Oberlin Alumni Magazine

Joe Smith ’86 learned to meet people through his love of photography. As an Oberlin student in the 1980s, he took hundreds of images that capture—through mostly straight-ahead portraits—the look of an era, and sometimes more.

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, held in

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