UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Critically acclaimed musician, visual artist, writer and teacher Leah Wellbaum will visit Penn State on Tuesday, March 24, for a conversation on music, communication and creativity.
The event, presented by the College of the Liberal Arts’ Department of Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS), will take place from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in 62 Willard Building and is open to the campus community and the public.
Wellbaum is the principal songwriter, guitarist and singer for the band Slothrust, which has recorded several well-received albums, headlined numerous national and international tours, and performed at the Lollapalooza, BottleRock and Shaky Knees festivals. The band’s distinctive sound melds pop hooks, theatrical melodies, jazz voicings, rock rhythms and blues influences.
Wellbaum has been profiled in Guitar World, Premier Guitar, Consequence of Sound, Out and other publications. Lzzy Hale of the band Halestorm has referred to her as “a force of nature.”
In addition to the event, Wellbaum will meet with students in the Rhetoric of Music and Memory undergraduate seminar taught by Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Bradford Vivian.
"Leah Wellbaum is a remarkably gifted, inventive and learned professional musician — a source of insights not only about music, but also about practices of creativity across many genres and mediums,” Vivian said. “I was very fortunate that Leah agreed to visit my CAS undergraduate seminar on music as a form of communication and to appear at this exciting public conversation on music, communication and creativity."
The Los Angeles-based Wellbaum is also the guitar specialist at experimental instrument development company Eternal Research, where, among other projects, she worked on the custom-built five-neck guitar of the late filmmaker David Lynch. She has taught music and creativity practices for nearly two decades, and said she admires long-form improvisation and is devoted to helping others “free themselves from creative hang-ups with a curiosity-forward approach.”
The event is being co-sponsored by the College of the Liberal Arts, the Josephine Berry Weiss Chair of the Humanities, the Humanities Institute, and the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.