Cornell’s taiko drumming group Yamatai holds its fifth annual Pulse concert Saturday, April 18 in Bailey Hall.

Yamatai Pulse

Yamatai, Cornell’s taiko drumming group, performs its fifth annual concert, Pulse, Saturday, April 18, from 7 to 9 p.m. in Bailey Hall. The event is open to the public. Tickets are $10 in advance (recommended; the previous four concerts have sold out), $15 at the door, general admission. Advance tickets are available from Yamatai members and at baileytickets.com.

Yamatai’s dynamic and expressive performances are the result of rigorous training, and the student group explores the cultural origins, musical possibilities and contemporary adaptations of the traditional art of taiko.

Pulse 2015 will feature student dance group BASE Productions and guest ensemble Bonten, a Japanese taiko group founded by Masataka Kobayashi, Yamatai’s primary influence and professional mentor. Kobayashi visited Cornell in 2006 and donated taiko drums and taught a master class for the group.

Founded in 2006, Yamatai collaborates with Cornell composers and student groups, and performs at Cornell and community events. The ensemble performed at the 2010 National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., and hosted the first East Coast Taiko Conference in 2011. Their annual show on campus is No. 133 on Cornell’s list of 161 things to do before you graduate.

Green ideas

Graduate student Loren Loiacono’s cello concerto “Sleep Furiously” has its world premiere Sunday, April 19 in Barnes Hall Auditorium.

Graduate student Loren Loiacono’s cello concerto “Sleep Furiously” will have its world premiere Sunday, April 19, at 3 p.m. in Barnes Hall, performed by cellist John Haines-Eitzen and the Cornell Chamber Orchestra.

The orchestra’s Spring Concert, which also features Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” is free and open to the public.

The cello concerto’s title and inspiration comes from linguist Noam Chomsky, and an example in his 1957 book “Syntactic Structures” of a grammatically correct sentence that makes no sense semantically: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

Haines-Eitzen is a senior lecturer and artist-in-residence in the Department of Music. Loiacono is a DMA candidate in music and a student of Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra and Kevin Ernste. This summer she will be a composer fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival and young composer-in-residence at the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival. Her current commissions include work for the New York Virtuoso Singers and cello-percussion duo New Morse Code.

‘Alums Make Movies’

Cornell Cinema highlights the creative work of alumni in Cornell Alums Make Movies, April 19-26.

The celebration begins Sunday, April 19, at 7 p.m. with Sydney Pollack’s “The Way We Were” (1973). Inspired by his college days at Cornell and his later experiences with the House Un-American Activities Committee, screenwriter Arthur Laurents ’37 based Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand’s character) on student activist Fanny Price, whose daughter, Zillah Eisenstein, will introduce the film.

Documentarian Doug Block ’75 presents “112 Weddings” April 20 at 7 p.m., an insightful look at marriage created from more than 20 years’ worth of wedding footage and interviews with several couples he revisited years later. Jon Gartenberg ’73 programs, preserves and distributes experimental films, including “Departures,” a trilogy of dreamlike films by Swedish filmmaker Gunvor Nelson screening for free April 21 at 8 p.m. in Sage Chapel, with live music by Annie Lewandowski (films contain adult themes and nudity; not recommended for children).

Lynn Tomlinson ’88’s animated clay paintings and an original song tell the true story of the last house on a sinking Chesapeake Bay island in her short film “The Ballad of Holland Island House,” showing April 22 at 7 p.m., before the feature film “Episode of the Sea.”

The series also features four screenings (April 23-26) of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” (2014), adapted from Thomas Pynchon ’59’s novel.

Bee aware

Entomologist Bryan Danforth leads an interactive discussion about honeybee declines and the underlying causes of colony collapse disorder at the next Science Cabaret, “To Bee or Not to Bee? That Is the Question.”

The free event, April 21 at 7 p.m. at Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S. Cayuga St., Ithaca, is open to all ages. No science background required.

Danforth, a Cornell professor of entomology, will discuss his primary research on wild bee diversity and how important wild bees are to agricultural pollination. He will be joined by Ithaca Honey Bee Co. owner Rick Cicciarelli. A sweet treat will be served.

Science Cabaret, held one Tuesday a month at Lot 10, invites scientists to talk about their work, with audience participation and discussion. Previous events have covered such topics as climate science, evolution and religion, robotics and astrophysics.

Sponsored by the Boyce Thompson Institute with support from the Downtown Ithaca Alliance.

Ben Carson address

Physician and politician Dr. Ben Carson will speak April 21 at 6 p.m. in Kennedy Hall’s Call Auditorium. His address, “The Change We Need,” is free and open to the public.

Carson, a potential Republican candidate for president in 2016, was director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for 29 years and performed the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head in 1987. In 2001, CNN and Time named him among the nation’s 20 foremost physicians and scientists, and the Library of Congress cited him as one of 89 “Living Legends.” He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2008.

A brief question-and-answer session follows Carson’s address. Sponsored by the Cornell Republicans, with support from the Ithaca-based Triad Foundation.

Reading series

Poet and critic Stephen Yenser gives a public reading April 23 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Free.

Yenser is the author of the poetry collections “Stone Fruit” (forthcoming), “Blue Guide” and “The Fire in All Things,” which received the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award. His work has appeared three times in the Best American Poetry series.

A professor of English and director of creative writing at UCLA, his works as a critic include “A Boundless Field: American Poetry at Large,” “Circle to Circle: The Poetry of Robert Lowell” and ”The Consuming Myth: The Work of James Merrill.” The co-editor of five books by Merrill, he is currently at work on Merrill’s Selected Letters.

Part of the Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series, presented by Cornell’s Creative Writing Program and Department of English.