Category: Arts

Audien provided attendees with a wild experience during his show on Wednesday at Club Necto. In terms of concert venues, Necto never fails to provide a fun, electrifying environment. The entire lower level fills with people who are usually of one mind about their intent: to dance until their feet are aching. Though some might find this overwhelming, as it can be, it has proven to be intensely fun each time I’ve attended a concert here.

Audien’s set was a variety trance, progressive trance, and occasionally remixes of popular songs. For those who aren’t fans of electronic music, it might have sounded like the same song was playing on repeat the entire night. Nonetheless, the music continued to thrill the audience until past midnight. Each song blended into the next, leaving none of that occasionally awkward silence in concerts, when the magic seems to die down momentarily. Audien masterly navigated the booth, keeping all entertained.

The lights and decorations made for an entrancing sight. The color scheme was largely bright purple and green, creating a practically ethereal feel to the venue.

Upon arrival to the concert, my friends and I stood on the outskirts, unsure if we should join the melee of the lower level. We listened, discussing whether or not we considered ourselves fans of the electric music genre. After ten or so minutes, a song came on that seemed to beckon to us. The music was enchanting, we needed to dance. And dance we did, and we didn’t stop until we decided our feet were too bruised to continue. We lost track of time in the crazy pit of dancers, having no concept of what or where or when, thinking only of the current and next song. I think that’s what a concert should do: allow yourself to be lost in the music.

This Thursday, two string quartets of different backgrounds will come together to present a marvelous program of string ensemble music in Rackham Auditorium.

The multiple-Grammy award-winning Emerson String Quartet is known worldwide as one of  the premiere ensembles of its kind. Since their professional start in 1976, Emerson has developed an international reputation and recorded over thirty albums.

Even without such an impressive resume (yet), the young Calidore String Quartet is on the right track for an equally substantial career. Since winning MPrize in its inaugural year, the quartet has already received prestigious fellowships and was featured in a UMS concert of their own.

These established and emerging musicians will present a marvelous program of string ensemble works, including Mendelssohn’s octet, a famous and monumental work which he wrote as a birthday gift for his teacher when he was 16.

The concert will take place this Thursday, October 5th, at 7:30pm in Rackham Auditorium. Don’t miss out on this rare opportunity to hear from two world-class string quartets in one concert! Buy tickets here or at the League Ticket office!

Included in the slew of excellent UMS programs this year was last week’s concert featuring string orchestra A Far Cry and experimental vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The concert primarily represented the music of two groundbreaking contemporary composers, Caroline Shaw and Ted Hearne, as well as 20th century composer Prokofiev and Renaissance composer Josquin. The concert alternated from the ensembles playing separately and together.

The music of Hearne and Shaw, while being quite stylistically different, both boast the mastery of drawing bold, chaotic, and somehow cohesive pictures from multiple stylistic and thematic threads. In their pieces, they both kneaded into the dissonance of two or more disconnected things happening at once. The various techniques that the composers used to handle these dissonances — intensifying them and then abruptly letting them evaporate, drawing them out over a long period time until gradually relaxing them, and more–were a source of thrilling suspense for both of the composers’ pieces.

Hearne’s pieces were “Coloring Book,” performed by a Roomful of Teeth, and “Law of Mosaics,” performed by A Far Cry. In “Coloring Book,” he juxtaposed austere polyphony with more rhythmically driven, unruly, and playful styles. “Law of Mosaics” was packed to the brim with conversational, interlocking parts, such as convoluted rhythmic pulses with sprawled out melodic lines overtop. The melodies and riffs in “Law of Mosiacs” were improvisational and bursting with personality, and A Far Cry carried this energy successfully.

Caroline Shaw’s pieces, while also possessing this similar ‘mosaic’ quality as Ted Hearne’s pieces, stood out in their patience; in both of her pieces, “Music in Common Time” and “La déploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem” (her arrangement of a piece by Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez), she gave gravity to drawn-out drones and slowly moving polyphony, eventually splattering more rhythmic and angular sections overtop. She has a way of inviting the listeners into huge, thick, open spaces/baselines and then working within those spaces in creative and shocking ways.

As an ensemble, A Far Cry radiated a rock-like energy. Not only are they remarkably virtuosic, but they are conversational players; their communication, sensitivity, and clarity of vision as a group packed their performances with electricity, whether it be in a slow, twisted movement of the Prokofiev or a high-octane and rhythmically aggressive segment of the Hearne.

Vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth represented a library of various vocal timbres styles, and tendencies, but the group was able to sound unified while still providing space for the unique colors of each vocalist to shine. Common threads among the singers such as bright vowels and rich but piercing timbres helped to make the ensemble seem like one body. It was exciting to see each performer lose themselves in their own way, especially during the solo sections; it’s not something that you usually get to observe in traditional Western vocal ensembles.

The night was lined with disorienting, chaotic beauty interspersed with more focused and calm moments. This intricate rhythm of tension made the a concert suspenseful and captivating one.