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(05/05/14 1:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Graduate student Ben Wedeking walked over to a garbage can and clipped his fingernails moments before his performance. This is the way Wedeking, a string instrument musician, prepares his fingers for performance. Wedeking and eight other Jacobs School of Music students put on a concert at 7 p.m. May 3 in Rachael’s Cafe.Organized by Wedeking, the event showcased four different types of chamber music, ranging from pieces by Russian composer Tchaikovsky to rock tunes by the Rolling Stones. Working on a double major in violin and guitar performance, Wedeking has played a variety of chamber music pieces this past year. Chamber music refers to music composed for small groups that would be played in a small chamber or room, Wedeking said. He wanted to incorporate his experience with it in his act.“I wanted to do everything I’ve been involved with this past semester in one place and have all different groups in the same concert,” Wedeking said. The concert contained four different sections, the first being a string sextet performing a classical piece by Tchaikovsky called, “Souvenir de Florence.” The next section consisted of seven popular Spanish songs by Manuel de Falla for classical guitar and soprano voice. “As an undergrad, I remember hearing graduate students playing these songs with a vocalist, and I really admired these pieces,” Wedeking said. “I always wanted to play them.”He said these pieces were written by a classical composer but are inspired by Spanish folk music. These pieces portray the shift from classical to folk. The next section included classical guitar duos and mandolin/guitar duos deriving from the Brazilian choros tradition. “Choros is a genre not very well known as much as samba and bossa nova, but in Brazil, choros are just as popular as the other two genres,” Wedeking said.The last section of the concert included steel and electric guitar duos from the American folk tradition performed by Wedeking and Eli Schille-Hudson, a freshman studying guitar performance. “The idea is that we’re going on a journey from more academic and classical music to less academic and more folk-oriented pieces,” Wedeking said. As the only undergraduate student in the entire performance, Schille-Hudson said he and Wedeking had been jamming for a couple weeks when he asked him to be a part of the performance.They collaborated to choose songs they both knew how to play or were willing to learn from each other.“This performance is different from Jacobs’ concerts in that it’s out in public, and we’re not sure of who the audience is going to be,” Schille-Hudson said. “It’s also much more relaxed and laid-back.” Wedeking said along with this performance being more relaxed and laid back, it’s an opportunity for audience members to hear different types of music and experience different genres all in one concert. “The audience will hopefully find some links between the different styles and have interest in a new perspective or a glimpse into a variety of genres,” Wedeking said.
(04/07/14 3:05am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A mix of Spanish, Portuguese and English echoed throughout the walls of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Friday. Students and guest performers tuned their guitars and warmed up their vocals moments before the show began. IU students, faculty and local community members of all ages gathered for the fourth Annual Spanish and Portuguese Song Festival. Event organizer Israel Fernando Herrera came up with the idea to have a Spanish and Portuguese singing competition several years ago while he was teaching Spanish here at IU.“I asked my students what they did in their free time,” Herrera said. “Many said they sang, played instruments or were in bands. I wanted to find a way to combine Spanish with music.” Herrera said he encouraged all of his students to participate in the event and stressed that this particular competition was different than others in the past.“It’s much more informal. You don’t need to be a professional. This is a matter of giving students the opportunity to use the language they are learning and enjoy being on stage,” Herrera said. This year, six undergraduate students competed for the top prize. They chose to sing popular songs from Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela. The participants were judged on two main categories: musicality and language. A music jury and a language jury selected the top three winners. Each specialized jury consisted of IU graduate students, faculty from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Latin American Music Center and other expert musicians. Rachel Colegrove took second place for her performance in Portuguese. Colegrove is double majoring in Spanish and Portuguese at IU. She worked with senior lecturer Vania Castro for two weeks on her pronunciation in preparation for the performance. “I saw the competition last year and have been thinking about competing ever since,” Colegrove said. Continuing a tradition that began in last year’s competition, there was a special category for high school students learning Spanish. This year, three students from the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship participated. Next year, the performance will include a fifth edition non-competitive section for children ages 6 to 10. First place winner Carina Liu learned Spanish not from classes at IU, but from her boyfriend with whom she practiced her performance and pronunciation. “I haven’t taken any Spanish classes, but I learned everything I know from my boyfriend, and I joined the competition because I’ve always wanted to sing on stage,” Liu said. Aside from the competition, IU Jacobs School of Music students, ROK GROUP, the Latin American Guitar Ensemble, IU Opera Theater, the Latin American Music Center, Spanish singer Tomás Lozano and the Amigo Fields band composed of IU faculty gave special guest performances. The festival was made possible because of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the IU Vice President Office for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs, the Institute of European Studies, the La Casa Latino Cultural Center, Latino Studies Program, IU Commission on Multicultural Understanding, the Latin American Music Center and the Jacobs School of Music.
(03/13/14 4:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater gave its fourth performance since 1980 at the IU Auditorium last night.Founded by choreographer Alvin Ailey in 1958, the theater consists of young African-American modern dancers. Ailey’s goal was to revolutionize African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance, according to the group’s website. “Revelations,” choreographed by Ailey in 1960, is a performance based on his “blood memories” while growing up in Texas. Throughout his career, Ailey was heavily influenced by traditional music and spirituals. Alvin Ailey Choreographer and Rehearsal Director Matthew Rushing led a pre-performance discussion. Rushing said because the company was founded to be a repertory dance theater, Ailey “opened the floor to his peers, including different choreographers from around the world.”“Revelations” represents this repertory, contains three separate performances the each elucidate a distinct style of dance. Ailey composed 79 ballets during his lifetime. Throughout its history, the company has performed more than 235 works by more than 90 choreographers.Since 1958, the company has traveled to 48 states, 71 countries and six continents. At the pre-performance discussion, Rushing said the effortless vibe the dancers feed the audience is an illusion.“What you see on stage often is not what we feel,” he said. “We work all our lives to make what we do look easy.”Despite this, Rushing emphasized the flow state the performers enter while dancing.“Dancers experience special moments when the audience is totally connected, moments where you feel high levels of art happening in the theatre,” Rushing said. “Sometimes you feel weightless, like you can dance forever. These moments keep you coming back to the stage.”Rushing began dancing as a child as a way to keep himself off of the streets, he said. He attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and joined Alvin Ailey in 1992. Rushing became rehearsal director for the company in 2010 and has choreographed two ballets. He has also performed for former presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and current president Barack Obama. IU Auditorium Associate Director Maria Talbert said the reason they keep bringing the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater back to Bloomington is because of their repertoire and artistry.Talbert first saw the company in college. “It was one of the most memorable artistic experiences I’ve ever had,” she said. Bloomington resident Pat Williams, who has seen Alvin Ailey perform at least three times, couldn’t agree more. Williams’ late husband was a musician — a pianist. The two of them would attend IU Auditorium performances on a regular basis because “it was important for us to support the arts.” When she first saw the company perform, she knew she would return, for the quality of the performances was outstanding, she said. “By the end of the performance, the energy from the theater will blow off the roof,” Rushing said.
(09/30/13 3:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When a former IU Jacobs School of Music student taught her two daughters to sing and play music together, a power sister duo emerged. On Saturday, the folk-alternative sister duo Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz performed at the 20th anniversary of Bloomington’s Lotus World Music and Arts Festival. Lily and Madeleine were raised in Indianapolis where their mother taught them to sing and play piano at a young age. Madeleine now lives in Bloomington, as she followed in her mother’s footsteps and is a freshman at IU.“Our mother sang a lot in high school and in college here at IU,” Madeleine said. “She knew piano and guitar as well, so she just loved music her whole life and taught us to love music as well.”Madeleine said that is why music has naturally and always been a part of her life.“People are born with different talents,” Madeleine said. “I was never very athletic, but I always loved music and have always been able to sing. I continued to do this as I grew up, and my mom supported both of us and helped us to develop our skills.”Besides singing, Madeleine, 18, plays the piano and Lily, 16, plays the piano, guitar, ukulele and banjo.The girls were raised on music including the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. These bands influenced their style and sound. As for modern-day musicians, Lily said she and her sister have often been compared to other folk-alternative sister duos like First Aid Kit and Tegan and Sara. “We love Tegan and Sara and First Aid Kit, so it’s an honor to be compared to them,” Lily said. “I think we differ from them in that we can’t create their sound. It’s hard to write a song that sounds like Tegan and Sara without ending up with a song that sounds like Lily and Madeleine. It’s just natural for us to be how we are.”Lily and Madeleine gained popularity after releasing a video on YouTube of their first original song “In the Middle,” which now has more than 300,000 views.The video for “In the Middle,” done entirely unplugged in black and white has no added instrumentation or flare.“We didn’t want to sugarcoat it or make it seem like it’s something that it’s not,” Madeleine said. “We wanted to keep our music as it is — no gimmicks.”Because of this instant success, the girls sold out the first two live shows of their career.After receiving tremendous feedback from YouTube audiences, Lily and Madeleine were signed onto Asthmatic Kitty Records, an independent label co-founded by singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens. “Madge (Madeleine) and I have been obsessed with Sufjan for years, so we were absolutely freaking out when we got the call from our manager that he wanted to sign us,” Lily said. “We’re so lucky to have been taken under the wing of Asthmatic Kitty.”Lily and Madeleine released their first EP called “The Weight of the Globe” in January, produced by Paul Mahern with the song-writing help of Kenny Childers from Gentlemen Caller. Many of the songs in Lily and Madeleine’s EP discuss the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood. Because of their age, the sisters said they struggle to find balance between school, their music and their relationships.“We’re trying to go about it one day at a time,” Madeleine said. “At times, yeah, it freaks me out and makes me feel uncertain. It’s so normal for kids at my age to be in college and just study, get a degree, get a job and that’s your life. “Lily and I are taking a different route, and at times it can be a little odd for us. It’s important for me to continue my education now, but I hope that in the future I can dedicate all my time to my music.” The sisters are planning to release their first full self-titled debut album Oct. 29. “The new album focuses on many different emotions,” Madeleine said. “Some people say the EP is kind of sad. I don’t want to seem dark, but at the time we wrote it, it just happened to be that a lot of my influences were kind of sad.”But Madeleine said the album isn’t all so dark.“It has a lot to do with the opportunity we received and how amazing our career has been so far,” she said. “It’s more positive lyrically. Lily and I were also a lot more involved with the production side. “We had some experience with the EP and still don’t know how to fully produce an album on our own, but we went into the studio knowing what we wanted it to sound like.” Lily and Madeleine have upcoming tours in New York and Chicago, and will be traveling to London, Berlin and Paris in October for their first time performing abroad. “I’m not familiar with the music audiences in Europe, so it will be cool to see how people react and just to share our music with another part of the world,” Madeleine said. As opposed to performances in major cities around the U.S. and performing abroad, Madeleine said they enjoy performing locally at places like Lotus Fest. “We like playing local shows because it’s the scene where we grew up,” she said. “We’re really excited to go to other big places, but there’s something about being local. It’s familiar and comforting.”Follow reporter Alexandra Mahoney on Twitter @Al_Mahone.
(09/30/13 3:25am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Lotus in the Park was just another example where the Lotus Festival provided audiences a day filled with music from around the world in celebration of Lotus Dickey.The event kicked off on Saturday at the Waldron, Hill and Buskirk Park and was free. Sponsored by the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District, Lotus in the Park featured performances from local and global artists and had participatory workshops for visitors. Besides the music, attendees enjoyed arts and crafts at the Art Camp, engulfed themselves in local Bloomington foods from restaurants like Nick’s English Hut, and joined the Hudsucker Posse in hula hooping.At the Lotus Dickey Song Workshop, IU alumnus Nancy McEntire explained how Lotus Dickey is the reason Lotus Fest exists today.In 1980, McEntire was working as a folklorist at the Spring Mill State Park when a former student told her about a man he found named Lotus Dickey who sang, played the fiddle and guitar and wrote his own music. He insisted McEntire meet him.When struggling to find upcoming, respectable folklore music, McEntire gave it a shot.After following a windy dirt road leading to a log cabin without electricity — and eight hours after hearing Dickey play all original songs — McEntire knew what she had to do. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I’ve got to let people know about Lotus,’” McEntire said. She brought Dickey to Bloomington so he could express his music, and she felt she needed to “introduce the world to Lotus Dickey,” McEntire said. While Dickey had once been living a life of solitude in a small log cabin in a rural southern Indiana town, he was now meeting people and learning about music from all over the world.McEntire remained close with Dickey for the remainder of his life. When he died in 1989, he told McEntire he wanted her to publish his songs. The Lotus Dickey Songbook was created in celebration of his music.In memory of Dickey’s music, Lotus in the Park offered live performances of artists and bands from Quebec, Poland and Bloomington.One of these bands was Mr. Taylor & His Dirty Dixie Band, a Dixieland band based heavily in New Orleans jazz from the early 1900s. Based in Bloomington, the band consists of six IU Jacobs School of Music students including Benjamin Taylor, Justin Knapp, Victor Ribadeneyra, Otis Cantrell, Douglas Olenik and Bridget Leahy. Other artists included the French Canadian group De Temps Antan from Quebec, who focus on Quebecois traditional music, and Janusz Prusinowski Trio from Poland, who play primarily Polish village music.Ghanaian xylophonist and experienced music educator Bernard Woma led a hands-on participatory workshop in which audience members joined in and learned about instruments and music from Ghana.The T.C. Steele State Historic Site from Nashville, Ind., held an Art Camp where participants could make world handcrafts with the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. Felipe Velázquez from Mexico City, Mexico, has been bringing his family to Lotus Fest every year for the past 12 years. “It’s a fun, safe place, and it’s great for the family,” Velázquez said.Founded in March 2009, the hula-hooping Hudsucker Posse, based in Bloomington, held a demonstration.Graduate student and Posse member Stephanie Poppe said she enjoys helping people learn tricks with the hoops. “Hooping is a great exercise and a great way to connect with yourself and your body,” Poppe said.Though Dickey wasn’t at the festival, McEntire acknowledged his presence.She said she feels 20 years after the first Lotus Fest, “His spirit is still here.” Follow reporter Alexandra Mahoney on Twitter @Al_Mahone.
(02/23/11 4:09am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Indiana’s state legislature is currently debating Senate Bill 192 and reviewing the state’s marijuana laws, specifically on criminal law and procedure.Senate Bill 192 focuses primarily on marijuana’s effect on Indiana’s criminal justice system, whether marijuana should remain illegal in Indiana, the implementation of medical marijuana and if marijuana does become legal, how sales and taxation will be handled.The Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters administered the study regarding the concerns conferred in the bill.On Feb. 21, Bloomington’s National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws had attorney Steve Dillon and marijuana activist and nurse Debra Parrish come to discuss SB 192 and why Indiana should pass the bill, highlighting the issues with Indiana’s marijuana laws.Dillon assisted in creating Indiana NORML in 1974 and has fought numerous cases regarding the inefficiencies of marijuana laws in Indiana.After graduating from the IU Law School, Dillon decided to focus on cases protecting people against marijuana laws.“I believe in liberty and freedom, and I felt that this was the best way to execute the Constitution,” Dillon said.Dillon said he believes Indiana should reform marijuana laws because of the medical benefits of marijuana, the evidence that the government can’t afford the cost of prison systems due to marijuana charges and the illegitimate procedures for convicting persons of crimes related to marijuana.Dillon encountered a specific case in which a woman who has had multiple sclerosis for 14 years was arrested for using marijuana. The woman tried marijuana after it was recommended by her son, and she claimed it was the only medicine that eased her pain and depression and that it helped save her life.Similarly, Rep. Tom Knollman, R-Liberty, has testified against marijuana laws in regard to diseases like MS. Parrish said when her husband was diagnosed with cancer, he was prescribed a drug called Marinol that soothes the nausea and vomiting resulting from chemotherapy. Parrish also said the active ingredient in Marinol is synthetic tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, an active ingredient in marijuana.Dillon said legal cases and government considerations to reform marijuana laws like Indiana’s SB 192 are small steps in providing awareness of medical benefits and glitches in the criminal justice system regarding marijuana-related crimes.Dillon said millions of people are arrested for marijuana in Indiana every year and 90 percent for possession of less than one ounce. Since 1965, 20 million people in the United States have been arrested for marijuana, causing more than a trillion dollars in taxes on prison systems in America.“The Indiana government knows it can’t afford putting prisoners away for marijuana. They might not be making changes out of compassion or recreation, but economics, and that’s okay. Whatever works to make a change,” Dillon said.Along with the high cost of marijuana convictions, Dillon said the ways in which people are convicted is illegitimate.Dillon said when people are convicted of driving under the influence of marijuana, they are tested for carboxy-THC, which can stay in a person’s system for up to three months.“Carboxy-THC has no relevance to impairment, but this is how they measure it,” Dillon said.In regard to the resistance against legalizing marijuana, senior and president of NORML at IU Steve Templeton said. “After the prohibition of marijuana in 1937, the propaganda against marijuana made it seem much more intense than it actually is.”Parrish said one of the most important things to do right now is to educate the community.“Knowledge without action is plain fantasy. The more you know, the more you can do. We (activists) need to educate, communicate and cooperate in order to make a change,” Parrish said.
(01/21/11 1:05am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sculptures and paintings of animals cover a local gallery that is showcasing the talent of local artists.Paper Crane Gallery & Studio, a gallery for local and international artists, is currently showing “Bestiary: A compendium of animals, beasts and creatures.”The exhibit focuses on highlighting various artists’ talents from surrounding areas of Bloomington. “We wanted to have a group show that would showcase the talents of people around town as opposed to having a gallery that focuses on one artist,” said gallery coordinator Nicole Wolfersberger. The event exposes an array of media including print makers, original drawings, hand-drawn books, sculptures and paintings, all focusing on different types of animals. Along with focusing on local artists’ talents, the event also benefits the Deep Roots Animal Sanctuary. Deep Roots is a non-profit organization devoted to helping animals. Twenty percent of all profits will go to the Deep Roots Animal Sanctuary.“We knew we wanted to do an animal-themed show and that came first,” Wolfersberger said. “We eventually decided that we wanted something other than just pictures of animals, which is when we decided to collaborate with Deep Roots. We were helping them, and they were helping us; it was a win-win situation.” The Bestiary event is the first time Paper Crane Gallery & Studio has collaborated a benefit with a gallery exhibit. Wolfersberger said the event can serve multiple purposes to its attendees.“I hope that the event opens people’s eyes to the opportunities for collaboration in the community,” she said. “You can mix artwork and social events in a political cause to have it all work together for a common goal. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a frivolous thing.” To get involved with the Paper Crane Gallery & Studio, one can volunteer, lead workshops or submit images of artwork to papercranegallery@gmail.com or visit their website at www.papercranegallery.org.“There are lots of different ways to get involved with the gallery, whether an artist or not,” Wolfersberger said.