New faculty member brings 45 years of experience to SPEA

Christopher Hunt is a four-and-a-half decade veteran of the professional music world whose achievements include fostering Pink Floyd's early career and directing Australia's most renowned art and music festival, the Adelaide Festival of Arts. \nNow, Hunt will add "IU faculty member" to that list as he joins the School of Public and Environmental Affairs' arts administration program.\nHe is expected to bring a "real-world sensibility to a program devoted to balancing artistic ambitions with management proficiency," according to a press release from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.\nHunt said he was officially retired when he was offered the position but experienced a change of heart.\n"I was traveling around Southeast Asia about two years ago," Hunt said, "and I had a realization around Myanmar that I didn't just want to be retired."\nHunt said it was a friend of a friend on the search committee who initially told him of the position, which was made possible by a grant from the University's Commitment to Excellence program. But Hunt's connections to the University go back earlier.\n"No question, I knew a lot about the School of Music," Hunt said. "I came several times to see the operas in the '70s and '80s."\nTwice, Hunt used Jacobs School of Music productions in festivals he directed. The first was a production of John Eaton's "The Cry of Clytemnestra" -- featuring then-student and current Jacobs School of Music faculty baritone Tim Noble -- which Hunt took to the San Francisco Opera. The second time was in 1985, when he transported IU's production of Handel's "Tamerlano" to the now defunct PepsiCo Summerfare Festival in Purchase, N.Y. \nIt was also at PepsiCo Summerfare that Hunt collaborated with renowned director Peter Sellars to create the now-legendary productions of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy -- "Don Giovanni," "La Nozze di Figaro" and "Cosi Fan Tutte." \nAsked if the Jacobs School of Music has the potential to sustain the prestige that originally attracted him to it, Hunt remained optimistic.\n"A lot depends on two things: the character and adventure expressed in opera and the level of professional performers associated with the school," he said.\nWhile direct involvement with the Jacobs School of Music is pending, he said he is enjoying his teaching responsibilities in SPEA.\n"I'm teaching the Capstone course," he said, which is the last course taken by arts administration students before a professional internship in the spring. "And I'm trying to do it in a way that probably baffles them -- not nuts and bolts, but what I think they can learn about approaches to the whole business of arts administration."\nPart of this approach, he said, involves stressing the necessity of the arts.\nMusic and other arts "are not an optional extra," Hunt said. "Art is to comfort the destitute and discomfort the powerful"