In the past couple weeks I have been writing many of my blogs about various performers and artists that have been or are associated with the University of Michigan. Today I will continue this trend as I introduce you all to the fabulous Jessye Norman.

Jessye Norman was the first opera singer I had ever heard live. It was the beginning of my freshmen year and she gave some special Gershwin concert at Hill Auditorium. I remember being in awe of how smooth and rich her voice was. Here we were in Hill Auditorium – which is a HUGE space – and every inch of the hall was filled with her sound, a sound that was never forced or pushed but poured out of her with such ease. After googling her name following the concert, I was not surprised to discover that not only has she received numerous honorary doctorates, but has been honored with the National Medal of Arts and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jessye Norman graduated from the University of Michigan in 1968 after studying with Elizabeth Mannion for her Master’s degree in Vocal Performance. Following her graduation Norman moved to Europe to establish herself where she landed a three-year contract with the Deutsche Opera Berlin via the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. During this three year contract, Norman spent quite a bit of time behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin. With her American passport it was easy to go through Checkpoint Charlie and here she was captivated by how much the arts and music met to the people behind the Iron Curtain. “They would arrive hours before the performances were to begin just to stand in line, knowing that they had tickets already, just to know that they were anticipating the music as much as the people who were going to present the music. Even though they lived under the oppressive regimes, that their spirits were not squelched — that they lived anyway, that they allowed their spirits to be free in any case. And that made a great impression and still makes a great impression on me”.

Four short years after graduating from the University of Michigan and moving to Europe, Jessye Norman made her debut at La Scala as well as the Royal Opera at Covent Garden performing the title role in Verdi’s Aida and Cassandra in Berlioz’s Les Troyens respectively. Jessye Norman spent much of her time performing in concerts and recitals primarily focusing on the European markets, only expanding to North America once she was an established artist in Europe. According to Encyclopedia Britannica “By the mid-1980s she was one of the most popular and highly regarded dramatic soprano singers in the world” during which she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1983 for their 100th anniversary season, singing at the inauguration of Ronald Reagan and Queen Elizabeth II’s 60th birthday celebration.

Now, as Jessye Norman is later in her career, she continues to perform although she has transitioned to performing numerous roles from the mezzo-soprano repertoire. Additionally she has partnered with the Rachel Longstreet Foundation to open the Jessye Norman School of the Arts, a tuition-free after-school program for economically disadvantage youth in her hometown of Augusta, Georgia. In her personal time she avoids listening to opera, instead focusing her attention on hip-hop, and never on an iPod as “there isn’t enough bandwidth on an iPod to give you the full scope of a trained voice or a beautiful violin… you’re not going to hear the timpani in the background or the wonderful soft entrance of the clarinet in the second movement, and all of these things that make this really great music, that is hundreds of years old, and we cannot stop listening and playing because it is so wonderful”.

As for the changes in her voice over the years and the changes in herself, Norman wisely says “I find that to be wonderful, that we can accept the passing of the years as being a positive thing. Life and living can be a marvelous thing if we simply, as it were, embrace the passing of time with love instead of shunning it and pretend that it isn’t happening”.

Woo Park is a Chicago-based funk/jazz-fusion band specializing in mind-altering synth sounds and sexy siren-songs that lure you into their psychedelic world. Every musician in the group is individually a master of their craft, and their union is an impressive mix of precision and insanity. Within the past year, they’ve released their first EP, Smokes, and two new songs, Tidal and Propeller, by means of live studio sessions. The studio session videos were recorded at Rax Trax studios in Chicago and feature excellent sound quality as well as live performance prowess. Since Woo Park is known for the palpable energy of live shows where they have been known to surprise the audience with outrageous costumes, fake blood, on-stage haircuts and more, the studio sessions had a lot to live up to. Naturally, they didn’t disappoint, and only further reinforced the reign of the Woo in the emerging Chicago music scene.

Their numerous appearances at South By Southwest 2015, along with other Chicago bands such as Twin Peaks and The Boxers, helped throw them into a larger musical scope, setting them officially on the path to stardom. Woo Park is one of the rare cases in today’s music scene where true talent gets appropriately recognized. Though they still don’t receive the attention they deserve, they have a total cult following in Chicago and it’s growing in other cities they’ve played on tour.

Anyone with an appreciation for music will enjoy their EP, Smokes. It combines jazzy, sexy vocals with progressive funk and intricate timing, courtesy of drum prodigy, Luke Sangerman. Brian Sanborn shreds on the guitar in beautiful, hypnotic melodies while Emily Nichols seduces listeners with dynamic vocals that go from soft whispers full-on wailing. Christian Zwit melts your ears with insane alien sounds on the keys and Parker Grogan destroys souls on the bass, adding effects that seem to drive listeners down into the core of the earth. Together, they are a total supergroup that refuses to be ignored.

The live studio sessions and full EP are available by clicking the links below. See for yourselves the madness that awaits you. Though Woo Park definitely appeals to musicians and people who are into Steely Dan, there’s no reason why everyone can’t get down with some crazy talented people playing music that’s impossible not to groove to. They play tons of shows in Chicago, and if you’re lucky enough to be around for one, do yourselves a favor and go. They will redefine what you think of as music, and they will undoubtedly pull some insane stunts that leave you wondering whether or not you still exist. If you still haven’t gone and listened to Woo Park, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for.

 

 

FULL SMOKES EP

https://wooparkgrooves.bandcamp.com/

 

PROPELLER: LIVE STUDIO SESSION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qsn8mv15XA

 

TIDAL: LIVE STUDIO SESSION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPNMF3A3KcI

I remember when Tomb Raider came out. Not the game, but the movie with Angelina Jolie. Terrible movie. But I enjoyed it. All the temple shenanigans and adventure and lets be honest, seeing Jolie, it was all perfectly entertaining when I was young. Honestly, if I turned on the tube right now and saw the first movie playing, I might consider watching all of it. But then I won’t, because I found something better.

Surprise! This post isn’t about Tomb Raider. It is instead about Shutter. No not the dumb horror movie…the comic book! by Joe Keatinge and Leila Del Duca.

When I first found this Image series I was like, “wait…is this just Indiana Jones with a female lead, so…Tomb Raider?” So I quickly flipped through the first issue at which point the ghostly hand of Keatinge reached out of his written words and slapped me across the face and waved its index finger back and forth.

The story has an energy to it that keeps you going, never forgetting to create new questions while answering old ones. But I want to talk about Leila Del Duca’s art. An astronaut, a minotaur, a triceratops, an anthropomorphic fox and lion, a robot that looks like Tik-Tok, an alarm cat, a dragon like thing with a skull, a skeleton butler…is there anything she cannot draw? It is to the point where she imitates the styles of past comic artists. In one issue, there is a segment that is done in the style of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo (couldn’t find a picture, sorry).

This visual inventiveness and willingness to try various things (ranging from having a main character that is multiracial and a best friend that is transgender) makes me very excited as a reader. If there is one thing that I absolutely love about comics, it is that it is collaboration (I am considering only projects in which the writer isn’t also doing the art. Although rare, there are some creators who do everything). The way Duca explained it in an interview is that Keatinge only says a couple of things in terms of art direction when he gives her the script. He would tell her that the character must be seated next to an astronaut here. But that is it. Everything else he leaves up to her. Keatinge is an example of a comic book writer who does not encroach into the territory of the artist that he is working with. She is not drawing for him. There is no artistic hierarchy. Keatinge gets last say in his side of the medium while Duca gets her say on her area of expertise. But this is not to say that they don’t ask each other for opinions. It is through this form of collaboration, amazing projects are produced – when two artists discuss how to make something right, not about who is right or wrong. This is the true definition of collaboration.

The comic book loving community also upholds this strong sense of collaboration. There is little to no sense of competition, of jealously. Instead, artists celebrate the success of their contemporaries because nothing gets you more excited about working in your medium than seeing a friend of yours create a wonderful new project that directs the medium in new ways. I myself find influences for specific projects/content outside of the medium that I work in, but other writers instigate the initial spark of enthusiasm that springs within me time and time again.

I will not lie; I have started to look for artists to work with. Comic books have certainly reinvigorated my creative hunger. My palate has expanded. Let me leave you with Alarm Cat. There is never enough Alarm Cat.

Going to a few Halloween parties this past weekend meant, of course, encountering drunk people. I saw drunken friendship-making, drunken secret-telling, and drunken hook-ups, all of which made me wonder about something: can fictional stories include big emotional beats while the characters are under the influence?

TV has virtually every variety of drunken encounter: the drunken bonding, the drunken hook-up, the drunken fight, etc. There’s one thing I’ve noticed, though: if there’s a central will-they-won’t-they romance, it rarely culminates because of alcohol.

There’ve been some great TV episodes with characters getting drunk together. The 15^th episode of “New Girl,” “Injured,” involves the characters getting drunk after discovering that Nick Miller might have cancer. This leads the funniest and most heartfelt episode of the first season, and it pushes forward the central romantic relationships of the show: Schmidt and Cece, and Jess and Nick. At this point in the show, though, Schmidt-Cece is in a casual hook-up phase; this is merely the first introduction to a real emotional component. And Jess-Nick is still only hinted at in “Injured”; their romance won’t actually become explicit until a full season later. This holds true in other TV shows too, though. Pam gets drunk and kisses Jim in the second season premiere of “The Office,” but fans don’t really consider that a true expression of attraction. They much prefer to single out the second season’s finale, which features their first real, sober kiss.

Based on all this, I’ve come to the conclusion that a huge plot development based on some character relationship can almost never happen just because of alcohol. It’s a cheat. We want to see these characters act on their feelings sober and not have to worry about whether they’re acting a certain way just because of what’s in their system. If Jim and Pam had been blackout drunk during their first kiss, it wouldn’t mean as much, because it’d so clearly be a plot device. Same with Nick and Jess, or Ross and Rachel, or Ben and Leslie, or any of the countless other great sitcom couples. Alcohol can spark connections, but it can’t define them.

Of course, this is more a rule for art than a rule for life. I’ve had friends who’ve had surprisingly positive experiences with alcohol and relationships, whether those relationships are ultimately casual or something deeper. As bad as it might sound, strong friendships and strong relationships in college are sometimes born under the influence. Alcohol is one of life’s many real-world plot devices.

It shows that art abides by different rules than life. In my English class, we read an essay by Philip Roth that essentially pointed out how the stories we read in the news strain credibility – if we wrote a sexting scandal a guy named “Anthony Wiener” into a book, using my professor’s example, people would say Wiener’s name was too on-the-nose. Real life stretches credibility, so we can’t truly tell just any real-life story and expect readers to believe it; we have to somewhat de-sentimentalize some stories, and de-contrive others. If an author wants to retell his story of his first kiss in the rain, he might have to take the rain away, because that sounds too much like a sappy romance novel. Similarly, if the author’s first big romantic moment with his wife happened mostly thanks to liquid courage, retelling his own story verbatim might not have the power and charge it could have with a fictional sober character.

When you watch so much TV and movies and read so many books, you become aware that what comes across as a plot device in stories can be a naturally occurring agent in real life. When you hear from one of your good friends that he really did meet his year-long girlfriend from a drunken hook-up, it’s kind of hard to rule it “contrived and unsatisfying.”