REVIEW: Jazz Department 25th Anniversary: Jazz Ensembles and Alumni Concert

Jazz Ensemble and Alumni Concert

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation department at the University of Michigan. To celebrate, a number of musical activities have been taking place all month,including panel discussions, visiting artists, masterclass, theme semester collaborations, faculty recitals, and performance showcases. Last week, the Jazz Ensemble and Alumni Concert performed in the Rackham Auditorium. Jazz ensemble is a required class for concentrators, divided into two sections: Jazz Lab Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble.

The first half of the performance showcased the “Lab.” They performed seven pieces; some original, some classic, some arranged by faculty, and some written by department alumni. Two of the songs featured vocals. The last piece performed before the intermission was my favorite. It takes a lot of breath to shine amidst the carries of thirty brass instruments!

Following the break, the Jazz Ensemble collected onstage and performed six arrangements. Two were written by faculty Andrew Bishop and Ellen Rowe (director of the department, who also conducted), and two were written by alumni. It just so happens that the latter were my favorite pieces of the evening.”Leaving Paris,” by David Luther (a very fine name for a jazz composer, don’t you think?) was the kind of music you’d want to hear on a rainy day. It was slow but varied; I felt the emotion in the rhythm very richly. “May Morning Dew,” by Tyler Duncan, was an adventurous and non-traditional piece. The notes drew from an ancient Irish folk song and included the recoded voice of a man singing the archaic tune. Tyler Duncan played the F Flute, which apparently he used when he auditioned for the school though it had never been done before. An experimental artist, you may recognize Tyler’s name from local Ann Arbor band My Dear Disco, which he helped create and toured with in the years following graduation.

The performance was an exciting exposition of student work, both past and present. The energetic music certainly celebrated this momentous anniversary that this year marks. I loved attending, but after the show had to quickly race back to the library to study for finals. Good luck everyone!

Review: Hold me Bat Boy, Touch me Bat Boy…..

I went to see the Department of Musical Theater’s performance of “Bat Boy” on Saturday instead of going to the IOWA game. I’m pretty positive I made the right choice.

For those of you who don’t know, this musical is based off the “Weekly World News” Headline “Found in West Virginia Cave – a half boy, half bat!” The writers of this farce Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming couldn’t have asked for a better setting or subject matter. They, along with Music contributions from Laurence O’Keefe, have created their own monster of dark, clever and campy humor, complex plot, cross-dressing Virginians (although, this may have been an artistic choice of the MT director), incest, love, random woodsy scenes…. it goes on.

The music is memorable, the choreography, by director Linda Goodrich, was entertaining and creative. And what can I say about the cast?

Bat Boy – junior Ryan Vasques has a beautiful tenor voice and a phenomenal stage presence. He uses his whole body to express himself, which was important for this role. His development from non-verbal Bat Boy to well educated young man was very believable, which considering the subject matter was an unexpected experience.

Shelly Parker – senior Ashley Park also has a strong voice and held her own on stage with a number of very dominant male characters. Her playful body language was fun and Park knew just how far to push the caricature with out becoming tedious or annoying, which is harder than one might think. Her comfort in her own skin was apparent and definitely helped the strength of her role.

Meridith Parker – senior Jane Bruce has a strength in her that radiates into every corner of the theater. Her voice is full and strong, well developed and matured. She carried the emotional trials of her character very well and held a “No” for an impressively long time! Bruce was very enjoyable to watch on stage. She harmonizes beautifully too!

Dr. Thomas Parker – junior Zachary Thompson. I’ve met Zach once. He told me to go see Bat Boy. I didn’t realize over all what I was about to get myself into nor did I know what to expect from Zach’s performance. Let me tell you that Zachery Thompson is quite the physical actor. I was quite impressed to see what he could do with his body, the wiggles and natural flow that he was able to whip out at will. His comedic timing was unbeatable in this production and he didn’t miss a note. Thompson was also very convincing in his role. He masterfully perpetuated the plot line and seamlessly carried himself through from beginning to end.

Senior Travis Ward-Osborne (Rick Taylor, Lorraine, Mr Dillion) who’s voice and (again) physicality blew me away. Ward-Osborne was close to stealing the show if his fellow leads hadn’t been so overwhelmingly strong.

The ensemble did a very nice job, they were beautifully in synch with each other. Unfortunately senior Jordan Barrow (Mrs. Taylor, Reverend Billy Hightower, Roy) although he had a beautiful voice could not project past his mic. When he was playing the Reverend his voice got lost in the crowd, which was too bad because his performance was otherwise very impressive.

All in all this was a fantastic production, my first experience of the Musical Theater Department at Michigan. The set design was amazing, the lighting not too overwhelming (thank god, there is nothing worse than a bad lighting designer).

The only complaint I really have about the production is the acoustics in the Arthur Miller Theater, the sound wall created by the band sometimes made the voices difficult to hear and the hard boxy walls deadened sound.

So it Goes.

See a Dept of Musical Theater show! They are very talented and worthwhile!

PREVIEW: Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

It’s the classic story of that guy who gets around. Don Juan, Dom Juan, Johnny Depp, Don Giovanni, it’s always the same old thing. In Spain, in France, in Italy, and now at U of M, the story repeats itself one more time. This weekend, The School of Music, Theater, and Dance will perform the age old tale of Don Giovanni, a legendary lover’ who ‘makes one too many notches on his bedpost. The opera masterpiece is directed by Prof. Robert Swedberg and stars both graduate and undergraduate students from the department. With music by Mozart and lyrics by Lorenzo da Ponte, this piece is one of the most famous operas ever performed. The libretto will be sung in its original language- Italian- but fear not, surtitles will be projected above the stage to guide all you English speakers out there.

I am currently enrolled in a Romance Languages seminar devoted entirely to this elusive and seductive character, Don Juan. As part of the course, we will be attending the opera. We are also engaging with both the actors and the players behind the scenes. Prof. Swedberg visited our class last week to discuss the process of creating such an opera. He spoke of the liberties he took in adapting the story for a modern audience. For example, the plot takes plays in New Orleans instead of Italy, and in the end Don Juan is dragged to hell by…well I don’t want to ruin the surprise but there is a slightly alternate ending the the original tale. It sounds like it will be a dramatic and exciting performance, sure to please. I’ve never been to an opera at U of M so you can certainly count on seeing me there!

The show will be held at The Power Center on:

November 8 at 7:30 pm//November 9 and 10 at 8 pm//November 11 at 2 pm

For more information about the performance, including buying tickets, click here.

Enjoy the show!

REVIEW: Comic Potential

Thursday night, January 26th, the small black-box theatre in Studio 1 of the Walgreen Drama Center filled with students and families who came to watch a handful of talented student-actors perform the romantic sci-fi play, Comic Potential, written by Alan Ayckbourn, which first premiered in the late 1990’s. The show began with a once-famous director, now a has-been and an alcoholic, working on the set of the cheesy soap opera he now works on with his crew of three “actoids” (actor androids–the new robotic invention that has replaced real human actors in the movie and television industry) and two lesbian lovers who film the episodes. The set was very simple, consisting of a bed, a table and chairs, and a video camera, yet very versatile, as the bed used in the hospital scene of the soap opera was converted to be used as the hotel room the two main characters stayed in later in the play.

The main plot of the play concerned the relationship between a young aspiring writer, the nephew of the man who owns the production company, who wants to learn from the once-famous director whom he adores, and the female actoid, known as JC, with a sense of humor that defies the rules and mechanisms of her robotic composition. The young writer discovers her unique sense of humor and decides that he wants to work with her on an old-fashioned comedy sitcom, and asked the director to let him use JC in a comedy show that he will write and pitch to the producers to be shown on the network. The director reluctantly agrees, but when the idea is pitched to the bratty accountant who wanted to date the young writer and was hurt and offended that he chose JC over her, she turns down the idea and decides that the actoid should be “melted down”, her memory erased and system re-booted, so that her “faulty” sense of humor would be no more.

The young writer, having fallen in love with the funny actoid, convinces her to run away with him, to rescue her from being melted down. They go to a clothing store, to get her some normal-looking clothes so she can get rid of the nurse-outfit she was wearing from the soap opera hospital scene, and they then go in hiding at a hotel, where they are discovered at the hotel restaurant, and are forced to flee to a dingy motel in a bad neighborhood, where JC has a run-in with a prostitute who suggests to her that the young writer is only using her, like all men use women. JC then gets upset and fights with the young writer, when the pimp in charge of the working-girls in the hotel barges into the room and threatens them, thinking JC was one of his girls. The young writer defends JC and he gets stabbed, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

JC returns to the television studio, thinking the young writer was dead, and decides to allow herself to be melted down, in order to forget all of the pain, feeling guilty that she allowed so much trouble to come to the young writer who she loved. But she changes her mind, and when she comes back the young writer is there, and they lovingly reunite. In the end, the bratty accountant loses her job and JC is offered the prestigious position instead. The young writer gets his chance at filming his sitcom, and all is well again in the lives of all the characters on set.

The play had an underlying satirical message concerning the entertainment industry, suggesting that the individuals who have money and manage money are truly in charge of what is created and presented to the public for entertainment, cheapening what should be artistic and meaningful to mere money-making, cookie-cutter productions. The actoids, man-made and purchased, suggest that actors are no more than blank canvases, bringing no personal creative input to their craft. The artist must sell-out, as the director did, in order to remain in the business, working on superficial projects, like the cheesy soap-opera, that will be profitable to the individuals and companies funding the project. Looking at most of the films that are being made and released to the movie theatres today, I can’t say I disagree with this premise.

I enjoyed the premise of the story, and the actors did a wonderful job, especially in such an un-real, futuristic script. The actress who played the role of JC did an especially incredible job. She did really well at convincing you she was a robot, while still being humanly real and accessible, relate-able. She was very impressive in switching between dialects and characters in the many scenes where she recalled the characters she had previously played in her history as an actoid. She was very funny.

Personally, I think the play started out strong, and then the story fell off at the end. This is no fault of the actors, but the script itself. I disagree that the love story was a necessary part of the play. I think it would have possibly been more interesting without it. It almost made the play into the very cookie-cutter love story that is profitable and prominent in entertainment media that the play advises against. The happy ending also didn’t seem fitting, and I was left wondering if it would have been more interesting to have the actoid melted down, to bring back the original point of the current state of the entertainment industry, leaving the audience with that premise in mind, bringing the story full-circle. If I were to re-write the story, there are definitely some things I would have done differently.

Overall, I enjoyed going to see a free play on Thursday night, and I would highly recommend going to check out other plays put on by Basement Arts some time this semester. The actors are very talented, and the script was interesting and unique. It was a very laid-back atmosphere, and an enjoyable way to spend a Thursday evening. For more information on Comic Potential, as well as a schedule of upcoming productions being put on by Basement Arts, check out their website: http://basement.studentorgs.umich.edu.

Review: Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan: Guilty of Laughter

This Sunday night I went to the Power Center (my favorite campus venue) to see the Druid and Atlantic Theater Company production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan. It was crazy funny! We laughed so hard at the dry Irish humor. The actors were so talented. No matter how much we laughed or what crazy things they did on stage, not a one of them ever broke character. And they did some pretty ridiculous things, including breaking eggs on heads, being incredibly boring to the point of laughter, and beating on each other.

The play is set on the small island of Inishmaan in 1934. There is nothing of interest happening on the island, so the people are forced to consider things such as sheep being born without ears to be interesting. Also in this category of things that should be reported; Cripple Billy is staring at cows again, a goose bit a cat, the egg man’s eggs didn’t lay today, and, what’s this? A team of Hollywood moviemakers are on the next island filming a movie? This really is big news! In fact, it’s the biggest news that the town gossip/self-proclaimed news carrier John Patine Mike has ever had. So big that a group of townspeople are sailing over to the island to see the filming and hopefully get a chance at acting in it. Billy Claven, called Cripple Billy by most on account of his severe deformities, is one interested in going. After winning the heart of the boatman with a doctor’s note reporting his eminent death, he sails with the group. Fortune smiles on him and Billy go’s to America for the chance of starring in a film about a cripple in Ireland. What a chance!

Throughout the production, constant jokes, insults, and egg throwing keeps the audience laughing and saying “I can’t believe they just said that!” Constantly people praise their homeland with the phrase “Ireland must not be such a bad place if dentists/Frenchmen/colored fellas/earless sheep/Americans want to come here.” The younger brother of the love interest, Helen McCormick, constantly talks of sweeties from America and his obsession with telescopes. Helen chucks eggs, swears like a sailor, and is the village slut that no one knows about (in order to maintain the name of the actual one and to avoid competition). The aunts that adopted Billy both have their quirks. One eats the sweets of their shop when stressed, the other talks to rocks when she’s worried. John Patine Mike has tried and failed to kill his mother for 65 years by giving her constant alcohol. There is so much comedy and brilliant writing in this production that it’s hard not to laugh, even when the setting makes the word “Cripple” a joke. You sort of feel guilty laughing when the characters, even his loving aunts, make fun of Billy’s disabilities. But then you remember the setting and realize it is realistic; what would have actually happened, and it’s okay to laugh.

The play was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon and I would thoroughly enjoy it if the Druid and Atlantic Theater Company returned to the Power Center in the future. It takes an open mind and a taste for dry humor to understand the comedy of this play. It also takes a sensitive character to understand the sadness, emotion, and tragic life that Cripple Billy leads. I would strongly advise going to plays like this. Everyone can learn and laugh a little from such a production and I am very happy to have attended.

As always,
This is Danny Fob: Artist and Art Reviewer

PREVIEW: Gibson Fleck

When I think back about the talent here at the University of Michigan, odds are high that Gibson Fleck will stick out in my mind.  I cannot explain to you the itching anticipation I’m experiencing for this show and I hardly know anything about it.  Gibson Fleck, presented by the Department of Musical Theatre, is an original production with music and lyrics written by A.J. Holmes and Carlos Valdes and book by Ali Gordon.  These names may sound familiar to you, and they should.  The creators of Gibson Fleck are all current U of M students.  This impressive and ambitious young team has worked incessantly to produce a show that is sure to continue the university’s tradition of innovation and creative genius.

Gibson Fleck, a story of a young man searching for a place to call home, incorporates a blend of both folk rock and musical theatre idioms.  The show is sure to be an emotional rollercoaster, as Gibson is faced with the enduring uncertainty of the meaning of “home.” I have no doubt that the inspiring story of Gibson Fleck will take you into a world unbeknownst to you.

Gibson Fleck will run throughout the weekend in the Arthur Miller Theatre on North Campus.

Thursday, November 18th: 7:30 PM (SOLD OUT)

Friday, November 19th:  8:00 PM

Saturday, November 20th: 8:00 PM

Saturday, November 20th: 2:00 PM

Sunday, November 21st: 2:00 PM

Limited tickets available at the League Ticket Office: 734.764.2538

Cost: $24/$10 with student ID

Cheers