The previous blog post was made by Daniel Stainkamp, a staff writer for the Arts Desk of the Daily Tar Heel.
A talented octet of musicians hailing from the city that brought us Hyphy and Rice-a-Roni lived up to its chops (named the “Rising Star Jazz Band of the Year in Down Beat magazine’s International Critics Poll) as it played to a sold-out crowd Saturday in Memorial Hall.
The octet consists of the collective’s artistic director, Joe Lovano, on tenor saxophone, Renee Rosnes on piano, Dave Douglas on trumpet, Stefon Harris on vibraphone and marimba, Miguel Zenon on alto saxophone and flute, Andre Hayward on Trombone, Matt Menman on Bass and Eric Harland on Drums.
The performance’s program touted the SFJC as an exception to the standard practice among jazz musicians for aspiring, promising musicians to join a group headed by a seasoned leader in order to jump-start their careers. According to the program, the group is comprised solely of all-stars.
Each year the SFJC chooses a composer for the performers to focus on as they compose their own original pieces for the concerts. This year it’s the legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter, who wrote jazz fusion, hard bop and modal jazz tunes, just to name a few.
Showing influences from Shorter as well as from free jazz and avant-garde/experimental artists, the performance wasn’t for the elevator music crowd. The phrases were thick and layered, and it was tough to extract a single emotion from any of the pieces.
But who says that should be the point? The audience had a lot to digest, but I felt like this just meant more for my money. There were breakdowns reminiscent of trip-hop tracks,
Bob Ray, an N.C. resident who attended the performance, agreed, describing the collective as “complicated but virtuosic.”
With complex and vacillating time signatures and key changes, the music that flowed out of Memorial Hall was very far removed from the sweet jazz of the ’30s or the soft jazz featured on today’s easy listening stations.
The horns on the front line (an alto sax, a tenor sax, a trumpet and a trombone) wailed, to put it bluntly. These musicians had no problem putting their instruments through a little friendly torture from time to time — they screamed, groaned, cried and spat notes like Guantanamo Bay residents had scribbled a few bars here and there.
But interlarded with these moments of excruciating timbre were frenetic simultaneous riffs, intense call-and-response sessions, and fugue-like solos, all working in concert to form a brassy wall of sound.
But the guys blowing certainly weren’t all that made the performance.
Harris played the vibes like Animal (the muppet) played drums, his work often only visible as a blur of red (the color of his mallet tips), occasionally with two mallets in each hand. He even had a bizarre moment where he appeared to be licking or kissing the last key on the vibes after hitting it, creating a sound somewhat evocative of a theremin. Harris’ playing reminded the audience that the ‘X’ in hardXcore stands for xylophone.
Rosnes shone with her lightning arpeggios and willingness to use all 88 keys with equal gusto. She proved her range of ability with her plaintive riffs in pianissimo and crashing solos whose sheet music must’ve had at least three Fs.
With a mix of relaxed rhythmic support and sporadically oscillating time-keeping abilities, Harland’s beats were a strong and consistent backbone for the group. He was also willing to get the most out of the skins, using brushes for that scratchy sound, hitting the metal rims and clicking the sticks together to create a robust percussive arsenal.
Menman mesmerized with his crisp staccato, and accentuated Harland’s time keeping and consistency, often managing to walk the bass (hit every beat in a measure) even with the ever-changing rhythms of the show.
The SFJC spliced in elements of funk, swing, soul and even some electronica-esque sounds into their show, and at times it almost felt like a kitchen sink approach (that is, if you weren’t listening carefully).
Jim Martin, a student at Chapel Hill summed it up nicely. “It was good. Short, tight… hard to put into words,” he said. “It was pretty wild.”
Carolina Jazz fest set to kick off in Chapel Hill
February 26, 2008
When asked to describe what exactly it is that unifies the various subgenres of jazz, famous composer, band leader and pianist Duke Ellington once said, “It’s all music.”
And beginning tomorrow, the 31st annual Carolina Jazz Festival will kick off, with a goal of heightening appreciation for jazz as a musical entity. The various performers, some from across the nation and others hailing from right here at UNC, will perform at a variety of local venues, giving life to those words of Ellington’s. And even a bit of his music, too.
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Here is the list of events. Those without ticket information are free and open to the public.
- “Meet the Artists” Jam session
4 p.m. Wednesday, Hill Hall Auditorium
UNC Music Department faculty members James Ketch and Stephen Anderson, among others, will put on a concert and conversation.
- North Carolina Regional Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Festival
8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Thursday, Great Hall and Cabaret, Student Union
Essentially Ellington, an extension of New York’s Lincoln Center, features high school students performing original arrangements of Ellington’s work.
- Jazz Cities on Parade: A Concert with Narration
7:30 p.m. Thursday, Memorial Hall
The North Carolina Jazz Reperatory Orchestra takes listeners on an auditory tour of the jazz styles inherent in cities like Chicago and New Orleans. Featuring special narration by David Hartman, former host of ABC’s Good Morning, America.
Tickets: carolinaperformingarts.org
- UNC Jazz Band
8 p.m. Friday, Memorial Hall
Director James Ketch leads UNC’s in a performance featuring special guests Greg Gisbert on trumpet, Victor Goines on tenor sax and clarinet and Herlin Riley on the drums.
Tickets: carolinaperformingarts.org
- Jazz After Hours
10:30 p.m. Friday, West End Wine Bar
450 W. Franklin Street
Haven’t had enough jazz yet? Join in on the fun at West End, where various performers from the week’s events will perform again, without a cover charge.
- Small Group Jazz Workshops
Noon – 2 p.m. Saturday, Hill Hall Room 107
These workshops feature Stephen Anderson, Jason Foureman, Greg Gisbert, Victor Goines and Herlin Riley.
- Fred and Gail Fearing Jazz Series
4 p.m. Saturday, Hill Hall Room 107
The UNC Jazz Combos will perform, with Anderson, Riley and other again joining the mix.
- The San Francisco Jazz Collective
8 p.m. Saturday, Memorial Hall
The internationally acclaimed eight-member collective, formed in 2004, will put on a performance highlighted by original compositions from all the members.
Tickets: carolinaperformingarts.org
- Jazz After Hours
10:30 p.m. Saturday, Jack Sprat Café
161 E. Franklin Street
Various performers will again make a late-night appearance, putting a cap on the four-day festival. Again, no cover charge.
Check the print version of the Daily Tar Heel in the upcoming days for more information on the performances, and a story on the San Francisco Jazz Collective’s show.
Tentative deal struck with writers guild
February 9, 2008
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Hollywood writers got their first look Saturday at details of a tentative agreement with studios that could put the strike-crippled entertainment industry back to work.
A summary of the proposed deal was posted on the Writers Guild of America’s Web site hours before members were to attend meetings on the East and West Coasts to voice their opinions.
The writers planned to gather behind closed doors Saturday afternoon in New York and later in Los Angeles to consider the deal that guild leaders said “protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery.”
Compensation for projects delivered via digital media was the central issue in the 3-month-old walkout, which idled thousands of workers, disrupted the TV season and moviemaking and took the shine off Hollywood’s awards season.
If members of the Writers Guild of America react favorably to the proposed deal, the guild’s board could vote Sunday to lift the strike order and the industry could be up and running Monday. This month’s Oscars ceremony, which has been under the cloud of a union and actors boycott, also would be a winner.
Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony has a picket-free pass from the union.
An outline of the three-year deal was reached in recent talks between media executives and the guild, with lawyers then drafting the contract language that was concluded Friday.
According to the guild’s summary, the deal provides union jurisdiction over projects created for the Internet based on certain guidelines, sets compensation for streamed, ad-supported programs and increases residuals for downloaded movies and TV programs.
The writers deal is similar to one reached last month by the Directors Guild of America, including a provision that compensation for ad-supported streaming doesn’t kick in until after a window of between 17 to 24 days deemed “promotional” by the studios.
Writers would get a maximum $1,200 flat fee for streamed programs in the deal’s first two years and then get a percentage of a distributor’s gross in year three — the last point an improvement on the directors deal, which remains at the flat payment rate.
“Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success,” guild leaders Patric Verrone and Michael Winship said in an e-mailed message to members.
Verrone is president of the Writers Guild of America, West, while Winship heads the smaller Writers Guild of America, East, which together represent 12,000 members. About 10,000 have been affected by the strike.
The guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios, have not publicly commented on the proposed contract because of a joint media blackout.
One observer said the guild gained ground in the deal but not as much as it wanted.
“It’s a mixed deal but far better than the writers would have been able to get three months ago. The strike was a qualified success,” said Jonathan Handel, an entertainment attorney with the TroyGould firm and a former associate counsel for the writers guild.
The walkout “paved the way for the directors to get a better deal than they would otherwise have gotten. That in turn became the foundation for further improvements the writers achieved,” Handel said.
A quick end to the walkout might result in TV viewers seeing a more new episodes of their favorite shows this season. A script takes about three weeks to write and about 40 working days to produce, so it could take as long as two months for the first new shows to air, Leight said.
But once a production has scripts and is up and running, episodes are worked on concurrently and an hour-long show can be produced within eight days, he said.
That could allow an hourlong drama to return with perhaps a half-dozen new episodes, and a half-hour comedy to squeeze in as many as seven new shows for the rest of the season.
Networks, however, are likely to pick and choose among shows, with low-rated newcomers less likely to get deals for more episodes than a series like “Grey’s Anatomy,” which has a big, faithful audience.
Spring semester Student Arts Forum dates announced, as is deadline for Student Arts Grants
January 28, 2008
UNC’s Student Arts Forum, an extension of the arts advocacy committee of student government, will hold three meetings this semester, all of which are open to members of student arts-related organizations and others interested in keeping their finger on the pulse of UNC’s arts community. The dates were announced a few days ago, and the first meeting is this evening at 8 p.m. in the Franklin Porter Graham Lounge in the Student Union. (Apologies for the late notice, as we just last night were made aware of these dates.)
UNC students can also join the open Facebook group “Student Arts Forum” on the UNC network for more details and a wealth of contact information for various leaders and members of arts organizations on campus.
Monday, January 28 (today) — 8 p.m. in FPG Lounge in the Union
Monday, March 24 — 8 p.m. in FPG Lounge in the Union
Monday, April 14 — 8 p.m. in FPG Lounge in the Union
Check out www.dailytarheel.com tomorrow for coverage of the issues discussed at the forum.
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Additionally, the deadline for the Spring Semester Carolina Student Arts Grants was announced. Applications will be due Friday, February 8.
http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org/aboutus/student.aspx has all the information that those interested in applying will need.
Applications can be mailed, faxed or delivered in person to:
Office of the Executive Director for the Arts (Emil Kang)
3rd Floor Carr Building
Campus Box 3233
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3233
Fax: (919) 843-2012
Office: (919) 843-7776
Organizers urge those seeking more information to call the office at the above number with any questions.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The board of directors of the Directors Guild of America has voted unanimously to recommend ratification of a deal with Hollywood studios.
The three-year collective bargaining agreement reached Jan. 17 establishes key provisions involving compensation for programs offered on the Internet.
”We achieved our three primary goals: jurisdiction in new media, which was absolutely essential; compensation for the use and reuse of our work in new media; and significant gains on issues of real importance for our work in traditional media,” DGA President Michael Apted said in a statement Sunday.
The deal between directors and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios, has been lauded by top executives from eight major companies, including News Corp.’s Fox divisions, Paramount Pictures Corp., The Walt Disney Co., CBS Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros., MGM and NBC Universal.
The ballot will now go to the DGA’s 13,500 members for ratification.
The issue of compensation for internet distribution has also been a key sticking point between striking writers and the studios, which broke off talks on Dec. 7.
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Okay, first things first. No more false promises of blogs to come. Considering the gap in time between the promise of that last post and this moment, I can certainly see why anyone reading could be insulted. From now on, if I post, I post, and if not… well, I’ll try to post.
That having been said… back to the DGA. This ratification was pretty much a formality, as the agreement was reached several days ago. While you have to give serious thought to the pressure this puts on the Writers Guild of America and the producers to come to an agreement, it’s easy to overstate that opinion. Progress was indeed made in the arena of internet compensation for directors, but the writers want to achieve more expansive results than those gained by the directors.
Meanwhile, the WGA strike, now in its 12th week, will most likely become more palpable for TV audiences, as new but only partially completed programs such as “Lost” approach their season debuts. I think it’s one thing when the programs still loom further away on the horizon, but worries are bound to increase as the window for a resolution closes. Writers are reportedly optimistic, but they understand that the directors’ deal doesn’t focus on all of the writers’ concerns and most say they won’t let a carbon copy of the DGA deal pass. Some have also speculated that the country’s economy, poised, in the eyes of many, for recession, could force the writers into agreeing to a deal more quickly. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that the writers are unified in refusing to cave into economic pressures, as well.
Time — that is, the time left until current shows reach their premature conclusions and until the writers and producers begin to more seriously focus on compensation — will tell.
-BC
Yeah, we’ve been a little (read: very) slack lately.
November 2, 2007
Here at the Artz Desk, it’s kind of obvious that our blogging tendencies have been on the decline as of late. But that’s not to say that the arts community here has done the same. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Memorial Hall has been the site of some amazing performances, first of all. Hopefully you caught the article about the world-renowned St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance there last week. It was truly something to behold. And today the venue hosts the National Pan-Hellenic Council Homecoming Step Show (see the DTH article here). This should, I think, prove to be an insanely cool event.
Elsewhere on campus and in the community, Lab! Theatre, Deep Dish Theater and others have been continuing their seasons. Check out the DTH for those upcoming performances.
It’s often hard to keep up with what’s going on with student theater, vocal groups, Carolina Performing Arts shows and other organizations. Thankfully, UNC junior Tom Allin and sophomore Shivani Chudasama are heading up the 2nd Student Arts Forum of the year for student arts organizations and all others interested to brainstorm ways to garner more publicity and create new ideas to foster inter-group collaboration. It’ll be on Monday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. in Union Room 3102. We’ll have an article on the forum in a few days, but if you want to represent your group (especially if you missed the first forum), this really is one of the best opportunities you’re going to get.
If your arts organization has events coming up or interesting stories to tell, don’t hesitate to let us know. artsdesk@unc.edu is our main e-mail address, but blog comments are another way, as is coming to the newsroom in the back of the Student Union.
With that being said, simply put, we promise to be better about blogging from now on.
Reynolds Price to speak at UNC
October 2, 2007
It’s always nice to see Duke sharing its resources with a supposed enemy.
This Wednesday, Oct. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Carroll Hall auditorium, Reynolds Price, a Duke grad and now the university’s James B. Duke Professor of English will deliver a free public lecture. Price is an award-winning author who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in addition to winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and the William Faulkner Foundation Award. Price was recently named the winner of UNC’s Thomas Wolfe Prize. The lecture accompanies the author’s acceptance of the award.
A native of N.C., Price has authored more than 30 novels and books of poetry and has began teaching at Duke in 1958. Previous winners of the Prize include novelist Tom Wolfe, novelist and poet Fred Chappell and novelist Pat Conroy. The award was last presented to Chappell in 2005.
This year, the award will be presented on the birthday of the author for whom the award is named. Thomas Wolfe, UNC class of 1920, wrote American classics such as “Look Homeward, Angel” and “You Can’t Go Home Again.” But perhaps most notably, Wolfe was editor-in-chief of his college newspaper, The (Daily) Tar Heel. 
Canvassing, canned goods and a concert.
September 20, 2007
This week, Will Halicks, a DTH staff writer, describes his experience with Rock for a Remedy.
After two and a half hours of canvassing in front of Raleigh’s Walnut Creek Amphitheater
Tuesday, my shirt was plastered to the small of my back and my hair had become a
shapeless, sweaty mop.
My friend Amy and I still had plenty of $3 raffle tickets left, and our goal of $100
seemed miles away. Even though the prize was Dave Matthews Band merchandise and all the proceeds were going to benefit Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, it was tough to reel in donors from the rowdy line of people heading to the concert.
Thats the basic idea behind Rock for a Remedy, a nonprofit that tours with musicians to
combat food insecurity in America.
We got our fair share of dirty looks while we canvassed. Many of the concert-goers veered
off when they saw us standing at the gate in our red T-shirts.
One guy, too drunk to see straight, shuffled up to me and, his face the picture of
sincerity, asked me to give his last piece of Trident gum to the food bank.
But by the time the Dave Matthews Band took the stage at 8 p.m., the food bank had more than $100 in donations, and Amy and I had free tickets to an exclusive fenced-off section
at the front of the lawn.
Rock for a Remedy collects canned goods and sells raffle tickets to benefit local food
banks at every stop.
We also handed out postcards so people could write their senators about the upcoming 2007 USDA Farm Bill, which will include proposals to fund renewable energy research and
subsidize specialty crop farmers.
Program director KJ Doyle, 38, said some friends and fans of Jason Mraz started the
nonprofit as a birthday present for him in summer 2003.
“He pretty much just said, ‘do something nice for someone else,’” Doyle said. It
snowballed from there.
The organization has also toured with Guster, Blues Traveler and Third Eye Blind.
Tour staff member Chiara Potenza, 27, who met Doyle while doing tour management, said
getting to spend time with Guster and its road crew on the last night of its spring tour
was the highlight of her involvement with RFAR.
“We all took one of the buses back to the hotel,” she said. “Everyone was this great
big family. It was just laughing and singing, everyone wedged in the back lounge.”
A sad day for opera fans…
September 7, 2007
(AP) MILAN, Italy – Hundreds of people gathered Thursday night in Modena’s main piazza to pay final respects to Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C’s and ebullient showmanship made him the most beloved and celebrated tenor since Caruso.
The crowd applauded in a sign of respect as pallbearers carried the casket into Modena’s cathedral, where a funeral is scheduled for Saturday. The tenor died early Thursday at the age of 71 after a yearlong battle with pancreatic cancer.
While Pavarotti moved the world with what one admirer called “the last, great voice” of Italian opera, his legacy went beyond the opera house. The tenor collaborated with classical singers and pop icons alike to bring opera to the masses, rescuing the art from highbrow obscurity in the process.
(click here for the rest of the article.)
