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(04/28/14 4:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Blue lights illuminated a giant, superimposed image of three “Indiana Jazz Legends” Saturday night in the Musical Arts Center. A densely packed audience sat to pay tribute to some of the most popular tunes of the 20th century. IU presented its Jazz Celebration at 8 p.m. in honor of famous Hoosier jazz musicians.Along with several guest musicians, including the IU Vocal Jazz Ensemble, the 50-plus-piece Studio Orchestra performed works written by guitarist Wes Montgomery, trombonist J.J. Johnson and pianist Hoagy Carmichael, a Bloomington native whose iconic statue sits outside the IU Auditorium. “It was like being in a 1940s club,” IU student Alex Black said. “It swung. I loved the feel of it.”The concert opened with Hoagy Carmichael Overture, arranged by Musical Director Brent Wallarab. Referred to as “America’s first songwriter” by guest announcer and WFIU’s classic jazz director David Brent Johnson, Carmichael is responsible for writing some of the most popular American songs of all time. His 1930 release “Georgia on my Mind,” the official state song of Georgia as of 1979, became enormously popular after pianist Ray Charles released a cover in 1960. Two of Carmichael’s other songs, “Stardust” and “Heart and Soul,” were performed Saturday night with a similarly warm reception from the crowd.Along with his musical career, Carmichael’s image has been ingrained in popular culture as the inspiration for an iconic 20th-century character. Writing in the early 1960s, James Bond creator Ian Fleming decided that his famous Secret Service operative should resemble Carmichael. Direct references to Carmichael appear in the dialogue of Fleming’s “Casino Royale” as well as “Moonraker.” The sounds and sights of jazz were both honored at Saturday’s performance. As a tribute to the late jazz photographer Duncan Schiedt, who took some of the most famous pictures of 20th century jazz icons, a massive poster depicting his images of Montgomery, Johnson and Carmichael hung above the orchestra. “The pictures really help you understand the people you’re listening to,” Black said. “They were people. They weren’t just musicians.”With celebrated guest soloists such as jazz guitarist Dave Stryker, Grammy-nominated trombonist Wayne Wallace and vocalist and IU graduate student Richard Baskin Jr., Saturday’s celebration treated patrons with the music of Indiana icons.“You wouldn’t have thought of the Midwest as a place for music,” Black said. “IU does a great job getting everyone to listen.”
(04/18/14 2:47am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>More than 240 students and fans packed into the Wells-Metz Theatre Thursday to witness Meryl Streep deliver her first acting master class.Fresh from her reception Wednesday, during which she received an honorary doctoral degree, the Academy Award-winning actress critiqued student performances and fielded questions from both an interviewer and the audience. “It was hard to listen for the fact that Meryl was speaking to me as a person, not just through a screen,” student actor Sasha Neufeld said.Streep began the class by addressing the art of acting itself, the difficulties that come with beginning a project and her creative process. “My husband goes to the studio every morning and confronts nothing but his imagination,” she said, referring to her spouse of 36 years, the sculptor Don Gummer. “He taught me a great thing: start by starting.” Streep started her own career in the early 1970s with several New York Shakespeare Festival productions before she appeared in her first feature film, “Julia,” a film about Nazi conflicts that came out in 1977. Streep’s small role in “Julia” preceded her first Academy Award nomination in the critically acclaimed Vietnam drama “The Deer Hunter.”During Thursday’s class, however, it wasn’t Streep who took the stage but several masters of fine arts students who performed dialogues from Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.” Streep praised the actors and provided gentle criticism on the varying performances. “In this world, you have to decide what your world is,” she said of the two female performers in “Julius Caesar.” “Are you going to play by girls’ rules?” The class concluded with an extended interview moderated by Jonathan Michaelsen, chair of the Department of Theatre, Drama and Dance. The questions centered on Streep’s personal life as an actor and on her own conceptions of art and artists. “The feeling world is our world,” she said of actors. “We understand the compassion that is needed in the world to help people.” Although Streep addressed many questions, the actress’ conviviality, wit and humility had the audience laughing and applauding. “I’ve entered some venerable state I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t think I’m so great.”
(04/15/14 3:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jacobs School of Music master’s student and award-nominated jazz guitarist Matt MacDougall led the debut concert of the IU All-Campus Jazz Ensemble at Rachael’s Café Monday night. The performance featured pieces composed or arranged by Frank Mantooth, Bill Holman, Rob McConnell and Count Basie, among others. Nearly all of the performers were students not majoring in music who joined the ensemble out of the desire to play in a big-band setting. “It’s eclectic,” said Neil Hicks, the ensemble’s bassist. “A good group effort.” Despite having been formally trained in music from a young age, MacDougall, who formed the 17-person ensemble with Tom Walsh, did not discover his inclinations towards jazz and classical until he began playing guitar at the age of 13. To date, the musician has performed at the Halifax Jazz Festival, the Ottawa Jazz Festival and the Galaxy Rising Stars Youth Summit Group, in addition to performances alongside musicians such as Jerry Bergonzi, John Abercrombie, Tim Hagans, John Surman and Mike Murley.MacDougall currently serves as an associate instructor in the Jacobs School of Music’s jazz department, but his experiences are not strictly limited to teaching and live performances. In September 2012, he released the album “Familiar Faces,” a collection of eight tracks that crosses multiple genres and fluctuates between loose, hip-hop beats and a firm bebop sound. The album was released on Armored Records, a record company devoted to promoting the work of up-and-coming musicians. “I got some mileage out of it,” he said. “All the things that built my foundation manifested themselves in that album.”“Familiar Faces” was nominated for the 2012 East Coast Music Award for Jazz Recording of the Year. Following the release of the album, MacDougall was able to perform at several highly renowned venues including the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage with Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead 2013 and at the 56th Annual Montery Next Generation Jazz Festival, an event that draws hundreds of artists, from high school students to icons like Herbie Hancock and The Roots. “I was very humbled by these experiences and felt very welcomed into the jazz community,” he said in a statement on a Kickstarter page. As of February, the guitarist has been working on his sophomore album, “Boy Goes to City,” which he said will feature a hard-driving groove laced with the influences of rock and alternative hip-hop, all within an improvisational or jazz context. Other members of the album ensemble include the Grammy award-winning saxophonist Jeff Coffin, saxophonist Adam Carillo, pianist Alex Wignall, bassist Roy Vogt, drummer Arianna Fanning and Grammy-nominated sound engineer Denny Jiosa. Although MacDougall’s own compositions featured stylistic influence from jazz fusion and alternative genres, Monday night’s concert was rooted in the big band artists of both early and contemporary, 20th-century composers, such as Count Basie, Frank Mantooth, Bill Holman and Burt Bacharach. The set-list featured such famous tracks as the bossa nova tune, “Black Orpheus,” the traditional, brass-heavy “After You’ve Gone” and the jazz staple, “Watermelon Man.” “We range from 1930s through 1940s big band sound, pushing towards a more modern big band sound,” MacDougall said.With crowds trickling in throughout the night, the venue was packed with an enthusiastic audience. Even when tables and chairs became crowded, people remained standing and, occasionally, swaying.“I don’t know anything about music, but I was into it,” audience member Shalu Mittal said at the show.
(04/10/14 4:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>With appearances on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Entourage” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” professional comedy duo the Sklar Brothers boast a broad and varied résumé. Starting tonight and running through Saturday, Randy and Jason Sklar will return to the Comedy Attic for the first time in two years.Performances will take place at 8 p.m. tonight, Friday and Saturday, with additional shows at 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.Tickets range from $14 to $18 and may be purchased on the Comedy Attic’s website.“The Sklars are the gold standard duo,” said Jared Thompson, owner of the Comedy Attic. “The connection they have leads the way they perform comedy to be that much better.”The brothers’ features as conjoined twins in an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” and as feuding managers in “Entourage” have earned them critical acclaim.Writing in regard to their “Entourage” appearance, Entertainment Weekly TV critic Paul Katz said, “In the hands of comedic masters, the Sklar Brothers, they made it soar.”Despite this praise, the brothers do not let the fact of their being twins define their style. “Their comedy accepts the reality of being twins but does not use it as a crutch,” wrote Neil Strausse in the New York Times. “They work with their physical and mental similarities and correspondences, their status as imperfect carbon copies of each other. In their comedy, the straight man is often an echo.”Since 2004, the brothers have branched out from their stand-up and their TV and movie appearances to other forms of media. In addition to appearances on the SportsCenter segment “The Bracket” and the weekly podcasts Sklarbro Country and Sklarbro County, the brothers were co-hosts of ESPN’s “Cheap Seats,” which Thompson referred to as “the most undervalued show that I can remember.”“They’re so intense about watching sports,” he said. “I’ve never seen someone be that interested in anything. They’re like professional sports-watchers. Their level of knowledge is just unbelievable.”For the Sklar brothers, entertainment is not limited to just comedy and sports. In 2012, the duo produced the music video “The Way It Is” for Canadian rock band, the Sheepdogs.This versatility of styles and the bond the brothers share with one another led to an intensely distinct experience two years ago when the brothers last performed at the Comedy Attic, Thompson said.“People were just so excited they were here in the first place,” he said. “They somehow took something that felt like a specialty act and made it into a traditional comedy show. They’ve taken the approach to a completely different level. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
(04/10/14 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Hot Dreams,” the third studio album released by the Canadian folk music project Timber Timbre, is a curious witches’ brew. The atmospheres conjured by its 10 delicious tracks balance the listener somewhere between the graveyard and the ghoulish afterlife — a kind of demon’s purgatory. In this alternate state, spooky, colorful sounds swirl around you like the liberated ghosts from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The beat is heart-heavy — a last reminder of life left behind — and the language isn’t one of words, but of whispers.Championing this death march is the crooning vocalist Taylor Kirk, whose slack-lip swagger that Pitchfork compared to Elvis Presley’s in its 2011 review of the studio album, “Creep on Creepin’ On.” The swagger remains in “Hot Dreams,” haloed by an orchestra of spooky harmonics that includes a violin, viola, autoharp, sampler, loops and three different types of electric guitar.It’s a lot to handle, but when consistently done right, the blend hovers beautifully between the jarring and the hypnotic, forming a foggy background that Kirk navigates with his vocals like a sopping barge. “Hot Dreams” is a more ambitious project than Timber’s self-titled album, but it’s more careful and more effective than “Creep on Creepin’ On.” “Beat the Drum Slowly,” as funeral opener as they come, drops dollops of glassy tone over a high-pitched sampler that sounds like a fly buzzing too close to your ear. A beat on a block of wood plods away rhythmically. But there’s a reason to this little symphonic carnival besides sheer fun with sound.The music is trying to find its way into the fore — learning to walk, it cannot yet speak. It drawls a colorful baby-babble and rejoices in sound, which is exactly what Kirk, a prodigiously morbid infant, gives us. “We heard crime soft and softly/a mystery mist, new sister shift/thinks recognize from television trims,” he coos. The album delights in sounds, yet words never assume anything more than an ambiguous narrative significance. Contrary to expectations, this keeps the album fresh and protects it from becoming too crowded. “Run from me darlin’/ run my good wife/ run from me darlin’/ you’d better run for your life,” Kirk sings in this delightful and rather chilly refrain on the penultimate track “Run From Me.” Excluding Timber Timbre’s trademark sound, there’s much for the non-initiated listener to grab on to in “Hot Dreams.”The titular track, another development in Kirk’s bizarre and eerie relationships with women, combines an R&B groove with a murder’s intentions. Kirk sounds like he’s cooing to his prey rather than to his lover, which makes the track outrageously fun, but also quite tender. Content with this effect, the track lets it go on for three minutes and then opens the stage for a pair of ragged saxophones. The effect is at once bizarre and completely convincing. Small bursts of unexpected color, and its leaps from a sound norm already twisted are what make Timber Timbre such a bold, dynamic sound-house. This quintet has produced songs for your dreams as well as your nightmares, but its commitment to blending its individualized, cinematic atmosphere with the world of rock and blues are what make Timber Timbre an indispensable part of musical reality.
(04/09/14 3:41am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Critically acclaimed for his work in fiction, and recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and a Pulitzer Prize, writer Junot Diaz has been compared to literary greats such as Phillip Roth and David Foster Wallace.He answered questions and read from his novel “The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” Tuesday night at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. The line of fans waiting to enter the theater at 8 p.m. stretched from the theater down to Walnut Street.“Your mother is rough in all things, but this time she is gentle,” Díaz read from the section of the book entitled “Wild Wood,” a scene that depicts a daughter discovering her mother’s breast cancer. The reading was a part of a special panel entitled “Science Fiction in the Americas,” which Díaz headlined and was organized by the Department of American Studies and the Latino Studies Program. “Junot Díaz is one of the most dynamic and compelling fiction writers,” said Deborah Cohn, chair of the Department of American Studies in a press release. “His work challenges us to look closely at constructions of ethnic and national boundaries and identities.”In addition to the reading by Díaz, the panel included a two-day Latino film festival from April 3-5 and a conference at the IU Cinema. The purpose of the festival was to bring awareness to transnational perspectives, and raise questions about race, identity and the abuse of power. Academy Award-nominee Edward James Olmos and professor Chon Noriega were among the festival’s speakers.Díaz’s writing has been praised for its passionate inventiveness, syntax and its commentaries on the lifestyles of citizens from both America and Díaz’s native Dominican Republic. His most famous work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” addressed sprawling political issues, from the horrific Trujuillato years in the early 20th-century Dominican Republic to the question of white identity in the United States. The political and ethical boundaries that Díaz crosses and blurs in his fiction are mirrored by his break with stylistic and structural boundaries.“Oscar Wao” was “neither a novel nor a story collection, but something a little more hybrid, a little more creolized,” Díaz explained in a review for the Guardian. Reviewer Christopher Tayler summarized Díaz’s nontraditional approach to form writing.“To his way of thinking,” he wrote, “there’s no reason to draw an uncrossable line between fiction and memoir, down-at-hell realism and stylistic exuberance, the New Jersey experience and pan-American culture.” Díaz’s reading Tuesday night focused on “Oscar Wao.” The audience questions he addressed included a wide range of topics, from questions of immigration and morality to his favorite writers. “I want books that give me an opportunity all out of the dehumanizing pressures of society,” he said. “Books that allow me to dwell in a space where there’s pain and loss.”Audience response to the visiting writer was enthusiastic. Díaz, with frequent curses and use of the vernacular, delighted his audiences as he spoke about his experience as a Dominican immigrant, as well as his work. “It’s a little in your face,” said Heather Songer, a student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. “It’s a very different way of looking at life.”
(04/08/14 2:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami spoke about his life and work Monday afternoon at IU Cinema as part of the Jorgensen Guest Filmmaker Lecture Series.Introducing the director, IU Cinema Director Jon Vickers lauded him as the “pinnacle to IU Cinema’s existence” and referred to him as “one of the world’s leading artists.”Vickers’ praise is not without precedent. French director Jean-Luc Goddard once said, “Film begins with D.W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.” Martin Scorsese, to the humble embarrassment of Kiarostami, said, “Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema.”Since Kiarostami began making films in the early 1970s, the director has exhibited ability for unconventional technique. However, it was not until after the 1979 Iranian Revolution that he emerged with the individualistic style he is known for.The films that Kiarostami made following the revolution introduced themes and styles the director would pursue and develop later in his career, such as the use of unprofessional “non-actors,” thematic complexity and settings in rural Iranian villages. In an interview with Film Comment in 2000, the director acknowledged that his innovations were rooted in the desire to cultivate a “deeply poetic cinema.”“In my mind, the abstraction we accept in other forms of art — painting, sculpture, music, poetry — can also enter the cinema,” he said. “I feel cinema is the seventh art, and supposedly it should be the most complete since it combines the other arts. But it has become just storytelling, rather than the art it should really be. I want to create the type of cinema that shows by not showing.”Kiarostami addressed the abundance of narrative in contemporary cinema as well as his creative process and philosophy of using ”non-actors.”“Once I have an idea, the first thing I do is find the character,” he said using a translator. “I draw my idea from the crew or characters. I tailor my idea to the character in front of me. I do not alter the character. His physique, I do not change.”His unconventional techniques have garnered him significant praise, including a Palme d’Or at the 50th International Cannes Film Festival and an officership of the Légion d’honneur from the Ministry of Culture and Art of France. “There’s a simplicity, an authenticity to the concepts,” said Ali Ghazinejad, an IU Ph.D. student and Iranian native. Nevertheless, critics such as the late Roger Ebert have not spared the director from blows.“I thought I had seen an emperor without any clothes,” the critic wrote about “Taste of Cherry,” Kiarostami’s Cannes prizewinner. “Is ‘Taste of Cherry’ a worthwhile viewing experience? I say it is not.”Richard Peña, professor of film at Columbia University and Kiarostami’s interviewer, did not bring the director’s criticism into the conversation. His questions centered on his minimalist cinematography, Kiarostami’s relationship with his crew and his feelings about his own role as director.“The most important part of my directing is choosing the character. Once I’ve chosen them, I follow them,” Kiarostami said. “If you allow yourself to work with non-actors, you will find another dimension.”
(03/28/14 3:25am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Starting today, IU Theatre will show the first of three new plays for its program “At First Sight,” a collection of pieces written by master of fine arts students Kelly Lusk, Iris Dauterman and Nathan Davis. Incorporating themes and issues of sexual trauma, mental paralysis and the nature of fate, the plays challenge various ideas and social constructions. The first piece, “The Art of Bowing,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Wellz-Metz Theatre.It is a meta-theatrical drama that explores human civilization, the role of divinity in human life and the philosophical concepts of fate and determinism. The genre of meta-theater blatantly breaks the fourth wall. Techniques of meta-theater include the actors’ recognition of their jobs as actors and of the play they are in. It has roots in the work of the 20th century dramatists Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett.“The groundwork was laid by playwrights like Beckett,” said playwright Nathan Davis, a third-year MFA candidate. “This bare, spare world where large ideas can fit. It’s a combination of being very specific and very vague.” For Davis, the thematic elements of meta-theater often take precedence over its characters or narrative aspects. “I look at characters in terms of archetype — what they stand for or what they represent,” Davis said. “I don’t view my characters as actual people.”Universality rather than individuality figures heavily in “The Act of Bowing.” The actors each play multiple roles throughout the development of the play and emerge onto the set under the premise that theater itself is dead. From this metaphorical death, however, Davis said he believes his characters have been given a chance to achieve a greater kind of freedom.“Ideas of freedom and death are very much common links,” Davis said. “The death of self so that God can move within you. The journey of submission. Giving yourself up for a greater truth.”Davis worked on the project with director Rob Heller, a second year MFA student who has worked on numerous projects at IU, including a play by Davis’ colleague Iris Dauterman.“It’s been a very highly collaborative process,” Davis said. “Rob’s enthusiasm for the script and commitment to keeping it fresh and dynamic is exactly what the play needed.”The second piece, “Lacy and Ashley Live in a Trailer Now,” will open at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Wells-Metz.It is directed by Dale McFadden, associate chair in the Department of Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance. “Lacy and Ashley” is about a gay couple in a place of their life they didn’t expect to be, Lusk said. “They find themselves stuck in a trailer, stuck in this town,” Lusk said. “It’s hard for them to get themselves out of this rut.”The play draws influence from the notable Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, whose work “Three Sisters” deals with the difficulties of moving out of the ruts of life. “It’s kind of a fantasy we have of just moving,” Lusk said. “But this move to be happier isn’t always the best of options.”Throughout the play, other characters including a drug addict and a gay man who finds himself in relations with married men maneuver in and out of Lacy and Ashley’s life. Lusk said by writing characters he considers rather unlikeable, he believes he is able to reach a culture not often depicted in theater. “I wanted to explore people that society views as bottom of the barrel — gay people and trailer trash,” he said. “People who don’t think very much of themselves talking with one another. It ends up being about how they communicate and how they make a community of themselves.”Lusk’s themes of human sexuality and community are also apparent in Dauterman’s play “Trigger Warning,” directed by professor and actress Nancy Lipschulz.The play will open at 5 p.m. Wednesday. It features issues of sexual violence, trauma and survival. “It was difficult to write about,” Dauterman said. “I wanted to be very respectful. I wanted to make sure that none of the characters came across as stereotypes or helpless victims. I wanted to make sure I portrayed the severity of what was happening to them.” “Trigger Warning” brings attention to sexual abuse in the lives of five women who share their stories with one another in an effort to release themselves from their trauma. Dauterman, who describes herself as “ambitious to the point of being idiotic,” believes that sexual abuse and the role of women in playwriting is underrepresented.By writing multiple roles for strong female characters, she said she views herself as representing a demographic in need of a voice.In dealing with strong themes and controversial subject matter, Dauterman, like Davis and Lusk, said she would like for her work to inspire and provoke her audience. “I would love to change some minds,” she said.
(03/27/14 4:09am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On Wednesday night, avant-garde chamber musicians known as the Bent Frequency Duo Project performed a guest recital in Ford-Crawford Hall. They played seven pieces by contemporary composers, five of which they premiered this year.A number of different themes and motifs, such as the Book of Job, mathematical constructions and Popeye the sailor, inspired the pieces. Professional percussionist Stuart Gerber and saxophonist Jan Berry Baker founded the Bent Frequency Duo Project in Atlanta in 2003. Gerber, whose “consummate virtuosity” was praised by the New York Times, has toured and taught internationally, most recently as the associate professor of percussion at Georgia State University. Also an acclaimed performer, Baker has appeared with numerous ballet, opera and chamber music companies. In May, she will appear on the “Blurred Edges 2014” presentation by the German company aktueller Musik. The first piece performed and the only track not commissioned for Bent Frequency, “From the Air” was written by artist Laurie Anderson in 1982 for her experimental, minimalist album, “Big Science.” The album remains influential, particularly for its combination of pop elements into experimental, contemporary classical music.“O Superman,” an eight-minute track on the album inspired by the crash of a military rescue helicopter outside Tehran in 1980, featured repeated or looping harmonies as well as vocals and sporadic instrumentation.The disaster and terror that inspired “O Superman” was felt in “From the Air” as well. “I sort of felt like my life was ending,” freshman Katherine Knapp said. “I couldn’t decide if I was okay with it until the song was over.”A similar sense of confusion was felt in the duo’s fourth song, the three-part “Oh, Popeye!” “I’ve never heard anything like it before,” freshman Meredith Baker said. “Oh, Popeye!” opened with a looping recording of the sailor’s dry cackle, which the performers built upon in a series of chromatic glissandi. The sound culminated into what the program notes called, “a tempest of crashing oscillations” which led to the second section, “a grooving dialogue” between Popeye and his love interest. The third section, labeled “Fight! (Tattoos, Forearms & Fisticuffs),” was entirely improvised. After a brief intermission, the musicians returned for the last three songs on the program. “Roulettes” explored various tones and figures through different rhythms and sounds presented by a baritone saxophone and a number of percussion instruments, including base drum, marimba and chimes, among others. “‘Roulettes’ imagines a musical equivalent for mathematical constructs,” composer Christopher Burns wrote in his program notes. “A series of complex interactions between saxophone and crotales (a series of miniature cymbals) which result in a variety of elegantly curved melodic shapes.”Unlike “Roulettes,” the amorphous “METTA,” its name derived from a Buddhist concept of meditation, did not experiment with the instruments’ relationship with each other, but with their relationship with reality and imagination. Playing over a prerecorded disk of seemingly arbitrary sounds, the musicians mirrored, echoed and enlarged themes and ideas introduced by the recording.“A deep integration of the live and electroacoustic components develops, that blurs distinctions between ... the ephemeral and concrete and the temporal and timeless,” composer Robert Scott Thompson wrote. Baker expressed surprise at the result.“I never would have thought someone would make that kind of sound,” Baker said.Although the audience at Ford-Crawford Hall was sparse, the attendees responded to each piece with enthusiasm and curiosity. “Music is about expression,” Knapp said. “Why not express yourself to your full extent? Bring out all you’ve got.”
(03/14/14 3:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Jacobs School of Music’s New Music Ensemble, under the direction of David Dzubay, performed three modern classical pieces with guest composer and conductor Steven Mackey Thursday in Auer Hall. “The theme of this concert could be underdog instruments,” Mackey said before the show, referring to the unconventional viola and electric guitar solos featured in the pieces. Mackey is the chair of the Department of Music at Princeton as well as a recipient of many awards, including a Grammy.“It’s been amazing,” New Music Ensemble Assistant Director Samuel Wells said. “For every New Music Ensemble, they bring in a world-famous guest composer. They’re exposing their students to almost everything that’s going on in the classical music world today. It helps us figure out how to fit in and what our options are as artists.” Mackey is renowned amongst musicians for his use of the electric guitar in his chamber music orchestrations. The combination of the chamber music tradition, which dates back to the 17th century, with modern musical trends is a genre cross that has come to define Mackey’s work. “People are switching between the two worlds much more quickly,” Wells said. “The boundaries are becoming more blurred. Stephen Mackey was one of the first people to do that with the electric guitar in a very big way, as a performer.” Thursday’s New Music Ensemble performed two of Mackey’s pieces: “Deal,” a commission from 1995 featuring small chamber orchestra and an extended electric guitar solo, and “Groundswell,” from 2007. In Mackey’s program notes for “Deal,” he describes the piece in terms of images and movement, shaped around the idea of a soloist “dealing with a whole world that he/she was, paradoxically, prepared for and surprised by.”“The final layer ... is a tape part made up of sounds from the ‘real’ world,” Mackey writes. “It was my idea that these sounds would draw an inclusive perimeter around the electric guitar and orchestra. Compared to a barking dog and a ringing phone the electric guitar and chamber ensemble have more in common than the labels ‘classical music,’ ‘jazz,’ ‘rock,’ and ‘world music’ ordinarily allow.”Both Wells and New Music Ensemble Director Dzubay believe that “Deal” portrays a convincing uniqueness.“It’s an interesting hybrid of styles, and very successful,” Dzubay said.Mackey said he believes his orchestrations are a natural blend of jazz, rock, and classical influences, which he does not view as mutually exclusive genres. “The music I write is just how I think music should go,” he said. “If you ask me what’s rock and what’s classical — it’s all intertwined.” Though many modern composers now follow this trend of genre crossing between classical and other musical forms, the style was not practiced until the 1980s and ’90s. Mackey believes the early “taboo” associated with combining vernacular, or non-classical, influences with traditional music helped strengthen his resolve as a composer.“I really had something I could push against,” he said. “I had to sort of steel myself and have a healthy thick skin. We’re in a wonderful period of music right now where it’s very open.”Nevertheless, he believes that this inclusivity might prove a barrier to some musicians in the development of their own styles.“Composers younger than me — a lot of my students — they just don’t make those distinctions between genres,” he said. “In some ways, it’s harder for young composers to individuate themselves.”“Deal” featured an extended improvised solo on electric guitar, which Mackey performed himself.“His skills on the guitar are pretty insane,” said Lydia Umlauf, the New Music Ensemble’s first violin.While the composer said he does not see a distinction between classical roots and rock music roots, he views himself and his improvisation as rooted in the style of a progressive rock and blues guitarist. “It comes from the blues,” he said. “Improvisation is sort of back in the flow of the composition process. It’s an important part of my compositional process as a way of getting an idea out there.”Mackey means this literally. “There are directions in the score to play ‘as if improvised,’” he said of the piece “Deal.” He said he prefers to improvise while composing.“Getting that first idea is often the result of improvisation,” he said. “Once the idea is out here, I chisel it and I whittle it down, and I polish it and I paint it, and I put it in the oven and I take it out, and I break apart and do it again.”The ensemble opened the performance with the short piece “Nigun II,” a Hassidic tune without words, by composer Sarah Nemtsov. Audience member and Jacobs student Eli Schille-Hudson said he thought the piece was contemplative.“I liked the spaciousness of it,” he said. Mackey’s five-part “Groundswell,” unlike “Deal,” did not feature improvisation. The piece featured Sekyeong Cheon on viola.“I thought it developed really well,” Schille-Hudson said. “I’ll come back of course.” The New Music Ensemble will perform again April 17 to premiere three new pieces.
(03/13/14 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Stalingrad,” director Fedor Bondarchuk’s flash-bang approach to the most bloody battle of World War II, initially premiered in Russia back in October. That could explain why the film is so heavy on the pro-Russia propaganda. In preparation for the Sochi Olympics, Western eyes were beginning to turn towards the motherland. Bondarchuk, capitalizing on the interest of foreign viewers, was probably eager to showcase the merits of his country in a spectacle both patriotic and dazzling.The first Russian movie to be shot entirely in IMAX 3D technology, “Stalingrad” is so giddy to show off its technology that the results are almost unwatchable. Every shot of the desolated city is so exaggeratedly rich in detail that the eye wearies of the spectacle in moments, subjecting the exhausted viewer to frame after frame of lucid rubble, blurred by the incessant drone of ash that drifts through the sky like charred strips of film negative. How much pulverized bric-a-brac can you buy with a $30 million budget? Too much, the camera reminds the audience each time it races across the city, projecting a landscape like baroque chiaroscuro in Technicolor: inky smoke and luminous fire, ash-white buildings and dark, brooding Russian faces.Bondarchuk’s patriotic hubris makes no apologies for such flagrant over-dramatization. Melodrama is the catchphrase of the film. Granted, this is an easy pitfall for war epics to fall into, but “Stalingrad” fails to recognize when enough is enough. When the film finally does pause to allow a shaky plot to emerge from the furious tempo, the change is hardly noticeable. Following the soldiers’ horrendous crossing of the Volga River into the Nazi-occupied city, audiences are introduced to five reconnaissance troops who have holed themselves up in an abandoned apartment. Though they bear slightly different names, they are all more or less the same person — filthy and battle-hardened and ready to shoot the man next to him if he dare use the Motherland’s name in vain. There are stabs at character — one of the soldiers is shy of girls, another was a former opera star — but these details, emerging only after absurd moments of violence, are ultimately meaningless. Personality means nothing when there are Nazis to kill. From there, the five men establish a base against the Nazis and face off for the next two hours. These intermittent firefights are arguably the worst moments of the film — less the handiwork of a director who claims to have read “all the history of the Battle of Stalingrad” than the renderings of a teenager who has played too many violent video games.Weirdly enough, beneath all the stylized gore and the absurd slow motion pans of soldiers dodging bullets or slashing throats, the film tries to sell itself as a love story between the soldiers and a young woman residing in the apartment. This is not really worth exploring — she is a human element and little else.It’s doubtful that this parallel could have ever worked, and it’s certainly not possible to buy this relationship on the terms that Bondarchuk offers. The director’s concerns are focused on war. It’s not difficult to say how Western audiences will respond to Stalingrad. Special effects and production value can’t blur its two-dimensional nationalism. However, with recent conflicts in Ukraine and Russia’s mounting pressure on the country, the film’s patriotism may bear a more ominous connotation than it did back in October. For the soldiers of Stalingrad, protecting their country amounted to protecting a bunker against foreign invaders. Seventy years later, the line between protector and invader is not quite so easily drawn.
(03/13/14 3:33am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Widely known for their irreverence and generally offensive content, the New York-based sketch comedy group the Whitest Kids U’ Know will perform today through Saturday at the Comedy Attic.Trevor Moore, Darren Trumeter and Sam Brown will perform at 8 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday, with additional shows at 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets range from $12 to $16, and Comedy Attic owner Jared Thompson expects all five appearances to be sold out.Three of the five members of the troupe appeared at the venue last March. Moore, the founder and best-known member of the group, released his debut album, “Drunk Texts to Myself,” in March 2013. A collection of songs borrowing from rap, country, rock and pop genres, the album was inspired by Moore’s habit of drunk-texting himself a to-do list and then later reading the nonsensical messages. Nevertheless, Moore views the album as expressing cultural topics. According to an IDS article from March 28, 2013, Moore said of the album, “I didn’t want to just do parody songs.“I wanted each song to have a point,” he said. “I go into a song about circumcision. I wrote a song about the Founding Fathers smoking pot and the Pope and how much money he makes.” Moore has worked with his troupe for more than 14 years, although the Whitest Kids U’ Know only emerged as a viable sketch comedy group in the mid-2000s after several of their videos went viral on YouTube.“We were kind of in the right place at the right time,” he said. “People were taking videos off our site and putting them on YouTube and spreading it around the net.”Thompson said their viral success was an unorthodox approach to their later fame. “There really never was a way to make it without being handed a TV show,” he said. “They kind of pioneered marketability based on just YouTube views. They were definitely on the forefront of that.” Whitest Kids U’ Know released its self-titled debut album in 2006 and was also named Best Sketch Group at the Aspen Comedy Festival the same year.Though Thompson describes himself as skeptical of sketch comedy, he realized the troupe’s potential after coming across their popular Civil War sketch on the Independent Film Channel.“I think they just have a natural feel for each other,” he said. “They’ve been doing this for so long. A lot of it is just their understanding the strengths and weaknesses of what they have to work with.” Unlike most other comedians that have performed at the Comedy Attic, the Whitest Kids U’ Know does not feature much stand-up. Instead, it relies on multimedia, skits and songs. Thompson said showcasing a troupe with such a diverse approach to comedy was a new experience at the Comedy Attic.“We’ve never done anything that wasn’t remotely stand-up at all,” he said. “But everyone who was here last year just had so much fun.”
(03/10/14 3:16am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Award-winning pianist Edmund Battersby performed a two-hour concert Saturday night for a densely packed Auer Hall. The program featured pieces by the 18th-century Classical composer Joseph Haydn and the 19th-century Romantic composers Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Battersby’s many recordings, the most recent of which was a re-release of shorter pieces by Schubert in 2013, have garnered critical acclaim from the New York Times and the online classical magazine Musical America, among others. In 1992, the pianist’s recording of Spanish composer Enrique Granados’ suite, “Goyescas,” was shortlisted for a Grammy. Critics have not been the only ones to regard Battersby in high esteem. Kanar Abrahamyan, a concert-goer and Jacobs student, said the pianist’s playing on Saturday night was sublime. “I enjoyed the lyrical stuff,” she said. “Especially the Haydn and the Schumann Opus 82. He had this very stylistic, more conservative, traditional Haydn classical playing.”An Austrian composer, Joseph Haydn was a contemporary of Wolfgang Mozart and one of the most celebrated and prolific composers in Europe by the time of his death, having written over 100 symphonies and 13 operas in addition to many other works. Known as the “Father of the Symphony,” Haydn redefined musical standards and forms. These developments were seen in the first piece of Battersby’s program, the Sonata in C Minor. “This sonata is unquestionably one of Haydn’s masterpieces in the genre,” wrote critic Joseph Renouf on his website, the Critic’s Ear. “The Haydn C Minor sonata surpasses its immediate predecessors and successors ... in part owing to its greater length and structural complexity.”Robert Schumann composed his Opus 82 Waldszenen in the years 1848 and 1849. The piece, a series of nine vignettes representing different images from the forest such as hunting, flowers and birds, appeared during the 19th-century Romantic period of music. This was the same era during which composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven and Hector Berlioz wrote works now commonly regarded as masterpieces for their extreme subjectivism and portrayal of dramatic, fantastic experiences. In 2012, Battersby released an album of Schumann pieces entitled “The Early Romantic Piano: Schumann and Chopin,” even though the album did not contain the Waldszenen. Audiences were nevertheless pleased by this inclusion in the program. “It was interesting,” audience member Ani Abrahamyan said after the performance. “I really liked it.”After taking a brief intermission with the conclusion of the Schumann compositions, Battersby finished the concert with two pieces by the Austrian composer Franz Schubert, the Klavierstücke No. 1 and 2, and the demanding “Wanderer Fantasy” in C Major. “Drei Klavierstücke,” Schubert’s name for three solo pieces he wrote in 1828, are not performed as often as many of the composer’s other works. Still, musicians have regarded the Klavierstücke as integral additions to Schubert’s prodigious body of work.“It’s just incredible, really,” English pianist Paul Lewis said in a 2011 podcast for the Guardian. “A longingly introspective theme of radiance and beauty.”Battersby closed the concert with Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy,” a piece known by audiences more for its formidable difficulties than for its lyricism. Commonly considered to be the composer’s most technically challenging piano composition, Schubert himself found these difficulties too great, famously remarking during a concert that “the devil may play it, for I cannot.” Battersby received a standing ovation at the close of the “Wanderer Fantasy.” “It was just amazing,” Abrahamyan said. “I think it brought out the strengths of the performer very well.”
(03/06/14 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In Homer’s “Odyssey,” Helios was the sun god whose island Odysseus and his men landed on after several years drifting at sea. In an audacious rebellion against their captain’s orders, the starving crew butchered and ate the sun god’s cattle, which earned them an awesome and catastrophic death from a divinely pissed-off Olympian. “Helios” is also the name of the latest studio album by the Fray. The Denver rockers are signed to the record label Epic, and you can note the obvious Homeric parallel because it is one of very few pleasurable ironies that one will find on “Helios.” Like most everything else the Fray has done, “Helios” is neither audacious nor catastrophic because, unlike the crew in the “Odyssey,” it never ventures to go anywhere.Perhaps this is why vocalist Isaac Slade is so confused when he sings “On the road to some place / Some place that we don’t know” on “Wherever This Goes,” a numbing march that marks time with a tambourine.This is a step in the wrong direction for a band that, 10 years into its professional career, should have an idea of where it’s going by now, especially after managing earlier, bolder narration in something like “How To Save A Life.” The lead single, “Love Don’t Die,” doesn’t fare much better, although it attempts to present an image of a catchier, more pop-oriented Fray. But spicing an upbeat and adding a chorus of claps only makes the tune sound like a half-hearted attempt to be current. This is something the band has struggled with throughout their career. In 2004, by the time “How To Save A Life” was released, the pop rock world was dominated by moguls like Fall Out Boy, the Killers and Nickelback so popular that they have long since passed into parody. Snagging onto the pop/rock ballad trend while the going was good, the Fray lapped up the sentiment, modeled it on a theme by Coldplay, and churned it right back out in its generic debut album. The difference between that first album and “Helios” is that Slade has pretty much dropped the piano. It’s a welcome change — the songs are a bit edgier, feelings aren’t quite so obviously on the sleeve — but it’s just not enough. “Hurricane,” flirting with distortion, electronic dance and a chorus of backup singers, is a splash in a kiddie pool compared to the musical redefinitions other bands have made this past year. When artists grope for their sound on a debut album, cliché and false sentiment are to be expected. Ten years and four LPs later, when cliché has become the staple anchoring musical identity, a complete overhaul is necessary if the Fray doesn’t want a faceoff with obscurity. “Helios” has no vocal authority, memorable melodies, or lyricism to boast of, relying upon its own musical tradition to float its 11 dismissible tracks.
(03/05/14 5:27am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Celebrated conductor David Effron will conduct the Johannes Brahms Concerto for Piano in D Minor and the Witold Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra at 8 p.m. today at the Musical Arts Center. The Brahms Concerto will feature the internationally recognized pianist Eunjin Bang as soloist as well as the Jacobs School Philharmonic Orchestra. Born in South Korea, Bang began playing piano at 4 years old and quickly received national acclaim for her achievements. Since moving to the United States, Bang has graduated from the Oberlin College and Conservatory with a Young Arts Diploma in 2008 and a Bachelor’s of Music degree in 2012. Recently, she has been pursuing her Master’s of Music degree at the Jacobs School. The Brahms Piano Concerto in D Minor is a frequently performed piece and is considered by some to be a classic. Many famous recordings of the piece have been made with pianists as varied as Arthur Rubenstein, whom the New York Times praised as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, to the eccentric Glenn Gould, who performed the piece with Leonard Bernstein at a controversial event in 1962. Before the concert began, Bernstein made a famous disclaimer to his audience regarding Gould’s interpretation of the piece. “You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unorthodox performance,” he announced before the show. “A performance distinctly different from any I’ve ever heard, or even dreamt of for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms’ dynamic indications. I cannot say that I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould’s conception.” Sam Emanuel, Maestro David Effron’s assistant conductor, said Bernstein and Gould’s performance represents the “give and take” nature of the concerto. “It’s a real collaboration,” he said. “I don’t think either person can really be the boss. The performance needs to be a unified whole. I’m a big fan, personally, of everything that Gould does.” The Brahms D Minor Concerto runs close to 50 minutes and features a balance between orchestra sections and piano solos. It is not considered the standard concerto piece. “The defining feature is that it’s symphonic in scope,” said Emanuel. “A lot of contemporary concerti are more soloistic—the orchestra is accompanying the pianist. This is much more the piano and the orchestra being equals.” Equality among and within the orchestra is a feature that will be represented in the composition by Witold Lutoslawski. One of the major composers of the 20th century, Lutoslawski wrote his heavily stylized Concerto for Orchestra in 1954. Emanuel views the concerto as representing the harsh postwar environment of the composer’s native Poland. “It’s a very dramatic piece — quite violent,” he said. “There are numerous passages that are marked to be played aggressively. It’s bleak.” Despite early success with the Concerto, Lutoslawski attempted to distance himself from the composition in later years, turning his attention to more “aleatoric” or improvisatory pieces — a hallmark of later 20th-century composers like John Cage. Featuring a score both grand and bleak, Emanuel said he hopes for a strong reaction from listeners. “The Lutoslawski has an overpowering feeling,” he said. “I think the audiences will just be struck by the drama of both pieces.”
(02/28/14 5:55am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Actor Henry Woronicz, the king, spoke from a throne imprinted with the inscription “Ex Nihilo,” or “out of nothing,” as the attention of the onstage cast moved to him. In the first minutes of the IU theater department’s Monday night dress rehearsal of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” nothing was everywhere. “Nothing will come of nothing,” the king says in the first act, in a scene that prompts his future tragedy.The concept of nothing is one of the central themes in the theater department’s production of “King Lear, ” which premieres at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Ruth N. Halls Theatre.The word inspired director Fontaine Syer’s adaptation of the play.“It’s a really important theme for Fontaine,” said senior Sasha Belle Neufeld, who is majoring in theater and drama and plays Cordelia in the production. “You have to look at life in this existentialist manner — life is here, and then it’s gone. It’s nothing.” Neufeld’s character, one of the king’s three daughters, makes an appearance in the text only when she is banished in the first act and killed in the fourth.“I get to relax in the middle,” Neufeld said. “But it is really difficult. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do backstage to keep me focused and to keep me in the show.”“King Lear” was written during the time of Shakespeare’s quartet of tragedies, which includes “Hamlet,” “Othello” and “Macbeth.” It tells the story of an aging despot who splits his kingdom among his daughters, provided they declare how much they love him first. Cordelia, Lear’s most beloved daughter, answers his question with the word “nothing.” “Actions speak louder than words,” Neufeld said. “That’s how Cordelia represents nothing in this play. She believes the love that she showed him should be enough for him to understand.” The furious king deposes his daughter and sets in motion the tragic events leading up to his overthrow, insanity and death. Nevertheless, Neufeld views the king as more pitiable than detestable. “Lear is senile,” she said. “When Lear chooses to banish her ... it’s not him. It’s this illness that’s taken over him. But I think Cordelia fights that because she wants to hope that he’ll come back to her, that he’ll overcome this terrible thing.”The idea of redemption also figures heavily into Shakespeare’s play. “We can find no other word than renewal,” wrote the Shakespearean scholar Lionel Knights. Even so, early critics of “King Lear” thought the writer was too harsh with the tragic death of Lear and Cordelia, agreeing with the late historical Shakespeare critic Samuel Johnson, who remarked he was so shocked by Cordelia’s death he avoided rereading the play for years. Complaints such as these resulted in a radically altered version of the play by Nahum Tate that kept Lear and Cordelia alive. This adaptation was performed for nearly two centuries. However, Syer’s production would suggest nothing of this optimistic rendition. The play features costumes in the drab, gothic colors of a party of mourners and a massive set piece that looks like different sheets of driftwood. A member of the design team described it as epic and crumbling. “But to the characters, that’s just their world,” cast member and IU doctoral student Eric Heaps said. “There is this falling apart. It’s coming apart. Nothing is coming from nothing.” Heaps plays the Earl of Gloucester, who banishes his loyal son Edgar in an act of rage, trusting to the support of characters who later overthrow Gloucester and gouge out his eyes. “It’s apparent that I go from a lot to nothing,” Heaps said. “The set design itself becomes nothing as it goes along. Pieces keep flying out.” The downward spiral of events that the men endure, such as Lear’s madness and Gloucester’s eye gouging, have been taken to graphic extremes in other productions. In 2007, “Lord of the Rings” actor Ian McKellen stripped nude during an 18 month-long production of the play to better illustrate Lear’s madness. Heaps, recounting Syer’s many experiences of seeing “Lear” performed, said a realistic and extreme eye-gouging scene would not convey the effect she wanted for her own production. “She thought of this idea of focusing on the emotional experience,” Heaps said. “You’re getting the emotion because you know what’s happening.” Emotional effect is something the cast said they take very personally.“Lear breaks my heart every time I see him,” Heaps said. “I want the audience to experience his journey — to be dragged through the mud with him. I just hope they feel something.” The last words of the play are Edgar’s, and they are used to illustrate the passing of age as well as the attempt to reconcile the future by enduring hardship. “You have to bear these woes in order to come back up,” Heaps said. “We that are young shall never see so much nor live so old,” Edgar’s lines finish the play. In one of the upper left-hand theater seats, Syer looked down with approval. The theme of the play had revolved around nothing and negativity, but her tone of voice was approving. “I think we’re in great shape,” she said.
(02/27/14 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After an early career spent writing songs for country moguls like Craig Campbell and Luke Bryan, the Georgia-born Cole Swindell has released his debut album, which is about as forgettable as albums come.When did country lose its imagination? Swindell, while providing no answers on his self-titled album, presents an overwhelming amount of evidence that country has completely lost its touch. It lacks the validity old stars like Garth Brooks and Kenny Rogers fought hard to give country, and contemporary stars like Trace Adkins and Kenny Chesney have fought to keep.Take the album’s debut single “Chillin’ It.” The track recently exploded to the top of the Billboard Country Charts. The music video, viewed more than two million times, features Swindell wearing top down aviators and preying on a sandy-colored soubrette after she gives him awkward sex eyes. “Nothing but two lane country on up ahead,” he sings, “Girl, you so fine, I wouldn’t mind if this is all we did.”Really? You so fine? Swindell could have afforded to stick in the verb, if only to not sound like such a frat star.It’s not like he didn’t have room in the song — it’s packed with enough beer and buds references to advertise the Super Bowl. The problem isn’t that the song is necessarily bad, but that the entire album plays like endless repetition. Throughout the twelve tracks, there are approximately 11 references or choruses about boozing, seven references to trucks — Swindell drives a shiny new K5 Blazer and likes to brag about it — and more than 18 references to girls that either have broken hearts or are fixing to break hearts. Of course, these are the motifs one works with when one writes a country song, but they used to represent something more than just an overly generalized nostalgia. Incapable of narrative, Swindell puts all the tropes into a blender and pumps out tracks that ooze sentimentality like beer can condensation. “I got a dozen roses if she comes back home,” he pines in “Dozen Roses & Six Pack,” “And this six pack might not be enough/ but it’s a damn good start if we’re ending us.” Oh, please. Coupled with a voice so lacking in character that it sounds air-brushed and auto-tuned, the entire effect is one of formulaic repetitiousness. You can listen to the entire album and not recall a single lyric afterward. This is not just formulaic. It’s a sad consent to mediocrity.
(02/27/14 5:00am)
With his gritty, shaky first film, director Garrett Batty attempts to bring Mormon values into the mainstream.
(02/26/14 4:43am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Tonight at Auer Hall, the celebrated conductor Uriel Segal will conduct two pieces from Ludwig van Beethoven and Igor Stravinsky, arguably the 19th and 20th centuries’ most influential composers. The program will include Beethoven’s famous “Eroica” Symphony in E Flat Major, as well as Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, featuring recent graduate of Oberlin College and winner of the 2013 IU Violin Concerto Competition Eliot Heaton as soloist.The performance will take place in Auer Hall at 8 p.m. Heaton, who comes from Geneva, N.Y., has been active in violin studies since he was three and has recently maintained a rigorous performance schedule. He has performed as soloist for several world premiers as well as for the Oberlin Sinfonietta and has served as concertmaster or assistant concertmaster for the Oberlin Symphony and Chamber orchestras, the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra.Stravinsky is best known for his demonstrative and forward-thinking ballets, one of which, “The Rite of Spring,” caused a riot when it premiered in 1913. “The Rite of Spring” is a ballet that featured alarming musical dissonance and unconventional rhythmic patterns. However, he also composed pieces of a more traditional genre. Though it premiered eighteen years after “The Rite of Spring,” the Violin Concerto in D is considered “neoclassic,” or resembling the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart composed.“It is very transparent, light and built according to classical form,” Segal said. “Neoclassical is very much a term used when 20th century composers were trying to imitate the classical symphony.” Stravinsky said he believed the “texture” of his piece resembled the intimate chamber music quartets of Mozart and Haydn rather than the more spacious orchestras that featured 30 or more musicians. Segal said he believes the tradition of the piece comes from the 17th-century Baroque period. “The spirit of neoclassical music is derived from Baroque,” he said. “Even the style of the third movement is more like Baroque music.”Segal said the piece is rooted in the exaggerated and vigorous Baroque style, yet he maintains the Concerto’s Classic “lightness.” He referred to it as musical “pointillism,” borrowing the term from a style of late 19th French impressionist painters.“Stravinsky is using a really big orchestra — a very big formation of wind especially — but he is using it very sparingly,” he said. “This type of writing gives you a lot of feeling of lightness.” Segal’s themes of lightness and transparency are apparent not just in the Violin Concerto, but in Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony as well. Recently, Segal has taken the nontraditional stance of performing Beethoven’s symphonies with smaller chamber orchestras, rather than large orchestras.His downsizing also follows the trend of what he called “the new Baroque awakening,” performing pieces in the style of how they would have sounded when they were composed. “You get the transparency and the balances which are very right for this music,” he said. “If you play it with a big, modern orchestra, you have to do many adjustments in order to have those pieces sound correctly.” One of Beethoven’s most acclaimed symphonies, the “Eroica” is also one of Segal’s favorite pieces. “It’s unique,” he said. “It has so much strength, and it’s so personal. It’s one of my most beloved pieces.”
(02/13/14 5:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Actress, writer and “Last Comic Standing” finalist Rebecca Corry will perform at the Comedy Attic Thursday night through Saturday night.Corry will perform at 8 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday, with additional shows at 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets range from $8.00 to $17.50 and can be purchased at comedyattic.com. The comedian grew up in Kent, Wash., or the “El Camino driving, hot dog water loving, one-toothed pregnant teen capital of the world,” as she called it on her website. She has guest starred on programs such as “The Bernie Mac Show,” “The King of Queens” and “Rules of Engagement.” Corry released her debut album, “My Story,” in 2012. It includes sections entitled “Tickling,” “Barfing” and “Balls.”Corry, who doesn’t like defining her comedic style, simply calls it storytelling. “If you think it’s funny, then it’s funny,” Corry said. “Some of it’s personal, some of it’s observational — just good, old-fashioned storytelling.” Corry describes her introduction to comedy as the moment “when I came out of my mother’s womb thinking ... what is this? Some kind of joke?” After moving to Los Angeles to host her own HBO one-woman show, “Have you Ever Been Called a Dwarf?” Corry began performing at a number of different comedy clubs. “The ‘good’ decisions I’ve made are simply creating,” she told the website First Order Historians last year. “Creating shows and content. When you think you’re ‘good,’ you stop getting better and learning.”Although she is less than 5 feet tall, Corry said she doesn’t let her height affect her craft.“My height doesn’t write my jokes,” she said. When asked by First Order Historians about her status as a female comedian, her response was similarly straightforward. “I hate the term ‘female comedian,’” she said. “Funny is funny. Doesn’t matter what you use to pee out of.” Recently, Corry has divided her attention between her career and animal rights activism. In May 2013, she began organizing the One Million PIBBLE March on Washington in support of pit bulls.“The goal is to end abuse and discrimination of pit bull terriers and to educate our communities, inside and outside of the animal community — that this is all of our problem,” Corry said. Corry, who performed at the Comedy Attic last year, advised any lonely singles in Friday’s crowd to “wear protection.”