student blog

"Professor Kubínek Meets the Symphony" review / Brian

As the opening notes from “Professor Kubínek Meets the Symphony” rung out across the auditorium, a noticed a pair of kids in the row in front of me exchanging glances and laughing wildly together. Looking closer, I saw the eight or nine-year-olds rapidly cupping and un-cupping their hands over their years, delighting in the contrast between the sudden loss and ensuing rush of sound against their eardrums.

It was a wonderful thing to see; one of those rare moments where I was reminded of the amazing, inexplicable properties of music and its power to draw emotions out of the listener. Tomás Kubínek and his Orchestra Iowa counterparts clearly approached their performance in that same childlike way, full of wonder and joy at the pure beauty of orchestrated sound. Kubínek’s passion for music was evident from the moment he appeared onstage until his final bow, making it easy to travel along with him through a number of top-tier classical works.

If you have the opportunity to see Kubínek and Orchestra Iowa perform, or even the next time you’re listening to a particularly moving piece of music, I recommend following in the footsteps of those children sitting in front of me and taking a moment to recognize just how powerfully affecting music can be.

-- Brian Dau

pretend encore / Brian

From the moment the lights dimmed at the IMU and Abraham Inc. took to the stage, it was clear the audience wasn’t quite sure what to expect. From a visual standpoint, there’s no reason the band members belonged together: hooded sweatshirts, formal suits, baggy hip-hop t-shirts and jeans, and tasseled leather jackets were all represented by various musicians. It was a jarring image, certainly, for any audience member expecting a cohesive ensemble like that of a string orchestra or jazz big band.

But Abraham Inc. has little in common with those stuffier styles of music. And when they launched into their first track, it all began to make sense. Abraham Inc. is the very definition of a gestalt; that is, a group greater than the sum of its parts. While each musician had his or her chance to shine at some point during the night, the group was at its strongest when they were all grooving together, each member doing what he or she does best and contributing to some really fantastic tunes.

Although not everyone seemed to appreciate Abraham Inc. (early on I saw a woman turn to her friend and mime shooting herself in the head), those of us who even slightly enjoy the genres Abraham Inc. represents (klezmer, funk, hip-hop) found a lot to like throughout the night. Best of all, instead of partaking in the irritating charade of the entire band leaving the stage at the end of the night, only to return for an encore, “beat architect” Socalled asked the audience to simply pretend as if the ten members had exited. So we all applauded for a few seconds, and then the band kept right on playing.

Thanks, Abraham Inc. That made my night, and more acts ought to follow your lead.

—Brian

insanely talented / Brian

The first thing I thought when the Winard Harper Sextet took the stage was “how come there are only five of them?” Some sextet, right? Turns out the rest of Harper’s band was stuck in the insane amount of snow currently crippling the east coast, but when Mr. Harper took his first drum solo it occurred to me that the group’s sixth member may have felt too intimidated to play with someone as insanely talented as Winard and simply stayed at home.

Winard Harper stands out among many of his fellow jazz drummers, a group of musicians often considered the best in the world at their instrument. His patterns and rhythms had a complexity and speed you just don’t see every day. He had a flair for theatrics too, somehow managing to throw in a few flashy moves with his drumsticks in between hits. Despite the obvious skill of the Chicago players who sat in with him for the performance, Harper was the clear star of the show.

But the high point of the performance was just after intermission, when the Chicago players were replaced onstage by a group of local high school students Harper met during the week prior to the performance. The kids were clearly thrilled to perform onstage, and Harper definitely got a kick out of it as well. Better yet, the high school kids were good players in their own right, making for a very cool moment.

Overall, the performance felt less like “concert” jazz and more like a group of guys getting together at a bar or some equally casual setting to play a few tunes together. To me, this is where jazz really shines as a style of music, so it was great to see everybody just enjoying themselves onstage in such a relaxed environment. Although I’m sure Harper’s usual band is very talented and would have been great to see, the spontaneity of this performance made it a whole lot of fun.

 Brian

Brian's mom's list

The story behind Rosanne Cash’s latest album, “The List,” is as follows: when Cash was 18, her father Johnny gave her a list of songs he felt “essential” to her musical education. In honor of this moment, I asked my mother (not a musician, but a very nice lady) to give me her own list of essential songs. I’ve excerpted ten of them below, with my own commentary added. Give it a try with your own mom or dad sometime, you just might learn something.

Moondance, by Van Morrison
I’m a sucker for great bass lines, and Moondance is full of awesome bass grooves. This is a great song, plain and simple.

Fever, by Peggy Lee
Mom showing off her jazz chops here. Can’t argue with this track, it’s a classic for a good reason.

Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zeppelin
Fact: my mom and I both really like Led Zeppelin. However, “Stairway” is probably at the top of my list of most overrated songs of all time. It’s not an awful song, but it gets a lot more credit than it deserves. It’s OK, Mom, we can still be friends.

American Pie, by Don Maclean
I’m a sucker for great lyrics, and the metaphorical battle between the football team and marching band in this song is just brilliant. I suppose I could say this is an essential “American” tune, but that sounds kind of pompous, doesn’t it?

Killing me Softly, by Roberta Flack
This is a fantastic song (about Don Maclean, ironically), but we all know it was done best by Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. Must be a generational thing. I’m sure once I show my mom Lauryn Hill’s version she’ll be convinced, too.

Fool on the Hill, by The Beatles
My mom is a Beatles fanatic (she easily could have populated this list with Beatles tracks alone), but it’s interesting to see her pick out a relatively unknown song by the Fab Four. Not sure about all the flutes in this song, but it’s still a decent pick.

Fortunate Son, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Yes! My mom and I have the same favorite Creedence song! Well played, Mom.

Ohio, by Neil Young
I’ll be honest, I’m not in any way a Neil Young fan, but “Ohio” is something of a jam, and it’s probably not a song I would have ever given a real listen to were it not for my mom’s Neil Young fanaticism.

Desperado, by The Eagles
This is my mom’s favorite song of all time. I will do my best to listen to it all the way through, but I always want to channel The Big Lebowski and say “anything but The Eagles, man!”

Deep Purple, by Artie Shaw

This is pretty old school, maybe a bit too much so for me. It’s got a pretty cheesy melody, but that’s classic pop music for you, I guess. Talk to me when you’ve figured out what dissonance is.

Brian

Rosanne disclosure / Brian

Full disclosure: I arrived at Rosanne Cash’s February 10 Englert performance having never heard a single one of her songs. As such, my vision of how the concert would play out was closely linked to my image of her father, whose music I am more familiar with. Honestly, I half expected her to walk onstage in a black suit.

So when she launched into a few songs off her latest album, “The List,” featuring songs Mr. Johnny Cash considered “essential” to his daughter’s musical upbringing, my initial reaction was “where’s her dad’s attitude?” Her version of these country and blues classics seemed to lack enthusiasm, and felt very straightforward. There was no indication she wanted to make those songs her own.

Fortunately, when she deviated from her father’s list and played a few of her original tunes, I began to see her appeal. Though not a woman who would “shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” her charisma abounds and it’s easy to get caught up in all the fun she’s having onstage (to briefly digress: was anyone else disappointed to learn the man in black never actually shot a man in Reno? Total cop out, Johnny).

It’s clear Ms. Cash took plenty of notes as a kid surrounded by some of the greats of her genre. Her music certainly has much more in common with the country of 50 years ago rather than the country of today. This is not a bad thing, at least to my ears.

While country/western isn’t necessarily my go-to genre, I can appreciate the raw, stripped-down sound of the old-school legends. As someone who’s achieved a fair amount of commercial success and Billboard chart recognition, it’s nice to see Rosanne Cash hearken back to the days when country was a little less fluff and makeup and a little more cracked leather and dusty spittoons.

Brian

as powerful as any virtual world / Brian

“Eye Piece” begins with writer/actor Rinde Eckert, alone on stage, speaking directly and frankly with the audience about the play we are about to experience. It’s a pretty meta moment, one that is repeated at different times in the play and always feels refreshing. But wait, the “meta” doesn’t stop there: a group of aspiring eye doctors and instructor present a frame throughout, i.e. we as an audience watch them watch the drama unfold. Characters speak directly to the audience freely throughout. The awareness is at time mind-boggling.

With the increasing sophistication of movies and 3D technology (Avatar is the prime example), it’s hard to sit down and watch a play that tries to be as visually stunning as its cinema counterparts. But when it comes to self-awareness, cinema can’t hope to top an encounter with a living, breathing human being in the room with you. This is where theater has its greatest strength, and it’s what makes “Eye Piece” so compelling.

And yes, it even manages to be visually stunning in parts (ironic for a work dealing with blindness, but of course Eckert is aware of that, too). A scene featuring three personified demi-god characters (Fear, Ignorance and Blindness) is probably the most eye-catching: Blindness looking sharp in his neatly-pressed suit, Ignorance with her disheveled Bob-Marley hair and patchwork attire, and Fear, described as a “cross between a Medieval night and a welder,” a looming, terrifying figure who pulls up a chair at the stage’s periphery and sticks palpably in the audience’s mind for much of the play. It’s Fear who is most memorable here, and for good reason: there is no more appropriate emotion for the feeling of losing one’s sight.

With “Eye Piece,” Eckert smartly keeps the audience in the loop through direct addresses and asides, and the effect is as powerful as any virtual world a computer can generate, 3D or not.

heavy metal classical and more / Brian

The cello was the first musical instrument I ever played. As such, I’ve always had a soft spot for the rhythm section/harmony players. Too often they get stuck with the most boring part of the score and, what’s worse, are expected to repeat that one boring line ad nauseam while everybody else in the group gets to show off and play the fun melodic stuff.

 That’s why I was so pleased to hear the opening piece by the Parker Quartet, an arrangement by Haydn which the program helpfully described as perhaps the first quartet score to give the cello and viola a chance to have the melody alongside the violins. For this dynamic to work, the piece requires the harmony players to be as accomplished as the violinists, and fortunately that was no problem at all for the Parker Quartet. Cellist Kee-Hyun Kim and violist Jessica Bodner are both incredibly talented players, and so expressive in their style it almost felt like they were doing a sort of dance at times.

 This is not to take anything away from violinists Daniel Chong and Karen Kim, who were equally stunning. I’m just biased towards the lower end of the musical spectrum and I invariably end up paying more attention to what the oft-unnoticed players are doing.

 After the Haydn piece, the quartet moved into an arrangement by Bartók, who I like to think of as the most “heavy metal” of the classical composers. This also makes him one of my favorites (a little dissonance never hurt anybody). This particular piece, however, included a four note motif which was supposed to perfectly describe a woman Bartók had an interest in. Except she shot him down, so in this piece he reversed the motif to show his disappointment (or some other melancholy nonsense like that).

 That’s all a bit too artsy for me, and that four-note sequence was always noticeably out of place, but the rest of the piece was fantastic and more than made up for the old composer’s emo tendencies. All in all, I’d  love to see the Parker Quartet around the Iowa City area more often. 

Brian

 

 

plucking away / Brian

To be a jazz musician is to be a double-edged sword.

From a technical standpoint, good jazz players are probably the most talented musicians in the world. There’s a problem with this, however. When you’re that good, there is inevitably a certain amount of self-absorption that tags along with all that skill. And jazz music is definitely for the self-absorbed (after all, no genre of music features the “solo” as prominently as jazz does). Within the context of soloing, this “look how great I am” mentality is generally tolerable and, if you like to watch people show off, even enjoyable.

But jazz musicians are prone to overstepping their limits in spite of their ample talent. And they are also prone to liking some really strange music. See: Herb Alpert and his wife Lani Hall. About halfway through the concert (probably around the time Mr. Alpert decided to serenade his wife with his shaky solo rendition of “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face”) I realized I liked the couple’s accompanying bassist, drummer, and pianist much more than the headliners themselves. Particularly the bassist, who only took one solo during the performance and spent much of the night plucking away chords on a very cool (and likely very expensive) electric six-string.

I guess I’m just put off by people who tend to want to show off a lot, and that’s why I gravitated more toward the surrounding cast over the folks whose names were on the ticket. To me, Alpert and Hall’s performances were more “look at me” than “look at how nice we all sound together.” Of course the two are great talents, and I’m sure there were plenty of audience members who enjoyed what they were doing. It just wasn’t for me. I was much more into the cohesiveness and groove and the little accentuations that the rest of the players were doing rather than the lead work of Alpert and Hall.

—Brian

5 for 5 / Brian

At one point during Rob Lake’s magic show this past Sunday, he took a break from the regular show to talk about how cool his “magic” coloring book was (the same as the coloring books for sale just outside the theater’s doors, of course). Coincidentally, this was about the time I realized I may be just a little older than the show’s target audience.

There were plenty of ways to keep my adult brain occupied, however. For example, although the show itself was clearly G-rated, the background music was amusingly unedited. The first time I caught some indie rocker (whatever the kids are listening to these days) drop an F-bomb over the sound system, I glanced around to see if any worried mothers were hurriedly clapping their hands over their offspring’s ears. Fortunately for those ever-vigilant parents, only the high school class a few rows in front of me seemed to notice (those teenagers never miss anything).

As the show continued, I started playing a game I like to call “Whatever, Hotshot, That Doesn’t Look So Hard,” where I attempt to prove that even a degenerate like myself could be a professional magician. The game really heated up during a trick in which Lake brought up five adults from the audience for a round of magic Pictionary. The idea was to have each person draw the first thing that popped into his or her head and then, after the pictures were all shuffled up, Lake would match them back to their respective owners.

“This is easy,” I thought. “I’m sure with my ample supply of street smarts (read: blatant stereotyping) I can pick out who drew what faster than some magician.”

Plus, for the last two drawings you don’t even have to do anything, just give them each a picture and if they look confused tell them to swap. And guess what? I was 5 for 5 and feeling pretty good about my magical abilities.

Then Rob Lake sawed a woman in half.

How the hell does he do that, anyway?

—Brian

definitely contagious / Brian

From the moment the Hot Eight Brass Band took the stage at the IMU this past Sunday, one thing was clear: they wanted the audience to have a good time. With their self-proclaimed “feel-good” musical style based heavily in traditional New Orleans jazz (think “Down by the Riverside”), the band had both young and old out of their seats dancing and singing along with the music. Though, to be honest, some of the younger folks may have been more or less coerced into getting on their feet so as not to be bested by Grandma’s ample dance moves.

The tunes came fast and furious, with the tempo only rarely dropping below a brisk pace. This is, after all, music based in a city where they even play upbeat music at the funerals. When things did slow down, however, the band’s individual members really had a chance to stand out. When the stage lights turned all red for “St. James Infirmary” and the trumpet rang out low and somber, the Hot Eight’s melancholy side really shone through.

Each band member had multiple opportunities to solo, with two or three taken each song. The soloists didn’t seem to always be chosen beforehand, which made for an intriguing, spontaneous feel to the music. However, a few times the band members seem to be fumbling around waiting for someone to take the lead on a song. Fortunately the awkwardness of those moments passed quickly enough, and one of the players would jump into the spotlight.           

But what impressed me more than the individual chops of each player was the way the band was able to bring it all together after an extended period of counterpoint playing into something both melodic and groovy. Their ability to play both complex counterpoint jazz lines and smooth melodies, combined with their excellent stage presence, made the Hot Eight a fantastic deal at no cost to the audience. The way these guys had fun onstage was definitely contagious, and had everybody feeling a little bit like they were out on the bayou despite the frigid temperatures outside. 

Brian