Oberlin Alumni Magazine

John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet talks jazz and more in a 1956 radio interview with Jim Neumann ’58, host of “Jazz Hot and Cool!” on WOBC.

That was Joe Smith’s approach to making friends and taking photographs, both of which he did prodigiously as an Oberlin College student in the 1980s. Smith ’86, now a computer network...

Rhiannon Giddens began 2022 with a starring role in Porgy and Bess, the iconic Gershwin opera often criticized for its derogatory depictions of Black characters. The widely hailed production...

A 2000 graduate of Oberlin, Giddens was trained as an opera singer under Marlene Rosen, and so the opera part is easy to understand. But it was after she returned home to North Carolina that she took...

To some, jazz signaled a decadent departure from the European masters who had inspired the work of conservatory faculty and students for more than a century. But there were also students smitten by...