People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s...
Posted: 10/31/14
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PERFORMANCES & EVENTS
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All comments by Matthew Browne
People Are Talking: UMS presents The San Francisco Symphony American Mavericks Festival:
I agree completely! Leave it to Jeremy Denk to make bombastic clusters sound expressive!
Amazing program! I loved every second of it. It was a true demonstration of how modern music is every bit as emotional, beautiful, and enthralling as traditional orchestra repertoire. The Mason Bates piece was stunning, the Copland was incredibly exciting, and I am amazed at how accurate Jeremy Denk was with his elbows and fists! In all seriousness, the Cowell piece was such a pleasant surprise… So beautiful and expressive. Can’t wait for Concert #2!!!
"by Sarah Voice
People Are Talking: UMS presents The San Francisco Symphony American Mavericks Festival:
What a terrific performance! Bravo to all involved! I’m excited for the next three performances!
People Are Talking: UMS presents The Hagen Quartet at Rackham Auditorium:
A truly wonderful performance! Very well executed and impecable blend and intonation! Though I am always a bit dismayed at concerts that program only one composer… eventually during the course of the concert that composer’s “voice” gets a bit stale for me. I was aching to hear some Bartok or Debussy by the end. But, that doesn’t change the very high quality of the performance by any means! Bravo!!
People Are Talking: UMS presents The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra: From the Canyons to the Stars:
I agree with you, Cait. The music was brilliantly performed and would have done fine on it’s own.
Having said that, I like the idea of accompanying a great musical piece with a film, just not this film, and not for this piece. “Canyons” already has such a colorful and potent assortment of ideas and images behind it’s creation, that to add an entirely new and unrelated film felt forced and unnecessary.
Simply put, Messiaen’s work is incredible, and the Hamburg Symphony performed it exquisitely; however, the video was grotesque and irrelevant. I am not saying that the film is not art, nor that it was not well filmed, merely that it polluted the work of Messiaen.
"by Caitlin Eger
People Are Talking [and Video Booth]: Einstein on the Beach at Power Center:
What a show! I badly wanted to comment on it last night immediately after I got home, but with a show this experiential and visceral I was interested to see if I would dream about it. I knew what my ego and super ego were thinking last night, but I was curious to see what my id has to say this morning. Well lo and behold, I did dream:
I was playing chess with the late film director and chess master, Stanley Kubrick. He was trying to explain some sort of mathematical theorem to me while constantly and arbitrarily moving the pieces around the board. The more I listened to him, the more I just heard a series of numbers without any words to explain them. The weirdest part was when, after he stopped reciting random numbers… he told me he had to leave because “we had been sitting there for 14,000 years, and he had things to do.”