In this video we cut back and forth between Thomas Kelly's lecture at a February, 2012 Symposium held by HILT (the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching) and footage from the Fall, 2011 iteration of "First Nights" in Harvard's historic Sanders Theatre, in which Professor Kelly teaches his students about one of the most famous and provocative "First Nights" ever - the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in 1913.
Thomas Kelly has been a Professor of Music at Harvard University since 1994 and served as the chair of the Department of Music from 1999 to 2005. Professor Kelly teaches the popular undergraduate course First Nights: Five Performance Premiers, which examines five musical premieres as significant moments of cultural history. His main research interest is in medieval chant, where he has identified and published an important repertory of early chant from southern Italy.