Variations on a theme

Shepherd School of Music professor of composition Anthony Brandt kicked off the new summer lecture series at the Moody Center for the Arts with a June 6 talk exploring “lifelong creativity.”

Between bars of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s famous “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” and images from Roy Lichtenstein’s “Bull Profile” series that riffed on Pablo Picasso’s earlier work, Brandt demonstrated how creativity is nourished by prior experiences and defined by novelty that’s often in tension with usefulness.

A new lecture on the theme of creativity from a Rice professor or community member will take place each Tuesday from noon to 1 p.m., throughout the summer, with a break during the week of July 4. (Photo by Katharine Shilcutt)