UM’s campus is hardly lacking for artistic talent. In its varying forms, students are quick to represent their abilities. Helicon, the History of Art Undergraduate Society, will be giving a space to such talent and displaying student curated and student made art in a one night only pop-up exhibition titled: Synesthesia. The event is open to any and all looking to check out some art in a cool and casual setting.
Synesthesia will be taking place on November 18, 8-11 p.m. at 504 Catherine St.
This Wednesday, November 16, the University Musical Society is bringing ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro to the University of Michigan! The concert will take place in Hill Auditorium at 7:30pm.
Shimabukuro started playing ukulele at the age of four, and now he is doing concerts around the world! With a four-stringed instrument, he is able to play anything from classical music to popular songs such as Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. More information on Jake Shimabukuro can be found at his website: http://www.jakeshimabukuro.com/home/
Tickets are on sale for $16.00-$60.00 (depending on the location of the seats) at http://ums.org/performance/jake-shimabukuro/.
Who: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
What: Performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in C Minor
When: This Saturday, March 15 at 8:45pm
Where: Hill Auditorium
The University Musical Society presents the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for this one-night only event. Tickets are still available on the UMS website, and there are special discounted prices for students.
If you would like to know what you’re getting into, here’s a link to the symphony they’ll be playing, but don’t think that listening to this version is comparable to what you’ll hear on Saturday. I’m sure the 1955 version in this video is significantly different from the 1890 version that the Israel Philharmonic will be performing.
This Wednesday evening, Stamp Nation, a newly formed student organization, performed a concert on the diag featuring all student performers. The concert featured performers from a variety of genres: everything from acoustic guitar, to funk music, to hip-hop. The decision to perform at the diag was a great idea. Students walking by who were uninformed about the concert discovered it firsthand. I also admire the performers’ confidence—it takes a lot of guts to perform in such a public setting, in an environment where the audience is free to leave at any time. Performers had different levels of experience. For some, it was the first live performance they’d ever participated in, and they stuck to covering songs by favorite artists. Others, like student Brandon Canniff, performed music they had written themselves.
The Stamp Nation club deserves a lot of credit for organizing the event successfully. The club is a meeting point for students with interest in music at various levels of prior experience. Some of the bands at the concert actually formed after meeting at the club. The club also arranged for speakers, provided by the university, in order to conduct the concert.
Stamp Nation faced one challenge Wednesday night: concert had difficulty maintaining stable audience numbers for the entirety of the concert. I suspect this is because of the weather, but luckily, Stamp Nation plans to set up another concert near the end of winter term, when the weather has improved.
Although relatively new, the club has big plans for the future. They plan to create a music mentorship program. Students looking for instruction will be set up with a tutor skilled in the musical style the student wants to learn. Stamp Nation also discussed the possibility of setting up an online page compiled with music their members have recorded. I wish them the best in their efforts and hope they continue to attract student interest, if they continue to grow, they will be an excellent resource for aspiring student musicians. Keep an eye out for concert footage—the club also arranged for the concert to be filmed.
I had trouble tracking down online samples of student music. I did find aspiring hip-hop artist Brandon Canniff’s soundcloud page—here’s a link to an album he produced this summer.
This Tuesday I listened to Flatbush Zombies perform at The Blind Pig. I believe attending a concert at The Blind Pig is a bucket-list item for students here—gotta once before you graduate or you’re missing out. It’s not the biggest or most glamorous venue. Neither of those words should ever be used to describe The Pig—sweaty and crowded are more appropriate adjectives. Nevertheless, this venue is a great spot to see talented groups on the cusp of stardom for reasonable prices (tickets usually $15 before fees).
Flatbush Zombies are a Brooklyn based group formed in 2010, consisting of MC’s Meechy Darko, Zombie Juice, and Erick Arc Elliott. New to the rap scene, Flatbush Zombies follow in the tradition of legendary New York rap group Wu-Tang Clan— minimalistic yet expressive production style, dissonant harmonies, and each MC embodies a unique persona on every track. Listeners can also appreciate the many references to hip-hop culture: frequent references to famous MC’s, particularly 2pac and Wu-Tang Clan, as well as plays on iconic lines from classic songs.
Flatbush Zombies, like many other hip-hop groups, fixate on drug use in their lyrics. It would be a mistake, however, to consider this group another run-of-the-mill group drawing on controversial subjects to gain popularity. Their lyrical content is distinctly existential, openly questioning the value of conventional morality and religion, opting instead for a morality derived from real life experience. Unlike mainstream hip-hop artists who advocate decadent, illicit drug use according to a purely hedonistic worldview, Flatbush Zombies depict drug use as an inevitable consequence of socioeconomic exclusion. Rather than glamorize drug use, they problematize the activity, prompting listeners to consider why drug use is prevalent, and how the activity is a conscious act of self-destructive escapism.
So how are the Flatbush Zombies live? They kill it. The venue was perfect for their musical style—informal setting mixed with ear-splitting acoustics complemented the minimalistic production style and the raw energy of the group. In my experience, hip-hop concerts rarely recreate the sound quality of studio recordings live, but this loss of sound quality is more than made up for when a performer brings enthusiasm and panache to the stage. Panache, pizzazz, x-factor, swag, whatever you want to call it—The Flatbush Zombies came packing heat, they lit up the stage with energy, adding a personal depth to their music which cannot be captured in the studio.
Fans of Wu-Tang Clan, Joey Bada$$, and Odd Future should definitely check out Flatbush Zombies—I think this group has a lot of potential to produce quality hip-hop music over the coming years. Fan or rap or not, definitely check out The Blind Pig, a venue that is integral to the Ann Arbor experience. The Blind Pig setting is ideal for discovering new music on an intimate level.
Listen to some Flatbush Zombies for free here (I recommend No Religion and Thug Waffle): https://soundcloud.com/flatbushzombies
Watch the Music Video that helped them gain popularity–you may notice inspiration from some of Tyler the Creator’s music videos
Kirsten Carey, free jazz guitarist and composer studying at the Michigan School of Music, has been in the throes of writing, recording, and releasing The Ulysses Project for two years, while most of us pea-brained undergrads hardly have the attention span to finish a semester long course. Samuel Beckett 101? No, really, no, no thank you. Saturday night, behind the charming façade of the Victorian Kerrytown Concert House, Kirsten’s album release for this scandalizing musical suite began to unravel the modernist masterpiece, Ulysses, casting it in a new, yet equally visceral light. She gave James Joyce’s characters the opportunity to croon about their sad, awkward, and mostly hilarious grappling with life in the underbelly of Dublin, and us an exercise in commiseration, empathy, and laughing at the expense of others.
It was a concert meets theater piece meets story-time hybrid whose effect was intense, vulnerable, and intimate to an extent that, if we were less human, could have been uncomfortable. So many moments of the performance evoked the embarrassing aunt in every family who is never afraid to blubber about her dirty laundry over the Christmas ham– the very reason you love her more than everyone else. In the stream and scream of consciousness tone of James Joyce, Kirsten and her costumed band [featuring Ben Willis (bass), Jonathan Taylor (drums), Derek Worthington (trumpet), Pat Booth (saxophone)] and minimalist theatrical troop of two, [Corey Smith (narration), and Glenn Healy] took you on a manic journey of eerie beauty and melody (oh yeah, shout out to Dedalus), toe-tappin and shoulder twitching jams (wooo baby, Musksweat, an earworm waiting to wiggle its way into your canal), and unbridled fits of god knows what (alright, Beware of Gerryowen, this one’s for you, you attention craving chorus of the insane asylum.)
Let me digress for a minute. Eric Schweizer’s guest appearance solo on baritone sax in Gerryowen startled me, and my ears are conditioned by the likes of John Zorn and Gogol Bordello. This tune should have come with a warning for people over the age of sixty and under the age of four who are not fully in control of their… facilities. The first note of his solo was deafening with all the timbral qualities of the loudest foghorn you have ever heard. It was like tectonic plates shifting, or the creaking of the Titanic as its sinking, or, with all respect to Joyce at his own tribute party, Melville’s Moby Dick pissed as hell as he is harpooned for the last time. Though Gerryowen was unique in the likelihood of it catalyzing PTSD, intense moments like these were omnipresent.
From Corey’s kooky and desperate, tentatively romantic and frantically erotic, (in all the wrong ways,) reading of a love letter to “Mr. Flower” which sent the audience into rolling fits of giggles, to Kirsten’s mesmerizing singing in “O” that closed the suite, it was an enchanting balls to the wall performance throughout. Kirsten’s voice is beautiful, and has all the inflections of a homespun lullaby and raw straining emotion that pulls at the heart strings in the unairbrushed ways that a bel canto style cannot. I think my takeaway from this memorable show (I will admit to tearing up at the end of “O”, excuse my lack of professionalism) can best be summed up by a rogue audience member who, after the applause, offered from the back of the room “you know, you really know how to make people feel things.” Kirsten, I hope you read this someday and let these words hug you, because well, I want to thank you for bringing The Ulysses Project into the world, and my iTunes library.
If you are a Joyce nut that happens to also be a free jazz connoisseur, or like great music (and people almost always fall into one of the two categories) I must recommend you checking out her website and investing an album ($10) for yourself.
