Check out the latest edition of the Creative Arts E-Lert, the official e-mail newsletter of the SF State College of Creative Arts. This issue highlights upcoming events including the annual Yehudi Menuhin Chamber Music Festival. The issue also includes news on the most recent Morrison Artists Series concert, a professor’ critically acclaimed set design, a longtime Creative Arts staff member’s retirement, and an alumna who performs the ultimate “Balancing Act.”

In the wake of the tough economy, Theatre Arts Professor Joel Schechter has turned to 19th century Russian author Sholem Aleichem for consolation.

Alumna Kristine Sinajon stood out in her solo at the San Francisco Sinfonietta’s 30th annual Handel’s “Sing It Yourself Messiah” concert on Dec. 14 at Davies Symphony Hall.

Alumna Danielle Knox embodies Lifetime Television’s “The Balancing Act.” She is a guest host on the talk show that offers solutions for women juggling career and home. Knox also recently was named weekend news anchor for CBS affiliate WGCL-TV in Atlanta, runs her own skin-care products company, and is a loving wife and mother of three boys.

For the first time in 42 years, someone other than Brian Weiner will have to order new telephones for Creative Arts staff and faculty. Weiner, director of Creative Arts Technical Services (CATS), will retire Dec. 24. He has remained responsible for several of the same tasks throughout his career, while rising in the ranks.

The Dec. 14 Morrison Artists Series concert featuring Time for Three was “brilliant,” “on another level,” “sprightly” and “beautiful,” combining “tight-knit ensemble playing and individual bursts of technical brilliance,” music critic Joshua Kosman writes in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Conor McPherson’s booze-filled Christmas Eve play “The Seafarer” takes place in a dank Irish cave. In designing the set for the Bay Area premiere, Theatre Arts Professor John B. Wilson “frames the slovenly, bottle-strewn household within the rock walls of a cavern,”

The Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Department recently began play-by-play telecasts of SF State Gator athletics for the first time in more than a decade.

Alumna Timothy Near again left little doubt about her talents, directing the Pulitzer and Tony winning drama “Doubt”at Center Rep Theatre in Walnut Creek.

In a Nov. 5 Contra Costa Times review, Sally Hogarty writes: “Skillfully directed by Timothy Near, the riveting drama tells of Father Flynn, a popular young Catholic priest at a parish school.

Listen to the Art Department’s Mark Johnson and Irene Poon Andersen on the KQED 88.5 FM program “Forum” from 10 to 11 a.m. Dec. 4.