Tickets
Non-Members: $115*
Members: $95
*Special pricing is available for first responders, active military, veterans, and those with special needs. For more information, please email Malori@thechurchsagharbor.org
No tickets will be sold for individual talks or partial parts of the day.
Tickets include breakfast and closing reception. Attendees are welcome to come to as many talks as their schedule permits. No tickets will be sold for individual talks or partial parts of the day.
Join us in welcoming back the much-loved annual Creativity Conference! Our fourth annual full-day gathering of idea-exploration and creativity in the arts and sciences features five outstanding thought leaders. Curated by April Gornik, this year’s conference welcomes an eclectic group of creative minds. Our speakers are:
CARTER BURWELL – Esteemed film-score composer
Speaking On: Why Do Films Have Music?
LUCIA JACOBS – Professor Emerita of Psychology and Neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley
Speaking On: Squirrel Economics — “How to Get Rich Like a Squirrel (Without Going Nuts)”
PATRICIA McCORMICK – author of the critically acclaimed Never Fall Down and SOLD, and co-author of I Am Malala
Speaking On: Creativity as a Form of Resistance
SUSAN ROGERS – Behavioral neuroscientist and multiplatinum-record producer, most notably known for her work with Prince
Speaking On: Neural Underpinnings of Creativity, Mind Wandering, and Musical Improvisation
LAWRENCE WESCHLER – Longtime New Yorker writer, author, and Director Emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University
Speaking On: Art and Science as a Parallel and Divergent Way of Knowing
The full day of intrigue and curiosity will begin with a light breakfast and then move on to individual presentations. Each of the speakers will reflect on their own practices and lives, sharing insight, perspective, and inspiration. Following the presentations, there will be a group round-table discussion with all the speakers and a Q&A with the audience. The conference promises to be an inspiring journey, inviting you to discover how you might cultivate your own creative flow.
The day will conclude with a reception, giving the audience a chance to talk with one another and the lecturers, and to reflect on their insights!
Tickets include breakfast and reception. Attendees are welcome to come to as many talks as their schedule permits. No tickets will be sold for individual talks or partial parts of the day.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
9:30 AM - Doors Open, Breakfast & Coffee
10:00 AM - First half of presentations & Q&As
Speaker 1 - CARTER BURWELL
Speaker 2 - PATRICIA McCORMICK
12:00 PM - Lunch Break (lunch is not provided)
1:15 PM - Second half of presentations & Q&As
Speaker 3 - LUCIA JACOBS
Speaker 4 - SUSAN ROGERS
Speaker 5 - LAWRENCE WESCHLER
4:15 PM - Round Table
5:00 PM - Reception with Speakers
6:00 PM - Event Concludes
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
CARTER BURWELL
Esteemed film-score composer
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CARTER BURWELL has composed the music for a number of feature films, including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, Gods and Monsters, Being John Malkovich, Before Night Falls, Adaptation, In Bruges, Twilight, True Grit, Carol, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and The Banshees of Inisherin. He also composed the music for the Apple TV+ Series The Morning Show.
His writing includes the essay “Music at Six: Scoring the News Then and Now,” published in the inaugural issue of Esopus magazine in 2003 and reprinted in Harper’s Magazine, the essay “No Country For Old Music” in the 2013 Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics, and “How Nino Rota Saved Me From A Subterranean Freakout” in Arcana IX.
LUCIA JACOBS
Professor Emerita of Psychology and Neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley
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LUCIA JACOBS, Professor Emerita of Psychology and Neuroscience at U.C. Berkeley, integrates animal behavior, ecology, animal cognition, and neuroscience into her studies of adaptive patterns of cognition in squirrels and other wild rodents, as well as humans. She trained first in animal behavior and ecology (1978 B.S. in biology, Cornell; 1987 Ph.D. in biology, Princeton), then animal cognition and behavioral neuroscience with postdoctoral fellowships at the Universities of Toronto, Pittsburgh, and Utah. She joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology at Berkeley in 1993, later joining Berkeley’s Institute of Neuroscience. The Jacobs Lab of Cognitive Biology produced more than 50 articles on animal behavior, cognition, and neuroscience, with Jacobs receiving honors including the Prytanean and Hellman faculty awards (U.C. Berkeley), a Herbert Spencer Lecture (University of Oxford), and a Radcliffe Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Retiring from Berkeley in 2023, she continues working from her farm in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she is writing her first book for Harvard University Press.
PATRICIA McCORMICK
Author of the critically acclaimed Never Fall Down and SOLD, and co-author of I Am Malala
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PATRICIA McCORMICK, a two-time National Book Award finalist, is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Never Fall Down, the true story of a boy who survived the killing fields of Cambodia by playing music for the Khmer Rouge, and SOLD, a moving account of sexual trafficking. She is also the co-author of I am Malala, the story of Malala Yousafzai, the girl who was shot by the Taliban in her fight for education. SOLD was made into a feature film starring Gillian Anderson in 2016. Her books have been named to the New York Times Notable Books list, Publishers Weekly Best Books list, and NPR’s BEST BOOKS list. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, and other national publications. In 2024, PEN America listed SOLD as one of the top ten most-banned books in the country. McCormick lives in Sag Harbor.
SUSAN ROGERS
Behavioral neuroscientist and multiplatinum-record producer, most notably known for her work with Prince
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SUSAN ROGERS holds a doctoral degree in behavioral neuroscience from McGill University (2010). Prior to her science career, Susan was a multiplatinum-earning record producer, engineer, and mixer. She is best known for her work with Prince during his peak creative period (1983–87). Her discography includes records with David Byrne, Barenaked Ladies, Geggy Tah, Nil Lara, Robben Ford, and many others. In 2021 she became the first female recipient of the Music Producer’s Guild Award for Outstanding Contributions to U.K. Music. She teaches psychoacoustics and neuroscience for Berklee College of Music Online. Her book on music listening, This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2022. She is currently writing Music Cognition: From Anatomy to Ecstasy for Princeton University Press.
LAWRENCE WESCHLER
Longtime New Yorker writer, author, and Director Emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University
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LAWRENCE WESCHLER is a long-time New Yorker writer and director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU (where the sciences were emphatically included as part of and central to the humanities). He is the author of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (on the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles), Vermeer in Bosnia, And How Are You, and Dr. Sacks (a biographical memoir of his 35-year friendship with the late neurologist), among other titles. His lecture explores the ways artists and scientists probe the world and the lack of difference between them, despite many thinking there is a divide. He extrapolates themes from his books, with side meanders into the thinking of artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney — subjects of two of his other books — and a whole new interpretation of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson. These days, Weschler dispenses “Wondercabinet,” a weekly Substack on the miscellaneous diverse.