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REVIEW: Sugartips Acoustic Duo

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

There isn’t nearly enough gentleness in the world. Everything is so loud all the time, the noises conflicting with one another and the angry fractures clashing. Background motivations seem to ruin the chance at pure intentions of bringing about joy. No one person or group or ideology is really blamable, though it would be easier if there was. Luckily we all have the opportunity to be soft and kind–we simply have to take it.

Even though Sugartips Acoustic usually does not deal in gentle tunes, the ambiance they create in every establishment they visit is one of fine relaxation. They play the classics, things everybody would know and feel comfortable singing along with a roomful of strangers. The experience is kind of like attending the wedding of a third cousin: maybe you don’t know many people, but you do know you’re somehow related to them all, however superficially. Also a lot of people are tipsy, and singing off-key to “Sweet Caroline.”

The pair performing in 2011.

Sure, Greg (the lead vocalist) could be a little flat, and he sometimes struggled to hit the higher notes, but perfect tone and pitch isn’t really the point. Greg and Ryan play music for the sake of it: to entertain, to enlighten, to fill a room with bubbling melody. Since the beginning of all music, this has been what it’s about. It is gentleness that drives them, and what has made them successful since their beginning way back in 2009.

It would be nice to see them perform a greater range of music, and maybe some more of their own compositions. I was excited to hear that their first ever original EP will be released this month! I’m glad that they are finding their own sound after such a long time experimenting with the music of others. This certainly isn’t easy to do; although I’ve been playing piano for years, the mere thought of composing anything myself is incredibly daunting. In all this time I’ve written almost nothing, even though I’ve played everything from Chopin to Adele and consider myself a creative person. There is something in all music makers that makes us immediately compare ourselves to the greats, even though they started from similar positions. I wish the Sugartips duo the best of luck in the next steps of their careers.

You can check out their music on Soundcloud, Youtube, or Facebook.

PREVIEW: Sugartips Acoustic Duo

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

Weeks can go by so slowly in the dead of winter (although Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog told us we’ll see an early spring!). Let’s go listen to some music together.

MASH bar (located below the Blue Tractor restaurant, 211 E Washington St) is hosting infinitely cool acoustic duo Sugartips tomorrow night at 8. Order a whisky, rest your arms behind your head, and relax to some smooth acoustic hits. MASH also offers delectable snacks like nachos and sliders.

So come on down, everybody. Life is too short to not enjoy Wednesdays at least a little.

 

 

REVIEW: 58 Greene Presents: Greenie Night Live

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

 

While several other a cappella groups performed last weekend, 58 Greene was the only one that mattered.

EnCore performing.

Now I guess I might be a little biased given I know and would die for Teddi Reynolds, one of the members of the group, but by the audience’s hoots and hollers throught the night I think it can be said they were also objectively good. Paired with two fabulous dancing groups (EnCore and FunKtion), the performance was smooth and stylish and properly varied. The song selections were a bit conservative, tending towards the classic, softer side, but that was nice. Flashy, chorerography-heavy performance is clearly not their style. In most of their songs they stand in a group, moving rhythmically, but not dancing. Instead they prefer to let their lyrical power enthrall the crowd. Not exactly reminscent of Pitch Perfect, but that is an unreasonable expectation for groups of all styles.

My only real critique of the performance is the lack of understanding some of the members have about their vocal range. While Scott McMillan’s performance of “Slow Dancing in the Dark” was wonderfully sweet and rich in tone, he had trouble reaching some of the high notes. I would have loved to hear him perform the song with pitch adjustments to better fit his range, or another song entirely. A few others had this problem in some spots, particularly with the higher pitches. While it is great to showcase one’s range, it is more important to focus on emphasizing the tones that come naturally. I could not begin to estimate the number of men I’ve heard singing in a falsetto voice when they definitely should not.

I was supremely impressed with the variety of voices within the group, from Danny Kim’s soft, soft high tones to Sarah Kleppe’s perfect mixing with Desirae Nelson’s voice in their “No Peace” duet. Teddi Reynolds and Rikvah Levine both gave me the shivers with their soulful selections. There were voices deep and high, singing like the soft wind and like the crashing sea. 58 Greene must have an awfully harsh audition process, given how talented their members are. Despite this assumption, for a flash of a second at the end I had a vision of joining the group myself. Then I remembered my non-speaking role in the eighth grade production of Mulan (I was the cricket) and promptly forgot this dream.

If you are more talented than I in the vocal arts, do try your hand at auditioning for the group. They are having winter auditions for Bass and Tenor parts on January 10th, 6-10pm in room 1405 of East Quad. Break a leg!

Video Player
1. “Rikvah Levine in "Toxic"”
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2. “Teddi Reynolds in "The End of Love"”
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REVIEW: Out There: A Performance by art duo Princess

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

There is a distinct difference between natural weirdness and the sort that is manufactured. Entitling an album “Out There” is far too self-realizing a move to truly belong to the former distinction. Things can be disastrous in cases like these, and unfortunately Princess’ performance veered quite drastically into the side of inorganic. This is not to say that there was no value in their work; quite the opposite, the intentional obscurity of meaning, though cringeworthy, was useful in forcing me to figure my own ideas about what I was seeing and hearing.

A concept album seems perhaps the wrong medium for what these two are doing. There is simply a lot going on, and their work suffers as a result.  They have a good sense of rhythm and tune (especially the flow of the rapping sections), but whatever their flat choreography was supposed to be doing was not being accomplished. The lyrics were often impossible to glean much meaning from. Most notably, the “party-party-party” song, most of whose words were about as inspired as you might imagine. I could speculate on what the song’s purpose is, perhaps some link to the procedural, routine nature of party culture, and the poisons that hide within its mindlessly indulgent atmosphere–the sexual harassment and assault, the brainwashing of men to be hunters who deserve prey, of women to bat their eyelashes and be a thing to desire. But to expect an audience to leap this far to make any conclusion of meaning is a bit much.

A bit too dark to see, but they are currently on the ground in anatomical position.

The space travel motif’s linkage to the album’s purpose was unclear. And though it was often visually striking, I found it relied too heavily on a single type of color scheme (red/blue combination and the vibrant, neon flat coloring of random objects). Also, the repetitive, jerky movements of the characters and objects in the video got old about halfway through the act. However, it still must be noted that the complex layering technique of visual artist Jennifer Meridian was impressive, if at times monotonous. Her work might perhaps be more suited for shorter videos and advertisements that demand the sense of excitement her design provides so well.

Mostly what I find fault with in the performance was its over-the-top brashness. I find it distracts from an audience’s ability to gather meaning from what they are experiencing. It’s more closely related to modern art than an exploration of misogyny in society. In all its spectacular glory I feel they are unable to develop their ideas into anything beyond the surface level. This is a shame, because the two clearly have an enormous creative capacity. I feel that, if they used their potential differently, they could have great success in creating thoughtful, deep, provocative art. While I and others in the audience can certainly derive our own meaning from the performance, the chasm over which we must stretch to get there is too wide. Perhaps this is the result of too many strongly creative people collaborating on a single project–in the process it became too much of a conglomeration than a precise piece of art.

If you’d like to check out the album for yourself, it’s currently available for preorder at their website bandofprincess.com. There you can witness one of their songs under the “videos” tab, and find other information about the band, including tour dates and background on the duo’s origins.

 

REVIEW: Third Place Concert Series presents: Zelasko // LaBonte // Rosen

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

As the icy wind blew snow along the pavement like sand through a frozen desert, I walked into Bløm Meadworks. It was just after hours, but the promise of good music had drawn a modest crowd of around 30 people. After beer and wine was distributed and the audience settled into their seats, they killed the lights, and we were suddenly thrust into a warmth and calmness that rivaled even the most roaring of hearth fires. The red and blue glow of smaller lights along the wall and the low hum of the brewing vats beside us made the blizzard outside feel a million miles away.

The concert featured three vocalists: Rebecca HH Rosen, Jocelyn Zelasko, and Hillary LaBonte. Rosen is a singer-songwriter who tours all over the U.S. with various groups; a musical vagabond since 2014. Zelasko and LaBonte are contemporary classical singers, taking part in various operas. All three have immensely strong voices with tones and ranges that are quite unique from each other.

The music from Rebecca HH Rosen and the cellists made me feel such conflicting things at once I became stuck in a tight space, held by the sound, feeling secure and claustrophobic both. Though the songs made me automatically picture peaceful summer images of the sun and breeze and soft, long grasses, I cried through the entire 30-minute set. And it wasn’t as if I began to listen and take in the words, gradually tearing up at the beautiful intersection of voice and my favorite string instruments. No more than five seconds passed from the moment Rosen began singing and I felt tears hitting my cheeks. There was nothing sad about the experience; all at once I felt all that is good and beautiful in the world, every sunny day. The sound of the cellos, guitar, and voice was simultaneously impossibly smooth and strong and sweet. I regret that I could not pay much attention to the lyrics, most of which were written by Rosen herself.

The next singers, Jocelyn Zelasko and Hillary LaBonte, performed together in what proved to be the most wildly conflicting, experimental version of chamber music I have heard yet. Though maintaining a classicality that stretched into opera at times, much of their performance was illogical, though it provoked critical thinking. A few songs had no words at all, but were piercing and emotional enough to stay in my memory for days afterwards. This may have been the effect of the room’s odd lighting, but I swear I lost my sense of sight for a time, LaBonte’s hair and face melting together with her neck and shoulders. I do not have a clear idea of what this fleeting semi-blindness means. The last part of their set used audio description as a medium–they literally put headphones on and described the sounds their phones were playing. It sounds ridiculous and confusing, but it felt like something more. When combined with the wordless songs and the often irrational ramblings of ones with lyrics, I had a sense of reliance on the singers for information, on the stories they were piecing together for us. It was reminiscent of ancient oral storytelling traditions; I was grateful to gather and understand the details they were passing down.

This concert was just one in Bløm Meadworks’ Third Place Concert Series. The series features a wide variety of artists in a wonderfully-curated monthly event. Check their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheThirdPlaceConcertSeries/) to look for future events.

 

REVIEW: Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem

Abigail Fox Leave a comment

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was commissioned for the re-consecration of Britain’s Coventry Cathedral, a beautiful church tragically destroyed in a World War II bombing. Britten himself was a staunch pacifist who had registered as a conscientious objector during the war, and the unique combination of these two elements gave birth to a piece that cuts through the gloss of glorified war stories into the more complex, tragic truth of the raw destruction of war. The text of the 80-minute choral piece is assembled from the Latin Mass for the Dead and the poems of Wilfred Owen, a World War I soldier who was killed just a week before the armistice at the young age of 25. Owen’s poetry is plainly anti-war, and the first of his lines in the piece is the chilling “What passing bells for these who die as cattle?”.

 

The requiem was presented as the collaboration between the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the UMS Choral Union, the Ann Arbor Youth Chorale, as well as three vocal soloists. The addition of the children’s chorale as specified by the original work adds a uniquely haunting aspect to the piece, a reminder that war ultimately results in a great deal of innocence lost, and the sacrifice of young lives with full futures ahead. Britten alternates between dissonant chanting mixed with layers of percussion and smooth, lyrical passages as the piece glides from movement to movement. Yet throughout the entire piece, the atmosphere is solemn, almost haunting. Britten refuses to let the audience forget why the piece was conceived, as a response to a tragedy brought about by the senselessness of war. It is impossible to hear the words of Owen echo through the auditorium in the rich tenor of soloist Anthony Dean Griffey without feeling an acute sense of what we have lost to the cruelty of war. Owen himself was a poet who garnered an abundance of post-humous acclaim despite his short career and the few poems he wrote; his career was brought to an abrupt end by a premature death on the battlefield.

 

Owen is merely one of many young talents, or simply young people, or people in general, whose lives were stolen from them by the merciless combat between sides. War Requiemserves as a haunting reminder that war is not a necessary evil, nor is it one we can afford to distance ourselves from. In the United States, it is perilously easy to turn a blind eye to those suffering from wartime brutality in other countries and in the modern age it is perilously easy to designate war as a “necessary evil”, a tragic yet inevitable byproduct of civilization. Yet as Britten wants us to remember, in a society as advanced as ours, the fact that we have accepted senseless violence over superficial causes as the price of civilization ought to haunt us, and we ought to remember that we have more power over our fates than we like to admit.