While Second Stage has long been known as a strong supporter of student-written works, this season in particular is offering an especially diverse mix of original pieces. Of the eight shows being produced this semester (including one performance art piece), three are new adaptations and two are entirely original plays.
“Lucy Goes to Court” is the second of those plays, going up a week after “Godspell” in the same space, the WestCo Café. The two make for interesting companion pieces: “Godspell” is quite supportive of the more endearing parts of Christianity while “Lucy” is fairly cynical of the state of modern religion.
“Lucy” is a farce that portrays what happens when several religions suddenly come together and take Satan to trial for all her (yes, her) crimes against humanity over the last few millennia. It is a courtroom drama of the supernatural, but this does not unfold as one would expect. For one thing, writer/director Hazem Fahmy ’17 offers an interesting take on the Devil, and not just because he gender-bends.
“I think about the Devil a lot,” Fahmy said.
Lucifer (Lucy for short), as played by Xandra Ellin ’18, is more of a child; she’s a self-proclaimed “bitch,” not exactly evil, and just wants to get drunk with her friends. Ellin has quite a bit of fun with the role, rolling her eyes at the prosecution and seducing the judge in equal measure.
Her shield and sword is the character Saul Goodman, taken straight from the television world of “Breaking Bad” and the upcoming “Better Call Saul,” here portrayed by Jake Lahut ’17 in place of Bob Odenkirk. The prosecution consists of Mother Teresa (Hannah Skopicki ’18), King Henry VIII (Oren Maximov ’17), and Mitt Romney (Daniel Giovanniello ’17), each representing a different religion and acting nothing like their real-life counterparts. Mother Teresa livens up the room, prancing around in her long robes, screaming obscenities the real life version would never dare say in public (or, probably, at all). Romney and Henry VIII are at their best when they grovel at Mother Teresa’s feet, which is not a sentence that gets written often.
As the trial progresses, chaos reigns. The intent of some characters is not as clear as it first seems, and Lucy becomes increasingly fed up with what she sees as false accusations while the court discusses the philosophy of war, America, sex, and other things. Most importantly, the court at large discusses religion. Gandhi (played by Fahmy) muses on the merits of Heaven, while Lucy is adamant she is not the source of the world’s ills.
Fahmy makes the interesting decision to add several original songs to the production, but without live accompaniment. Actors instead sing to recordings or, more often then not, entirely a cappella. It is an impressive feat for the performers to achieve.
The production, quite like its narrative, is somewhat miraculous. Fahmy and stage manager Nola Werlinich ’17 said they struggled with repeated setbacks, including having to switch actors halfway through the rehearsal process. Werlinich, like many stage managers, is the unsung hero of the production: she recruited new cast and crew members mere days before opening night. Before the penultimate rehearsal, she gathered the ensemble in a warm-up while paint dried on the remaining pieces of the set that were intended to transform the Café into a distinguished heavenly courtroom, and Maia Nelles-Sager ’17 hung the final lights.
“It’s been very appropriate,” Fahmy said. “For me, this is my first time directing and my first time writing.”
Fahmy and Werlinich are among quite a few novice combos producing shows this season. “Worm Queen,” “Godspell,” “Lucy,” and the upcoming “Theban Plays” all boast first-time directors and stage managers for the Wesleyan stage. The “Lucy” cast is relatively new as well, with nine out of its 11 cast members never having acted in a Wesleyan production before.
“Neither of us had any idea what we were doing,” Werlinich said.
When Fahmy asked Werlinich to stage manage his show, she accepted on a whim, later admitting she thought it was a joke. They also didn’t submit their Second Stage application materials until the night they were due, Werlinich recalled.
“Well, looking back, it’s indicative,” she said, laughing.
Fahmy said that working with other inexperienced cast members helped calm his anxieties about putting on a show.
“It helped with me not being intimidated,” Fahmy said. “We were very newbie when this process started.”
For Werlinich, that atmosphere contributed to a more collaborative project.
“We had a big cast and so many other people have joined the team since then, and I was just excited to be working with so many people,” Werlinich said.
There does certainly seem to be a sense of camaraderie amongst the large cast, and that isn’t entirely surprising. The vast majority of them alternate between sitting together in the courtroom and hiding behind the set for the entirety of the production. That is the exact type of situation that fosters cast bonding.
“There are so many inside jokes in the cast,” said Max Cembalest ’18, who plays the angel Gabriel. “They are vulgar, they are disgusting, and none of them make sense.”
Lucifer and “Lucy” have been through heaven and hell over the last two months, and now both arrive in WestCo this weekend. Seats are first-come, first-serve to Heaven’s courtroom.
When I was 10 years old, I began my first summer as a saxophonist in the Renbrook Summer Adventure Jazz Band. The sax player who sat next to me was at least six years my senior and taunted me mercilessly every day. “You’re not gonna play a solo today? You’re not? Come on! That’s weak.” To prove him wrong, I spent days working on a short solo that I can still play today. Now, I am no great musician, but that doesn’t change the fact that this early torment was quite formative for me. Which is why I was floored by Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash.”
In “Whiplash,” drummer Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) finds himself in the premier jazz ensemble at the best music school in the country. The band’s conductor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), is a perfectionist (verging on psychopath) who will do whatever it takes to get the exact sound he wants out of his band. Neyman pushes himself beyond his limits to be the drummer Fletcher wants.
It seems like a textbook inspirational teacher story à la “Dead Poet’s Society” and “Stand and Deliver,” but “Whiplash” does so much more. Chazelle’s film isn’t inspirational; it is pulverizing, from start to finish.
The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year, a decidedly earned accolade. The first scene alone is a masterpiece. The screen is black, and a slow snare beat fills in the space. The tempo picks up, faster, faster, faster, and the black gives way to a hallway shot of Teller playing the drums. Everything but Teller and the drum kit are pitch black. Suddenly he stops, and Simmons appears. His black shirt, pants, and blazer render only his expressive face visible. What follows is a brutal session that is as enthralling as it is intense. And the film only ramps up from there.
Critics have praised Simmons’s Fletcher as a force of nature, a monster that the film refuses to condemn. But he is so much more than that. Fletcher is disgusting, disturbing, magnetic, torturous. In his rehearsal room, Simmons hurls racist, homophobic, and generally repugnant insults like they are ammunition. Yet at the drop of a hat, he becomes a friendly jazz fan, the kind of person who ends all of his sentences with “man” and cries when hearing the music of a talented, deceased former student. When Fletcher plays piano in a jazz quartet, his sensitivity and joy counterbalance the horrible and horrifying things he says and does. In 2014, cinema has not given us a monster more fascinating.
There’s not enough that can be said about Simmons’s performance, but Teller, who was excellent in last year’s “The Spectacular Now,” is just as incredible. Neyman’s obsessive need to push himself to become “one of the greats,” as he puts it, is all-consuming. There’s an earnestness and authenticity to the early moments that Neyman shares with his father (Paul Reiser) and to his brief love interest (Melissa Benoist), making the toxicity and intensity of what happens later much more powerful. The charm of Teller’s character belies barely contained rage. Just as the film won’t condemn its antagonist, neither will it praise its protagonist.
“Whiplash” is a fast-paced thriller masquerading as a music-drama. It’s a small-scale story told with huge stakes, knockout punches, and two of the year’s best performances. Watching it, I couldn’t help feeling like I was 10 years old again, sitting in my house, trying to show that older musician what I was capable of doing. Perhaps beauty requires brutality.
A girl wakes up and goes through her normal routine. Everything is as expected, except, between each moment, she makes a note of what she’s done. As she goes about her day, she occasionally stops, appearing clueless, having no explanation of how she arrived in her current place. Why does she need to take these notes? How is she unaware of what has been happening to her?
Celeste Barnaby ’18 asks those questions in the form of a screenplay, which she brought to be read aloud at the second meeting of the Screenwriters’ Lounge. Every two weeks in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center, a group of about 15 students meets to critique a play, hear a guest speaker, or participate in a screenwriting workshop. A new program in close connection with the Wesleyan Film Project, the Lounge provides a communal environment for screenwriters on campus to discuss, share, and critique each other’s work.
The project is spearheaded by Joseph Eusebio ’17, who wanted to establish a regular gathering place for students interested in screenwriting.
“It’s an idea I’ve had for a while,” Eusebio said. “I know there are a lot of people interested in screenwriting and a lot of people who have left Wesleyan and become screenwriters, but there was no real gathering place.”
The Lounge is linked to another student filmmaking group, the Wesleyan Filmmaking Project, which works to provide students on campus with the resources to produce their own films. Although the idea for the Lounge came first, the Filmmaking Project began earlier, through meetings over the summer of an advising committee of about seven students. The Filmmaking Project, currently managed by Jacob Sussman ’17, has received $3,600 worth of camera equipment from the Student Budget Committee.
“[The Wesleyan Film Project will act as] an on-campus hub for film production to connect students with each other and with gear,” Eusebio said.
The project boasts about 150 students, a Facebook page, and a website in progress that will, ideally, include a list of students who are interested in screenwriting and their specific interests. Eusebio referred to Second Stage as the model for the project.
The Screenwriters’ Lounge’s main link to the Filmmaking Project is that it encourages submissions to the Project and edits and reworks in-progress submissions. At the beginning of the academic year, the Film Project had only received about seven submissions, so the advising committee thought a place where screenplays could be produced and critiqued would boost the number of students writing.
In a typical meeting of the Screenwriters’ Lounge, a student whose piece is being produced for the Wesleyan Film Project will bring in their writing, which is read out loud in the style of a traditional table read and then critiqued by other participants at the Lounge. Members offer a large spectrum of critique, and occasionally one will disagree with another and spark a discussion of the efficacy of a certain method or strategy.
Barnaby had emailed her work to the Film Project and was subsequently contacted by Eusebio requesting that she bring the script to the next session at the Lounge. She had the chance for her script, chronicling a stretch of time in the life of a girl who loses chunks of her memory, to be read in a relaxed setting with snacks and casual conversation.
“It’s very cool to be around creative people who care about what I’m writing,” Barnaby said.
Through a conversation with her mother, the girl in Barnaby’s screenplay reveals that her condition is getting worse. While she is dating a boy, the gaps in her memory grow larger, and she is forced to record all of their dates in her notebook, leading to a terrible—and forgotten—fight that threatens their relationship.
For the second half of the session, the Lounge heard from senior creative writing fellow Amanda Distler ’15, who has worked for Martin Scorsese. In addition to discussing her previous jobs and how she handled each one, she took questions from attendees and gave some advice on getting jobs in screenwriting and tackling the process of screenwriting itself.
Eusebio projects that future meetings will have a similar structure, focusing on a specific script but also including more workshop-style sessions to simply encourage students to write, something that can prove difficult to do during the busy school year. Lounge meetings will also include watching, reading, critiquing, and studying past senior theses that Eusebio and Sussman will select, along with exercises using scenes from popular movies and TV shows.
Eusebio said he hopes to conduct a 24-hour screenwriting contest, during which contestants write in the Shapiro Writing Center for 24 hours and then submit the scripts to be read. The script the members like the most will then be put into production, complete with a full team, gear, and its own budget.
Tricia Merlino ’18, who attended the Screenwriters’ Lounge for the first time earlier this week, felt inspired by the session and considered submitting her own work to be critiqued.
“Critiquing someone else’s work gave me ideas for my own work and how to improve it as well as generate new ideas,” Merlino said.
As a Visiting Assistant Professor of African American Studies, David Swiderski has expressed his passion for and extensive knowledge of music by teaching classes such as “Ebony Tower” and “I Strike The Empire Back: Black Youth Culture in The Neoliberal Age.” Swiderski has been an avid music fan since he was a teenager, when a record club membership offered by Columbia Records allowed him to build a collection rooted in alternative rock and grunge’s signature “Seattle sound.” He turned to the blues in high school when he picked up the guitar. Swiderski’s musical upbringing, along with his studies in African American music, has informed his significant technical and historical music expertise. The Argus asked him for his personal playlist, and what he provided ranges from the blues, funk, and jazz to soul, folk, and politically inspired hip-hop.
Little Walter, “Roller Coaster”
“Little Walter is a harmonica virtuoso who played a lot with Muddy Waters. ‘Roller Coaster’ is not typical blues harmonica; it’s this totally liberated expression. My jaw just dropped listening to it. How you could have in your mind to play what he played is the astonishing part.”
Charles Mingus, “Hog Callin’ Blues”
“Mingus has a manic energy in his music. I love the way he incorporates this range of sonic impulses from the whistles and screeches of horns to more melodic instrumentation.”
Herbie Hancock, “Fat Mama”
“This begins Hancock’s exploration of soul and funk by drawing those into the world of jazz. The link with the Mingus piece is this amazing tenor saxophone, which is way down in the lower registers of the tenor. It’s this totally funky groove to start the song off and he’s playing a Fender Rhodes on top of that, which gives the song a great pulse of energy. It’s a much rounder sonic experience than the Mingus piece, which has a lot more jagged edges and discord.”
Booker T. & the M.G.’s, “Time is Tight”
“I was doing my dissertation research on Cleveland and found this Jules Dawson movie, “Up Tight,” about the neighborhood I was studying. It’s about the Black Nationalist struggle in the ’60s, and Booker T. & the M.G.’s wrote this song for its soundtrack. It’s a bit somber but very lovely; I like the R&B sound. The organs, guitar, and the horns section combine to create music that generally appeals to me.”
Guns N’ Roses, “Paradise City”
“This song and Slash got me interested in playing the guitar. I must have been in fifth or sixth grade, and they made a big impression. It’s one of those rock anthems from the ’80s that’s a guilty pleasure or like musical candy. I still listen to it sometimes. I drove my wife crazy; we were driving to New York, and it came on, and we had been in a traffic jam getting stressed out, so I just turned it up and made us listen to it at full volume. We were in a much better mood after that.”
The Coup, “Pick A Bigger Weapon”
“I’m especially drawn to conscious rap. Rap music as it evolves has a question of whether or not it has a higher purpose. Is it just for party music or is there something impactful you can say about the world? This late ’90s Oakland group promotes explicitly radical politics. When I’m feeling frustrated at the state of the world, I put on this track and let them vocalize what I’m feeling.”
Nina Simone, “Since I Fell For You”
“A beautiful love song. For quieter moments and more mellow moods, I go with her.”
Mahalia Jackson, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”
“Again, just beautiful to listen to. “Take My Hand” is easy on the ears and soothing to the soul. It’s like medicine.”
Ani DiFranco, “Shy”
“An amazing musician with politics heavily interwoven into her music. She takes apart the folk genre and rearranges it in a way that is brand new and totally compelling. Her vocal range is staggering on ‘Shy,’ which is the first DiFranco song I ever listened to. I had never heard music like this before.”
Rachmaninoff, “Vocalise”
“I’ve recently found that Bobby McFerrin’s version of ‘Vocalise’ is perhaps the perfect lullaby in that it is pleasant for parents and soothing for babies (at least mine).”
When thinking about HBO in the early 2000s, most people would conjure up images of “The Sopranos” or “The Wire.” There’s certainly a reason for that. But a third, just as meritorious show often gets left by the wayside.
“Six Feet Under” ran from 2001 to 2005. It follows the Fishers, a dysfunctional family that runs a funeral home, and the life and death that surround them. The brainchild of Alan Ball, the show emerged immediately after the 1999 film “American Beauty,” which he scripted, and runs in a similar vein.
“Six Feet Under” is a drama, but it’s also a comedy. It’s dark, but it’s also earnest. It’s immensely surreal and yet has some of the most realistic depictions of human nature on television. It’s a show that follows its characters as they attempt to cope with broken things: families, relationships, and themselves.
But most importantly, the show is about death, and no show approaches the subject like “Six Feet Under” does. In the pilot, when the mother, Ruth Fisher (Francis Conroy), hears of the death of her husband over the kitchen telephone, she pauses and then utters an inhuman wail, throwing anything she can find before collapsing on the floor. Her son walks in, and she delivers the character- and show-establishing line, “Your father is dead, and my pot roast is ruined.” It’s ridiculous and yet horrifyingly natural.
Each episode frames itself by opening with a death before fading to white and beginning the plot of the episode. Sometimes the death is tragic, sometimes it is funny, and sometimes it is both. But it is always thematically relevant. And then the Fishers must deal with the funeral as they deal with themselves. A core part of the show is how people cope with the loss of a loved one; it’s less concerned with the dead and more with how the living react to the dead.
And the show is also about life, as it needs to be. Neither death nor life can be fully understood without understanding the other. The series effectively lays out its thesis near the end of the first season with a quick exchange:
“Why do people have to die?”
“To make life important.”
And “Six Feet Under” earns that somewhat corny line. Amongst the loss, heart-wrenching breakups, and general emotional trauma, the show’s characters come to terms with what gives their lives meaning. And the important thing to note is that the show never tells us what to think of life or how to cope with death. It merely presents a story and allows us to make of it what we will.
“Six Feet Under” would be nothing without its cast. Peter Krause plays the closest thing to a lead in the ensemble show, Nate Fisher, who constantly battles his many inner demons. Michael C. Hall, of “Dexter” fame, plays his brother, David, one of the strongest examples of a well-rounded gay character on television. Lauren Ambrose plays the teenager of the family, constantly lost amidst her lack of solid ground and her rotation of poor relationships. Frances Conroy’s portrayal of Ruth is particularly unique. She takes a neurotic, overprotective role and finds a way for us all to see our own mother within her. Lili Taylor and James Cromwell (“Babe,” “The Artist”) take up principle roles later on and are beautiful additions.
But perhaps the true star of “Six Feet Under” is Rachel Griffiths’s character, Brenda. She offers the outside perspective on the family as Nate’s mysterious love interest, and Griffiths deserves multiple Emmy’s, despite winning none. She is able to balance emotional distance and intimacy in a way that should not be possible and is able to tune it toward whoever is in a particular scene. Griffiths, like many of her costars and the show itself, is successful because she is a master of balance.
The cast plays extremely well off of each other. Some of the show’s best sequences arrive when several characters sit down together for an awkward family dinner. As each member of the cast grows in wildly different ways, their interactions become more meaningful and complex.
And then there’s everyone else in this world. Recurring guest stars Jeremy Sisto (“Clueless”), Patricia Clarkson, Rainn Wilson (“The Office”), and Kathy Bates (“Misery”) deliver an intense breadth of talent to the show, and those are just the ones you may have heard of. Richard Jenkins, above all others, deserves a shout-out. He occasionally returns as the ghost of Nathaniel Fisher. Jenkins is often a delight, but what makes him fantastic here is that he and the other ghosts in “Six Feet Under” are within the characters’ heads. He plays subtly different Nathaniels depending on which cast member he’s interacting with. His performance draws insight into what the other character wants, needs, or fears.
That’s not to say everyone in the cast is perfect. Keith (Michael St. Patrick) and Rico (Freddy Rodriguez) are regulars for the show’s full run. They’re meant to give outsider perspective on the family but don’t accomplish that task as effectively as Brenda does. Sadly, the show takes a slight turn for the worse when these characters receive more attention.
But “Six Feet Under” can correct its course. In season four, the show seems to really want to bring all of its characters to their lowest point. Season five compensates for this by reaching the show’s pinnacle, with the final few episodes proving brutally cathartic. The series finale is considered one of the best in television history, and for good reason: the final 10 minutes alone come as close to perfection as I can conceive.
“Six Feet Under” is one of the few influential television shows of the previous decades that realized it could be shot like a movie. Alan Ball clearly learned a few things while working on Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty” set. The way the directors approach scenes (and especially how they play with space within the Fisher household) has left a mark on the shows that followed. The show’s soundtrack, by composer Richard Marvin, is just as critical, creating elegant disquiet with just a piano. And Alan Ball wields montages (set to everything from Buddhist chants to Sia’s “Breathe Me”) in a fashion yet to be rivaled.
“Six Feet Under” is not an easy show to watch. It’s brutal, and it jumps rope with your emotions. It will go into a horrifying dream sequence only to startle you by smashing back to reality. The show is haunting, it is traumatizing, and it is far from perfect. But it is a show that affects its audience far more than most. There is absolutely nothing like it, before or since. It is the beauty, irony, and horror of morbidity all rolled into one. And it should not stay buried.
Have you ever listened to Fleetwood Mac all day and night? I am occasionally prone to having an impromptu Fleetwood Mac listening party of sorts, no matter what I am doing, because I just need to have Stevie Nicks’ vocals in the background. “Dreams” will forever be one of my favorite songs in existence; it is nearly impossible not to simply rock back and forth and enjoy the beautiful countryside that the track paints in my head. And don’t even get me started on “Landslide.”
To many, Nicks’ career is defined by her time as the lead of Fleetwood Mac, but she is so much more than that. Although she is the sweetheart of many a classic rock fan’s fantasy, she has not had the easiest life. Yet, through all the rumors, she has always stayed true to her music. Though “Edge of Seventeen” might be considered her only true hit as a solo artist, it is hard not to enjoy her gentle ballads, which contrast so perfectly with her rougher in-your-face tracks. Nicks’ newest endeavor, 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault, is a group of songs she recorded over the entire course of her musical career, and a careful listener can pick up the period of her career from which certain tracks were written. The album is a healthy combination of her softer, country-influenced compositions and those that pick up the pace.
24 Karat Gold’s opener, “Starshine,” is a highlight, setting the album off at a breakneck pace. A driving beat almost forces you to tap your foot. Jazzy organ is played sparingly but perfectly to catch the listener’s ear throughout the song. Nicks’ voice has a feistiness to it that complements the track’s electric guitar. The high point of the song, however, is the organ solo, which follows the song’s guitar solo seamlessly. Short and simple, the organ’s high pitched energy offers a nostalgic taste of the ’70s and ’80s music we all miss and love.
Immediately following “Sunshine,” Nicks gives listeners a little taste of her Fleetwood Mac days with “The Dealer.” The track is charged with the light acoustic chords and sweet soft electric solo (carrying just a touch of attitude) that make so many of Nicks’ songs easy to hear over and over again. As “The Dealer” builds toward its finish, Nicks gives the stage to the electric guitar and a well-placed piano segment that help bring the track to life. “Blue Water” slows down the tempo, creating a blues lounge atmosphere; it’s a calm gift to listeners. The incredibly youthful vocals, mellow guitar grooves, and the back-and-forth duet near the end craft an incredibly relaxing ambience.
“24 Karat Gold,” finally, is an incredible song that has me loving Nicks once again. Sometimes the title track of an album can be a disappointment, but the brooding, bluesy, and downright gloomy song that Nicks has composed in this case is spectacular. The deep heavy bass that gets the song going also sets the tone for the dark nature of its lyrics: “Set me free, set me free,” she implores, accompanied by a guitar that sounds like it’s aching to be let free. The subdued solo makes listeners feel anxious as it tries to get out of its constraints, and Nicks asks, “Is this what you wanted / to happen to me?” This newest album is in some ways a tribute to Nicks’ fans from the Fleetwood Mac era, and any music lover who has enjoyed a moment of her music career should indulge in the combination of nostalgia and new sounds that it provides.
The latest installment of the Center for the Art’s “Muslim Women’s Voices at Wesleyan” program, “Fleur d’Orange” tackles the complexities of being a woman in contemporary Moroccan culture. More narrowly, the work draws from choreographer and performer Hend Benali’s experience growing up in Casablanca, Morocco, and training as a ballet dancer from a young age.
Coming from a culture where women aren’t allowed to dance publicly, Benali incorporates a large range of emotions—sorrow, frustration, happiness—into this astounding work.
Personally, I came to the performance interested in seeing how Benali’s dance training would translate into such a piece. While there were no definite ballet-like movements—Benali never employed the traditional turnout, for one—I was able to catch glimpses of a “porte de bras,” or elegant carriage of the arms. Regardless of whether or not she chose to harken back to her original training, Benali is, by no doubt, a tour de force. She was a sight to behold onstage, captivating the audience with every movement she mustered forth. She was a fireball of energy, sometimes exploding into seemingly frantic contortions and other times tempering this intensity and curling herself into a small ball.
Appearing onstage initially in a traditional Moroccan headdress and a long tulle skirt (not dissimilar from a Romantic tutu), Benali manipulated the fabric to create fascinating and captivating shapes. She began with the tulle draped over her head, hiding her face. She later tucked the parts of the skirt into waistline before going into a rousing belly dance. Later, she employed an enormous, long, white cloth, contorting and wrapping herself in it until she she essentially constructed a burqa. Benali used fabric both as a tool and as an intimate dance partner, often pouring her feelings of frustration and agitation into it.
However, Benali also knew when to employ minimalism, and she spent a good majority of the work’s length in a simple tank top and shorts. She luxuriated with time, showing herself putting her hair back; instead of this seeming like a waste of time, she made it a piece of its own, a singular moment. She later incorporated this theme of singularity in front of a video projection. There, she invited the audience to study and consider the poses she made. Benali isn’t shy with sharing her other talents as well; she often sang and hummed as she danced. She would create music herself, stamping a beat of her own.
Joining her onstage were fellow dancer and collaborator Souifane Karim and composer-musician Mochine Imraharn. Karim complemented Benali and had his own moments to shine. Incorporating elements of hip-hop, Karim also moved with deliberate precision. He manipulated his own body, moving a leg with an arm or vice versa, responding perfectly to Imraharn’s musical arrangements, using every beat to make his body seem to pop. Though not himself particularly kinetic, Imraharn used live instruments and recordings to create a fascinating atmosphere, further weaving contemporary and traditional Moroccan culture.
“Fleur d’Orange” asked viewers to consider what it is to dance and, more specifically, what it is to dance as a Moroccan woman. There is definitely joy in it, as demonstrated by the early belly dance. However, there is also pain and a feeling of defeat from having to hide this kind of joy. When Benali contorted, she seemed to contort with the need to move but without any outlet to do so. Karim emphasized this sense of restriction by demonstrating its opposite: He moved easily on stage with open activity. Benali’s multiple costumes illustrated the says in which she must grapple with several identities; she took popular images of women in burqas and women washing clothes and employed them to show the humanity of these unsung dancers.
Benali and her cast will continue to tour the United States with “Fleur d’Orange” thanks to the Center Stage program, which brings international dancers and musicians to perform in the United States.
From light, cheery melodies to deep and dark tones, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music Neely Bruce drew in his audience in what has become a semi-annual piano recital in Crowell Concert Hall on Sunday, Oct. 12. The afternoon recital was the fourth out of 12 CD-length concerts in Bruce’s “This Is It!” series, an ongoing effort to record his entire selection of solo piano works as he plays them in front of a live audience.
Bruce’s free, chromatic improvisation, with pieces that lasted no longer than one minute and 45 seconds, mixed sweet melodies with unconventional chord patterns.
The concert began with Bruce’s “prelude à l’improvisto,” a nine-part introduction. Staccato rhythms transitioned abruptly into softer melodies, and Bruce’s utilization of dissonant chords and hurried playing gave his opening piece an air of musical abstractionism. Despite the seemingly erratic features of the composition, the natural ebb and flow of the piece, with its constant crescendos and decrescendos, felt cohesive. Similar patterns were later implemented in “Modal Study No. 4,” “Serial Invention No. 2,” and “Two-Part Invention and Chorale.”
However, as his “prelude à l’improvisto” progressed, the overall tone of Bruce’s compositions shifted. Once he began performing his “Pandiatonic Study No. 2,” the slightly cacophonous, often-clipped chords that were prevalent at the beginning of the movement gradually diminished in frequency. More slurred notes replaced them, flowing into each other to create increasingly mellifluous melodies. When Bruce had reached his “Algorithmic Gymnopédie No. 1” and his “Andante variée,” a total conversion had occurred: Polished melodies had overtaken the somewhat jagged quality of his opening pieces.
The metamorphosis became even more apparent in “The Two-Twin Tango” and “Three Lullabies.” Bruce had allocated each portion of the latter three-part composition to a specific individual: one lullaby to baby Alex Broening, one to baby Max Broening, and yet another lullaby for their parents. Delicate tones persisted throughout, eventually building into Bruce’s “Variations on a Polonaise.”
Before the second portion of his concert, following a five-minute intermission, Bruce explained to the audience how his “Variations on a Polonaise” are actually “anti-variations,” since they exhibit traits that Frédéric Chopin’s original works do not. The first piece, “Tema,” was a jumpy, upbeat selection with little difference throughout the volume. In the fifth fragment of the Variations, “Arioso,” the cheeriness evident in “Tema” made its return. Despite a hint of the dissonance that was characteristic of the first half of the concert, the progression of the Variations remained holistically melodic. From “Presto non troppo” to the final fragment, “Tema, da capo,” a dramatic crescendo heightened the grandeur of the Variations’ finale.
The performance concluded with a jolly rendition of “Rondo Fanfare” by Anthony Heinrich, as well as an equally uplifting encore that was another original composition of Bruce’s. His talent on the piano underscored a high degree of fluidity and proficiency in this particular genre of classical
music.
Bruce’s genuine desire to share his passion with an audience was clear throughout the concert, and his devotion to becoming the first pianist/composer to record his complete roster of piano music is a testament to his deep emotional connection with a skill he has truly mastered.
When Vijay Iyer took the stage at Crowell Concert Hall on Saturday night, he joked that it was no coincidence he was playing on Columbus Day weekend.
“I’ve never been here before, but it’s a beautiful venue,” he told the almost sold-out audience. “I think I’ll just rename it after myself.”
He was kidding, of course, but these are the sorts of themes he’s thinking about, maybe not in the heat of playing, but certainly in his research and creative process: the merging of musical worlds and the correcting of certain biases and inaccurate narratives. The son of Indian immigrants, Iyer created his own Ph.D. program in the cognitive science of music at the University of California, Berkley. In 2013 he won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and last January took the position of Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University. That’s all in addition to recording dozens of albums—solo, with the Vijay Iyer Trio he brought to Wesleyan, and with any number of collaborators, jazz or otherwise.
Iyer’s compositions may fall under the broad umbrella of “jazz,” but their boundaries are more porous: elements of minimalism and other avant-garde and classical styles can be heard throughout. Rhythms, for one, are paramount. On Saturday night, he played a terse repeated pattern on the bass notes with his left hand while waiting to strike with his right, emphasizing the important beats in coordination with the drummer, Tyshawn Sorey MA ’11, who studied in the graduate composition program under both Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier and who displayed not only remarkable rhythmic control but also a deftness for creating experimental textures. Iyer also used dynamics both in coordination with and opposition to the bass, played by longtime collaborator Stephan Crump, and drums, where a sudden strike would ring out surprisingly.
At times, Crump, Sorey, and Iyer would appear as if they were off in their own worlds, playing melodic and rhythmic patterns that seemed to have nothing to do with each other until they slowly merged into a cohesive whole. Sorey would, for a moment, lead with an outspoken funk groove before the emphasis shifted to Crump, soloing while Sorey and Iyer dropped out except for the occasional roll to keep the tempo and chord changes.
“It seems like you’re in a different universe every night,” Iyer told Sorey in an intimate pre-performance workshop. “I am, too.”
Between the workshop and a quick interview, The Argus had the chance to talk with Iyer about his music, life so far in the academic world, embodied cognition, and the importance of listening.
The Argus: What have you been teaching over at Harvard?
Vijay Iyer: I started there in January in the music department, and there’s no performance program. There are a lot of people who come to Harvard who are really good musicians but they don’t necessarily come there to study music. There’s a joint program with Harvard and the New England Conservatory, and the best musicians, are in that program, and they do all their music at NEC, and they do something practical at Harvard like econ or pre-med. What I did last term was “Creative Music Critical Practice Studio.” I wanted to see who would show up, see what we could do together, and see what were the needs of the people in that community because I was new there, and there’s no one on faculty who does what I do. It’s a pretty standard music program: scholars of music, ethnomusicologists, some composition faculty there coming out of a postwar European modernism palette, so their points of reference are different.
I had this critical mass of pretty exceptional players, but there were also people who were good in high school who make do with the activities on campus like being in the jazz ensemble. What I found with these students is most of them don’t know the history of the music, don’t know their place in it, and haven’t listened to much besides Miles and Coltrane. I’ve given a lot of stuff to listen to from the last 100 years, and then they played, and we did some critiques in class. Their final project was to collaborate. This to me was what I felt was necessary for that particular gang. And it seems to have stuck, because what I’m doing this term is a graduate seminar, which is now notorious; you may have heard about it. That’s called “Theorizing Improvisation,” and that’s for music scholars, so I have Ph.D. students in ethnomusicology and music theory and historical musicology, and a couple of people from outside the department. A lot of the alums from last semester wanted to continue, pick up where they left off, so I piled them into a seminar called “Creative Music Seminar.” They’re all undergrads, because there aren’t any grad students at Harvard who are ready to deal seriously with music, with creative music, with improvising, who self-identify with that jazz background.
A: There was a recent controversy on social media involving a course syllabus you wrote. Can you explain what happened there?
VI: It’s not even really a controversy; it’s just a lot of online sniping. “Theorizing Improvisation” is a huge reading list, way too much reading, but also on the syllabus I wrote a sort of mini-essay introducing the course, because there hasn’t been anything like it in the department, so I felt like I needed to not exactly sell it but explain it. I thought it was reasonably clear. I had enough visitors to the class who kept asking me to post the syllabus, so I posted it on Facebook as a note. I said, “Here it is,” and linked to it on Twitter. A lot of people were like, “Wow, this is great,” or, “I’m gonna research the sources you’re citing!” But several people sort of had this, “Well this is what happens when jazz goes to the academy! So much talk and so little substance.” I answered back to some of these snarkers; there was this inaccurate portrayal of me as not worthy of being in the field, basically that I’m not authentic. Somebody said, “Well, actually, this is racism, and you should push back.”
It reminded me, a year ago when I got the MacArthur, there was something similar going on online. What I found about all of these people was they hadn’t listened to my music, none of them, not any of it. They were actually speaking about me without listening, and that to me is why it is racism, because you can’t form assumptions about people without finding out some facts, but these folks weren’t interested in the facts.
A: In terms of your research, you have a Ph.D. in music cognition.
VI: Subject-wise, yes. [The program is] an interdisciplinary program at UC Berkeley, where there’s an option that’s rarely used to create your own interdisciplinary doctorate, so that’s what I did. It was named “Technology and the Arts,” and the focus was cognitive science and music.
A: Can you tell me what that is and what your interests there are? As a jazz musician you’ve talked about a more distributive model of thinking about collaboration.
VI: Music perception and cognition is an existing research field. I was stepping into something that was already in motion. I felt that it needed to be supplemented by some other perspectives on music, on what music is. What I found was happening was that scientists were trying to extrapolate from attributes of Western (and in specific 19th century tonal music of Western Europe) and kind of make these rather extravagant claims about the cognitive universals of music. Like, “This is how the brain works,” or, “This is what the musical mind perceives; [it] favors this and not that.” It seems to me they couldn’t disambiguate culture from what they were examining. But they weren’t aware that was the case.
Coming from—I don’t know where I come from, I come from a lot of places—my own aesthetic and artistic priorities are connected to African American music, that whole history, which is quite vast and stands in great distinction to European classical music in a lot of ways. One of the ways is the role of rhythm and also the role of improvisation. Meanwhile I learned about this new perspective on cognition called “embodied cognition,” which was an understanding that the mind is in the body, which seems kind of obvious, but the history of Western thought is influenced by people like Descartes. It’s called “dualism,” this idea of the mind sort of being on some abstract realm that isn’t the body. And this kind of thinking influences views on cognition and views on music and treats, for example, music as an abstraction, as just the abstract play of forms in this intangible space that is not this earthly plane. And I don’t want to rule that out, that is true, but it’s also the case that music is something we do, and something that we do together. It’s found in every human culture on earth, along with dance; that tells you something about its foundational role in human life and particularly its role in what we can call “culture” in the way that humans interact.
This perspective on embodied cognition was coming into being in the late ’80s/early ’90s, and I started thinking along these lines in the mid-’90s, rethinking cognition as something that is contextualized by the body and its environment, so that actually what we call “thought” it some sort of mediating process between sensory input and what you call “motor output,” or the actions of the body. That grounds it. It’s this activity that we do that is full of sensation; it’s very much alive; [it] stimulates our sensory organs. It also involves some coordination of activity, literally bringing the body in sync with others. Thinking of music in those very basic terms, as the sound of human bodies in action, and then understanding how we perceive the sound of bodies, there is a way of prioritizing sounds of bodies when we are listening. We can hear each other in even the midst of a noisy place; we decode it instantly, like, “Oh, that’s a person.” That’s something we’ve evolved to do because it’s useful for us to be able to hear each other, even to hear without seeing. That, to me, makes more sense for a foundation for music perception. You could then call it a kind of empathy; it’s the sense of hearing another person and being able to identify that person as a fellow person, a fellow human being.
That process is still mediated by culture. In particular, we’re able to render ourselves deaf to each other, and that’s a way of kind of revoking personhood or denying personhood. We see it in the literature of the slave era, when whites in or traveling in the South would observe slave music, but they wouldn’t call it music; they’d call it noise. It’s bound up with the idea that they weren’t seen as fellow human beings, and we still see this today in the way people talk about hip-hop for example as not music…. Even the history of jazz has this rejection in the academy until pretty recently.
A: The subaltern can’t play music.
VI: Yes, exactly. [Laughs] I guess I’m interested in that process and how this becomes an overlapping area between science and the humanities because we’re talking about, on the one hand, what seems like a direct and transparent process of perceiving another body through senses, but then we also see how that process is subject to all these cultural forces. That’s basically what the research topic was.
A: When you perform with your trio, in a collaboration with Indian musicians, or even with poets, how does this idea of embodied cognition come into play, in practice?
VI: What I hope is apparent in the music is a process of listening to each other in a way that the listener who is not onstage can then empathize with that process to the point of even imagining themselves to be a part of it. That’s what it boils down to.
It was funny; yesterday I worked with a string quartet that I’ve been collaborating with. They’re sort of classical music stalwarts; they’re the best in the world at what they do. I’ve heard [Franz Schubert’s string quartet] “Death and the Maiden” many times, but I feel like I heard it from scratch yesterday; they really brought it to life. We were warming up at some point, and the second violinist and I just started playing together; she doesn’t think of herself as an improviser or anything like that, and she was just warming up, but I heard her taking her time in a way that was in relation to things I was doing, and it came to a close, and I said, “That was music.” And she said, “Yeah. I felt it, too. So why do you think that is?” I said, “I don’t know, but I think it was because we were listening to each other. As simple as that.”
Early in the afternoon on Sunday, Oct. 5, students, professors, musicians, and Middletown residents gathered to hear the warm acoustics of Russell House to hear members of the West End String Quartet—comprised of Jessica Meyer and Sarah Washburn on violin, John Biatowas on viola, and Anne Berry on cello—perform classical and modern chamber music works. The West End String Quartet members, playing together since 2005, are not only strong advocates of classical, modern, and contemporary music, but they also direct and coach the chamber music program at Wesleyan. Individually, members also teach at the Hartt School Community Division, Bay Path College, Three Rivers Community College, Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The David Einfeldt Chamber Music Seminar at Hartt, and Strings by the Sea in San Diego.
Bringing us back to the days of Mozart, the concert began with the short (by classical standards) and sweet: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “String Quartet No. 21 in D Major, K. 575,” which immediately captured the audience’s attention. Members of the audience sat onstage surrounding the musicians, which pleasantly gave this event a traditional, intimate feel.
Mozart’s recurring melodies, repeated in different dynamics, tones, and keys, moved audience members to feel as if they were involved in the ongoing conversation happening between the musicians of the quartet. These cantabile, carefree moments captured the blithe and lighthearted persona of Mozart’s music, and the individual technique of each musician allowed them to play cohesively with agile clarity.
Sometime during the first movement, Allegretto, I could not remember where I had recently heard some of those melodies. As a violinist, I naturally began to think about other classical music works and compositions where I might have come across them. When I got home, however, I realized they were actually used in the middle section of the song “Mozart’s House” by UK indie-electronic band Clean Bandit.
Midway through the second movement, I noticed my neighbor’s eyes begin to shut. Rather than being a negative observation, it felt to me to be an indication of the pleasant, lulling quality of the slow Andante section. In the dancing third movement, Menuetto: Allegretto, however, the room’s atmosphere instantly became jubilant and festive. Eyes opened, heads nodded, and I wanted to jump out of my seat and join in with my own violin. The musicians breathed in sync and slightly tapped their feet as they played.
Right before intermission, the group performed Erberk Eryilmaz’s “Miniatures Set No. 4 for String Quartet.” I’d never heard of either the composer or the composition before this concert. This contemporary work was quite interesting, providing a deep insight into the composer’s Turkish background, juxtaposing traditional melodic belly-dancing themes with more contemporary techniques. Each of the five movements was quite short, keeping the audience on its toes as different quartet members began to sporadically yell and randomly tap their instruments and their bows. It understandably shocked the audience at first, but they began to acquiesce and enjoy the piece as it progressed.
We eventually arrived at my favorite portion of the performance: Dmitri Shostakovich’s “String Quartet No. 3 in F Major.” Historically, this string quartet is well known as the one composed by Shostakovich after his “Symphony No. 9,” which was censored by Stalin’s Soviet authorities; as a result, each movement delicately revealed the angst and the pain that Shostakovich felt.
Even if you missed this performance, Russell House hosts a series of concerts throughout the year. They are all great opportunities to experience firsthand a variety of music, played by only the best of the best.
