Published Jan 5, 2024 by InterHarmony International School of Music

InterHarmony® International Music Festival proudly presents A Flower Blooms in Snow , showcasing emerging artists making their debut at Carnegie Hall alongside seasoned InterHarmony Artists—Lenora Anop (violin), Antonio Di Cristofano (piano), and Misha Quint (cello). These performances are a highlight of the InterHarmony Concert Series, taking place at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall on January 25 at 8 PM.

Budding artists, Anna Marine, Ellie Martinson, Tadao Tomokiyo will collaborate on Schubert’s beautiful, somber work Auf dem Strom. A trio for piano, voice and french horn composed for the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death. Evoking a mournful tone, it directly quotes the funeral march from Beethoven’s Third Symphony. Intensifying this mood is the text, based on a poem about a sailor’s farewell by Ludwig Rellstab.

Ellie Martinson is a fourth-year student of music performance at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is an Iñupiaq Alaska Native from Nome, Alaska; her Alaska Native name is Paukana.



Published Jan 5, 2024 by Alaska Native News

Two-hundred and forty-one years ago, when Gen. George Washington marched back into New York City as British troops were walking out, a volcano erupted in Iceland.

For eight months of 1783, Laki volcano spewed lava and belched noxious fumes into the atmosphere. One quarter of the residents of Iceland died, and the sulfur-rich gases that spread worldwide reflected the sun’s rays, making many places on Earth cooler. 

Using evidence held in white spruce trees, researchers think the Laki eruption was a catastrophe for northwest Alaska residents, who had no idea why their July turned into November that year.

To further show the weirdness of 1783, the Lamont-Doherty scientists also cited a book of oral traditions from Natives of northwest Alaska, written by William Oquilluk.

In the book, Oquilluk describes four ancient legends, each linked to the near-extinction of everyone living in northwest Alaska. The first two events were too far back for the researchers to imagine what they might have been. The fourth and most recent disaster was the influenza epidemic of 1918 that hit Alaska and the rest of the world so hard.

The researchers argued that the third calamity in northwest Alaska was linked to the Iceland eruption. Oquilluk wrote of it as “The Time Summer Time Did Not Come.”

That year (perhaps 1783), in the springtime migratory birds had returned to Alaska and all seemed normal, until after June passed. Then, “suddenly it turned into cold weather” and people “could not go out hunting and fishing,” Oquilluk wrote.

“In a few days, the lakes and rivers, recently thawed, froze over. Warm weather didn’t not return until spring (early April) of the next year,” the Lamont-Doherty scientists wrote.

Published Jan 5, 2024 by Yereth Rosen

Alaska is expected gain 5,400 jobs in 2024, an increase of 1.7% over the past year and enough to nudge total state employment above 2019 levels for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, according to the newly published annual forecast from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

In Fairbanks, the pandemic-created job losses were not as steep as for the state as a whole; the large role that the military and the University of Alaska play in the regional economy insulated the area somewhat from pandemic effects on employment. The job recovery in Fairbanks is likewise expected to be less dramatic, with 1.4% growth, according to the region-specific forecast.