ON CAMPUS
THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, november 12, 2013
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rose art museum
PHOTOS BY RAFAELLA SCHOR/the Justice
CLASSY CREW: More than 700 students perused the current exhibits at the Rose Art Museum’s event on Thursday night.
Students enjoy art in a social atmosphere By eMILY WISHINGRAD justice EDITOR
On Thursday night, in the final days of Louis Louis week, the Student Committee for the Rose Art Museum, commonly known as SCRAM, in conjunction with Student Events, put on SCRAM Jam, their annual semi-formal event. When asked which student organizations—Student Events and SCRAM— were responsible for specific aspects of the evening, Rita Tobias ’14 said that it was entirely a collaborative effort between the two groups and that they worked together since the middle of September planning the event. SCRAM Jam provides students with an opportunity to enjoy the current exhibits in a social and interactive environment. Students were encouraged to walk around the exhibits but also to watch student performances, take pictures in a photo booth and dance with friends. The event featured artists disc jockey King Pleaxure (Ayan Sanyal ’14), Trevor Kafka ’15, a including an aerial dancer, and the Brandeis Improv Collective. In an interview with the Justice, Sarah Horn ’16, the leader of the student committee for the Rose Art Museum, said that this was the first time SCRAM Jam featured performances. The upper level was mostly filled with students as they waited in line to
get drinks and piled around the table with SCRAM Jam exclusive giveaways—cups that change color when filled with hot or cold liquids and vibrant red sunglasses. Members of the Improv Collective were also scattered around the first floor, improvising on wind instruments, an asset that created a mood of refinement. The music was very disjointed as the musicians were staged fairly far apart, playing independently of each other in a modernistic style. The modern music went well with the modernist art of Andy Warhol, Jack Whitten and others in the exhibits currently on view. The event attempted to present itself as classy and cultured and students adhered to that standard, appearing in semiformal attire. About a third of the way through the night, Kafka began his solo dance performance on the landing between the top and bottom floors. Kafka moved with incredible grace and strength as he slowly switched from pose to pose in a dance that had echoes of a figure skating routine. The next performance, also on the middle landing, was an improvisation show courtesy of the Music department’s Improv Collective. The group of musicians, with their instructor Prof. Thomas Hall (MUS), started to clap in unison and then transitioned into improvisation.
As one might imagine, the event could be potentially risky for the artwork but Student Events and SCRAM made sure that they had strict guidelines and security in place in order to protect the art. The food and beverages provided were not allowed in the galleries but only allowed in the passageway between the upper and lower levels. In addition, members of SCRAM along with Jennifer Yee, the patron services coordinator of the Rose, carefully monitored students to ensure that students did not get too close to the artwork. This concern was mostly relevant in the Minimal and More exhibit in which sculptures were staged in the middle of the floor in the path of foot traffic. Horn mentioned that there were a lot of limitations to the event due specifically to the Warhol exhibit. She mentioned that “given the fact that a lot of works in [the Warhol] exhibit were loans, [the event] technically didn’t have a dance floor. [The event was] allowed a DJ and… allowed to have activity in [the Foster Gallery] but it was really closely monitored. In years before, [SCRAM Jam] had a space that was designated as a dance floor, the lights were off.” SCRAM Jam gave students a way into the museum—some for the first time—and made the art more accessible.
UP ALL NIGHT: Some of the night’s fun activities, left: students smile in the photobooth; right: a student dances her heart out in the Foster Gallery to DJ King Pleaxure at the Rose Art Museum on Thursday evening.
cONCERT
Composer considers the viewpoint of the audience By NATE SHAFFER justice Staff writer
As part of a composer colloquium series, David Sanford, composer, band leader and professor of music at Mount Holyoke College gave a lecture in Slosberg Music Center. The topic of his talk, which took place on Friday afternoon, was “The Projected Audience.” Attendance at these talks is mandatory for students in the MFA and Ph.D. programs in composition. However, they are also free and open to the public. The tone of Sanford’s talk was as unpretentious and casual as could be—especially considering the lethal potential for dry personality and inscrutable musical choices. Perhaps this tone could be attributed to his background in jazz—jazz musicians are known to be “cool cats,” while “academic composers” favor ambiguity, if not inscrutability, in their work. As the talk’s topic had to do with the
audience itself, in presenting his pieces, Sanford discussed the particular ways in which he addressed the audience before and after performances. Typically this is done via program notes, short explanations of music to be read by audience members in a concert’s program. However, he began by addressing his own appearance: “When I was younger I used to look even more like Jay-Z,” he said, provoking laughs from the audience. “I could only do Public Enemy, but I could do it pretty well.” He was getting to his main point—the audience’s context for understanding music plays a significant role in their appreciation of a performance. Looking a certain way, or making very small statements about a piece can greatly influecne how audience members perceive a performance. Sanford cited an example. At a recent performance of his cello sonata 22.1, he was introduced as having a background in jazz and funk. How-
ever, the piece itself sounds nothing like jazz—it’s very much a part of the new music canon. Loosely defined, new music is “contemporary classical,” which doesn’t inherently mean much, though it tends to indicate a certain amount of inscrutability. Sanford explained that the application of this classification caused him to be described as “one lame funkster” by an especially rabid concert reviewer. This qualification of his background unfairly portrayed the objective of the piece; he wasn’t aiming for funk, this was a piece in the “classical” canon. Sanford then engaged more in the idea of how fractured our current audience is. At this point in time, we have unprecedented access to music of the past. In a sense, that minimizes the effective role of music being “invented” or composed today. He explained this idea by comparing today’s audience to audiences of the past. Those hearing Strauss’ symphonies for the first time understood
the context of the composition; they knew Strauss’ contemporaries, they had seen the concert from the previous week. They necessarily had more reference points that they could use to parse through Strauss’ musical choices. However, the listeners aren’t the only ones who have been decontextualized; composers of new music can insert themselves into any aesthetic, past or present, and comment as they see fit. It’s unreasonable to think an audience member will know whose music you were thinking of a composer can’t just assume a listener will “get it.” In short, our freedom to engage with past music effectively decontextualizes all new music. As Sanford said, “the listener is a bit impoverished in what they have [to go by in listening to music for the first time]—got to give them something … Personally, I don’t like people to say ‘this is going to be difficult, even if it is going to be like that.’” Sanford raised an important ques-
tion—what is a composer to say about his work? He came to a nihilistic view of program notes. Although the context plays a role in how the piece is understood, if the audience likes the piece, the program notes are genius and if they hate the music, the notes couldn’t matter any less. He encourages composers to minimize the mediation and let the music speak for itself. In an enjoyable way, Sanford’s music itself reflected the methodically presented intellectual insight of his talk. His pieces pleasingly combine the harmonic language of 12-tone classical music with the instrumentation, soloing and “grooving” of jazz. But despite how well Sanford’s music resonated with me, the take away from his talk was that in newly composed music, as in all art, universal understanding is impossible. Even if today’s audience is more fractured than they ever have been, the only thing for passionate creators to do is to keep pushing forward.