In this Provost Distinguished Lecturer Series, MSU Professor of violin, viola and chamber music, Angella Ahn, discusses her family, her studies, and how she came to make her home in Bozeman. She is active in the Montana arts community, serving on the MT Arts Council and the Intermountain Opera Board, as well as being the Artistic Director of the MT Chamber Music Society and Bravo! Big Sky Music Festival.

She was introduced by Eric Funk.

It was recorded at the Museum of the Rockies on November 15, 2022.

Do you know how Montana State University came to have its school colors of blue and gold, and how they became the bobcats? Have you heard about the successful 1930 strike by women students and what they accomplished? About the Golden Ghosts and their Ultimate Sacrifice during WWII?

These and other stories were related by Kerry Hanson, Vice President of Alumni Engagement at the MSU Alumni Foundation, to a gathering of the MSU Retiree Association, an organization that informs, connects and advocates for all university retirees. You can learn more about the about the Alumni Foundation at msuaf.org, and you can learn about, register, and see a listing of future events (open to the public) at the MSU Retiree Association website.

Recorded at the MSU Alumni Foundation on January 14, 2020.

Cedar Mathers-Winn is a man of many parts. He is a musician and a biologist who has recorded bird songs around the world, and has studied bird communication for his Master’s degree from the University of Montana. He is also an accomplished naturalist, and teaches a course at the Montana Outdoor Science School. This interview finishes with his song, Face of the Moon.

Recorded on January 9, 2020.

Psychotherapist Timothy Tate by nature thinks deeply and personally about our interior psychic landscape, and about ways in which it is connected to the living landscape around us. In this reading of an article for Mountain Journal (see the original piece here), Tim offers some reflections from the start of a new year.

Jeremy Wade delivered the 2017 Trout and Salmonid lecture at Montana State University. Wade is the host of Animal Planet’s “River Monsters” show”, as well as a writer, and extreme angler. He speaks about the drastic reduction around the world in the numbers of large fish. He ascribes this to the four factors of overfishing, dams, climate change, and pollution.

We thank the Montana State University Library for sharing this material from their YouTube channel.

Hear the exciting story of how Michael McFaul, a Bozeman High School graduate, became an influential U.S. Ambassador to Russia, mentioned by name recently by Trump and Putin. McFaul appeared on PBS Newshour, NPR, and the Colbert Show. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014. (more…)

Rick Bass reads from an essay-in-progress on “westernness,” bringing together familiar themes of place and people, of beauty and art and their relation to the problematic idea of wilderness. His thoughts are grounded in human and economic realities of life in the Yaak valley in northwestern Montana, where he makes his home, writes, and works with the Yaak Valley Forest Council. This reading took place at the Best of Bioneers event in Bozeman on March 27, 2011.

For more Rick Bass, watch his 2013 Wallace Stegner Lecture at MSU on YouTube.