

* The center will enhance ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ focus on and support to service-learning. Service-learning at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ goes beyond traditional volunteerism by incorporating community service into academic course work. Since 1995, more than half of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student body has engaged in service-learning projects, while more than a third of the faculty has included a service component in their courses. In the year ending May 2001, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students participated in 53,547 hours of service in the local community. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ service-learning program involves nearly 150 community agencies and institutions.

* The center will provide an ongoing institutional structure and resource for collaborations with the community, including LA Excels. A community-based strategic alliance founded in 1998, LA Excels is composed of colleges, schools, hospitals, municipal governments, arts organizations and businesses that work together to create a shared vision of excellence in community development. After two conventions involving more than 1,000 local citizens, LA Excels decided to champion plans that no single entity could accomplish, including: the development of a performing arts center, a community arts learning center, and a museum devoted to the area’s industrial and social heritage. It also supports an LA conference center, neighborhood housing improvements, green corridors and bicycle pathways linking the two cities, and projects to increase educational aspirations of local schoolchildren.

* The center will align and support research projects by students and faculty that have application in the community — research that brings external support that otherwise would not occur. Examples include a student who developed a Geographical Information System for Lewiston and Auburn and saved the municipalities nearly $200,000 in labor and consultants’ fees. Another gave 34 students from Lewiston’s Longley Elementary School a chance to conduct hands-on science experiments with four ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors.

Significant grant support from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provide resources that enable these college and community collaborations.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees voted to create the center and authorized a search for its first director at its meeting last October. During board discussion, Trustees Chair Burton Harris, among others, noted the importance of a lasting partnership between campus and community. “The fences, physical and metaphorical, have come down,” Harris said. “The college and its partner, the community, now have a direct, a sustainable, and a mutually-reinforcing relationship.

“The establishment of this center, one of the most significant steps taken by the college, will assure the Lewiston-Auburn community that, as partners now and in the future, both the college and the community can reinforce their strengths, their mutually beneficial interactions and their missions of excellence.”

Costlow, professor of Russian and East Asian languages and literature, is the inaugural Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies. Parakilas, professor of music, is the inaugural James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts.The Johnson Professorship is funded through a $1.2-million grant from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation of New York City. As Harward says, “it recognizes the ever-increasing connections among academic disciplines. It brings a new level of visibility and confidence in the value of taking research and teaching wherever they lead, even when beyond the boundaries of established fields of study.” The Johnson Professorship in Interdisciplinary Studies is held for a four-year term. The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation was incorporated in 1952 in New York with funds donated by Christian A. Johnson, a Swedish immigrant who eventually became a prominent financier and industrialist.

A member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty for 15 years, Costlow has been a full professor since 1999. She is the author of two books on Russian literature and was recently awarded a Phillips Faculty Fellowship funding her studies in Russia.

Costlow graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 1976 and received her doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University in 1987. She is the author of Worlds Within Worlds: The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (Princeton University Press 1990) and co-editor of Representations of the Body and Sexuality in Russian Culture (Stanford University Press 1998).

Costlow’s research includes examining the significance of the forest in Russian culture, as a source of legend and an economic resource, as well as an historic place of refuge and resistance. She is studying the role and representation of the forest in Soviet and World War II-era partisan activity in Bryansk Forest and in current projects to create a national park in a Taiga forest area of central Russia.

Her translation of The Tragic Menagerie, a recently rediscovered piece of Russian literature, received critical acclaim from both The New York Times and the New Yorker and garnered a 1999 prize for best translation from Russian/East European languages by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. Costlow’s introduction won the 1997 Heldt Prize for best essay in Slavic women’s studies. The Johnson Professorship is the only chair at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ specifically devoted to interdisciplinary studies.

The Moody Professorship was established through a $1.5-million endowment gift from James L. Moody ’53, chair of the Board of Fellows at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and retired CEO and chairman of Hannaford Bros. Co. The professorship reflects the Moody family’s interest in the performing arts. James Parakilas has taught at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ since 1979. He was chair of the Humanities division from 1996 through 2000 and is currently the chair of the department of Music. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1970, received his master’s degree in music history from the University of Connecticut in 1975 and his doctorate in musicology from Cornell University in 1979.

Parakilas is the author of many articles and four books on music, including Ballads Without Words: Chopin and the Tradition of the Instrumental Ballade (Amadeus Press 1992). Most recently, in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the piano, Parakilas co-wrote and edited Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano, (Yale University Press 1999).

An exploration of the musical and social roles played by the piano in its long history, Piano Roles received glowing praise from the New Yorker, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Parakilas, who teaches a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ course “The Piano as a Culture Machine,” writes in the introduction to his book: “The piano is the instrument, the product, around which the modern entertainment industry was created.”

Parakilas’ essay “Nuit plus belle qu’un beau jour’: Piano, Song and the Voice in the Piano Nocturne received the 1999 Wilk Prize, awarded annually by the Center for Polish Music Studies at the University of Southern California.

There are more than 21 endowed professorships at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, recognizing the academic qualities of its faculty and the generosity of donors to the College.