The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Fall 2010 Press Book: Select Previews and Reviews

2010-2011 SEASON

FALL 2010 PRESS BOOK: SELECT PREVIEWS AND REVIEWS

Where it’s more than a great performance

Greetings!

We are pleased to share a collection of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's "Select Previews & Reviews," fall 2010 edition. The coverage we received throughout this semester was extremely gratifying, from the world premiere of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's The Matter of Origins, a project commissioned by the Center, to visiting artists with local ties, including the Post-Classical Ensemble, Heather Henson's IBEX Puppetry, and Daniel Phoenix Singh.

We also enjoyed the coverage of productions presented by the resident academic units, including the UM School of Music's National Orchestral Institute, the Maryland Opera Studios' staging of Florencia en el Amazonas, and the UM School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies' presentations of Enchanted April and Am I Black Enough Yet? Thank you for your ongoing support of the Center. We look forward to seeing you in 2011.

Sincerely,

Susan S. Farr Executive Director

OVERVIEW In an effort to expand its media coverage – both in terms of quantity and scope – the Center pursues several goals each season: to garner more media interest in engagement events; to highlight commissioned projects and themes connected to them; to seek out new and alternative media sources; and to strive for more coverage of our resident academic units.

The following pages illustrate the Center's success in meeting our goals and the wide range of favorable coverage we received in a variety of media outlets for performances – as well as select commentary from our "You're the Critic" initiative, which provides patrons with an opportunity to submit feedback on their experiences at the Center.

TABLE OF CONTENTS  LIZ LERMAN DANCE EXCHANGE : THE MATTER OF ORIGINS……………6 VISITING ARTISTS WITH LOCAL CONNECTIONS………………………24 - POST-CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE - IBEX PUPPETRY - DANIEL PHOENIX SINGH  ACADEMIC UNITS……………………41 - NATIONAL ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTE - ENCHANTED APRIL - UM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA - AM I BLACK ENOUGH YET? - SCHUMANN FESTIVAL - FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS  OTHER NOTABLE COVERAGE…………73 - SEASON PREVIEWS - WINTER BIG BAND SHOWCASE - HONORS CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT - SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE - LAURIE ANDERSON - CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE  YOU'RE THE CRITIC……………………91

LIZ LERMAN DANCE EXCHANGE:

THE MATTER OF ORIGINS

PHOTO BY: JOHN BORSTEL

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LIZ LERMAN DANCE EXCHANGE

– THE MATTER OF ORIGINS

We kicked off the season with the world premiere of The Matter of Origins, a new work by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange that blended the beauty and expression of modern dance with concepts of science and physics in a two-act performance that blurred the lines between performer and audience.

Commissioned by the Center, this production afforded the Center the opportunity to engage our media contacts with an extremely unique hook, expand our reach into media outlets unconventional for an arts organization, and further solidify our status as one of the top presenters in this densely populated market, with a special emphasis on learning, growth and exploration.

LIZ LERMAN DANCE EXCHANGE

– THE MATTER OF ORIGINS "Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's The Matter of Origins will debut at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland – inspired by Lerman's meeting a group of physicists who conduct research at CERN, the work explores the outer limits of the universe and the inner spaces of our own minds…"

- American Institute of Physics AIP Matters 8/16/2010

"Once again, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is pushing the boundaries of art and movement with Liz Lerman's The Matter of Origins, where dance and physics collide as the Dance Exchange explores the origins of matter in an evening of equal parts performance, conversation and floor show."

- Carolyn Kelemen Howard County Times 9/9/2010

9/22/2010

SCIENCE IN MOTION - The Diamondba…

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SCIENCE IN MOTION Dance troupe combines tech and theater at CSPAC

By Andrew Freedman Friday, September 10, 2010 CSPAC wants to start off the year with a bang. But not just any bang &- a Big Bang.

A new dance piece based on research in particle physics, "The Matter of Origins," put on by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, will have its world premiere at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center tonight.

Jaclyn Borowski/The Diamondback

The show's choreographer, Liz Lerman, a university alumna and member of the Alumni Hall of Fame, explained The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange rehearses “The Matter of Origins” the mix between science and art was not unusual.

"Some of the overlaps have to do with the nature of how you ask questions," Lerman said. "[It's] how you investigate and research, how passionate and to some extent, how both artists and scientists pursue a question for long periods of time pursue a question for long periods of time without any resolution."

While developing the piece, Lerman and some of her team visited the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva, which Lerman called "a testament to a peace project."

performance in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Jaclyn Borowski/The Diamondback

The team was inspired by the many languages spoken there in order to solve technological issues. One member of the company was allowed to dance through the laboratory, including in the tunnel where the particle accelerator is located.

"This kind of investment in creation is exactly what a

diamondbackonline.com/…/science-in-…

Jaclyn Borowski/The Diamondback

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9/22/2010

SCIENCE IN MOTION - The Diamondba…

"This kind of investment in creation is exactly what a research university does," said Paul Brohan, director of artistic initiatives at CSPAC, calling Lerman "widethinking" by noting her credentials in performance and academics.

Eleven dancers, including 2007 graduate Sarah Levitt, who majored in dance, will perform the piece.

"The idea of collisions is something we've been working with," Levitt said. "The idea of beginnings and endings. It's coming at the movement from a different place, and that's always interesting to me."

Act one of the show will be a dance performance in the Kay Theatre. Lerman added that video and other multimedia will be incorporated into the piece.

Lerman and Levitt were both quick to mention that "The Matter of Origins" is about more than science.

Jaclyn Borowski/The Diamondback

"It is a story about beginnings," Levitt said. "That is part of it. Although it's about physics and we're looking at, loosely, the beginning of how things started on Earth."

Lerman said the science involved in the piece is informational but also metaphorical. She explained that particles, collisions and energy are not necessarily used to teach, but to explore dance in new ways.

Act two of the show will seat audience members at tables near the Kay Theatre, where they will be served tea and chocolate cake. The cake will be made from a recipe of Edith Warner, a tea house owner who cooked for scientists in the Manhattan Project.

"I got very interested in people who are sort of witnesses to history," Lerman said. "I mean, there she was … It's interesting to think about what was she listening to when she was serving all of that."

The second act will incorporate more dancing but also allow for audience response. Lerman said a university physicist and a dancer playing the role of Warner will preside over each tearoom.

Dancers will act as "provocateurs" who will answer questions and move conversation along.

Levitt expressed her excitement about returning to the campus for the show's world premiere.

"I got to perform in the Kay as a student, but getting to come back as a professional with the Dance Exchange &- it's huge for me," Levitt said. "And I'm just so happy the premiere is happening at Maryland because I really loved this school and I got so much out of the program." diamondbackonline.com/…/science-in-…

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9/22/2010

SCIENCE IN MOTION - The Diamondba…

Both alumnae were excited to return to their alma mater and provided reasons for current students to attend the premiere.

"You're gonna be thinking and feeling and wondering and seeing," Lerman said. "And then you get some chocolate cake. It sounds like a great night to me!"

"The Matter of Origins" will open today at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Kay Theatre in CSPAC. Both shows are sold out, but there will be a standby line in the lobby 30 minutes before the show. afreedman at umdbk dot com CSPAC wants to start off the year with a bang. But not just any bang &- a Big Bang.

A new dance piece based on research in particle physics, "The Matter of Origins," put on by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, will have its world premiere at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center tonight.

The show's choreographer, Liz Lerman, a university alumna and member of the Alumni Hall of Fame, explained the mix between science and art was not unusual.

"Some of the overlaps have to do with the nature of how you ask questions," Lerman said. "[It's] how you investigate and research, how passionate and to some extent, how both artists and scientists pursue a question for long periods of time pursue a question for long periods of time without any resolution."

While developing the piece, Lerman and some of her team visited the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva, which Lerman called "a testament to a peace project."

The team was inspired by the many languages spoken there in order to solve technological issues. One member of the company was allowed to dance through the laboratory, including in the tunnel where the particle accelerator is located.

"This kind of investment in creation is exactly what a research university does," said Paul Brohan, director of artistic initiatives at CSPAC, calling Lerman "wide-thinking" by noting her credentials in performance and academics.

Eleven dancers, including 2007 graduate Sarah Levitt, who majored in dance, will perform the piece.

"The idea of collisions is something we've been working with," Levitt said. "The idea of beginnings and endings. It's coming at the movement from a different place, and that's always interesting to me."

Act one of the show will be a dance performance in the Kay Theatre. Lerman added that video and other multimedia will be incorporated into the piece. diamondbackonline.com/…/science-in-…

3/4

9/22/2010

SCIENCE IN MOTION - The Diamondba…

Lerman and Levitt were both quick to mention that "The Matter of Origins" is about more than science.

"It is a story about beginnings," Levitt said. "That is part of it. Although it's about physics and we're looking at, loosely, the beginning of how things started on Earth."

Lerman said the science involved in the piece is informational but also metaphorical. She explained that particles, collisions and energy are not necessarily used to teach, but to explore dance in new ways.

Act two of the show will seat audience members at tables near the Kay Theatre, where they will be served tea and chocolate cake. The cake will be made from a recipe of Edith Warner, a tea house owner who cooked for scientists in the Manhattan Project.

"I got very interested in people who are sort of witnesses to history," Lerman said. "I mean, there she was … It's interesting to think about what was she listening to when she was serving all of that."

The second act will incorporate more dancing but also allow for audience response. Lerman said a university physicist and a dancer playing the role of Warner will preside over each tearoom.

Dancers will act as "provocateurs" who will answer questions and move conversation along.

Levitt expressed her excitement about returning to the campus for the show's world premiere.

"I got to perform in the Kay as a student, but getting to come back as a professional with the Dance Exchange &- it's huge for me," Levitt said. "And I'm just so happy the premiere is happening at Maryland because I really loved this school and I got so much out of the program."

Both alumnae were excited to return to their alma mater and provided reasons for current students to attend the premiere.

"You're gonna be thinking and feeling and wondering and seeing," Lerman said. "And then you get some chocolate cake. It sounds like a great night to me!"

"The Matter of Origins" will open today at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Kay Theatre in CSPAC. Both shows are sold out, but there will be a standby line in the lobby 30 minutes before the show. afreedman at umdbk dot com

diamondbackonline.com/…/science-in-…

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Maryland Community Newspapers Online

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010

Dance performance to focus on tiny things, big story UM show will explore the origins of the universeby Dennis Carter | Special to The Gazette

Leah L. Jones/The Gazette

Thomas Dwyer (right) of Taneytown and Ben Wegman of Washington, D.C., during the rehearsal of Liz Lerman's Dance Exchange "The Matter of Origins."

The smallest particles in the known universe are at the center of Liz Lerman's show at the University of Maryland, College Park, this month. Lerman's Takoma Park-based Dance Exchange will premiere "The Matter of Origins" Friday and follow with a Sunday performance at the university's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Lerman's group of dancers will take audience members through a multimedia dancecentric tour of the universe's birth in the first act of the performance, which includes visits to Marie Curie's laboratory and the Hubble Space Telescope. The second act will center on a conversation with Edith Warner, a New Mexico woman who famously hosted atomic scientists from the Manhattan Project in her tea room.

The performances will kick off Clarice Smith's fall season, which features two more dance performances Nov. 4 and 5 and Dec. 3 and 4 before the end of the year. The mysterious complexities of matter became Lerman's artistic muse after a visit to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, in Geneva.

"They want to know how it all started and I think that's a good question," said Lerman, a Baltimore resident, referring to CERN scientists' work with instruments like the Large Hadron Collider, a $10 billion particle accelerator that allows research of the most minuscule particles. "They're trying to answer a question that seems unanswerable ... and I think that's beautiful."

In conversations with CERN physicists, Lerman said one question cropped up again and again — What would happen to the various cultural stories seeking to explain the origins of the universe if CERN scientists are successful in their attempts to recreate the Big Bang that started it all?

"It made me think a lot about the difference between religion and science and the origins stories that every society has," she said. "Maybe those stories emerged from observations and experiments, like they do in science. I just wondered if these religion-based stories served the same purpose in ancient cultures as science does today."

"I'm hoping that when people come to the concert they'll step out of time and give themselves a little moment to consider these questions," Lerman said.

"The Matter of Origins" will end with scenes from Warner's tea room in Los Alamos, where American scientists developed nuclear weapons during World War II. Silver Spring resident Martha Wittman, who plays Currie, said incorporating the story of Warner, a modest teahouse owner who became associated with some of the most consequential scientific research, personalizes a story that can be too big to digest. "[Warner] is someone we can identify with. ... It's much easier to understand the relationship this ordinary person had [with Manhattan Project scientists,]" said Wittman, who at 75, is one of the oldest dancers in the performance group. "She could definitely sense that something very big was happening just up the hill from where she was."

The conversations, Lerman said, will show audiences that science is unavoidable, especially for a woman living in the shadows of a nuclear arsenal.

"It's an interesting sub-story and it's this idea that science is happening all around us and we're all living it, whether we know it every day or we don't," she said.

Dancing Physics and Society: The Matter of Origins September 13, 2010

By Olivia Fermi

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange - The Matter of Origins. Photo: George Hagegeorge © 2010 Delightfully, every so often, the Neutron Trail leads me into realms artistic. When I heard about Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange new work The Matter of Origins, with its exploration through dance of the interplay between atomic and high energy physics in society, I contacted her with great excitement. She responded in kind and invited me as a guest to the world premiere this past weekend at the University of Maryland.

The time depicted in the first minutes of the performance is 1943-1945 and World War II is raging. The newly discovered potential of atomic energy poses a threat and an opportunity.

Reasoning the enemy could develop an atomic weapon, the US government setup the Manhattan Project. The hub was in Los Alamos, NM where scientists and their families lived on a mesa (hill) within a strict container of secrecy.

Act 1 opens symbolically with a teacup from Los Alamos. Here, my grandfather Enrico Fermi was second in command under Robert Oppenheimer working to solve the most difficult problems associated with developing the first atomic bombs. Projected unto the encircling backdrop are a teacup and its round saucer viewed from above and enlarged far beyond human scale. Within the teacup a person rearranges every day objects. On stage, the dancers echo and expand the vision, moving dramatically with real teacups and saucers.

Universe in a Teacup Where did this universe in a teacup come from?

Imagine the strangeness of an elite — many of the world’s top physicists — living in confinement for the sake of secrecy in the most rustic conditions. They worked long hours under intense pressure. As much as the scientists relished the work, they needed respite too. Edith Warner served them tea and chocolate cake in the town of Los Alamos, outside the secret fenced-in compound; and hosted sought after formal dinners for the physicists and their wives.

From its beginnings in a teacup, The Matter of Origins explores themes at once universal and human: how we measure, how we fathom, how we relate to one another and to the cosmos.

The dancers are dynamic, emotive and precise in their interpretations of meaning inherent in this work. The play between the choreography, the ever-changing set and the score is wonderfully engaging. The teacup fades and becomes a scene of Los Alamos itself. I recognize a slide from my own Neutron Trail – Elemental presentation (below).

Sign at Oak Ridge, TN Manhattan Project facility where uranium for the first atomic bombs was purified. Photo: Life/Ed Clark, 1945

Radiance of Radium – Mystery of Dark Matter The scene, the score and the dancers shift to an evocative portrayal of Marie Curie and her primitive yet successful attempts at purifying radioactive radium (top photo).

The Matter of Origins fittingly begins with the early history of atomic science. But there’s lots of 21st century frontiers in the production. Thanks to the strength of the troupe and two years of creative rehearsals in consultation with physicists Drew Baden, William Dorland and Chris Monroe, sections on high energy physics, the big bang and dark matter are each distinct and memorable.

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange - The Matter of Origins. Photo: John Borstel © 2010 At the end of Act 1, while the company takes their bows, we’re applauding enthusiastically with hollering to be heard. But it’s only intermission.

Act 2 – Tea for Real We line up to enter one of three tea rooms. Each tea room has 15 – 20 round banquet tables draped with white table clothes. We stand ceremonially around the four walls until instructed by our tea hostess/dancer Edith Warner to step forward and take the first empty seat. The ceremony naturally turns walking into a physics experiment about statistical motion.

At each table is a provocateur, who stimulates conversation. Our provocateur invites us to introduce ourselves and to pour tea for our neighbors. Soon we seem to be inside a Broadway

musical as dancing waiters and waitresses pirouette to our tables laden with platters covered by white clothes.

“That must be the chocolate cake — Edith Warner’s famed recipe. Did my grandmother like it?,” I wonder to myself.

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange - The Matter of Origins. Photo: George Hagegeorge © 2010 But no, announced by a triumphant fanfare, each server unveils an iPad (photo above). We watch a video clip — a moment from Edith’s diary on the day of the atomic bomb test — and then discuss it around the table.

The next punctuation is the serving of Edith’s delicately mocha-tinged, dark chocolate cake.

Edith Warner dances with a real physicist. Moments later, I catch his eye and Prof. Chris Munroe, specialist in quantum entanglement and I exchange introductions. As the conversation continues around my table, I lean over to speak with Chris about physics, dance and the many ways between art and science can tango together.

I loved the production and was fortunate to view it twice. A work like this is special in the way it both entertains and opens pathways for cultural evolution. See it if you can. ***

Big Bang ballet

By Physics Today on September 13, 2010 2:20 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

In his dramas German playwright Bertolt Brecht strove to trigger an “alienation effect” (Verfremdungseffekt in German, or just V-effekt). Alienation in this case meant forcing viewers to look at things in a new way.

The V-effekt was evident at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, where on 10 and 12 September the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange “did” particle physics and cosmology in a mixed-medium show. In existence for more than 30 years, the Lerman company has performed modern dance events based on contemporary themes, including recently one concerned with genetics.

Called The Matter of Origins, the program last week consisted of two parts. In the first part dancers were propelled around a large stage by insistent music. They were backed by large screens filled with projected images; you might have expected pictures from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and equations floating in midair, and you’d be right. But other images or movies, showing nervously moving hands or people sleeping in bed, were also there to distance you from too close an expectation of what a ballet about the origin of the universe or the forces of nature ought to be.

The images were backdrop; the main thing you saw was human dancers. And here I have to admit that modern dance is a puzzle to me. Being a literalist, I tend to look for specific signs and meanings. Being a physicist I mostly want to encounter cosmology in an analytic way. Dance gestures seem hieroglyphic; they speak a language I don’t understand. I appreciate the athleticism and elegance of the effort but am sometimes dismayed by what looks like arbitrary movements. So, going to a dance about physics was, consequently, bound to trigger a personal V-effekt.

But surely art and science are both big enough to assimilate just about any topic. Furthermore, I believe that art is in the eye of the beholder. It’s what you make of it. Maybe I’ve been looking at dance in the wrong way. Dance, and most of nonverbal art, evokes rather than depicts. It can momentarily disorient in order to re-orient.

For example, in The Origins of Matter one dancer stood on a chair while other dancers tried to tip or yank her off. Indeed she lost her balance a number of times, was repeatedly caught by others, and then tried again. That nicely evoked (but certainly

did not depict) a feeling of the bafflement of perspective (the nonexistence of any preferred reference frame) or the fuzziness of quantum measurement (the observer disturbing the thing observed) at the heart of modern physics.

A video shot at the LHC showed a dancer gliding along the main beam tunnel and past computer farms that will contain petabytes of data. A photograph of what looked like an LHC detector—where high-energy collisions approximate fiery conditions nanoseconds after the Big Bang—morphed into one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most famous pictures, the Ultra Deep Field, perhaps the deepest-focus optical photograph ever taken.

In a brief audio clip, physicist Gordon Kane is asked what dark matter looks like. His answer: It's dark. Then the dancers tried to depict—I mean evoke—dark matter anyway, in the form of tangled arms and gestures.

Another goal of Brecht’s V-effekt is to break down the barrier between performer and viewer. He wanted playgoers not merely to sit back in their seats but to think about, and maybe even argue about, what they’d seen.

In the second half of Origins the audience was split into groups and steered into smaller rooms, where they were seated at large tables. The conceit here called for us to imagine that we were in a Los Alamos café where Manhattan Project scientists would come for a respite from their war work. In the first half of the program, we watched dance, music, images, and projected inscriptions, but in the second half the participants were offered actual cake and tea (the specialties of the original café), more dance (dancers moved among the tables), and even a mini-ballet offered up on iPad devices stationed at each table. That little tableau rendered the 1945 Trinity test shot as whirligig ballerina with a fist reaching in from outside the frame to represent the rising mushroom cloud.

The most important ingredient in the second half was the conversation, which was kept in motion by a “provocateur” at each table. We were encouraged to talk about the show, our favorite scenes, and any pleasures or detractions we cared to address. The most poignant discussion at my table centered on that iconic physics creation, the atom bomb. What if, with the pushing of a single button, you could probably end the World War II, but at the price of incinerating a hundred thousand civilians: Would you do it? The ambivalence at the table was palpable.

The Matter of Origins was the season opener at the Clarice Smith Center; volunteer discussion leaders came from various cultural institutions in the Washington, DC, area. In the course of two performances, and in hallway encounters, I spoke with a theologian, a linguist, an orchestra conductor, a hospital administrator, Enrico Fermi’s granddaughter, and a variety of physics, mathematics, and engineering professors. The theologian appreciated hearing the opening verses of Genesis spoken in Hebrew. The conductor responded chiefly to the music. An official from the National Academy of Sciences was there to see how science could be popularized through the arts.

In the program notes, company founder Liz Lerman said that she was intrigued by her visit to CERN and her conversations with scientists there during the creation of the show. “At this stage of my own life, stumbling into the extremely complicated

and driven lives of theoretical and experimental physicists surprised me by their poetry,” she said. “I found making the piece a kind of refuge from the contemporary political world I live in.” For her, CERN had a kind of sacred feeling to it.

This brings things full circle. Friedrich Nietzsche said that Greek tragedy drew creatively on the forces of both Dionysus and Apollo, on both disordered energy and cool rationalism. If dance can accommodate physics, it would be interesting to see whether physics could accommodate some of the intoxication of dance.

Phil Schewe Categories: Science and art

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VISITING ARTISTS WITH LOCAL CONNECTIONS

Several visiting artists that appeared this semester had unique local ties to the area that garnered attention from the media. The Washington, DC‐based Post‐Classical Ensemble presented Russian Gershwin, a program exploring the intersections of pop, jazz and classical in the noted American composer's music through the lens of two renowned Russian pianists.

Heather Henson – the daughter of UM's most famous alum, Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets – carried forward her father's legacy through her own artistic vision in IBEX Puppetry's presentation of Panther and Crane. And choreographer Daniel Phoenix Singh, who earned his BA and MFA from UM, led his dance company, Dakshina, in two evenings of Works by Anna Sokolow.

VISITING ARTISTS WITH LOCAL CONNECTIONS "It's Gershwin, with a twist: nearly every American knows of the works of composer George Gershwin, who wrote 'Rhapsody in Blue' and the opera 'Porgy and Bess.' The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is offering a different view of the American composer – in fact, it's a Russian view."

- Ken Sain, The Gazette 9/23/2010

"The Center offers performances by interesting guest artists.

There's a good one coming up called "The Gershwin Project."

The September program features two pianists…and will feature something we don't often hear in this work – real improv. Hopefully, Gershwin is smiling somewhere up there in jazz heaven."

- Terry Ponick, Washington Times 9/11/2010

VISITING ARTISTS WITH LOCAL CONNECTIONS "Could you ask for anything more than George Gershwin's music performed by the Post-Classical Ensemble at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center?"

- Washingtonian "Where and When: What to do Tonight" 9/24/2010

"Heather Henson carries on her father's Sesame Street legacy with her own show, 'Panther and Crane,' presented by IBEX Puppetry at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Using a mix of dance, kites, lights and puppets, the show tells the story of a crane's survival in the changing Florida ecosystem.

- Washingtonian "Where and When: What to do Tonight" 10/14/2010

PHOTO BY: TOM WOLFF

POST CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE:

THE GERSHWIN PROJECT: RUSSIAN GERSHWIN

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Post-Classical Ensemble spotlights Gershwin at Clarice Smith Center Has every angle of Gershwin been covered? Not likely. That most American of composers continues to fascinate scholars, just as he continues to engage audiences. The DC-based Post-Classical Ensemble, which can be counted on to devise programs that offer abundant context and fresh perspective, offers "The Gershwin Project: Russian Gershwin" next week at the Clarice Smith Center.

The composer, born in New York to Russian immigrants, has long been more unabashedly admired by non-American musicians than his own countrymen. I still remember the way former BSO music director Yuri Temirkanov used to talk about Gershwin, always with the word "genius" said several times and with a sense of puzzlement over why some American orchestras seemed to think Gershwin was primarily for pops concerts.

As Joseph Horowitz, Post-Classical's artistic director, points out in program notes for next week's presentation, "eminent European-born musicians admired Gershwin without the qualms typically expressed by eminent Americans ... And so we should not be amazed that, behind the Iron Curtain, jazz and Gershwin were embraced with enthusiasm even when Soviet cultural propagandists looked askance."

To drive this point home, Post-Classical has engaged Russians pianists for the concert on Sept. 24 -- Genadi Zagor and Vakhtang Kodanashvili, "products of Russian training [who] grew up in a musical culture that was never ambivalent about Gershwin."

Zagor will offer an improvisation on a Gershwin prelude and will improvise the solos in "Rhapsody in Blue," an unusual, but certainly Gershwin-esque, touch. Also on the concert will be the "Cuban Overture" and the Concerto in F. Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Post-Classical's music director, will conduct.

During a free concert on Sept. 21, Kodanashvili will play Gershwin songs and Zagor will improvise on the composer's music and take suggestions for more improvising from the audience. There will also be a free concert on Sept. 21 by the UM School of Music Faculty Jazz Ensemble featuring further takes on the great Gershwin songbook. Discussions are also part of the schedule. It should all make for interesting time in College Park.

SUN FILE PHOTO OF GERSHWIN; PHOTO OF ANGEL GIL-ORDONEZ BY TOM WOLFF

12/8/2010

stephen brookes - home

Post Classical Ensemble's "Russian Gershwin" Monday, September 27, 2010 at 02:07PM Stephen Brookes

By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • September 27, 2010 t’s easy to see why the Post-Classical Ensemble would embrace George Gershwin. This most American of composers has long been under-appreciated at home, relegated to pops concerts for the sin of drawing on jazz and popular music. But Gershwin is overdue for a fresh look, and that’s the Ensemble’s specialty: turning familiar music on its head, providing context and fresh perspectives, and generally pulling the rug out from under listeners.

I

That was the strategy behind “The Russian Gershwin,” the Ensemble’s program on Friday night at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Center. Russia, it turns out, has long been crazy for Gershwin and taken him far more seriously than America has, and the group brought two gifted young Russian pianists to show us why – and maybe shake us out of our preconceptions.

But make no mistake: This was not some weird, exiled Gershwin smelling of vodka and revolution. On the contrary; pianist Genadi Zagor opened the evening with an introspective and elegant improvisation on Gershwin’s Prelude No.2, then seamlessly slid into an ultra-sophisticated (and altogether G eorge G ers hwin gorgeous) account of the concerto-like Rhapsody in Blue. Zagor’s a superb pianist, and provided his own imaginative, very personal improvisations for the solo piano parts, walking the fine line between jazz and classical with perfect balance.

Vakhtang Kodanashvili took a jazzier and more extroverted approach to the Piano Concerto in F, a too rarely heard wonder from 1926. Kodanashvili’s lean, exuberant playing contrasted nicely with Zagor’s more lush approach, and -- backed by razor-sharp playing from the Ensemble, led by music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez – resulted in a terrifically exciting account, and an edge-of-seat Cuban Overture brought the program to a close. Was a distinctly “Russian” evening? Maybe – but to these ears, anyway, the personal trumped the national, and in the end it didn’t matter: Gershwin was Gershwin in any language.

Article originally appeared on stephen brookes (http://www .stephenbrookes.com/).

See website for complete article licensing information.

stephenbrookes.com/…/post-classical-e…

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PHOTO BY: MATTHEW SIMANTOV

IBEX PUPPETRY:

PANTHER AND CRANE

Full circle

By Andrew Freedman Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Photo by Ken Martinson/Courtesy of CSPAC

Heather Henson and IBEX Puppetry will perform Panther and Crane tonight through Saturday at CSPAC. The show tells the tale of a crane surviving in Florida’s varied environments.

Sometimes the conventional method of telling a story doesn't work. Some use magic and illusions, acting or dance. Heather Henson uses puppets.

It's fitting that Henson, daughter of alumnus Jim Henson of Muppets fame, is coming to her father's alma mater with her company, IBEX Puppetry, to display a unique style of her craft at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. IBEX Puppetry will be putting on four performances of Panther and Crane starting tonight and running through Saturday.

"It's not only the school that my dad went to, but it's also the hometown where he grew up," Henson said, addressing her family's legacy on the campus. "It is the university where my grandfather worked and went to graduate school. It is the campus in which my grandfather and my grandmother met each other and fell in love.

This is definitely coming home in many ways."

Henson's father grew up near the campus, and Henson considers the city to be an important part of her family history.

"It's not just the college, it's the whole town of College Park that means a lot to my family," she said.

Paul Brohan, director of artistic initiatives at CSPAC, acknowledged the importance of Henson performing on the campus.

"She is so excited to be coming to Maryland," Brohan said. "Just the richness for her and her familial history and all that potential. It was very powerful for her. That gives us all a little bit of a thrill here to be part of the process of being able to make that happen."

Panther and Crane brings up ecological issues as it tells the tale of a crane surviving in Florida's varied environments — both its lush natural areas as well as its man-made cities. It's an issue Henson was inspired by upon moving to the state.

"I was intrigued with the ecosystem down there — the Everglades and the beautiful birds and Florida panthers and alligators that are all down there," Henson said. "I in particular got intrigued with the story about the cranes that fly from Wisconsin down to Florida. It's the story of humans making this huge effort to bring this species on the brink of extinction back to health. And they've done an amazing job."

For CSPAC, Henson's dedication to ecological topics was one of her most appealing characteristics.

"It's not just her and her name," Brohan said. "It's actually the fact that she's willing to explore these issues and that she's enthusiastic about bringing them to audiences through her performance."

That show includes a lot more than just puppeteers and puppets onstage. The performance also incorporates dance, music, kites and animation.

"I like all of it," Henson said. "I added the things that I like. I get so inspired; I get so excited about seeing the beautiful things in nature. So I think a lot of the things I'm adding are things that inspired me, and I'm just following the muse."

Specifically, Henson discussed her love of indoor kites and the "sense of delight and wonderment" that they bring to the show and the increasing use of multimedia in theatrical performances.

For those at CSPAC, this unique take on puppetry is the next step in the Henson legacy.

"Heather's commitment is in live performance and in interacting and having her artwork and her art form impact directly with a live audience who's there — present, in the moment," Brohan said. "Not that her father didn't, but I think that Heather is taking it to that next level. That direct, impactful and immediacy level."

Some students are also interested in Henson's work, her differences from her father and what she adds to the show beyond puppetry.

"I'm looking forward to seeing how Heather Henson has shaken things up while adding on to her father's legacy," said David Olson, a senior government and politics and theater major with an interest in puppetry.

"There are not too many hard, fast rules when it comes to doing puppetry. ... The greatest thing about bringing IBEX in for me is seeing another take on this craft."

Henson's distinctive techniques are making waves with intrigued students and those at CSPAC, all of whom encourage others to see the performance.

"There's a simple kind of joy in the way that she approaches her work," Brohan said. "She's very enthusiastic about wanting to share her viewpoint and share that kind of enthusiasm for the work with our students. And that's very special."

As for Henson herself, everything seems to be coming full circle."Everything is all connected," Henson said.

"I'm coming home to my family heritage; I'm telling a story about the birds and their family heritage."

Panther and Crane will be performed tonight through Saturday in the Dance Theatre at CSPAC. Tickets are $30, $9 for students. afreedman@umdbk.com

DAKSHINA/DANIEL PHOENIX SINGH DANCE COMPANY:

WORKS BY ANNA SOKOLOW

PHOTO BY:

STEPHEN BARANOVICS

VISITING ARTISTS WITH LOCAL CONNECTIONS "…speaking of famous female dancers/choreographers: I can't wait to see Daniel Phoenix Singh's recreation of 'Rooms' by the late Anna Sokolow at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Anna certainly ranks up there among the greats, and she has a connection to the University of Maryland as a mentor to dance faculty members Anne Warren and Alvin Mayes.

- Carolyn Kelemen Howard County Times 10/29/2010

"Only in America: by day, University of Maryland grad Daniel Phoenix Singh is a computer consultant; by night, he runs Dakshina, a company devoted to Indian dance as well as – here's the newest twist – the dark social commentary of mid20th-century choreographer Anna Sokolow…"

- Sarah Kaufman Washington Post, 9/12/2010

SPOTLIGHT The Arts. Served daily.

Dakshina at the Clarice Smith Center Posted by Randy Shulman on November 3, 2010 9:29 AM | Permalink

As early as 1955, Anna Sokolow refused to alter her choreography with a gay sequence for a concert. "She was a Jewish, straight white woman. There was really no reason for her to take that [gay-affirming] stance," says Daniel Phoenix Singh. "She could have easily said, 'Okay, I'll change it.' It wouldn't have affected the dance much. No one would have known."

The 38-year-old Singh has admired the late choreographer since before his days at the University of Maryland. Tonight, Nov. 4, and Friday, Nov. 5, Singh returns to his alma mater with his six-year-old company Dakshina. The company will perform a full program of works by Sokolow, including the 1955 piece "Rooms," which features a duet with two men amongst several choreographed pairings.

--Doug Rule Dakshina performs Thursday, Nov. 4, and Friday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. Clarice Smith Center's Ina and Jack Kay Theatre, University of Maryland, University Boulevard and Stadium Drive. College Park. Tickets are $30. Call 301-405-ARTS or visit claricesmithcenter.umd.edu or dakshina.org.

danceviewtimes writers on dancing November 07, 2010

Admonitions Anna Sokolow's "Frida", "September Sonnet" and "Dreams" Dakshina / Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company Kay Theater Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center The University of Maryland at College Park November 5, 2010

by George Jackson copyright 2010 by George Jackson Anna Sokolow did not make her dances easy to deliver or to digest. Performing them puts dancers under constant stress. Tension is maintained for long stretches at a time and even recumbent poses require effort. The audience is fed treats (bravura steps, decorative groupings) frugally. The admonition is to pay attention to substance - the interaction of feeling, meaning and motion. That interaction can be stark and acrid, or pliant and ripe. Sometimes, as in "Frida", it is almost jaunty with a hint of mint. Sokolow does not shun pitfalls - mixing music, reducing figures to types - which become part of her vision: dance as everyday life with a holiday just once in a while.

"September Sonnet", the program's middle piece, is in the form a classical pas de deux - sort of. A woman and a man meet and engage, each then has a solo variation before they come together again in a coda that resolves their relationship. Strangely, Sokolow's protagonists avoid looking at each other in their initial encounter. Without making eye contact, they do touch and this even elicits quivers, but all the while they gaze up overhead or peer past one another. Such behavior gives their affair a furtive air that perhaps can be called autumnal, Septemberish.

Into the man's variation Sokolow puts candy - just a little leg action of the showy, near balletic sort.

Mostly, though, it is line and lyricism that are called for. The woman's variation is about the expression of tensions, the revelation of feelings. In the coda, the man's and woman's eyes finally meet, but only a little. I concluded that, constitutionally, they distrust youthful joy. Sokolow herself didn't seem to trust any one composition because she took the music for "September Sonnet" from four different composers Arvo Part, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Francis Poulenc and Robert Schumann.

All of Sokolow's "Dreams" are nightmares: the woman precariously balancing on the shoulders of four sinister men, the drummer frantically tapping on every available surface but unable to find a drum, the trio of belles with flowers opening from the palms of their hands like stigmata while they keep on posing and primping pointlessly, and so forth. Some dreams resonate as archetypes and others seem stereotypes but in all of them Sokolow skillfully captures the trapped feeling one has in a bad dream of being unable to stop whatever it is one is doing despite knowing one ought to. Much of "Dreams" is in silence interrupted by dancer-made sound and snatches music from Bach, Teo Macero and Webern.

"Frida", a set of sketches based on the life and work of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, I had liked a lot at a rehearsal showing. It is for Sokolow a step rich and rhythmically buoyant work, but at Friday's performance it seemed studied and failed to gain momentum. Some of the problem may have been that not one dancer but several took the Frida role, a different one in each scene, and so there was no build up. Also the blackouts between scenes interrupted. One scene shows Frida in a love relationship with a

man. Again, as in the earlier "September Sonnet", this duet of Sokolow's is a dance of tentative togetherness. In the final scene, the dancers who previously had taken the title role form Frida's funeral cortege - a nice touch but one that easily escapes attention.

Dakshina is looking good as a company. Its ensembles cohere. It can convey the Mexican sizzle of "Frida" and it triggered the Ausdruckstanz chill of "Dreams". The two dancers in the fragile "September Sonnet", Melissa Greco Liu and company director Daniel Phoenix Singh, gave their solos meaning. His became a soliloquy and hers a confession. Lorry May's staging of the three works* made each quite distinct. Yet, I'm ambivalent about Sokolow. There's much to admire as the dancers work her vision but movement didn't often spring from her imagination spontaneously. Perhaps I'm asking for too much holiday. *Sokolow's "Rooms" instead of her "Dreams" was danced at the November 4 performance.

Posted at 08:47 AM in George Jackson | Permalink

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ACADEMIC UNITS

The Clarice Smith Center fully integrates the UM academic performing arts departments into its programming, a creative collaboration uncommon among university presenters. Providing students with opportunities to directly connect with world‐class professionals, faculty members and visiting artists is integral to every presenting season – and results in an impressive range of performances.

Among those that received notable media coverage this semester are two theatre productions presented by the newly formed School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies: a stage adaptation of Enchanted April with guest director KJ Sanchez and Am I Black Enough Yet?, directed by UM faculty Scot Reese – in addition to the School of Music's Robert Schumann Bicentennial Festival & Conference, National Orchestral Institute and Maryland Opera Studio's production of Florencia en el Amazonas.

National Orchestral Institute

NATIONAL ORCHESTRAL

INSTITUTE

"One of the better entertainment options each June takes place at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, as some of the best symphony orchestra students from colleges across the nation gather in College Park to learn from professionals at the National Orchestral Institute."

- Ken Sain, The Gazette 6/3/2010

"The month of June is a classical music lover's delight at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as the National Orchestral Institute offers a rich array of orchestral and chamber music performances. Now in its 23rd year, this renowned summer program of the University of Maryland's School of Music brings aspiring orchestral musicians to the Center to work with internationally known conductors."

- Prince George's Sentinel 6/9/2010

National Orchestral Institute Nurtures Young Talent In its 23rd year, program aims to give best and brightest young musicians edge in classical music world

By Annie Wu Epoch Times Staff Created: Jun 23, 2010Last Updated: Jun 23, 2010

One of last year's performances of the National Orchestral Institute and Festival, a renowned program of the University of Maryland School of Music, which ran at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. (Stan Barouh) The National Orchestral Institute (NOI), a program at the University of Maryland, has found a way to give young classically trained musicians from around the country a chance to survive in their competitive field: offer them highly intensive training and performance opportunities through an intensive four-week program.

The NOI will be holding its last concert of an annual festival at Dekelboum Concert Hall in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on June 26, performing works by Brahms, Edward Elgar, and contemporary composer Jennifer Higdon.

Already in its 23rd year, auditions are held across the country to select the best and the brightest musical talent of the generation. This year, 95 musicians were chosen to participate in this unique opportunity to study how to become professional players.

They range from 18 to 28 years old and will be giving a total of eight performances.

Each week, musicians work together with celebrated conductors and principal players from renowned orchestras, honing their skills and learning to make music together.

Their week culminates in a public performance at the Performing Arts Center.

NOI Managing Director Richard Scerbo discussed the challenges young musicians face in becoming orchestral players. First, there is an “extremely competitive process in which they have to win their job. It was recently put to me by one of our NOI faculty members that winning an orchestra job is like landing on the moon— especially at one of the top orchestras. It's such a prestigious appointment and it's so difficult because there are so few openings.”

In addition, the classical music scene is changing and musicians have to learn to adjust. “Professional orchestras as we know it … in some places they are actually in crisis, and in other places they are undergoing changes that make figuring out what is needed from an orchestral player very difficult.”

The Training

Scerbo explained that the NOI helps young musicians address these challenges by “expecting the highest level of performance” from them and at the same time, giving them the opportunity to learn from “professional orchestral musicians of the highest caliber.” They coach NOI participants on what is expected of them in the musical profession.

A National Orchestral Institute chamber music recital, held in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's beautiful Gildenhorn Recital Hall. Recitals by the NOI participants are just part of the intensive four weeks of activities, including orchestra concerts with renowned conductors; discussions; mock auditions; master classes and sectionals with NOI faculty, culled from top orchestras. (Stan Barouh) NOI also offers “professional development seminars” for the participants to better understand the career. Guest lecturers include past president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra James Undercofler and notable music critic and composer Greg Sandow. They lecture on topics such as the future of classical music, how professional orchestras are run, and what a life devoted to music is like.

Scerbo also noted that symphony orchestras should not be the only outlet for classical music, especially when it is so difficult today to become an orchestral player. “We cannot rely on orchestras … to hold up the classical musical world.”

Scerbo said, “I would say it's more incumbent upon young musicians to make sure that they're creating art themselves as well and not just relying on large orchestras to create that art for them.” They must learn that orchestras are not the only option.

It is vital for young musicians to learn to create ensembles of their own. “I think that sort of entrepreneurship is definitely going to be needed from classical musicians in the future because we have to go out and create our venues ourselves.”

That is why the NOI teaches its participants how to perform in small chamber groups as well. Aside from orchestral and chamber playing, the NOI divides the musicians into "conducterless" orchestras, allowing them to “shape the entire music-making process from beginning to end,” said Scerbo.

NOI Artistic Director James Ross commented on the value of the experience in a video posted on the NOI website: “During that week, our players come and they are immediately put into string quartets, woodwind quintets, small ensembles … and every one of them in a conductorless chamber orchestra. So their first experience of playing with these other high-level players is preparing a concert with no coaches, no conductors telling them what to do.

They have to figure out, from the chemistry within their particular group, and in relation to their piece … the music is coming from you and every one of you has a responsibility to be caring about this, to be working on this, and commenting on your colleagues. How can you begin to comment on your colleagues without creating a certain kind of tension? … This is great training for young players.”

Pianist Sara Daneshpour was featured in the unconducted chamber orchestra performance on June 5 in a rendition of Mozart’s "Piano Concerto No. 20 K.466." A young musician herself, she noted in another NOI video that it is sometimes easy to get carried away with establishing your name in the industry, with so many auditions and competitions to attend and the possibility of being rejected.

She said it’s important to always remember that “this career is about music, and not about me.” She reminded musicians to be honest with music and be able to “totally put yourself in the music and express what's inside … just focusing on the art, and I think if you do that, everything will fall into place.”

The National Orchestral Institute and Festival performing in 2009 included three orchestral concerts, just as this year's season does. (Stan Barouh) The New Lights Concert

Another exciting feature of the festival is the second New Lights concert on June 24, where “the NOI invite[s] the most talented participants from the previous year back to NOI to … be leaders in a concert that explores new ways of presenting music.” The concert will also be performed without a conductor.

Aside from the two pieces the NOI has chosen for them, the rest of the program is open for the musicians to choose whatever they wish to perform. This year, the two assigned pieces are works by contemporary composers Osvaldo Golijov and Derek Bermel.

Scerbo said the New Lights concert will give musicians the opportunity to “explore … group improvisation, audience interaction, basically breaking down or reexamining

the way concerts are presented. And we put this entirely in their hands.”

But the most anticipated series of the festival are the full-scale orchestra concerts.

Called the NOI Philharmonic, the orchestra performs for three Saturdays in June. An open rehearsal held the day before is free for public viewing.

In performance: NOI Web-only review:

National Orchestral Institute ensemble offers professional polish

by Joe Banno It says a lot about current standards of orchestral playing that the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic has performed this summer at the Clarice Smith Center on Saturday with such confidence, technical finish and sure sense of style. The Philharmonic showcases musicians (age 18 to 28) drawn from colleges and conservatories across North America to participate in the University of Maryland's 2010 NOI. These Philharmonic concerts -- Saturday's was the second of three -- cap a month of intensive study and performance by the NOI participants in chamber music, new music and symphonic literature.

In a challenging program, conductor Asher Fisch drew performances from these young musicians that would not have sounded out of place on the concert series of many American regional orchestras. The strings were a tightly disciplined group -- kudos, especially, to an uncommonly well-toned viola section -- able to shift gears quickly from trenchant attack to silken allure in Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, and to keep up with the intensity and complexity of the writing in music from Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg." The woodwinds' crisp, clean solo work was flawless, and there was a burnished glow to the brass in ensemble playing.

The greatest orchestras may bring a richer vein of character, a more lived-in sense of interplay and, in some cases, a more urgent narrative thrust to these scores. But -- particularly at the challengingly fleet speeds Fisch adopted here -- these colorful, razor-sharp performances, by musicians who have known each other for only a month, were mightily impressive.

The final NOI orchestra concert, under Miguel Harth-Bedoya, is on June 26th. The students will also program their own a contemporary concerton June 24th.

-- Joe Banno

SCHOOL OF THEATRE, DANCE, AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES:

ENCHANTED APRIL

PHOTO BY STAN BAROUH

10/12/2010

Enchanted CSPAC - The Diamondback -…

Enchanted CSPAC

By Andrew Freedman Sunday, October 10, 2010 There's an old, clichéd saying that people are like onions composed of many complex layers that cannot be understood individually.

Being cliché, of course, does not make it untrue. For the women in Enchanted April , this is very much the case. The play, like the women in it, is composed of many themes: independence, self-exploration and friendship where it is least expected.

The theatre, dance and performance studies school has brought the play - adapted by Matthew Barber from the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim - to the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

On a rainy day in London in 1922, Lotty Wilton (Chelsie Lloyd) reads a newspaper ad for "those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine" to rent out a small castle in Mezzago, Italy. When she sees Rose Arnott (Gracie Jones), a woman in the local club who she has noticed but never spoken to reading the same ad, she feels they are destined to go together.

Lotty and Rose have conflicting personalities. Lotty is eccentric and talkative, while Rose is reserved and religious. They are perhaps the most unlikely of friends, but both feel they need an escape from the same thing - their husbands (James Sakamoto-Wengel and Jonathan Berenson).

To help pay the rent, they recruit two other women to join them - Lady Caroline Bramble (Whitney Rose Pynn), a woman from high society with a love of cognac, and Mrs. Graves (a hilarious Ruth Anne Watkins), a smart-mouthed and strict older woman with a penchant for nuts.

After filling out the paperwork with owner Antony Wilding (Thony Bienvenido Mena), they take the train to the castle.

These characters are brought to life in a way that makes this journey one worth taking. The four women are deeply explored, compared and contrasted. The talents of the actresses make them relatable and, more importantly, worth caring about.

The exchanges between the characters are timed perfectly, whether it is one of the more serious diamondbackonline.com/…/enchanted-…

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10/12/2010

Enchanted CSPAC - The Diamondback -…

moments sprinkled throughout the play or one of the many laugh-out-loud instances that keep the audience engaged. The entire cast's acting is believable and wholehearted, brought down only by moments when their faux British accents waver or become difficult to understand.

Director KJ Sanchez manages to make every moment important. As Lotty and Rose fight with their husbands; as Rose gains confidence in herself; as Caroline admits a secret that haunts her; as Mrs. Graves bickers with the castle cook, Constanza (a flawless Olivia Brann) - each bit contributes to the self-exploration that makes Enchanted April so appealing.

Even the set reflects the voyage - both personal and literal - throughout Enchanted April's two acts. London is created simply - two walls that rotate to create different interiors, a window dripping with rain, a table and chairs.

But when audiences return from intermission, they are treated to a bright and sunny Italy, flanked by the castle and surrounded with lush foliage and a working fountain. It makes one wonder where the crew hid this stuff during the first act.

Audience members leave with a sense of their need for self-exploration. Watching these women and their relationships change delivers a positive message: When things seem at their worst, we can still change for the better.

Italy is compared to Paradiso - heaven. While it may be near impossible to reach that sense of bliss, Enchanted April delivers the wonder promised in its title. Audiences will think, laugh (a lot) and leave with a deeper appreciation of their own personal journeys.

Enchanted April runs through Saturday, Oct. 16 at the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $27, $9 for students.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars afreedman@umdbk.com

diamondbackonline.com/…/enchanted-…

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UM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

PHOTO BY: STAN BAROUH

Combined orchestras celebrate the seas at U.Md. By: Marie Gullard 11/04/10 10:00 PM Examiner Correspondent

BY: COURTESY PHOTO Luis Novo, maestro of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, will lead two orchestras in Sunday’s performance.

Jose-Luis

When the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra perform side by side Sunday, the union will represent a unique joint venture for all of the musicians involved.

Under the direction of the Annapolis Symphony’s maestro, Jose Jose-Luiss Novo, the two orchestras will combine forces in a presentation of two works celebrating the importance of water in our lives. “Side by (Sea)Side” showcases Benjamin Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from “Peter Grimes” and Claude Debussy’s “La Mer.” The orchestral collaboration, as well as the chosen works, serves not only to enhance awareness and support for the Chesapeake Bay, but also to cement a partnership between music students and professional musicians. The idea here is that one institution (ASO) becomes mentor to the other (UMSO) with the idea of helping the latter’s members transition to a professional career after graduation.

“Both institutions can benefit from an experience like this,” said Novo, himself a former student of UMSO director Jim Ross. ss. “The Annapolis Symphony will benefit by playing next to very talented young musicians who are always full of energy and great ideas. In exchange, we offer them the expertise and experience of being involved in a professional orchestra. [We] offer them the contacts they will be needing as soon as they graduate.”

In what can be viewed as a project that celebrates community, Novo chose a subject of wide interest to all concerned — in this case it is about living and thriving so close to the Chesapeake Bay — about the awareness of protecting a mighty estuary that, over time, has become fragile. To that particular end, his choice of repertoire is sublime.

Shortly after the 1905 premier of “La Mer,” Debussy commented to his publisher: “The sea has been very good to me. She has shown me all her moods.” However, in Britten’s 1945 opera “Peter Grimes,” a much bleaker and brooding aspect of the sea is presented. The initial calm of “Dawn,” for example, is replete with the ominous swelling of the waves.

Even as Novo asks us to think about renewed commitment to the Bay’s sustainability, he also celebrates that commitment to the future professional musicians he has taken under his wing.

“Students live in a bubble, [in] that part of the world where [they] are valued very much. Then [they] confront reality and it produces an instant emotional and even professional shock,” he said. “We try to fight that by giving them a taste of what their integration might be and making that happen in a more natural way.”

'Side by (Sea)Side' Where » Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s Dekelboum Concert Hall When » 3 p.m. Sunday Info » 301-405-2787; claricesmithcenter.umd.edu.

SCHOOL OF THEATRE, DANCE, AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES:

AM I BLACK ENOUGH YET?

Photo By: Stan Barouh

The Diamondback > Diversions

Black is Beautiful

By Andrew Freedman Sunday, November 7, 2010

"I don't see race," late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert has said on several occasions. "People tell me I'm white, and I believe them."

For the rest of us, things aren't that cut and dry. Race is still as important a topic today as it has been throughout American history. But how do we see it today? Do we value different races and their diversity? Do we stereotype? Do we conform to what others think our race should be? Even in a country where we've elected our first black president, it's a topic most people like to avoid as best they can.

But it's a topic that deserves exploration. The theatre, dance and performance studies school has embraced it with open arms with its production of Clinton Johnson's Am I Black Enough Yet? in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Kogod Theatre.

An "examination of blackness," Am I Black Enough Yet? is performed by a talented ensemble cast (Jamar Brown, Juliette Ebert, Alexis Fortiz, Jason Phillips, Erica Philpot, Kiara Tinch, John Wahl and Baakari Wilder) and tells several stories to scrutinize the modern-day concepts of race, ethnicity and identity.

This is no way a standard play. As soon as it starts, the players break the fourth wall to inform viewers that everyone in the audience will be "honorary black folks" for the duration of the performance. Those who are already black don't miss out on the action.

Actual black folks are told, "You're, like, uber-black. Like Shaft-level black," as Shaft's theme song plays.

Once the audience is all on the same level, the series of performances begins. Skits, songs, poetry and anecdotes examine the many facets of race in America. They include fun, energetic pieces such as "Eight Things You Need to Know and Do When You're Fully Black" and more serious pieces that focus on topics such as interracial dating, finding a hero as a minority and differences in culture among one race.

One sketch regarding a "slang council" and a monologue about author Ezra Jack Keats steals the show as its funniest and most touching moments, respectively.

The show asks questions that some might not want to ask. Sometimes, this means laughter and smiles as the cast pokes fun at certain ideas. Other times, it requires somber reflection into one's own thoughts. And yes, it's possible at some point someone's going to get offended. Racial slurs are dropped, and stereotypes are used to great effect.

Although Am I Black Enough Yet? dives into these topics with a no-holds-barred approach, it's clear that director Scot Reese has instilled into his actors a notion of the delicate nature of what is covered. The show's stories don't preach or tell you what to think; rather, they take a risky, raw approach that lets audiences answer the tough questions they pose.

The theater is set up in a minimalist fashion. When audience members walk in, they see a platform and a sheet with the name of the play written on it in graffiti. Songs ranging from Earth, Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove" to Usher's "Yeah!" play until the show starts. Once the sheet drops, a simple set is revealed.

Two chairs and a table are the only set pieces on the stage. Above it are a series of signs and lights that illuminate where a given scene of the play is taking place. It's simple and organized, allows the crew to appear invisible and lets the play flow easily from one part into the next.

The show runs a bit long but keeps the audience engaged the entire time. The pacing of the sketches assists greatly in making time pass.

The ensemble works extremely well together and delivers an all-around great performance. The actors show tremendous range as they each play many characters throughout the course of the performance. Their only shortfall is, at times, some of the actors — who are not wearing microphones — may be difficult to hear.

An Oct. 12 letter to the editor in The Diamondback asked for one thing of CSPAC: "good, relatable stories, presented in an enjoyable way." With Am I Black Enough Yet?, the theatre, dance and performance studies school nails this request.

No matter what your race, ethnicity, culture or beliefs, this show delivers a remarkable (and sometimes really funny) method of self-exploration through theater, without all of the baggage that goes along with being politically correct.

"It's your culture," the audience is told. "Learn it, live it, love it."

Am I Black Enough Yet? runs through Saturday at the Kogod Theatre in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $27, $9 for students.

RATING: 4.5 stars out of 5 afreedman@umdbk.com

SCHOOL OF MUSIC:

ROBERT SCHUMANN BICENTENNIAL FESTIVAL & CONFERENCE

PHOTO BY: NANCY HOROWITZ

MUSIC REVIEW

Music review: Charles Rosen at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

By Stephen Brookes Friday, October 22, 2010

You almost have to go out of your way to avoid Robert Schumann these days; it's the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth, and his music is being celebrated as far as the ear can hear. Piano superstar András Schiff gave an all-Schumann recital on Wednesday night at Strathmore, but over at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, an equally intriguing concert was underway -- one that stripped away centuries of convention to present original, rarely heard versions of two of Schumann's best-loved works.

The considerable brains behind the program (the highlight of the University of Maryland's four-day Schumann Festival, which ends Friday) belonged to none other than Charles Rosen, the eminent pianist, musicologist, author and all-around polymath who, having turned 83 in May, continues to probe more deeply and thoughtfully into music than just about any musician alive. Rosen teamed up with the terrific young German tenor Christoph Genz for the song cycle "Dichterliebe," restoring four songs that Schumann originally included but later took out (apparently for commercial reasons).

It was a memorable performance. Genz has an extremely clear, light voice, effortless and natural throughout its range, and his take on the songs was expressive but never overcooked. Restoring the four songs, meanwhile, was simply brilliant; each was a small gem, and together they extended the dramatic arc and brought new depth and interest to the entire work.

Rosen himself opened the evening with the original three-movement version of the Fantasia in C for Piano, Op. 17, which Schumann reworked and expanded after it was rejected by publishers. Rosen's technique -- just to get this out of the way -- isn't as powerful or precise as it was in his prime, but it was a fascinating reading nonetheless, deeply personal and shorn of all dross. When Charles Rosen plays, you can't help but listen; this is a musician who always has something important to say.

Brookes is a freelance writer.

MARYLAND OPERA STUDIO:

FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS

PHOTO BY: CORY WEAVER

UM SCHOOL OF MUSIC / MARYLAND OPERA STUDIO

"The quintessential small venue is the university. Music schools, with lots of in‐house talent…are a natural laboratory for new opera. The Maryland Opera Studio at the University of Maryland presented its third world premiere, Shadowboxer, earlier this spring – and in the fall, it will present another recent American opera, Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas…" ‐ Anne Midgette, Washington Post 7/4/2010

"…and wouldn't you know, there's more opera this weekend.

UM's excellent Maryland Opera Studio presents the regional premiere of Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas, a work based on the writings of Gabriel García Márquez about a famed diva's boat ride down the Amazon…" ‐ Tim Smith, Baltimore Sun 11/19/2010

UM SCHOOL OF MUSIC / MARYLAND OPERA STUDIO

"What's most encouraging in Washington this season, though, is the depth: there are a number of exciting projects with less widely known forces. I'm pleased, for instance, to have a chance to hear the opera Florencia en el Amazonas when the Maryland Opera Studio of the University of Maryland puts it on in November." ‐ Anne Midgette, Washington Post 9/12/2010

DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ ŽŵŵƵŶŝƚLJ EĞǁƐ KŶůŝŶĞ dŚƵƌƐĚĂLJ͕ EŽǀ͘ ϭϴ͕ ϮϬϭϬ

sŝǀĂ ƐƉĂŹŽů͊ hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚLJ ŽĨ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ ƐĞƚ ƚŽ ƐƚĂŐĞ ŝƚƐ ĨŝƌƐƚͲĞǀĞƌ ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚͲůĂŶŐƵĂŐĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ ďLJ sŝƌŐŝŶŝĂ dĞƌŚƵŶĞ ͮ ^ƚĂĨĨ tƌŝƚĞƌ

ŚƌŝƐƚŽƉŚĞƌ ŶĚĞƌƐŽŶͬdŚĞ 'ĂnjĞƚƚĞ

;&ƌŽŵ ůĞĨƚͿ hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚLJ ŽĨ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ͕ ŽůůĞŐĞ WĂƌŬ͕ ŽƉĞƌĂ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚƐ ĂƌƌŝĞ ŶŶĞ tŝŶƚĞƌ͕ ĂǀŝĚ ůĂůŽĐŬ͕ DŽŶŝĐĂ ^ŽƚŽͲ'ŝů͕ ĂƌŽŶ /ŶŐĞƌƐŽůů͕ ƌŝĚŐĞƚƚĞ 'ĂŶ ĂŶĚ ŶĚƌĞǁ DĐ>ĂƵŐŚůŝŶ ƌĞŚĞĂƌƐĞ Ă ƐĐĞŶĞ ĨƌŽŵ ƚŚĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ Η&ůŽƌĞŶĐŝĂ ĞŶ Ğů ŵĂnjŽŶĂƐ͘Η

tŚĞŶ ĂƐŬĞĚ ƚŽ ŶĂŵĞ ĂŶ /ƚĂůŝĂŶ ŽƉĞƌĂ͕ WƵĐĐŝŶŝΖƐ ΗDĂĚĂŵĞ ƵƚƚĞƌĨůLJΗ Žƌ DŽnjĂƌƚΖƐ ΗdŚĞ DĂƌƌŝĂŐĞ ŽĨ &ŝŐĂƌŽΗ ĐŽŵĞ ƚŽ ŵŝŶĚ͘ /Ĩ ĂƐŬĞĚ ĨŽƌ Ă 'ĞƌŵĂŶͲůĂŶŐƵĂŐĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ͕ ŵŽƐƚ ĨĂŶƐ ĐĂŶ ŶĂŵĞ tĂŐŶĞƌΖƐ Η^ŝĞŐĨƌŝĞĚΗ Žƌ ^ƚƌĂƵƐƐΖ Η Ğƌ ZŽƐĞŶŬĂǀĂůŝĞƌ͘Η Ƶƚ ĐĂŶ LJŽƵ ŶĂŵĞ Ă ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚͲůĂŶŐƵĂŐĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ͍ EŽƚ ƐŽ ĞĂƐLJ͘ ^ƉĂŝŶ ĂŶĚ >ĂƚŝŶ ŵĞƌŝĐĂ ĚŽŶΖƚ ŚĂǀĞ ŽƉĞƌĂƚŝĐ ƚƌĂĚŝƚŝŽŶƐ ƚŚĂƚ ĂƌĞ ĂƐ ǁĞůů ŬŶŽǁŶ Ͷ Ăƚ ůĞĂƐƚ ŶŽƚ LJĞƚ͘ dŚĞ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ KƉĞƌĂ ^ƚƵĚŝŽ͕ ƉĂƌƚ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚLJ ŽĨ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ ^ĐŚŽŽů ŽĨ DƵƐŝĐ ŝŶ ŽůůĞŐĞ WĂƌŬ͕ ŝƐ ĂďŽƵƚ ƚŽ ŚĞůƉ ďƵŝůĚ ƚŚĂƚ ƚƌĂĚŝƚŝŽŶ ďLJ ŽƉĞŶŝŶŐ ŝƚƐ ϮϬϭϬͲϭϭ ƐĞĂƐŽŶ ŽĨ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚ ƉĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞƐ ǁŝƚŚ ŝƚƐ ĨŝƌƐƚ ŽƉĞƌĂ ƐƵŶŐ ŝŶ ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚ͘ Η&ůŽƌĞŶĐŝĂ ĞŶ Ğů ŵĂnjŽŶĂƐ͕Η ĂŶ ŽƉĞƌĂ ŝŶ ƚǁŽ ĂĐƚƐ͕ ǁĂƐ ĐŽŵƉŽƐĞĚ ďLJ DĞdžŝĐĂŶ ĐŽŵƉŽƐĞƌ ĂŶŝĞů ĂƚĄŶ͘ ĂƚĄŶ ǁĂƐ ĐŽŵŵŝƐƐŝŽŶĞĚ ďLJ ƚŚĞ ,ŽƵƐƚŽŶ 'ƌĂŶĚ KƉĞƌĂ ƚŽ ĐƌĞĂƚĞ ƚŚĞ ǁŽƌŬ͕ ǁŚŝĐŚ ƉƌĞŵŝĞƌĞĚ ŝŶ ϭϵϵϲ͘

ĂƚĄŶ ǁĞŶƚ ƚŽ ŶŐůĂŶĚ ǁŚĞŶ ŚĞ ǁĂƐ ϭϰ ĂŶĚ ůĂƚĞƌ ŐƌĂĚƵĂƚĞĚ ĨƌŽŵ WƌŝŶĐĞƚŽŶ hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚLJ͘ ,Ğ ƌĞƚƵƌŶĞĚ ƚŽ DĞdžŝĐŽ ŝŶ ϭϵϳϳ ƚŽ ďĞĐŽŵĞ ŵƵƐŝĐ ĂĚŵŝŶŝƐƚƌĂƚŽƌ Ăƚ ƚŚĞ WĂůĂĐĞ ŽĨ &ŝŶĞ ƌƚƐ ŝŶ DĞdžŝĐŽ ŝƚLJ ďĞĨŽƌĞ ƐĞƚƚůŝŶŐ ŝŶ ĂůŝĨŽƌŶŝĂ͘ Η&ůŽƌĞŶĐŝĂΗ ƚĞůůƐ ƚŚĞ ƐƚŽƌLJ ŽĨ Ă ĨĂŵŽƵƐ ĚŝǀĂ ǁŚŽ ƚƌĂǀĞůƐ ĚŽǁŶ ƚŚĞ ŵĂnjŽŶ ŝŶ Ă ƐƚĞĂŵďŽĂƚ ƚŽ ƉĞƌĨŽƌŵ Ăƚ ƚŚĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ ŚŽƵƐĞ ŝŶ DĂŶĂƵƐ͘ dǁĞŶƚLJ LJĞĂƌƐ ďĞĨŽƌĞ͕ ƐŚĞ ƉĂƌƚĞĚ ǁĂLJƐ ǁŝƚŚ ŚĞƌ ůŽŶŐͲůŽƐƚ ůŽǀĞ͕ Ă ďƵƚƚĞƌĨůLJ ŚƵŶƚĞƌ͕ ĂŶĚ ƐŚĞ Ɛƚŝůů ůŽŶŐƐ ĨŽƌ Śŝŵ͘ dŚĞ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ KƉĞƌĂ ^ƚƵĚŝŽ ǁŝůů ƉƌĞƐĞŶƚ ŝƚ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ϲϱϬͲƐĞĂƚ /ŶĂ ĂŶĚ :ĂĐŬ <ĂLJ dŚĞĂƚƌĞ ĂƐ Ă ΗǁŚŝƚĞΗ ŽƉĞƌĂ͕ ǁŚŝĐŚ ƌĞĨĞƌƐ ƚŽ ƚŚĞ ŽĨĨͲǁŚŝƚĞ ŵƵƐůŝŶ ĐůŽƚŚĞƐ ƚŚĂƚ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚ ĐĂƐƚ ŵĞŵďĞƌƐ ǁŝůů ǁĞĂƌ͘ dŚĞ ƐŝŵƉůĞ ϭϵƚŚ ĐĞŶƚƵƌLJ ĐŽƐƚƵŵĞƐ͕ ǁŝƚŚ ƚŚĞŝƌ ĐŽƌƐĞƚƐ ĂŶĚ ďƌŝƚĐŚĞƐ͕ ĂƌĞ ĚĞƐŝŐŶĞĚ ĂƐ Ă ǁĂLJ ƚŽ ůĞĂƌŶ ŚŽǁ ƚŽ ƐŝŶŐ ĂŶĚ ŵŽǀĞ ŝŶ ƉĞƌŝŽĚ ĐŽƐƚƵŵĞƐ ďƵƚ ǁŝƚŚŽƵƚ ǀŝƐƵĂůůLJ ĚŝƐƚƌĂĐƚŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ ĂƵĚŝĞŶĐĞ ĨƌŽŵ ƚŚĞŝƌ ƉĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞƐ͘ Η^ĐĞŶĞƌLJ͕ ƉƌŽƉƐ ĂŶĚ ĨĂŶĐLJ ĐůŽƚŚĞƐ ĐĂŶ ďĞĐŽŵĞ ĐƌƵƚĐŚĞƐ ƚŽ ŚŝĚĞ ďĞŚŝŶĚ͕ ƐŽ ǁĞ ƚĂŬĞ ĂǁĂLJ Ăůů ƚŚĂƚ ŝƐ ƵŶŶĞĐĞƐƐĂƌLJ͕ ůĞĂǀŝŶŐ ŽŶůLJ ƚŚĂƚ ǁŚŝĐŚ ŝƐ ĐƌƵĐŝĂů ƚŽ ƚĞůůŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ ƐƚŽƌLJ͕Η ǁƌŝƚĞƐ >ĞŽŶ DĂũŽƌ ŝŶ ŚŝƐ ĚŝƌĞĐƚŽƌΖƐ ŶŽƚĞ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ Η&ůŽƌĞŶĐŝĂΗ ƉƌŽŐƌĂŵ͘ KŶͲƐƚĂŐĞ ƉƌŽƉƐ ǁŝůů ďĞ ŵŝŶŝŵĂů͕ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ƌĂŝƐĞĚ ƉůĂƚĨŽƌŵ ĂŶĚ Ă ƐƚĞĞƌŝŶŐ ǁŚĞĞů ƚŽ ƐƵŐŐĞƐƚ ƚŚĞ ƐƚĞĂŵďŽĂƚ ĂŶĚ ƉĂƉĞƌ ƌĞƉƌĞƐĞŶƚĂƚŝŽŶƐ ŽĨ ďŝƌĚƐ͕ ďƵƚƚĞƌĨůŝĞƐ ĂŶĚ ƚƌĞĞƐ ƚŽ ĞǀŽŬĞ ƚŚĞ ũƵŶŐůĞ͘ dŚĞ ŵƵƐŝĐ ǁŝůů ĂůƐŽ ďĞ ƉůĂLJĞĚ ŽŶ Ă ƉŝĂŶŽ ŝŶƐƚĞĂĚ ŽĨ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ƐŵĂůů ŽƌĐŚĞƐƚƌĂ͘ ΗdŚĞ ŵƵƐŝĐ ŝƐ ďĞĂƵƚŝĨƵů͘ ĂƚĄŶ ŚĂƐ Ă ƵŶŝƋƵĞ ǁĂLJ ŽĨ ĐŽůŽƌŝŶŐ ĐĞƌƚĂŝŶ ŵƵƐŝĐĂů ƉĂƐƐĂŐĞƐ ǁŝƚŚ ŵŽƚŝǀĞƐ ĨƌŽŵ ƉƌĞǀŝŽƵƐ ƐĐĞŶĞƐ͕Η ƐĂŝĚ ƐŝŶŐĞƌ DŽŶŝĐĂ ^ŽƚŽͲ'ŝů ŝŶ ĂŶ ĞͲŵĂŝů͘ ŶĂƚŝǀĞ ŽĨ DĞdžŝĐŽ͕ ^ŽƚŽͲ'ŝů ƉůĂLJƐ WĂƵůĂ͕ Ă ŵĂƌƌŝĞĚ ǁŽŵĂŶ͕ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ͘ ^ŚĞ ŝƐ ŽŶĞ ŽĨ ĞŝŐŚƚ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚƐ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ĐůĂƐƐ͕ ĂŶĚ Ăůů ŽĨ ƚŚĞŵ ĂƌĞ ŽŶ ƐƚĂŐĞ ĚƵƌŝŶŐ ƚŚĞ ĞŶƚŝƌĞ ƉĞƌĨŽƌŵĂŶĐĞ͘ ΗdŚĞ ƉŝĞĐĞ ŝƐ ǀĞƌLJ ĐŽŚĞƐŝǀĞ ĂŶĚ ŚĂƐ Ă ŐƌĞĂƚ ƐƚŽƌLJ ĂƌĐŚ͕Η ƐŚĞ ǁƌŽƚĞ͘ Η ĂƚĄŶ ƉĂŝŶƚƐ ƉŝĐƚƵƌĞƐ ǁŝƚŚ ƚŚĞ ŵƵƐŝĐ ƚŚĂƚ ĐĂůů ƚŽ ŵŝŶĚ ŶĂƚƵƌĂů ĞůĞŵĞŶƚƐ ĨŽƌ ůŝƐƚĞŶĞƌƐ͘ zŽƵ ĐĂŶ ƌĞĂůůLJ ƐĞĞ ďƵƚƚĞƌĨůŝĞƐ͕ ďŝƌĚƐ ĂŶĚ ƚŚĞ ƌƵƐŚŝŶŐ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ƌŝǀĞƌ͘Η DĂũŽƌ ĨŝƌƐƚ ďĞĐĂŵĞ ĨĂŵŝůŝĂƌ ǁŝƚŚ ĂƚĄŶΖƐ ǁŽƌŬ ǁŚĞŶ ƚŚĞ DĂƌLJůĂŶĚ KƉĞƌĂ ^ƚƵĚŝŽ ĚŝĚ Ă ǁŽƌŬƐŚŽƉ ĂƌŽƵŶĚ ƚŚĞ ĨŝƌƐƚ ĂĐƚ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ĐŽŵƉŽƐĞƌΖƐ ĐŽŵŝĐ ŽƉĞƌĂ Η^ĂůƐŝƉƵĞĚĞƐ͘Η ,Ğ ƐĂŝĚ ƚŚĞ ĞdžƉĞƌŝĞŶĐĞ ǁĂƐ ŵƵƐŝĐĂůůLJ ĂŶĚ ĚƌĂŵĂƚŝĐĂůůLJ ƐŽ ĞdžĐŝƚŝŶŐ ƚŚĂƚ ŚĞ ǁĂŶƚĞĚ ƚŽ ǁŽƌŬ ǁŝƚŚ ŽŶĞ ŽĨ ĂƚĄŶΖƐ ĨƵůůͲůĞŶŐƚŚ ŽƉĞƌĂƐ͘ Η&ůŽƌĞŶĐŝĂΗ ŝƐ Ă ƌĂƌĞ ŽƉƉŽƌƚƵŶŝƚLJ ĨŽƌ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚƐ ƚŽ ƐŝŶŐ ĂŶĚ ƉĞƌĨŽƌŵ ĂŶ ŽƉĞƌĂ ŝŶ ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚ͕ DĂũŽƌ ƐĂŝĚ͘ ^ŝŶŐĞƌ ĂǀŝĚ ůĂůŽĐŬ͕ ǁŚŽ ƉůĂLJƐ ZŝŽůŽďŽ͕ Ă ŵLJƐƚŝĐĂů ƌŝǀĞƌ ĐƌĞĂƚƵƌĞ͕ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ŽƉĞƌĂ͕ ƐĂŝĚ ƚŚĂƚ ŚĂƐ ďĞĞŶ ƐŽŵĞǁŚĂƚ ŽĨ Ă ĐŚĂůůĞŶŐĞ͕ ƐŝŶĐĞ ŚĂƐ ŶŽƚ ŚĂĚ ĂŶLJ ĨŽƌŵĂů ƚƌĂŝŶŝŶŐ ŝŶ ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚ ĚŝĐƚŝŽŶ͘ ΗKĨƚĞŶ ƚŝŵĞƐ / ǁŝůů ƉƌŽŶŽƵŶĐĞ Ă ^ƉĂŶŝƐŚ ǁŽƌĚ ĂƐ ŝĨ ŝƚ ǁĞƌĞ /ƚĂůŝĂŶ͕ ďĞĐĂƵƐĞ ŵLJ ďƌĂŝŶ ŝƐ ƐŽ ƵƐĞĚ ƚŽ /ƚĂůŝĂŶ ďLJ ŶŽǁ͕Η ŚĞ ƐĂŝĚ ŝŶ ĂŶ ĞͲŵĂŝů͘

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TBD

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Florencia en el Amazonas November 19 - November 23 Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Stadium Maryland 193 & Stadium Dr College Park, MD, 20740 | 301-405-2787 | Website

Daniel Catán's opera about a famous soprano floating down the Amazon frequently veers into magical realism.

Type: Opera, Theater/Performing Arts Price: $25 Time: 7:30pm

(Photo: Cory Weaver)

TBD NotesThe single thing you must know Daniel Catán's opera about a famous soprano floating down the Amazon with some fellowpassengers frequently veers into magical realism, which is all too often a signal to production directors to go overboard with visuals. So it'll be nice to see it attempted by the University of Maryland's Opera Studio, which does minimal operas — the singers wear simple muslin costumes, there's little scenery, and often the accompaniment is just a piano or two.

For Florencia there's a little extra music: A harpist, flautist, clarinetist, and percussionist join pianists Sun Ha Yoon and Hsiang-Ling Hsiao. But you can bet that it doesn't get in the way of the story or the singing. (Andrew Beaujon)

The Diamondback > Diversions

Of love and other demons

By Andrew Freedman Thursday, November 18, 2010

Photo courtesy of Maryland Opera Studio/Cory Weaver

Florencia en el Amazonas follows a group of travelers on an Amazon River boat trip from Colombia to Brazil. The opera starts tonight and runs through Tuesday at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Márquez said, "The year 2005 was the first in my life when I did not write a single line."

Just because the author, famous for works including Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, stopped writing does not mean his works have stopped inspiring.

The Maryland Opera Studio can attest to that, as it presents an opera inspired by Márquez's works.

Beginning tonight, the Opera Studio will be performing composer Daniel Catán and librettist Marcela FuentesBerain's Florencia en el Amazonas (Florencia in the Amazon) — a contemporary opera involving love, secrets and environmental disasters that turn the characters' worlds upside down.

The opera follows a group of travelers as they take a boat from Colombia to Brazil via the Amazon River to reach an opera house in Manaus, where they will hear famous singer Florencia Grimaldi perform. On the way, they fall in love, hide their true feelings and face unexpected fears.

The graduate students performing Florencia have been working on the show for months.

"They received their assignments last spring, and they had the summer and before school started to learn the music on their own," said Justina Lee, the Opera Studio's music director.

Monica Soto-Gil, a graduate student performing in the opera, discussed memorizing the opera before hitting the stage for rehearsals.

"It takes a lot of time because there's quite a lot of music to learn, but hopefully at this level, your musicianship is good enough," she said.

For the piece, which will be the students' recital performance, the studio tried to pick a work that would both interest and challenge the performers.

The spring operas are in "Italian and German, so we didn't want to pick something that was in that language," said Laura Lee Everett, the Opera Studio's coordinator. Florencia is a Spanish-language opera.

Soto-Gil has found the use of Spanish in an opera enjoyable.

"I've never done an opera in Spanish, which is my first language, so it's quite a treat for me," she said. "I'm really enjoying that … It was really easy for me to memorize."

Another draw for the Opera Studio was that Florencia is a contemporary piece.

"It was written by a living composer that they can interact with, which is a very different experience from listening to recordings … that have been done for 200 years," Everett said.

Director Leon Major's theatrical background is having a large impact on the performance; the performers in the opera take theatrical classes as well as voice instruction.

"A lot of singers become these talking heads from the neck up," Everett said. "It will be a compelling story as opposed to watching someone stand there and sing and not really convey it to you."

She added that the theatricality of Florencia helps make it more understandable even though the performance is in a foreign language.

Soto-Gil said "you have to act as well," and recalled a non-singing rehearsal in which performers wore masks so they could solely focus on their movement.

Lee feels the story will grip its audiences and hopes it will draw students to come see the show.

"You see each of the characters' desires and needs and wants and how they're met while they're traveling and the stuff that happens when they encounter a rough patch on the river," Lee said. "The story is very interesting and touches on everybody's human condition. We all can identify with a lot of these characters and what they go through: to be in love, to not be in love. What comes first, your career or not your career? What happens when love grows old? How do you rekindle it?"

Those working on the show hope audiences will appreciate the medium, rather than avoid it because of its potential unfamiliarity.

"The text is exquisite … It's beautiful poetry set to beautiful music," Everett said. "It's a great opportunity for [students] to explore this."

Lee believes opera carries an emotional weight that will inspire students.

"I think they would like it," Lee said. "There's something about the human voice — singing, too, and music, that expresses things that you cannot say in words."

Florencia en el Amazonas runs through Nov. 23 at the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Tickets cost $25, $9 for students. / afreedman@umdbk.com

In 'Florencia,' magical realism meets opera at Maryland Opera Studio

By Anne Midgette Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 21, 2010

They call it the "white opera." For its stripped-down fall presentation, the Maryland Opera Studio at the University of Maryland uses a set of period costumes, made of natural muslin, to allow young singers to get used to working onstage in unfamiliar clothing. But this white, turn-of-the-century garb, slightly ghostly, slightly anodyne, could have been tailor-made for the otherworldly magical realism of "Florencia en el Amazonas," which opened at the Kay Theater of the Clarice Smith Center on Friday night.

Daniel Catán wrote this opera in 1996 as a commission for the Houston Grand Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, and the Seattle Opera - the first Spanish-language opera written for a major company in the United States. It was immediately popular with audiences and has done well since, garnering several productions, a recording, and, ultimately, another big-league commission from the Los Angeles Opera: Catán's "Il Postino," starring Placido Domingo, had its premiere in September.

"Florencia," though, is probably the stronger work. Catán writes in a lush, postPuccini melodic idiom, creating music that's well suited to a story that reaches toward mythic timelessness, with a soupcon of the overblown on the side. Inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (though not based on a specific work), the opera follows a boat loaded with travelers on a journey down the Amazon to see the great diva Florencia Grimaldi at the legendary opera house in Manaus. None of them realizes that Florencia is on board with them. You might call it a "road opera": It's a symbolic journey; there is a symbolic shipwreck; and in the end all find that what they sought (including Florencia) was on board all along. It's a bit pat, even a bit kitschy, but perfectly satisfying to most opera audiences.

Given the costs of producing opera at a professional company and the attendant risks of low box office receipts for an unfamiliar work, universities have become a natural haven for new opera. "Florencia" has been done by at least two other student programs before Maryland, and it's Maryland's second contemporary work this calendar year, after the world premiere of "Shadowboxer" in April. But young voices are not always the best fit for new works, and this one certainly placed high demands

on a couple of promising singers. In the challenging role of Florencia, Bridgette Gan showed a voice capable of gorgeous lyrical singing, but a little taxed by the bigger, Pucciniesque demands of her first aria. Joseph Shadday intermittently showed a solid lyric tenor in another big role as the idealistic young deckhand Arcadio. Monica SotoGil offered a fluid mezzo-soprano as half of the bickering married couple who turns out always to have loved each other after all.

Leon Major, the stage director who leads the Maryland Opera Studio, guided a clear production that managed, in spite of its spare resources, not to feel at all makeshift (perhaps because the current financial crunch is forcing so many professional companies to try stripped-down productions as well that we're getting used to filling in the blanks). The journey was shown on a projected map at the back of the stage, while bits of foliage and clusters of origami birds and butterflies evoked the jungle.

John Devlin led a modest instrumental ensemble of two pianos, harp, flute, clarinet, and percussion. It was an evening that spoke well for studio opera.

"Florencia" will be presented Monday and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

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OTHER NOTABLE COVERAGE Several other performance events during the fall 2010 semester also received positive coverage, both from visiting artists and the School of Music.

Both The Washington Post and The Gazette offered detailed previews of the Center's 2010-11 season. Jazz artists such as Christian McBride and Inside Straight and the SFJAZZ Collective were noted by several outlets, as was performance artist Laurie Anderson's latest work, Delusion.

In the School of Music, among the performances noted were the Honors Chamber Music Concert and the Jazz Studies program's Winter Big Band Showcase.

U.Md. jazz ensembles stay true to the music in big band lineup By: Marie Gullard 12/07/10 8:05 PM Special To The Washington Examiner

University of Maryland Jazz Ensemble will be performing at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center this Wednesday.

The very earliest of American jazz men would probably be surprised to learn not only how far the musical genre has come while pretty much remaining the same, but also that there are today jazz degree programs in many universities and music schools worldwide.

It is little surprise, then, that Chris Vadala -- professional jazz saxophone and woodwind player, director of University of Maryland's jazz studies program and one of just a handful of the university's Distinguished Scholar Scholar-Teacher Teacher award recipients this year -- is justly proud of his students as they present their annual Big Band Showcase under his direction on Wednesday.

"Big," "Band" and "Showcase" sum up the work beautifully, since the performance features three groups. The UM Jazz Ensemble is made up of what Vadala refers to "the premier group" of graduate students and jazz majors, while the UM Jazz Lab Band features undergraduate music and jazz majors. The third group, one that Vadala recently put together, is a blend of advanced jazz and music majors, advanced players who aren't music majors, and other musicians campus-wide.

"We average two big band concerts per semester," Vadala said. "Obviously, I have some favorites that are important from an educational standpoint [and] a programmatic standpoint to make sure we have diverse [repertoire], composers and eras. I also encourage students to incorporate homegrown works."

Each band will present six selections in Wednesday's program, Vadala said, adding that "the three groups will be playing seamlessly that evening."

Senior jazz guitar major Michael Kramer is a member of the UM Jazz Ensemble and plans on applying to the Jazz Institute of Berlin after graduation to pursue further studies.

"I would love [audiences] to know that if they come out to the show, they'll hear some great arrangements, some classics [of] Ellington and more progressive sounds like Danny Davis' arrangement of 'A Train,' " he said. "Also, they will hear some wonderful emerging and formidable soloists such as Griff Kazmierczak on trumpet, Tim Powell [first tenor] and Ben Boker ([lead alto].

Kramer knows the band is sounding as good as he has ever heard it and is excited to play Wednesday night.

"The real challenge is to try to make the music feel right, you know, really feel good in the spirit that it was arranged and composed, and to bring something to each chart every time," he said. "This is jazz, and we are, after all, learning how to improvise. Basically, I'm talking about remaining true to the spirit of the music."

IF YOU GO Pipin' Hot Jazz Where: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday Info: $27 general, $9 full-time students with ID; 301-405-2787; claricesmithcenter.umd.edu

Young musicians take audience on a tour of chamber music By: Marie Gullard 12/04/10 Examiner Correspondent Completing a performance degree in music from the University of Maryland means mandatory chamber ensemble time. It's a good thing for the students, and also for the audiences who enjoy professional quality music written for a small eensemble.

Staff and students of the university's School of Music will present an Honors Chamber Music Concert at 2 p.m. Sunday at the campus' Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

"Over a week and a half ago, we had three chamber music recitals [giving] everybody a chance to play," David Salness, director of chamber music activities, said. "There were six [chamber] groups that were selected from over 30 by the faculty aas most outstanding."

In a program that will run about 90 minutes, one brass ensemble made up of four trombone players, another of saxophones, a woodwind and piano ensemble of four and, finally, three string ensembles each play alternately one piece written by Edvard Grieg, Guy Lacour, John-Michael Michael Damase, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms.

Beethoven, it should be noted, composed some of the most challenging pieces for string quartets in the entire history of chamber works. The honors musicians, as well as all of the students in the chamber music studies department at the university, are well up to the task.

"We feel there's a little more academic rigor involved in being a well well-rounded rounded individual and being knowledgeable beyond your instrument," Salness continued.

"Students get extra attention [and] performance opportunity. Our students are performing right away which I think is extremely valuable [and] we have a fabulous facility which has a lot to do with people's attitude about the quality and importance of the work they're doing."

Students also receive regular mentoring from a coach (one for each ensemble) who plays professionally outside of the university setting. Additionally, the renowned Guarneri String Quartet, whom NPR noted "is among the mos most revered and enduring ensembles of its kind in the world" serve as artists in residence.

The public, in turn, benefits from a program of chamber music that has become a national model for success; one Salness said he feels offers more than most other univ university music programs.

"The audience completes the musicians' journey through the semester," he said. They have been gearing toward presenting these pieces to listeners and having them respond to what they're doing."

IF YOU GO

Honors Chamber Music Concert Where: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland When: 2 p.m. Sunday 2787; claricesmithcenter.umd.edu Info: Free; 301-405-2787;

SF JAZZ C SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE OLLECTIVE

MUSIC OF HORACE SILVER PHOTO COURTESY OF SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE

DCist Preview: SFJAZZ Collective

Every spring since 2004, eight of the country's finest jazz musicians convene in San Francisco for a multi-week session of writing and rehearsing, before embarking on a performance series as the SFJazz Collective. SFJazz, the ensemble's umbrella organization, is the West Coast's largest nonprofit jazz institution and presenter of the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival.

"The general concept to have a band that has no leader, where everybody shares the leader position at different points," said saxophonist and founding member Miguel Zenón during a recent interview with DCist. "The idea is to have a totally democratic ensemble."

The ensemble assembles a new repertoire every year, combining original pieces with the work of a celebrated jazz musician who is also chosen through a democratic process. After exploring the works of late composers like Coltrane and Monk, the group now celebrates living legends. On Sunday, the Collective will come to the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center to apply its innovative approach to the music of hard bop pianist Horace Silver.

"We're just trying to give due to all the composers that have added their significance to the development of jazz," said Zenón, a winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant who DCist profiled earlier this year.

Describing why Silver was chosen as this year's honoree, Zenón said, "Any jazz musician has been exposed to Horace Silver. It's always been obvious that he's been tied to the language of the blues, and this earthy, funky language in his music."

In addition to Zenón, the Sunday's all-star lineup will include vibist Stefon Harris (also previously profiled on DCist), tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, and Luis Bonilla on trombone. The rhythm section consists of Edward Simon on piano, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Eric Harland. A couple of these musicians are substitutes, an unfortunate necessity when dealing with players who have such busy schedules. However, Zenón noted that subs are chosen very carefully, with the overall aesthetic of the ensemble in mind.

One of the reasons the SFJazz Collective is so unique is that it marries tradition with cutting-edge music. All of its members are breaking new ground with their own groups, and while the program will feature many of Horace Silver's best known works, the ensemble members create original arrangements. Additionally, half of Sunday's set list will present original songs, also written by members of the Collective.

The future also bodes well for the band -- the collective has taken an interesting turn by choosing Stevie Wonder as next year's honoree. SFJazz has also announced plans to build a new facility that will serve as a full-time jazz performance and education institution.

"It's a really fun band and I really hope this will keep going for a long time," said Zenón. "It's nice to be part of something that feels so special and that's been going on for so long."

The SFJAZZ Collective will perform at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, located on the University of Maryland campus, on Sunday, October 24, 2010. Tickets to the 6 p.m. show are $42, $9 for students.

LAURIE ANDERSON: DELUSION

PHOTO BY: LELAND BREWSTER

Scene4 magazine International Magazine of Arts and Media Now in our 11th year of publication with comprehensive archives of over 6000 pages

December 2010 – reView

by Karren Alenier "'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.

And when justice is gone, there's always force.

And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!" From "O Superman" Laurie Anderson

Do great people, especially poets, as John Keats wrote about his theory of Negative Capability, have the wherewithal to accept and live with the mysteries of human existence and the universe beyond better than the average Jane or Joe? Performance artist Laurie Anderson and her male alter ego Fenway Bergamot parsed these unsolvable mysteries through a chain of questions and stories in her performance piece Delusion which this reviewer saw September 28, 2010, in the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland.

DEAD DONKEY, SILLY GRIN Best in the storytelling mode, Anderson raised questions in Delusionsuch as: what are days for? what are the last things you say before you turn into dirt? In between a recurring litany of questions and dreams, she wove various stories starting with a personal motivation story about her carrot and donkey system.

She said the carrot on a stick kept her donkey moving until one day the animal dropped dead with a silly grin on his face. She punctuated this story with a quote from Herman Melville, "What is a man if he out lives the lifetime of his god?" Next she moved into the following koan. Her teacher told her to play a

sound and then follow that sound with her mind. A bell is struck. Then the teacher said, this time, don't follow the sound. As for all koans, who knows what the teacher is teaching except to say, be with it?

Following this sequence, multiple video projections morphed into a graffito of a falling skeleton—this projection, her primitively drawn storyboard.

Anderson's voice modulated to Fenway's baritone asking hard questions: how do we begin again? which way do we go? Then Anderson talked about her theory of punctuation in which she suggests that a little clock face should replace the period to show how long it took to write a sentence.

THE AEROSPACE ANDERSON Because Anderson ventures into the writerly world—at one point she also goes through a journal of days in the month of October, this reviewer would say Anderson is more than jack-of-all-trades performance artist.

She is a poet who cares about the words chosen for her compelling discourse which ranges from the personal—her mother dies and Anderson never gets to sort out the relationship—to scientific—she discusses a plan to move manufacturing to the moon so the Earth can repair itself (is this a far flung NASA plan or Anderson providing a delusional joke?)—to political—who owns the moon (China? Russia?

United States? Or how about the Italians who saw it first?)—to metaphysical as she pondered 19th century Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov's theory on how to resurrect the dead by retrieving particles of ancestors floating in outer space.

Anderson gained recognition outside the art world with a number two position on the British pop music chart in 1981 for her Minimalist-like song "O Superman." In 2003, NASA hosted her as its first, and so far only, artist-in-residence. Anderson is known for combining storytelling, singing, dancing, visual art and video, and playing her original custom-designed electronic violin. In 1977, she created a specialized violin set: a violin bow that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge of her violin. Innovation is what she is known for.

Something about her credentials begs the question why she peppered Delusion, which was commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and the Barbican Centre in London, with references to 19th century thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Melville, and Fedorov without counter balancing with references to more recent philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein,Noam Chomsky, or Luce Irigaray.

As to the music produced: Anderson plays her electric violin but there are unseen musicians—Eyvind Kang on Viola and Colin Stetson on horns, the original soundscape is mostly moody and unmemorable.

The most interesting musical moment was Anderson's interpretation of the nursery rhyme song "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Movement and dance were confined to a few moments of strut where Anderson's sparkling flats caught light.

Otherwise Anderson saw fit to rest on a couch that was one of her four video screens or stand behind a speaker's podium. Video projections tended toward images of the natural world and some of them seemed clichéd (e.g. leaves falling expressing the onset of winter and old age). Among the interesting projections were extreme rain (Anderson stands in some of these video downpours) and an almost holographic scene of Anderson sitting in one corner of the frame while a woman lies sprawled on the floor. A dog licks at the woman while a man stands in the background. Anderson's child-like drawings (also a projection) seemed to be some sort of chaotic storyboard for Delusion.

In experiencing Delusion, one gets the sense that Anderson was playing to the crowd that has already seen her. If one had never seen Anderson in performance before, it was easy to miss to that her alter ego, whose bass baritone is created by a computerized voice filter, has a name—Fenway Bergamot.

However, the name is not important since Anderson has been using this voice-altered character for years without a name.

What is clear is that voice seems related to the character Halin Stanley Kubrick's 1982 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. What was annoying about the voice is that it seemed to suggest in its deep resonance and slow delivery that what the male alter ego had to say carried extreme weight and to this reviewer's thinking this weight mirrored the clichéd imagery that was meant to suggest those things with which we go to the grave not understanding.

The last run of images in Delusion, concern maternity and mother-daughter relationship. Anderson has a stupendously absurd dream where her rat terrier Lola Belle (Lola Belle is her real life pet) is sewn into her stomach so she can give birth to this dog and greet her, "Hello, little bonehead." Eventually this discourse leads to the death of her mother. Anderson goes to Robert Mapplethorpe's priest for counsel and tells him she does not love her mother but her mom is dying. Father Pierre tells her to say to the mother that she (Anderson) always cared. Thus the mother dies hearing this from her daughter and Anderson feels robbed for not telling her mother how she really felt. So then Anderson resorts to a Buddhist meditation to try to find one moment when her mother loved her, only to come out of the meditation with this question, "Did you ever really love me?"

So maybe the answer is that Laurie Anderson's quotient for Negative Capability is just like us ordinary Janes and Joes when it comes to love and death. Maybe Anderson is better at being with stars, which are our original building blocks.

Cover Photo-Kevin Kennefick Storyboard Photo-Laurie Anderson

Performance review

Review: Laurie Anderson brings 'Delusion' to the Clarice Smith Center

By Anne Midgette Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 30, 2010

Laurie Anderson has gone baroque.

"Delusion," Anderson's newest evening-length performance, had its premiere in Vancouver in February and arrived at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center on Thursday night. It has all the familiar hallmarks of Anderson's work: scraps of stories over a bed of recorded and live music, told in Anderson's pillowy voice in a kind of soothing singsong that seems deliberately to belie the lapidary texts. Indeed, Anderson's spoken delivery is at once seductive and so familiar -- in its artlessness, its inflections, the lilt at the end of a sentence as she delivers a quasi punch line -- that one might like to hear something in a new key.

But I have never been struck as strongly by the sensuality of the Laurie Anderson experience as I was in "Delusion." Yes, her aesthetic appears stripped-down, severe: a bare stage with a few props (in this case, a sofa, a couple of projection surfaces, a scattering of electric candles on the floor), her androgynous clothing and short, tousled hair. But this piece is baroque because it's full of color and image and, by Anderson's standards, even drama.

Anderson's work has always appealed to the senses. There's an element of animal comfort to sitting in a darkened room and listening to a lush voice tell stories that lull you to heightened awareness, or the edge of sleep, or both.

And "Delusion" is particularly colorful, sensual, emotional. It also has a womblike aspect: the video projections often included glowing red or amber surfaces, warm in the darkness. (Elements that were billed as "electronic puppetry" turned out to be video loops of animations created on chalkboard, reminiscent of the South African artist William Kentridge in showing the erasures and overscores as one figure morphs into another.) The reference to the womb, accidental or not, is apt; one theme of the piece is the death of Anderson's mother.

When Anderson first introduces the theme, it's in a dream image straight out of a Dutch painting. A video presents a tableau: a red velvet curtain; a half-naked female body; an elderly man standing over it; a dog nosing around, with Anderson herself, her back to the viewer, as spectator, while the live Anderson tells of her mother's dying.

There are certainly other elements. "Delusion" includes two segments from "Homeland,"Anderson's latest album, which she presented at the Birchmere this summer. She delivers a couple of sections in a voice filtered by electronics so that she sounds like a man -- something she's been doing for so long that she's given a name to this male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot.

When Anderson picks up the mother story again, at the end of the piece, it's with a twist: She wanted to tell her mother that she didn't love her. She plays her electric violin against a video of a furious whirl of falling leaves that is angry and pretty and obvious, and then invokes something she calls the "mother meditation."

This is usually interpreted as involving universal love. In Anderson's account, she was told to do it by focusing on one moment when her mother loved her unreservedly. She can't find the moment. She responds to this loss with very loud, angry playing.

There's a difference between crafting idiosyncratic perceptions into a work of art and working out your issues onstage. In some ways, Anderson's work represents an easy-listening version of performance art; and its limits, for me, were exposed by what seemed like trivialization. It does, however, represent a kind of letting go, and for many, that may be its appeal -- or its catharsis.

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE AND INSIDE STRAIGHT

PHOTO BY: CHI MODU

Weekend in Jazz | 11.12-11.14

Christian McBride performs with his group Inside Straight at the University of Maryland on Friday. courtesy flickr user leewrightonflickr

Christian McBride & Inside Straight, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (University of Maryland), 7 p.m.

Christian McBride, performing here with his group Inside Straight, is arguably today’s top bassist in the classic jazz idiom. He and Inside Straight, which comprises some of the best musicians in the jazz game, released a stellar album, “Kind of Brown,” last year.

Its complexity and contemporary bent combined with a groundedness in tradition, forging a complete whole that was hard-swingin’ and bluesy as well as cerebral and ambitious. The group includes Warren Wolf on vibraphone, Christian Sands on piano, Jaleel Shaw on alto and soprano saxophones and Ulysses Owens, Jr. on drums. $42 cover for general audience, $9 for University of Maryland students, no minimum.

by Giovanni Russonello

Jazz Setlist, Nov. 11-17: Enough Already, November 14! Edition Posted by Michael J. West on Nov. 11, 2010 at 10:13 am

Other highlights from the week after the break.

Photo: Brian Callahan Friday, November 12 If there's a single all-star bassist of the past two decades, it's Christian McBride. His virtuosity on the instrument is awesome, made more so by his gregarious personality and fearsome physical presence: the double bass is a gigantic instrument, and he looks like he could crush the thing in his hands. And if "virtuosity" means "ability to play anything," McBride seems determined to prove it. He plays funk, fusion, and even hiphop rhythms and harmony on electric bass, and just as easily slips into mainstream, post-bop, and even free jazz on his acoustic. Slightly funky acoustic jazz is the order of the day in McBride's current band project, Inside Straight, which currently includes an impressive lineup of saxophonist Steve Wilson, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, pianist Peter Martin, and drummer Carl Allen (in the running for Busiest Drummer on the Planet). All are excellent, but none more so than McBride himself. Inside Straight performs at 8 PM at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, on the UMUC campus in College Park. $42.

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YOU'RE THE CRITIC On a weekly basis, the Clarice Smith Center gathers qualitative feedback from critical reviews, campus and community partners and participants. As part of a national research project, we have instituted regular e-surveys following performances, entitled "You’re the Critic," which enable us to assess the impact of these arts experiences on individuals. This direct feedback is posted on the Center’s website, and in many of the responses, patrons praise the Center not only for bringing specific shows or artists to campus, but also for our overall approach to presenting.

NATIONAL ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTE (JUNE 2010)

 “Everything about the Clarice Smith Center is virtually perfect. The NOI performance, as all performances throughout the year, was of very professional quality and beautifully presented. The Clarice Smith Center is a first class facility and the staff is always pleasant and helpful. I always enjoy my visits.”

 “The Clarice Smith Center is a treasure, not only for the University of MD, but for Marylanders in general. It is a well‐spring of cultural opportunities unlike anything else in the area.”

 “I especially love the National Orchestral Institute, which is a total joy comprised of professional caliber musicians. It is a sheer joy to listen to these young people perform, assured by the knowledge that they represent the future of classical music. The price for seats is a ridiculous bargain to any of us who have attended the series in recent years. Bravo to the directors, staff, and musicians who make this possible.”

 “These events provide opportunities to hear a variety of music‐‐ and ensembles‐‐that are unavailable most of the year in the Baltimore‐Washington area's very conservative classical music environment. The NOI is one of the area's greatest little‐known annual musical assets.”

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange:

The Matter of Origins



“It is a rare opportunity to see something genuinely new. I felt honored to have the chance to see The Matter of Origins.”

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“I feel I was part of a profound experience, rather than just attending a performance.”

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“I enjoyed the performance. This was my first event at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and I feel that my experience with The Matter of Origins was positive enough to encourage me to attend future events.”

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“Most unusual and best performance I have ever seen ‐ and I am 90 years old. Besides the performance, everything was superbly organized. I love attending your performances.”

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“Liz Lerman's Matter of Origins is a breath of fresh air in modern dance. Her method of combining the arts and the sciences works very well.”

POST-CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE:

RUSSIAN GERSHWIN

 “We have been coming to the CSPAC since its dedication and have attended many concerts. This concert was one of the very finest! Both pianists and the Ensemble were excellent. The performances were beautiful, interesting, and exciting. It was a terrific evening of fine music.”

 “What a terrific performance. Our family stayed up until midnight discussing the performance, the program notes, and the issues raised in the post‐concert discussion.”  “Both piano soloists were FABULOUS, and the orchestra was also very good. Our group agreed it was one of the best performances we've attended.”  “The concert was wonderful. The pianists, the conductor and the orchestra performed beautifully. We learned a lot about Gershwin and the "Russians" that we had no knowledge of.”

 “As usual, being able to choose from a "smorgasbord" of selections of great presentations through the "school year" is EXCELLENT! Any time I have had contact with the staff, I'm always met with a cordial, competent, and creative response from each of you. Kudos to all of you.”  “Courteous, helpful, and professional; you couldn't ask for better than the staff at CSPAC.”

SCHOOL OF THEATRE, DANCE AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES: ENCHANTED APRIL  “We live near a professional theatre and have never seen a performance there that ranks even close to Enchanted April on Maryland's campus. The acting was sophisticated and the set enthralling.”

 “The actors did a marvelous job. The sets, lighting and costumes enhanced the performance enormously. I truly felt that I was in rainy London and sun‐drenched Italy. It was marvelous!”

 “It was a wonderful night of theater! A VERY enjoyable recently written play, well acted, with beautiful sets, a perfect night out after a long week of hard work! We've been going to UM plays for four decades, and this was one of the most enjoyable performances!”  It was such a beautiful story, and every single thing from the casting of the amazing actors, the talent of the set designers, the directing...FLAWLESS! I came multiple times and encouraged many friends to come and see for themselves. Each and every one was blown away, some came more than once! Bravo!  “The performance was outstanding...the best play I have seen at UMD. Each individual was awesome throughout the performance. I loved it so much that I saw it three times and would go see it again.

Customer Service has always been good each time I have visited; they make you feel at home.”  “This was one of the most professional performances I have ever seen, including those on Broadway. The cast was wonderful, and the set design and function was absolutely fabulous.”

IBEX PUPPETRY:

PANTHER AND CRANE 

“This show was truly moving ‐ I shed tears of joy and sorrow.

The combination of kites, puppetry, dance, and music was both original and profound.”

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“Very unusual and may not be for everyone but that's what I like about the [shows at] UM; it's always unusual and different.

You never know what you are going to get, and it makes you think outside the box.”

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“This was one of the best performances we have ever seen at the Center. It was enchanting and planned perfectly‐‐‐the puppets, the music, special effects, all of it. I was not aware there were so many children in the audience until the lights went up at the end. Everyone, including ourselves was spellbound. The talkback was engaging and interesting.”



“Heather Henson and her troupe created a dream‐like fable before our eyes right on stage. What a delightful performance!

Customer service was, as always, exceptional.”

UM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND UM CONCERT CHOIR:

PARADISE AND THE PERI

 “The recent performance of Paradise and the Peri was spectacular! The soloists were superb; the chorus and orchestra also were wonderful. This is a program that I would definitely come to see again.”

 “Our dealings with the Clarice Smith Center through the years has been great! The people who work behind the ticket windows, the ticket takers, the ushers ‐‐ everyone has been courteous and helpful whenever we have needed help.”

 “Wonderful! Wonderful! I enjoyed the performance of "Das Paradies und Die Peri" immensely! I had never experienced this side of Robert Schumann before and really liked it a lot! I also attended the pre‐performance lecture, thought that was most educational and enhanced my experience of the performance as well. Immediately afterwards, I looked into "Lalla Rukh (Rookh)", ordered the book by Thomas Moore on Amazon.com and two versions of "Das Paradies und Die Peri"!”  “I found the UM Orchestra, Choir, and the vocal soloists as talented and professional as any for‐profit fine arts musical organization that I have heard elsewhere! Bravo to the Conductor and the Director of the UM Clarice Smith Music Dept Program who spoke before the program.”

SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE:

THE MUSIC OF HORACE SILVER  “Excellent! It is wonderful to have exposure to well‐known as well as emerging talent of this caliber! Being exposed to the creativity and new work of such top‐notch talent is invaluable.

Customer service at CSPAC is excellent: it is responsive, attentive to details, and personal preferences. The staff is thoughtful and reliable, and if there's a problem, they are understanding and reliable when they commit to a task or service.”

 “It is wonderful to experience the brilliance of such a wide array of talent and creativity. It was an honor to have exposure to the live performance and the interaction of all of these gifted musicians. Customer service was excellent with attention to detail, respect for personal preferences on seating, and a good sense of the importance of listening to the wishes of attendees.”

LAURIE ANDERSON: DELUSION  “Laurie Anderson's performances never cease to amaze me. Her train of thought is an ongoing exploration of emotions, current events and humor. The final portion of this particular performance, when she's talking about her mother, was so personal and heartfelt that it brought me to tears. Just an amazing and brave performer. I see her whenever she's in town, wherever I am, whether in Princeton NJ, Sarasota, Fl or, now, the DC area and have never been disappointed and have always been inspired by her creativity and spirit.”  “I found Laurie Anderson's emotive performance of Delusion to be very intelligent, introspective, thoughtful, reflective, moving, poignant, and at times, humorous. As with most of her shows, Anderson's experimental style, combining live instrumentation, spoken word, recorded sound, and animated video lent itself well to the topic of her performance piece. Even though the subject matter of Anderson's production was not light fare, it was a pleasure to be able to have been a part of the performance.”  “From the moment the show began, to the moment it ended, I was transported into another realm ‐ a realm of words, emotions, and experience ‐ unlike any I'd experienced before. It was utterly original yet familiar. Truly breathtaking.”  “Laurie Anderson was as interesting and insightful of performer as she was 20 years ago when I last saw her. I overheard a fellow patron upon exiting who put it best, "that was incredible, I still have goosebumps!" I thought it was just me...but now I realize she has that effect on lots of people.”

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE AND INSIDE STRAIGHT  “This was my first time visiting CSPAC and what a first it was...the performance was way beyond any expectations. The artists were clearly some of the best amongst us, and on top of it, they did a meet‐and‐greet after the show? Class act all the way around. Thank you CSPAC for giving me and my friends a beautiful, inspiring evening out.”

 “This was a brilliant performance by some young in age, but obviously very experienced and accomplished musicians. It was a joy to see Christian leading the guys through a fun and engaging performance that folded the audience in perfectly! I really wish CSPAC had more jazz performances. Customer service was great as always. Very helpful and knowledgeable staff.”  “This was my second time attending a performance at Clarice Smith. I also saw SFJAZZ Collective last month. I was blown away by Christian McBride and Inside Straight. Please bring more jazz programming to Clarice Smith like this. The post‐ show meet/greet with performers for both the SFJAZZ Collective and Christian McBride were wonderful.”  “For both of us, this was one of the finest jazz concerts we have ever attended, and we attend many, including those at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The talent and technique of the handpicked younger members of McBride's group were awesome.”

MARYLAND OPERA STUDIO:

FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS  “Wonderful, thrilling performance. Music was very evocative; singers had beautiful voices, acting was good, set very suggestive and appealing ‐‐ loved the procession of leaves, butterflies, and birds reminiscent of Latin American processions. Pre‐show talk was excellent; a superb evening.”

 “The interpretation of the story line, individual character development and singing were wonderful. The innovative ways of portraying the scenery passing by, the butterflies and the water movement were really imaginative. The musical accompaniment was really moving. I particularly like the butterfly adornments worn by the musicians. I am looking forward to another performance.”

 “It is great that you are featuring new compositions and young artists. Do more of the same.”  “I thought the opera and the quality of the performance were excellent. Ethereal and intensely emotional. The core message I saw was the importance of life's journey rather than the destination; also, enriching and loving relationships which reach beyond oneself are the most energizing and fulfilling.”