A night full of a cappella
At the end of February, the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) held the last of four Northeast Quarterfinals of the season in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. This was the ICCA’s 19th season of student a capella competitions, which have become increasingly popular due to the movie Pitch Perfect. And looking around, I could see the extent of a capella’s popularity — all of Kresge’s 1200 seats were filled with enthusiastic students and supportive families.
Yo-Yo Ma’s modern-day Silk Road
World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma has done more than create music with his Silk Road Ensemble — he’s united the world with an innovative approach to cross-cultural exchange. His eclectic group, which performed at Symphony Hall as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston last Wednesday, consistently breaks down the borders of music. Featuring instruments, composers, and musicians from every corner of the globe, the Silk Road Ensemble performed six original pieces — at times scattered, but thoroughly vibrant and entertaining.
Stravinsky, Debussy, and Brahms at the BSO
When you hear Igor Stravinsky’s name, what comes to mind? For most, it would be the Rite of Spring, a revolutionary work that sparked a riot the night of its premiere. For others, the name may conjure up visions of Petrushka or the supernatural Firebird Suite. What is definitely not associated with Stravinsky is Johann Sebastian Bach, the master of fugue and counterpoint, whose groundbreaking musicality was deeply rooted in the German Baroque tradition. That is, unless you know the story behind Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-flat for chamber orchestra.
Of All the Flowers: Songs of the Middle Ages
This past Friday, the Boston Camerata performed at Walker Memorial as part of the MIT Sounding Series sponsored by the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology. The night’s program was specifically commissioned for MIT and included some of the first performances (in the past 600 years or so) of newly reconstructed pieces from 14th-century French and Italian composers Guillaume Machaut, Johannes Ciconia, Francesco da Firenze, and others.
Timbuktu: Life under terrorism
ISIS and the radicalization of Islam should be deplored. We know this. But what are the crimes? Facile answers include the beheadings and mass killings that have the immediate shock value needed to attract media attention. (Our world is one of noise, to echo Polish director Pavel Pawlikowski at the Oscars.) The injustices perpetrated against everyday Muslims living under jihadist militants are both more pervasive and more insidious: abrogations of freedoms not only to life, but to liberty, personal and cultural. Attacks on not only the body, but the soul.
True love and tragedy in Boston Ballet’s Lady of the Camellias
Choreographed by Val Caniparoli, Lady of the Camellias by Boston Ballet is an emotion-filled display of the talent that makes the company so special.
MoMA: Museum of MochA
This year, Mocha Moves performed “MoMA: Museum of MochA.” Every set of the showcase was beautifully reminiscent of the artwork that inspired it and representative of the way that dance can tell stories. Mocha alumni served as MCs, introducing the appropriately named dance sets which alluded to historical paintings — “Girl with the Ratchet Earring,” “Venus de Mocha,” “The Mocha Lisa,” “Persistence of Memory,” and a flurry of other fun pieces.
Song of the Sea: A beautiful Irish tale
From Snow White and Mulan to Ratatouille and Frozen, I have always associated animated movies with Disney and Pixar — movies with bold colors and characters with big eyes. These movies’ characters shared a distinctive cartoonish look that practically begged to be placed into a coloring book complete with a pack of crayons. I have been so used to this style of mainstream animation that when I watched Song of the Sea, I was taken aback by the mesmerizing watercolor animation that filled the screen with beautiful gradients and intricate Celtic patterns. Not only did the plot engage me until the end, but the film was simply gorgeous. No coloring book could do this justice.
Debussy, Birtwistle, Liadov, and Stravinsky at the BSO
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the country’s five major symphony orchestras, and because they feature a new lineup of pieces and performers weekly, there is always something new to see. Earlier this month, the concert conducted by Stefan Asbury and Ken David Masur consisted of four pieces arranged strategically to depict the show’s central theme: vitality.
Farewell Pawnee!
This past Tuesday NBC aired the last two episodes of its acclaimed comedy, Parks and Recreation. For seven seasons, the mockumentary followed the service of the Parks and Recreation department of Pawnee, Indiana, a fictional town.
Drawing Apart
Reykjavík artist Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s exhibit on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, entitled Drawing Apart, is powerful and agitating, a true treat for MIT’s artistic community.
What We Do In The Shadows: Twilight meets The Real World (in a good way)
I don’t generally go out of my way to see comedy flicks, but having grown up through an age of reality television and teenage vampire romances, I couldn’t resist. You know a movie is going to be interesting when “hipster vampire” appears in the description. But fear not: “Each crew member wore a crucifix and was granted protection by the subjects of the film,” so no humans were harmed in the making of this documentary, well, except for each course of dinner guests.
Human Capital: The Price of Greed
Human Capital is an Italian drama with an air of mystery. The film revolves around two families of very different social statuses as their lives are thrown together and torn apart by a single tragic accident. While the film certainly has the thrill and suspense of a whodunit mystery, make no mistake: this film is a socio-economic commentary through and through.
Julianne Moore shines in Still Alice
In Still Alice, Julianne Moore plays Dr. Alice Howland, 50, a celebrated psycholinguistics professor at Columbia. During the middle of a lecture, she draws a blank on a word related to her research. She apologizes, smiles and after a long pause fills the sentence with the word “thingy”. Shortly after, as she is jogging around campus her vision becomes blurry and she becomes absolutely disoriented. She tries to find known places, but nothing looks familiar.
ARTS IN REVIEW:
As in previous years, Boston was a prominent center of eclectic and exciting cultural events in 2014. In addition to hosting internationally known musicians and performers, like St. Vincent, The Knife, and Lily Allen, it also allowed up-and-coming recording artists and singer-songwriters like Holly Herndon, MØ, and London Grammar to showcase their work to the city’s concert-goers. Boston Calling, a musical festival that has now become the city’s trademark event, brought many musicians in the spring and fall, bolstering Boston’s cultural importance. Boston Ballet provided fans of ballet with versatile productions, from Cinderella and Pricked to Jewels and Close to Chuck. Those who appreciate theater and performance arts had many opportunities to see famous actors and performers, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, in Boston’s theater centers. The city was also a hub for movie screenings — the most critically acclaimed movies of 2014, such as The Grand Budapest Hotel, Birdman, and Boyhood, attracted extra attention.
Who knew a ukulele orchestra even existed?
When an eight-person ukulele band from across the Atlantic comes to Boston, you stop everything you’re doing to see what in tarnation a band with more than one ukulele could possibly do. A lot, it turns out.
Death, dogs, and songs surround MTG’s upcoming production, Lucky Stiff
The MIT Musical Theatre Guild has had a busy IAP preparing for the opening night of their latest production, Lucky Stiff. In the words of director Jon Sue-Ho ’13, the production tells “the story of a pathetic British shoe salesman who in order to inherit six million dollars from his uncle must take his uncle’s corpse on a vacation to Monte Carlo.”
Science through dance
It’s generally frowned upon to do a somersault in a research presentation, but this was an exception. As the music started, the students leapt onto the stage and wordlessly described their topic in a series of graceful pirouettes, dipping and weaving around each other while seeming to be propelled by their arms. “Motion of Bacteria through Flagella,” the program said.
Bloated fan service and CGI in Peter Jackson’s final Hobbit film
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, has sucked up over $700 million in global box offices, if only because the film is director Peter Jackson’s final trip to Middle-earth. But the movie, despite its expectedly breathtaking cinematography, is a mediocre lobster roll — there’s not much meat and quite a lot of filler.