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R VOLuMe 15, iSSue 13
NOVeMBer 21, 2013
Uncle Vanya
Chekhov’s classic comes to life in Sheafer, pg. 4
Andrew Bird Pulaski album review, pg. 3
Kayhan Kalhor Persian musician comes to Duke, pg. 6
DUKe theater StUDieS
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ess recess editor’ s recess note ss recess r
R recess editors Thanksgivakkah...
I started bartending at the loop this semester, and as a result I’m on a quest to create the perfect playlist for my shifts. I’ve composed all kinds of playlists for myself and others— playlists of songs for studying, for long drives, for heartbreak, for pregaming, et cetera. And now I feel the need to create a new kind of playlist: a playlist for the loop Bar. I’ve wanted to make this playlist for a few weeks now, and I haven’t progressed too much. For the time being, we bartenders have relied on Spotify radio stations, which have been less than perfect. Therefore, our alternative is to curate a set of songs that more accurately captures the mood that we envision for this space in which our friends and fellow students congregate. In an ideal world, this probably means we would have multiple playlists tailored to a variety of conditions, but also in an ideal world, I would be acing all of my classes and getting nine hours of sleep every night. Playlists can be tricky, especially when there isn’t a substantial amount of thought that goes into making them. Depending on the purpose of a playlist, the choice to
Lauren Feilich................................................................................................tofurkey Jamie kessler.................................................................................................the o.c. MC Bousquette..................................................................................................yams Megan rise............................................................................Matthew McConaughey kathy Zhou....................................................................................Macy’s Day Parade
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eliza Bray.............................................................................manic pixie dream turkey Minshu Deng.....................................................................................................yams
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put certain songs on it can evoke specific memories or emotions, and ultimately the playlist is responsible for setting the mood. When a playlist doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do or is just bad, it is uncomfortable and embarrassing. A friend and I once took an impromptu bus trip to the north of Morocco, and seeing as her iPhone had just been stolen, I was left with the task of making an On-The-Go playlist on my 5th generation iPod. It was not the easiest thing to do; fielding through 30 GB of music with a click wheel gets pretty tedious. The end product was a hodgepodge of whatever struck my fancy. While there was no real thought or reason to making it in my mind, after about two hours of sitting on the bus and sharing headphones my friend told me she was sick of listening to my “dark fairy music.” I handed the iPod to her and let her make her own On-The-Go playlist, adding so many of the songs from my library that I had just passed over with the click wheel. normally I might be horrified or embarrassed to know that one of my playlists didn’t impress someone I like. You can imagine how terrifying it is to give a mix to a crush and then suffer through the paralyzing anxiety of awaiting their feedback. not quite the same context as creating a bar playlist, but in a sense I am so terrified by the pressure of creating a playlist that should please everyone that I can’t bring myself to start. On that bus in Morocco, I hadn’t really considered how to construct
The Chronicle an experience for the both of us with whatever weird playlist I made. I also completely neglected the fact that the hash from the day before was not helping my friend see the world in the happiest light at that moment in time. Playlist creation is a test of emotional intelligence: do you understand how people feel or what they want to feel? And how do you help construct the appropriate experience through music? I don’t want to listen to Bon Iver at a pregame. If I’m not at Ultra, please do not make me listen to dubstep. True, drunk students at a bar probably aren’t the hardest to please in terms of music: throw on some Top 40, Disney, HAIM (you know who you are), and we’re probably good to go. But obviously I find playlist-making to be an art form, and a piece of art, let alone a playlist, is never really finished in my eyes. It’s a curse. And I refuse to crowdsource this one, either. By no means am I a qualified music snob, but again, I am looking for more sophistication than the tipsy masses would suggest. This loop Bar playlist will be the perfect soundtrack to my senior year of bartending, to win after win by Duke Athletics, to the commiseration among those who have no idea what they’re doing after graduation and to the elation among those over-21 underclassmen who look forward to their remaining time at Duke. If only I could start it. —Minshu Deng
The Chronicle
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MUSIC
Special to the chronicle
MAGIK MARKERS Surrender to the Fantasy Drag City
by Gary Hoffman THE CHROnIClE
With “Surrender to the Fantasy,” Magik Markers demonstrate a clear departure from their last album, “Volodor Dance,” as they create a softer, more psychedelic sound with just as much creativity and originality. Magik Markers is a noise rock band from Hartford, Connecticut that has been active since 2001. The band owes a lot to major influences like Sonic Youth for both their sound and their success. In fact, their debut album was released off Thurston Moore’s label and lee Ranaldo produced their second. Still, despite obvious ties to earlier noise rock, Magik Markers combines modern effects with psychedelic energy to create a unique sound on “Surrender to the Fantasy.” Although the beginning of the album seems like little more than noise-infused pop, the second half has a much more minimalistic and hauntingly introspective feel.
MUSIC
ANDREW BIRD
Special to the chronicle
I Want To See Pulaski at Night Grimsey records
by Kathy Zhou THE CHROnIClE
After “Break It Yourself” and “Hands of Glory,” Andrew Bird has taken a new route back to his hometown, Chicago, and to one street in particular: ‘Pulaski at night.’ The song weaves through an eclectic, and tentative, medley of senses: the nostalgia of something lost, the comfort in familiarity, the melancholy of never fully knowing and the hope in starting over. “I Want to See Pulaski at night” is a heartrending and rolling cinematic score, threaded together by the string-oriented themes that meld into or surface throughout ‘Pulaski at night.’ These aren’t necessarily new tricks, either. It’s quintessential Andrew Bird, but presented in a new and more layered way; it’s gentler, revealing itself piece by piece. The plucking, whistling and harmonic double stops settle us into a familiar soundscape before Bird slowly introduces additional elements. Bird hits us with piano accompaniments, resounding timbers and rhythmic violin strumming. It’s deliberately fashioned to keep us on edge, and
The first track, ‘Crebs,’ sounds more quirky and iconoclastic than thoughtful or interesting as excessive amounts of reverb for the vocals and heavy distortion on the guitars combine with the standard and unoriginal changes. likewise, ‘Mirrorless’ begins with a cutely bittersweet guitar hook that sets the tone of the song. Although these weren’t the most interesting pieces, they provided a solid start for the album. The most well done facets of the first tracks featured lazy, drifting and sometimes atonal guitar solos that foreshadowed the second half of the album. The second half starts at ‘American Sphinx Face.’ It features an ethereal drone and heavy bass line that create a darkly psychedelic environment. This foundation combines with Ambrogio’s psychotic improvisation and lyrics about “lilly’s lilies” and “yellow scrolls” to create a truly sublime atmosphere. Peter nolan borrowed a friend’s Mellotron for the next track, ‘Young.’ With this song, the band creates a bittersweet feeling of peaceful acceptance without sounding cliché or overdrawn. The rest of the album keeps this atmospheric quality while incorporating more of the anger and energy seen in their earlier work. “Surrender to the Fantasy” showcases Magik Markers’s trip into psychedelia. Although some parts are soft and flowery, these moments lend more austerity and beauty to the darker, more minimalistic parts. The band sounds very similar to noise rock predecessors, but “Surrender to the Fantasy” indicates a maturation from the angry, fast-paced noise punk at their roots.
once again, Bird pulls at us, affecting a plaintive beauty as he pulls his bow. The EP starts off warily and sounds almost foreign. In the first track, ‘Ethio Invention no. 1,’ Bird embeds East and Southeast Asian sounds in his pizzicato and the tinnier inflections. Bird flutters around a theme, dilettantish as he introduces us to the hazy story behind “Pulaski.” When the layers are set in place, he continues onto ‘lit From Underneath’ and ‘logan’s loop,’ two tracks with the warmth and quicker pace to which we’re grown accustomed. By the time ‘Pulaski at night’ is over, we’ve taken our breaths and settled down into the grittier double stops and chiming single piano notes of ‘Hover I.’ Underlying the rustic sound is a subtle and delayed frenzy that blends into ‘Hover II.’ The track quivers with layered plucking, harking to the EP’s opening theme while grounding it in a deeper, and more resolute, tonality. There’s a sense of movement—it wavers, but the intention remains firm. The chorusing layers flourish and fade beneath the high-pitched and magnetic violin melody, reminiscent of Bird’s 2007 ‘Yawny at the Apocalypse.’ The last track, ‘Ethio Invention no. 2,’ starts with muffled, ambient noise before it tapers back into the plucking that started off the album. It’s more urgent now, and much sooner than in the previous tracks, Bird loops in complexities. Soon he’s strumming, fiddling and throwing in harmonics and trills. He’s familiarizing us with something new. The elements are distinct, yet they coalesce into a busy soundscape by the end, slowly distorting underneath Bird’s sparse melodies until coming to the hushed close. As always, we’re left yearning.
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FILM
Before its large-scale release, there was already tremendous hype for “Blue is the Warmest Color.” In May, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where, for the first time, the Palme D’Or was awarded not only to the director Abdellatif Kechiche (“The Secret of the Grain”) but also the two lead actresses, léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, an unprecedented but ultimately justified move. Exarchopoulos and Seydoux, respectively playing the main character Adèle and the love interest Emma, were both outstanding, displaying so much passion and emotion that the film is sometimes uncomfortable to watch. Both actresses later admitted that the process of making the film was horrible due to how much Kechiche made them give emotionally at all times, even forcing them to physically hit each other and refusing to choreograph the sex scenes. The movie chronicles the life of Adèle, who starts off as a confused high school student not content with her boyfriend and other friends. Eventually she meets and falls in love with the somewhat older, blue-haired artist, Emma. The rest of the movie follows Adèle’s experiences with love, identity, confusion, heartbreak and loneliness. The cinematography by Sofian El Fani is absolutely stunning. Similarly, but less obtrusively than in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Bleu,” the film is filled with the color blue. Blue is prevalent in many obvious and symbolic ways, such as the color of Emma’s hair, and in much more subtle aspects such as a deep blue nail polish or a bright blue shirt worn by someone walking in the background. All of the blue creates a mesmerizing, dream-like atmosphere that is terrifically easy to get lost in. While blue is important in the film, the French title of the film, “la Vie D’ Adèle: Chapitres 1 & 2,” seems to be more appropriate. The movie is about so much more than the various potential interpretations of all the blue in the film; it is about Adèle during two chapters of her life— potentially the pre-Emma and Emma chapters. The film is not concerned with unimportant and unnecessary plot events, often skipping over them, but rather focuses on events that are important to Adèle emotionally. After a crucial moment in which a fight breaks out one morning before
school, we never see Adèle return to her school, but we soon see her working her dream job without any intermediary explanation. Part of the brilliance behind Exarchopoulos’s performance is how well she is able to tell the story with just her face, in all its aspects: lips, nose, eyes, cheeks—even how she puts up and down her hair—work in harmony to express what Adèle is feeling and experiencing. Her lips alone are able to tell the entire story as they quiver, kiss, laugh, eat or remain motionless and slightly agape, almost as well as Maria Falconetti’s eyes are able to in “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” One of the greatest aspects of the film is its ability to feel completely familiar and radically new at the same time. The film deals with love and growing up but does so in a way that is far more immersive and realistic than many films dare to go. Walking out of the three-hour film is more reminiscent of waking up from a detailed blue-tinted dream than leaving a movie. As expected, there has been much controversy over the extended and explicit sex scenes in the movie. These scenes are not pornographic filth as some deem them, but are integral for Kechiche to accomplish his goal of portraying the process of growing up and falling in love. Unlike most sex scenes that serve simply as a means to the end of plot development, the scenes here are ends in themselves to explore the role of sex and intimacy in a relationship and how they diverge from public life. Throughout the film, Kechiche is able to assert the film’s relevance and importance while mirroring what is happening through Adèle’s relationship to literature. In the beginning, Adèle is in a class that prophetically discusses “la Vie de Marianne” and how it relates to the nature of love and the idea of love at first sight, showing art’s relatability to life. In the middle of the film, Emma and Adèle discuss Sartre when Emma says that she was big on Sartre in high school since he allowed her to accept who she was, showing art’s ability to affirm and comfort. Finally, near the end of the film, in what can be seen as a cry of victory from Kechiche, Adèle reads a poem to her class of first graders that ends by praising the almost limitless power wielded exclusively by the artist. A film largely about a homosexual couple, especially when the director and lead actresses are heterosexual, is bound to elicit scrutiny over political incorrectness or simple naiveté. There are certain faults with the film, such as Kechiche’s disappointingly strong “male gaze,” objectifying women by portraying them as a set of body parts as opposed to a human being. That said, it is refreshing that while a large part of the film deals with Adèle falling in love with another woman, Emma, the film is able to resist being defined by that fact and does not posit a cursory, black-andwhite view of sexuality.
“Come back to Chicago, city of light,” hums Bird. He’ll “paint you a picture,” “write you a story” and “send you a postcard,” but he realizes—a little sadly—that he can never fully capture his home. So instead, he picks up what he can, sculpts them together and starts over. Andrew Bird pulls us into his continuous, universal
back and forth: from the familiar into the unfamiliar and back. We move to home and away from home, endlessly feeling out our paths to a person, place or dream. From the beginning to the (momentary) end, there’s a persisting tenuousness that has finally started to burn again, erratic and uncertain, but jubilant.
Special to the chronicle
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR Sundance Selects Directed By Abdellatif Kechiche
by Brad Lenz THE CHROnIClE
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The Chronicle
Uncle Vanya brings frustrations
DUKe theater StUDieS
One of the most unique features of the play is the double casting of several of the characters. Director Jeff Storer said that having multiple actors play one character also allows for a broader interpretation of the characters, separating them from the actors. he noted that this cast in particular is incredibly diverse, which brings many different regionalisms to the play.
by Raisa Chowdhury THE CHROnIClE
DUKe theater StUDieS
resident dramaturg Jules Odendahl-James helped the cast research and explore the historical context of the play.
Check your preconceived notions of Chekhov at the Sheafer Theater door. The theater department’s production of “Uncle Vanya” aims to give Anton Chekhov’s classic an upgrade that brings the woes of 1800s middle-class Russians to life for a modern audience. The play opened last Thursday and will continue through Sunday, nov. 24. Over the course of roughly two hours, the cast shows the happenings on a rural estate when a professor and his much younger second wife Yelena come to visit, unable to afford their city lives any longer. The estate belongs to Sonya, the professor’s daughter by his first wife, and is managed by her Uncle Vanya, the titular main character. The local country doctor who Sonya is in love with, Astrov, as well as Vanya both become infatuated with Yelena. The play follows the characters as they deal with their frustrations. Resident dramaturg Jules Odendahl-James helped the cast research and explore the historical context of the play. She said it’s “the perfect Thanksgiving story” that anyone with a family can relate to. “It’s about a family that has all its positive and negative dynamics being sort of crammed together in a space and having to live with each other,” Odendahl-James said. “Over time, all those little problems come up to the surface and say all those things that have been pent up inside.” She added that though the characters are in their 40s or even older, the questions raised are still relevant to 20-somethings. “Have I missed the boat? Did I make the right choice? Have I fallen in love with the right person? If I haven’t fallen in love yet, will I do that?” were just a few examples given by Odendahl-James. When the play starts, it starts in chaos. One feels out of place as the cast walks about, all simultaneously delivering disjoint lines and
making noise. It takes a few minutes to realize the play has started and the lack of costuming at the beginning feels anachronistic. Odendahl-James noted that the play extends beyond period costumes, instead highlighting the interplay among the costume, design and movements, which creates the feel of the play. “We are attentive to the props that are needed, but this is not an exactly faithful representation of a country home in 19th century Russia,” Odendahl-James said. “[It’s] the late summer to early fall world and the temperature and climate and the type of people are infused through everything.” One of the most unique features of the play is the double casting of several of the characters. The four main characters in the script are each split between two actors. Director Jeff Storer, professor of the practice of theater studies, experimented with double casting in one of his theater classes last semester and thought it would be a good for “Uncle Vanya” as well. In addition, with a lean cast of only nine written in the play, Storer wanted to incorporate as many students as possible. Storer added that having multiple actors play one character also allows for a broader interpretation of the characters, separating them from the actors. He noted that this cast in particular is incredibly diverse, which brings many different regionalisms to the play. For example, one of the actresses who plays Yelena is from Arkansas while the other is from Zimbabwe. Senior Ashley long, the Arkansan who plays Yelena, noted that one of the biggest challenges of double casting was picking up the play when one hasn’t fully experienced all of the emotions that have happened in the interim. Senior nick Prey, who plays one of the Astrovs, said the experience of splitting a character with junior Mike Myers was new and interesting. “My natural impulse would be very different
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of Chekhov’s Russia to Sheafer from Mike’s and the way we interpreted and played the character. I started taking things from him and he started taking things from me and it was a combined process,” Prey said. “I honestly don’t know anymore how I would have played the character if I were doing it on my own.” Sophomore Faye Goodwin, who played one of the Sonyas, said that she was initially concerned there might be a certain competitiveness between actors sharing roles, but found the collaborative process to be meaningful. “It almost took out that immature student actor element in thinking that the character is about you,” Goodwin said. “It’s not about you. It’s about the character.” Throughout the play, both actors in each role were often on stage with one spectating while the other delivered lines. Goodwin noted that while the character changes can throw the audience off, it also gives them more freedom. “The best part about the weird stuff we’re doing, the kind of unconventional meta stuff, is that it can be interpreted by the audiences,” Goodwin said. “As long as the audience is thinking or feeling anything, whether it inspires them or depresses them... they related.” The character of Sonya in particular draws on the watchers’ heartstrings. A single woman, she runs the entire estate while her Uncle
mopes though his midlife crisis, and yet has no power over the future of the estate or the man that she loves. Junior Cynthia Wang, who played the other Sonya, emphasized that while the play encompasses a lot of sadness, there is also a great deal of comedy and she encouraged audiences not to suppress their laughter. Prey added that the play is not just the four main characters. “One of the things we’ve really discovered about the play is that it really is about the ensemble,” Prey said. “I haven’t been this close to a cast in a while.” The score of the play was written by Bart Matthews, Trinity ’96, who has worked with Storer on several productions in the past. “I just went away and wrote a bunch of music,” Matthews said. Although he didn’t formally study Russian tunes as preparation, he tried to give it a Eastern European feel. Matthews said that he incorporated blues in the music to reflect the sorrow that so many of the characters experience. “This play is no exception but [Chekhov’s] most popular plays dwell a lot on the misery of the human condition of wanting things you can’t have,” he said. “There’s a lot of angst around being miserable and not being able to do anything about it.” He added that several things changed from the inception of the play to its delivery on stage. While Matthews has a few lines in the
play himself, he was originally supposed to play the role of Waffles, one of the smaller but perhaps most endearing characters, who both acts and plays music in several of the scenes. But when first-year Rory Eggleston auditioned, Storer rearranged things because Eggleston was so “perfect” for the part. The score also incorporated the melody of a Japanese lullaby that originated from junior Jaya Powell’s audition. Powell plays the part of a stage manager and sings the haunting lullaby partway through the play. Matthews noted that other pieces played throughout the production also have hints of the lullaby. Powell and Eggleston, as well as several of the other cast members, double as musicians. “He wanted to pull from as many different resources as he could both in terms of how he approached the acting and how he approached the music,” Matthews said of Storer’s strategy in bringing the play together. Storer emphasized that theater is a form that is collaborative and is particularly wellsuited for teaching students about the human condition. “The arts are a remarkable way to remind us of our humanity and to enhance our ability to be the best communicators we can be,” Storer said. “Uncle Vanya” runs Nov. 17, 23 and 24 in Sheafer Theater. For tickets and more information, visit http://theaterstudies.duke.edu/multimedia/ uncle-vanya
Duke Theater Studies Over the course of roughly two hours, the cast of “Uncle Vanya” shows the happenings on a rural estate when a professor and his much younger second wife Yelena come to visit, unable to afford their city lives any longer.
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The Chronicle
Persian musician crosses cultures by Sid Gopinath The Chronicle
On Nov. 21, Persian musician Kayhan Kalhor will perform with Ali Bahrami Fard at the Nasher Museum of Art. This performance will expose audiences to Kalhor’s improvisational traditional Persian music. Kalhor plays the spike fiddle, which is often described as the great-greatgrandfather of the violin and is played as an “upright fiddle.” With a round, hollow soundbox and skin soundboard, the spike fiddle looks and sounds unlike anything in Western music. Kalhor attributed the distinct reedy sound quality of the instrument to its unique design. “[Kalhor] is one of the real instrumental masters of the world who is able to speak forcefully out of his own tradition but also collaborate with musicians out of other traditions,” Aaron Greenwald, director of Duke Performances, said. This performance was arranged as a direct collaboration with the Nasher’s exhibition, Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art, which displays the Islamic artwork of Doris Duke’s home in Hawaii. “We are trying to collaborate more actively [with the Nasher], and this seemed like a natural one,” Greenwald said. “This was the kind of presentation that we could make effectively and somewhat efficiently in the Nasher’s auditorium.” Kalhor was brought in as the perfect musical complement to this exhibit. “Kayhan had been an artist in residence at Shangri-La. He had spent time there making work and giving concerts, so there is a direct connection there,” Greenwald explained. This direct connection allows for Kalhor to give audience members a unique, first-person perspective on the Shangri-La exhibit. Greenwald sees this as particularly important because of the numerous misconceptions about Iranian culture. “I think we have sometimes not such a nuanced view of the world. We think, ‘Iran—that must be an incredibly culturally repressive place,’ but Tehran in particular
has been a place where there has been a lot of cultural richness and vibrancy,” he said. While he is now thought to be one of the masters of his instrument, Kalhor had rather modest beginnings. “I lived in a family who loved music, but we didn’t have any professional musicians in the family,” Kalhor said. “Periodically, I saw [the spike fiddle] on TV and in little shows, and I just fell in love with the sound of it.” This love drove him to pursue a career in music. At the time, this was an impressive feat because there were only a few old masters available to teach the instrument. But this changed after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as many Iranians sought out their cultural roots again. “I think music benefitted from [the revolution], and there was a revitalization of music, art and culture. At the same time, a lot of different kinds of music— western classical music and western pop music—were banned. A lot of Iranian classical artists had to feed all of the TV stations, all of the radio stations,” Kalhor said, explaining the effect of the 1979 Revolution on Iranian and traditional Persian culture. “Nowadays, thousands and thousands of young players pursue these instruments.” “Persian traditional or classical music is very, very old,” Amir Rezvani, Duke psychiatry professor and President of the Persian Art Center in North Carolina, said. “It is rooted in a history of five thousand years. All of these instruments, when played together, give you a feeling of history and culture. It is music different than whatever you hear from pop music.” And, unlike modern Western pop music, no two Persian traditional music concerts will be the same. “Persian classical music is based on improvisation and composition,” Rezvani explained. “Based on what you’re getting form the audience in the moment and the feeling, you improvise. One concert is different from another concert.” Kahlor doesn’t seek to emphasize these divisions between genres of music or
Special to the chronicle
Persian musician Kayhan Kalhor will perform with Ali Bahrami Fard at the Nasher Museum of Art.
regions of the world. Instead, he tries to show the similarities and the ways in which these groups can work together. “I really don’t think this is very important to talk about because music is a kind of social knowledge to the world because all of the nations have it and love it,” he began dismissively. “They all reflect an expression and a way of people expressing themselves in different cultures through instruments and through playing different instruments.” This view may be informed by his deep understanding of both Persian and Western culture. As someone who has studied in and lived in Iran and Canada, he is able to work these two seemingly competing musical styles into his work. “By combining these two—Persian culture and Persian music and Western culture and Western music—Kalhor has been able to cross cultural borders with his work. If you ask me, that is probably one of his missions,” said Rezvani. While this may be the case, Kalhor
sees his mission at Duke and at other performances as much more personal. If others find that his music unites people across cultural borders, then it was because of the interpretation of the music by the listeners. “The objective is to reach somewhere, to experience something you haven’t experienced before, and then let other people know about it and try to share it with them,” he said. Ultimately, though, Kalhor wants to be able to deeply connect with his audience. “I’m sure there is something in the music that reaches somebody’s soul or some part of somebody’s soul. This makes music meaningful. I’m sure whoever comes to this show is open enough to want to experience that.” Kayhan Kalhor will perform a sold-out show at the Nasher Auditorium on Nov. 21. From 3 to 4:30 p.m. that afternoon, he will give a guided tour of the Shangri-La exhibit. For more information, visit http:/dukeperformances. duke.edu.