Event Details

Tickets: $75 (Performance Only)
For information about donations or benefit seating, please see below.

This program is made possible with support from the Seton Hall Arts Council, College of Arts and Sciences

Held for the first time at SOPAC, the 17th Annual Evening of Roses will feature world renowned violinist Joshua Bell in a short program, when he receives Seton Hall University's Humanitarian of the Year Award. He will be accompanied by Sam Haywood. The musical portion of the benefit will also present a performance by acclaimed Metropolitan Opera bass Kevin Maynor, accompanied by Eric Olsen.

In addition to the appearances by these celebrated musicians, the 2010 Evening of Roses will premiere Sister Rose Thering Remembered, a short film that describes the journey and work of Sister Rose, a Dominican nun who devoted her long life to encouraging dialogue and understanding among all people, particularly between Christians and Jews.

The Sister Rose Thering Endowment was established in 1993 to perpetuate and extend the inter-religious education work of Sister Rose in funding graduate scholarship assistance for teachers in Jewish-Christian and Holocaust Studies, developing teaching resource materials and presenting workshops for teachers in public, private and parochial schools. 

The Sister Rose Thering Endowment for Jewish-Christian and Holocaust Studies is honored to recognize Joshua Bell with the Seton Hall University 2010 Humanitarian of the Year Award. Bell, heralded as one of the most celebrated American-born violinists of the modern era, will be acknowledged for his special relationship with Israel and the Jewish world. Last October, Bell traveled to Poland, where he took part in two extraordinary concerts significant to the world’s Jewish community. As the featured artist at the seventh annual Bronislaw Hubermann Violin Festival in Czestochowa, he participated in the dedication of a memorial to the city’s Jewish population, deported by the Nazis to Treblinka in 1942. Bell also performed in Warsaw at a benefit concert for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, scheduled to open in 2012 at the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. A Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 35 CDs and performs with leading orchestras around the world. His work has resulted in awards including Grammys, the Oscar and the Pulitzer Prize.

The benefit will mark the final time Monsignor Robert Sheeran participates in the Evening of Roses as President of Seton Hall University. Sheeran will retire at the end of the academic year. 

Kevin Maynor, a Newark resident, is a bass soloist who has performed in concert halls and opera houses throughout the world, and has sung everywhere from Carnegie Hall to China’s Beijing Concert Hall. His sonorous voice has been compared to the greatest bass voices of the 20th century, and he has won acclaim for his interpretations of more than 50 operatic roles in five different languages. Maynor has appeared at such venues as the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, New York City Opera, the Spoleto Festival and has sung the title role in Frederick Douglass with the New Jersey State Opera. Kevin Maynor has done several State Department tours, building bridges of understanding between those of this country and foreign friends in India, China, South Africa, Russia, with the Maori and Aboriginal people of New Zealand, and most recently in Germany and France.

Information about donations and benefit seating can be obtained by calling Marilyn Zirl, administrator, at (973) 761-9006 or marilyn.zirl@shu.edu.  All seats are reserved with special rates for Seton Hall students, faculty and employees.  A limited number of performance only tickets are currently available for sale through SOPAC.