Tag: Ann Arbor

REVIEW: A Little Night Music

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A Little Night Music, based off of the movie Smiles of a Summer Night, was an exciting and jaw-dropping musical full of plot twists and shocking revelations that uses humor, song, and dance to portray infidelity as a romantic comedy. Set in 1900 Sweden, the story revolves around a messy love web between a lawyer, Fredrik Egerman; Fredrik’s wife, Anne; a famous traveling actress, Desirée Armfeldt; Desirée’s lover, Count Carl-Magnus Malcom; and the Count’s wife, Charlotte.

The drama between the characters shows the darker side of romance in a sarcastically endearing way. The men are ungrateful towards their partners but down bad for Desirée, which is what generates the jealousy that pushes the plot forward in unexpected ways. The entire time I was on the edge of my seat, uncertain where the story was taking me. The ending was bizarre yet satisfying: happy yet bittersweet. Afterwards, I had a lot of fun talking to my friend about all of the twists and turns in A Little Night Music, which for me is what set it apart from the other musicals I’ve watched. It was a story completely different from what I expected when reading the description of the plot online.

The students really brought this show to life; their voices perfectly replicated the classic European noble accent. The wardrobe was gorgeous, particularly Desirée’s deep red dress and Charlotte’s dark blue dress, a contrast that hints at their differences and heavy animosity. I was also very impressed by the live playing of the cello and piano on stage, as it was my first time seeing instruments played on stage by the actors and not by the musicians in the pit orchestra. Especially the student who portrayed Fredrik’s son, Henrik, who played the cello with a very good tone and vibrato. 

My favorite song would be “Send in the Clowns,” sung by Desirée as she discovers that love doesn’t always go as predicted. The lyrics were relatable and the emotion in her voice mirrors lots of the experiences people face in romance today. This is the last musical I’ll see this semester and was a fun one to review. If you’re looking for something to betray your expectations, then A Little Night Music is for you!

REVIEW: Tales from the Realm of Pops

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This semester’s Michigan Pops Orchestra concert, Tales from the Realm of Pops, has been my favorite concert of the past six I’ve attended. The theme this semester was fairytale and fantasy, and the repertoire was full of my personal favorites that are both famous in the classical world and familiar with most audiences: from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet to The Legend of Zelda to Sleeping Beauty, the orchestra certainly took us on a magic carpet ride.

The first piece to capture my heart was Tchaikovsky’s notoriously hard Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, performed by this year’s High School Concerto Competition winner Minji Kim, a Junior studying at Skyline High School. The past three High School Concerto Competition winners have all been violinists, but she’s left the biggest impression on me so far. The first movement of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, the Allegretto, features intense lyrical runs up and down the violin, which Minji nailed each time. What impressed me the most were her double stops. Double stops mean two notes are being played at the same; this requires the bow to be completely evenly balanced on the strings while the fingers are to be a precise distance apart. It’s very easy to be out of tune when playing double stops, especially while shifting, but Minji made it sound incredibly easy with her crystal-clear tone and perfect intonation. This was my first time listening to this concerto live, and it couldn’t have been any better.

Right after came one of the unarguably best orchestral works to ever exist: Scheherazade, Op. 35 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Pops played the third movement, The Young Prince and the Young Princess. Just like the title suggests, it’s an incredibly romantic movement that passes the melody between the strings and winds, as if they were lovers conversing. The lyrical line evokes so many feelings, such as yearning and passion before turning into playful flirting when the tempo picks up. I highly recommend listening to all of Scheherazade. It’s truly a piece that shows music can weave a colorful story and brings out the violin’s full potential during the many concertmaster solos, which Katie Zhao did an amazing job of.

I’m so glad I got to attend this concert despite being busy with finals and the coming end of the semester. It whisked me away from my stress and worries and was the best refuge I could get. I’m now all the more excited to come back to another Michigan Pops concert next year, and I wonder if they’ll be able to top this semester’s amazing collection.

REVIEW: Alexandra Collins’s “Hyper Light”

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Seeing Stars with Alexandra Collins’s Exuberant “Hyper Light”. 

On Friday February 16th, I had the pleasure of attending the opening reception of Stamps senior Alexandra Collins’s first solo exhibition “Hyper Light ”. The work is on display at The Common Cup, an Ann Arbor coffee shop on Washtenaw Avenue.  From still lifes of jello molds and glassware, to large zinging abstracts of flowers and shapes, the series is a colorful and bold exploration of the relationship between energy and tension.

“Red Jello on Purple Tablecloth”

Collins’s eye finds movement in stillness. Investigating the organic in the inorganic, she uses bold colors and streaky light to create energetic portraits of jello and glass. The tension between energy and stillness holds as a focal point in her still lifes like the horizon of a sea scape. The lively dynamic style contrasts and emphasizes the stillness of the subjects like a loud silence. Maybe you shouldn’t have ordered that second Mayan Mocha, or maybe you caught the jello jiggling from the corner of your eye.

 

“Superbloom”

Collins plays with the constraints of the canvas, in some works lining up several panels, in others tacking panels on in unexpected ways. The larger and more abstract pieces expand and challenge what can contain them. Pieces such as “Superbloom” are colorful menageries of plant life, bubbles and baubles, and streaks of light. Reminiscent of exploding stars and streaking galaxies, the arrangements represent a synthesis of color, shape, and form. The flowers are closed, and the paint around them vibrates and thrusts and sings like it just can’t be held anymore. Like the build up of a song with no release, we are held in those moments before explosion.

On a blustery February day, the basement location of the exhibition makes the colorful paintings feel like an underground secret, like spring charging beneath the earth. I felt a celebration and investigation of the feminine in the flower motifs and dining room still lifes. The celestial exuberance and energetic synthesis of shapes and color asking what feminine energy might look like, and where we could put it down. When I parked at a table for a few hours to sip coffee and send out piles of resumes and cover letters, I felt Hyper Lights hum resonating around me, not with the glory of the finish line, but with potential.

“Supernova”

“Hyper Light” will be on display at The Common Cup on Washtenaw Avenue for about two more weeks, until March 2nd. The paintings are an energetic and possibility expanding presence in the cafe, which is a great place to study or meet with friends. You can find more of Collins’s work on her website and instagram, or by attending Commence, a graduating senior exhibition held at the Stamps Gallery in April.

 

 

 

 

REVIEW: Extemporaneous: Solo Piano Explorations

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Kerrytown Concert House recently hosted the magnificently versatile composer and pianist, Alyssa Smith. She is a recent graduate from the University of Michigan’s School of Music, obtaining her Masters of Jazz and Improvisational Studies last spring. She often frequented the Blue Llama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor with the Alyssa Smith Trio. Additionally, she held a flourishing piano studio for many students in the Ann Arbor community. Now based in New York City, Smith continues to enchant audiences with her sensitive and thoughtful playing. She is now working at the Brooklyn Music School while upholding her private studio, and performing in New York City with the Alyssa Smith Quintet.

The solo concert was entitled “Extemporaneous: Solo Piano Explorations”, featuring a culmination of Smith’s own improvisational compositions. She played a selection of six pieces, each with a different style and character. As a classically trained pianist, Smith delicately interweaves Romantic and Impressionist styles into her playing, along with inspiration from jazz greats like Bill Evans and Chick Corea. It is evident that she has transcended the realms expected of a concert pianist or a purveyor of jazz standards; rather, she has masterfully assimilated her profound understanding of these disciplines, fashioning them into her unique musical expression.

Smith introduced each tune with a personal statement or anecdote. Her remarkable capacity to intricately intertwine the humility and splendor inherent in the human experience was both impressive and deliberate. The themes of her pieces ranged from animals she admires to embracing change and even included a botched endeavor with fixing a broken medicine cabinet. When you think of these things, not often does virtuosic piano playing come to mind, but Smith finds a way to bring out humor and vitality in the ordinary. 

Alyssa Smith will be back at Kerrytown Concert House in the spring with a new set featuring her playfully virtuosic pianism. Keep an eye out at https://kerrytownconcerthouse.com for her next performance—or if you are ever in New York City!

REVIEW: Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch

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I loved Dr. Seuss’s books growing up but never watched the movies, so to celebrate the end of the semester and the coming of Christmas, I watched The Grinch at the Michigan Theater on Sunday, December 10th. I haven’t watched any of the previous adaptations, but they seem pretty different. The first version, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, came out in 1966 as a cartoon that’s 30 minutes long. The second version, also titled How the Grinch Stole Christmas, came out in 2000 as a live-action that’s 1 hour and 55 minutes long. The most recent one is what played at the theater: the 2018 animation that’s 1 hour and 30 minutes long, which is simply titled The Grinch.

This version is essentially the Grinch’s origin story and the audience gets to learn who the Grinch is as a person rather than a thief. The best part is we get to see his relationship with his dog Max, who is youthful and energetic in the film but old and weary in the book. Another character they redesigned was Cindy-Lou Who, the little girl who catches the Grinch in the middle of his act. In the book, she was less than two and only on a page or so; in the movie, she’s much older and one of the main characters.

The animation was fun and very fitting for a children’s Christmas movie. The palette was bright and the characters were cute, even the Grinch. I enjoyed hearing the narrator’s lines and rhymes because they added more of the book elements too. His voice surprised me though because he sounded relatively young when I was expecting an old man reminiscent of Santa, which I wish they went with instead. Because I knew the plot beforehand, it felt like a very long movie and some parts were dragging on, but I enjoyed it overall and would rewatch it again once it’s closer to Christmas.

REVIEW: She Loves Me

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This past weekend, I watched the musical She Loves Me (1963), a romantic comedy with a classic enemies-to-lovers trope set in 1934 Budapest, Hungary. The male lead is Georg Nowack, the hardworking manager of Maraczek’s Parfumerie. He’s always at odds with the female lead, Amalia Balash, an employee who’s not the best at her job and believes Georg always has it out for her. There’s a unique array of workers at the parfumerie. There’s the playboy Steven Kodály, the innocent delivery boy Arpad Lazslo, the sexy lady Ilona Ritter, and the cheerful father Ladislav Sipos.

It’s a frustratingly slow-burn romance; most of the first act is unraveling the main character’s mysterious love interests, their “dear friends,” and getting to know the other employees. In the second half, though, the romantic development quickly speeds up and She Loves Me plays, my favorite musical number. I enjoyed watching the usually serious Georg dancing around the stage and singing his heart out, giddy with love.

The show was completely run by the Golden Theatre Company (GTC), a student organization that strives to spread the joy of musical theatre and create opportunities for all students to be part of the production and performance process. When reading the program notes, I was fascinated that quite a few members were freshman or not musical theatre students; one was even a Mathematics and Computer Science major! Furthermore, everything was done well. The stage props for the parfumerie were adorable and intricate, the outfits were gorgeous and elegant, fitting for the era, and the microphones and music were clear.

As suggested by their name, the GTC only performs musicals from the Golden Age of musical theatre (roughly mid-1940s to late 1950s) or musicals sung in the classical style. I look forward to their next semester’s performance because I’m sure they’ll choose a wonderful musical to perform with the highest quality.