The ‘Next Big Thing’ at Spring Weekend
Man, don’t you wish you could have been at South by Southwest (SXSW) last month? While you were sitting in class, the Next Big Things were stamping out names for themselves, playing free shows in backyards at all hours of the day. Yeah, SXSW, the focal point of the entire music industry, is a pretty friggin’ sweet deal for any music fan.
The Return of a Master
Sometimes I wish I could write prose like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote music. Maybe that’s a difficult lesson to learn in itself: Mozart’s music isn’t boring; it’s elegant. It’s the sheer simplicity that can be maddening, and Mozart isn’t an exception — the harmonic ease and clarity of melodic lines in Mozart’s music often seem bland or generic, and that, in itself, seems to be the sticking point: it’s not everyone who can write music so cleanly. After one listens to the music repeatedly, it somehow loses its blandness and realizes its — well — elegance.
CONCERT REVIEW MIT Chamber Chorus Prepares for Harbison’s Seventieth
There’s no getting around Tomás Luis de Victoria’s setting of <i>O magnum mysterium</i> text for me, if it isn’t for Francis Poulenc’s setting of the same text. But maybe that’s an asset when it comes to listening to Harbison.
PREFROSH EXCLUSIVE Attention Prefrosh: Arts at MIT
Whether you’re completely new to MIT or a self-proclaimed lifer, there are always plenty of ways to get involved with the arts at MIT, or in the surrounding community. Here’s a brief guide to what kinds of arts opportunities are available at MIT. If you’re hoping to get off campus for a bit and explore arts in the city, there’s even more out there to satisfy your craving. This article isn’t intended to list every group at MIT nor every concert hall in Boston, but rather to give a small sampling of what you could enjoy here. Exploring on your own is always an encouraged avenue for finding out about art at MIT and in the city!
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ ½ / 4 Conspiracies Abound in ‘State of Play’
S<i>tate of Play</i>, based on a BBC miniseries by the same name, begins with a chase: a frantic dash across busy streets and crowded stores. The person being pursued, a street criminal, finds what seems to be a safe location behind trash cans, only to be shot in the head by an unmasked assailant, an eerie individual the viewer sees at various points in the film. The next scene depicts the murder of a young woman whose death is implied by a scream as she is pushed in front of a subway train. Seemingly unrelated, the two murders set into motion a mystery thriller interweaving journalism, politics, and personal affairs. Despite this fast-paced opening, the film slows to a meandering walk as the plot develops in various locales around Washington, D.C., with twists and turns that eventually confuse the moviegoer.
CONCERT REVIEW Great Scots at The Paradise
Glasvegas, Scotland’s hottest rock group, is on their first U.S. tour to promote their eponymous debut album. After visits to David Letterman and SXSW, they finally arrived at Boston’s venerable Paradise Rock Club on Tuesday night. Joining them in the sold out show was Ida Maria, a promising and kinetic Swedish singer.
Next Act
Don’t forget to check out Next Act’s performance of Sweet Charity, based on a book written by Neil Simon. The music was composed by Cy Coleman and lyrics written by Dorothy Fields. Performances are scheduled for today and tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Next House. The best part: admission is free! This year’s production is directed by Matt Cohen ’10.
RESTAURANT REVIEW Across the Atlantic in Under Fifteen Minutes
The Cambridge restaurant scene is blessed by the presence of a vibrant Portuguese community clustered around Inman Square and South Somerville, about a half hour stroll from MIT’s campus. The flavors of Portugal are splendidly rich with many dishes showcasing the nation’s top quality seafood and meats in hearty sauces crafted from fine olive oil, garlic, and a variety of earthy spices and herbs.
CONCERT REVIEW Through the Ages
One could learn a lot performing with the <i>Oriana Consort</i>. Certainly, one could learn a lot attending one of their concerts. Conductor Walter Chapin’s copious program notes exuded the author’s obvious excitement for both music and ensemble, and his interest was well transmitted — reading Chapin’s notes provided the distinct impression of attending a music history course; an engrossing excursion through the past with bits of history being performed.
CONCERT REVIEW Wild, Deep, and Danceable
Sharam Tayebi of Iranian-American Grammy award-winning DJ and dance music production duo Deep Dish got Bostonian clubgoers to make some wild moves on the dance floor at his <i>Get Wild</i> tour and CD release party at nightclub Rumor last Thursday.
CONCERT REVIEW A Weekend with The Bad Plus
What better way to spend my 21st birthday weekend than with my favorite band, The Bad Plus. The time-shifting, genre-bending trio celebrated songs from their new release, <i>For All I Care</i>, as well as old tunes (and some new, but unreleased ones as well) at Berklee Performance Center on Friday, April 3rd, and at Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton on Saturday April 4th. The trio, consisting of Reid Anderson (bass), Ethan Iverson (piano), and David King (drums), have been playing the majority of their shows with vocalist Wendy Lewis, who joined the band on <i>For All I Care</i>. On both shows this weekend, they began with a traditional trio set, and then brought Lewis out for the second half.
CONCERT REVIEW Sturm und Drang, but Insightful Too
Who <i>hasn’t</i> played Murray Perahia’s March 28th program? Or at least tried; all of the works performed by Murray Perahia on Sunday afternoon’s Celebrity Series concert are somewhere gathering dust on my piano, multiple recordings litter my CD collection. It’s music that we’ve studied to understand what Western music is, music we’ve scrutinized to hear what Western music is supposed to sound like, and perhaps that’s what was so fundamentally difficult about Sunday’s performance. What can there possibly be to say about music that’s been spoken about for so long?
THEATER REVIEW MIT Shakespeare Ensemble Performs ‘Pericles’
Drama is tough. It takes a lot time, a lot of money, and a lot of otherwise unemployed people willing to sacrifice both soul and social life for the glory of a few good performances. Unlike some of the other arts, which are often solitary, drama is always about other people: the audience, the cast, the director. No production is “pure” in that sense, but rather the amalgam of a host of other people’s opinions and decisions.
CD REVIEW BoA Enters the American Pop Scene
Although the three-letter name BoA may not currently strike a chord of familiarity in the US, the R&B pop princess is staking her claims in our neighborhood. The pop star who took Korea by storm and rode on top of the <i>hallyu</i>, the popular culture movement in Korea, recently released her first full-length (and self-titled) English album.
CONCERT REVIEW Moz: ‘To Be Human Is to Be Loved’
Former Smiths frontman Morrissey stopped by Boston on Sunday, March 29th as part of his Tour of Refusal, in support of his latest studio record <i>Years of Refusal</i>. A crowd waited in line hours before doors opened in order to get a great spot at the House of Blues. The general admission floor area filled up quickly with eager fans awaiting a chance to touch the singer himself, as he is known to generously offer his hand to those in the first few rows.
CONCERT FEATURE What’s the Buzz?
Kicking off this Sunday is the Beeline Festival at the Broad Institute. The festival hopes to introduce MIT and the surrounding community to new and exciting music, as well some exciting culinary treats. Co-coordinators Christine N. Southworth ’01 and MIT professor Evan Ziporyn, both musicians themselves in Gamelan Galak Tika, have organized six outstanding performances every weekend in April. The opening concert this Sunday will feature The Calder Quartet, as well as a reception where guests can taste honey and pastries made by local beekeepers and chefs. After the reception is a second set with Gutbucket.
RESTAURANT REVIEW Top of the Hub: Restaurant Week
In many major cities, Restaurant Week serves as an annual or a biannual tradition. Two or three course meals at acclaimed restaurants in the city go for relatively inexpensive prices. I took advantage of this event by taking my girlfriend to the Top of the Hub, located on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Tower.
CD REVIEW An Irish Band Releases Another Album
To be honest, I wasn’t going to pick up U2’s most recent effort, <i>No Line on the Horizon</i>. When I was looking at Billboard release listings for the month of March, U2’s name didn’t even stick out. Yet, their album cover did. I saw it in a magazine, but recognized it as something else: <i>Boden Sea, Uttwil</i>, or a time-lapse photograph of Lake Constance taken by my favorite photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto. I wasn’t sure how the use of the photograph could have anything to do with the content of the music, so I delved a little deeper.
CONCERT REVIEW A Romantic Journey
Time seems to get distorted in musical history. Somehow, the past two hundred years of music are still very much with us in many different ways. At the very basic, instrumental level, Mozart’s piano is different from the one we play today, Haydn’s horn is much more curmudgeonly and Bach took on the challenge of writing six suites for the curious new cello. But Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and even Beethoven were writing during the very beginning of the industrial revolution, at the very inception of a period of novel metallurgy and mass-produced instruments. And all of this changed the way instruments were made. The standards provided by the technologies of the industrial revolution made it possible to write for a body of instruments that extends almost through today.
CONCERT REVIEW French Fare and All That Jazz
One of these days, when the bipolar weather gods deem Boston worthy of some warmth and sun, take a stroll across the Charles and meander your way to Kenmore Square’s Petit Robert Bistro, where customers munch on tasty French bistro fare at relatively affordable prices. PRB recently started its live jazz Sundays with the arrival of the spring season. On a recent sunshine-filled weekend, a friend and I decided to check this out and came away with both stomachs and ears satisfied.