Friday, December 14, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Youssolanda Rocktography
See http://flickr.com/photos/wutheater/ for our latest photo updates from this past weekend!
Preview:
-Emily
N’Dour Review at the Cap Times
Even the Capital Times couldn’t resist the lure of N’Dour:
So you think you can dance? The age old question of fan etiquette.
I too had the pleasure of working the Youssou N’Dour show, which turned out to be one of my favorite shows of the season thus far. It was apparent from the one hour-plus sound check that Youssou’s band enjoy playing together. Add an enthusiastic crowd to the mix and you have a concert Madison will be talking about for weeks.
Our attempts to contain the dancers to the side aisles lasted about five minutes. Hey, we tried. Unfortunately, not everyone was in the dancing mood, so there were some complaints. This led to conversations about fan etiquette–what is acceptable and what isn’t. It seems there are two types of patrons out there: those who acknowledge the existence of the other people in the theater and don’t want to interfere with their enjoyment of the show and well, those who don’t.
Quite frankly, the crowd Thursday night was far from out of control in my opinion. Every person I asked to stop taking pictures looked disappointed but complied. Then again, on Saturday I went to a Hanson concert. If you want to see a crowd get out of control, look no further (side note: seeing them perform live is worth dealing with the crowd). It just depends what you are used to. For our concert series patrons, perhaps the dancers are a bit too rambunctious. To the dancers, if you are sitting in your seat it appears to them as if you are uninterested in the show.
So, in the end, this is a quandary that every venue deals with. Every single person paid to be at the show, how do you make everybody happy? In short, we can’t. Fans have to step up and say, “Hey, you are in my way, I paid too, please dance somewhere else.” Or move to the balcony. People can only ruin the show for you if you let them.
Case in point, the pre-show announcement from the Rialto theater (not a direct quotation but close):
“Welcome to tonight’s show….If you are having a problem, please see an usher. Do not call me Monday morning to complain. I can’t do anything about it by then.”
~Sarah
Monday, December 10, 2007
Stringed Sensations
As one whose musical expertise is stuck somewhere between plunking out “Ode to Joy” on a piano, and memorizing the words to “No Business Like Show Business”…I often wonder how I got myself into this whole theater thing. This feeling of being a little bit lost is usually most prevalent around the time of Concert Series events. As I sat in Yolanda Kondonassis’s Harp Masterclass on friday afternoon, I watched in awe as one of the harp students sat and gracefully played a tune that somehow rang as familiar in my head…initially I applauded my newly cultured ear and internally congratulated myself for achieving some form of composer recall…alas..midway through the piece I realized it was familiar solely because it played in the background of the closing scene of Ocean’s Eleven…as Brad Pitt et. al. are staring pensively into the fountain. So much for cultural wherewithal.
Kondonassis’s masterclass did prove to be quite interesting…her background as a teacher was clear, and the advice she offered was interesting even if you rivaled my prior knowledge of the harp. Did you know that harpists are best suited to wear rounded-heel shoes while playing? or that continunity between practice and performance shoes optimize performance? As she said, “harpists could suffer a much worse fate than to be forced to go shoe shopping”….the students really seemed to enjoy that. She also did a rather entertaining rendition of the mobility (or lack thereof) of a barbie doll, and how it related to shoulder movement whilst playing the harp. Somehow I doubt Mattel ever considered that application of their product.
Later that afternoon the Rossetti String Quartet appeared on the scene, and in a true to form mother duck style, Shelly (our Trusty Concert Series Associate director) led the rather weather-shocked (California based) quartet over the not-particularly-shoveled sidewalks to a practice room in Mills. Welcome to Wisconsin, indeed. At this point, the quartet discovered a technical difficulty (likely incurred by the weather) of loose chin rests, and sent Shelly and I back to the Union in search of pliers. Pliers found, and hugs garnered from the Quartet…(slightly awkward?) our duties for the day were over.
The actual concert on Saturday proved to be among my favorites for the year…I loved watching the interaction between the quartet…its so cool how they all know when to begin and end just by watching each other. The harp certainly added depth to their notes, and watching Kondonassis’s hands added a mesmerizing effect to the audience experience. At one point, Kondonassis even provided some commentary of her own regarding the history of harps, and how competing harp companies commissioned the two best harp pieces today. All in all, I really enjoyed it!
oh, and for what its worth…its “deb-Ussy” not “da-bussy”…. so much for applying Chicago Bears style pronounciation to famed composers.
- Courtney
Kondonassis’s masterclass did prove to be quite interesting…her background as a teacher was clear, and the advice she offered was interesting even if you rivaled my prior knowledge of the harp. Did you know that harpists are best suited to wear rounded-heel shoes while playing? or that continunity between practice and performance shoes optimize performance? As she said, “harpists could suffer a much worse fate than to be forced to go shoe shopping”….the students really seemed to enjoy that. She also did a rather entertaining rendition of the mobility (or lack thereof) of a barbie doll, and how it related to shoulder movement whilst playing the harp. Somehow I doubt Mattel ever considered that application of their product.
Later that afternoon the Rossetti String Quartet appeared on the scene, and in a true to form mother duck style, Shelly (our Trusty Concert Series Associate director) led the rather weather-shocked (California based) quartet over the not-particularly-shoveled sidewalks to a practice room in Mills. Welcome to Wisconsin, indeed. At this point, the quartet discovered a technical difficulty (likely incurred by the weather) of loose chin rests, and sent Shelly and I back to the Union in search of pliers. Pliers found, and hugs garnered from the Quartet…(slightly awkward?) our duties for the day were over.
The actual concert on Saturday proved to be among my favorites for the year…I loved watching the interaction between the quartet…its so cool how they all know when to begin and end just by watching each other. The harp certainly added depth to their notes, and watching Kondonassis’s hands added a mesmerizing effect to the audience experience. At one point, Kondonassis even provided some commentary of her own regarding the history of harps, and how competing harp companies commissioned the two best harp pieces today. All in all, I really enjoyed it!
oh, and for what its worth…its “deb-Ussy” not “da-bussy”…. so much for applying Chicago Bears style pronounciation to famed composers.
- Courtney
Friday, December 7, 2007
If you feel the urge to dance…..
To those of you who weren’t there…let me tell you, did you EVER miss out. Youssou N’Dour and the Super Etoile rocked the Wisconsin Union Theater last night, and all 900 of us were right there with them, dancing.
As a freshman, it was a night like this that totally sold the Union Theater for me … I had never experienced anything like it before… a theater where you can dance?! Who knew! Even now, when people ask me how the performance went, and I tell them that everyone was up and dancing…they’re skeptical… “you can dance in the Union Theater? I thought that place was just for formal concerts and stuff…?” Wrong, my friends… wrong.
I always enjoy watching the audience members experience the music in their own unique way…last night saw a college aged kid dancing with reckless abandon on his own, and then he moved toward an older woman in a wheel chair…where they bobbed their heads and danced together…certainly in a moment of mutual enjoyment - and, oddly, equality.
I love that music, especially world music, can provide these kinds of moments. Music and performance, moreso than most mediums (in my, albeit slightly biased, opinion), bring people together. At one point, N’Dour spoke of how Africa is always painted as a poverty and disease stricken place…while he admitted those kinds of statements certainly have their truth…they miss the overwhelming feeling of the happiness and hope of the people. He then sang a song dedicated to the people of Africa, and boy, did that joy ever come out.
Of special note, (to me at least) was one of the dancers. He was dressed totally in white and moved so incredibly, it left you in total and utter jaw-dropping amazement. He jumped, he leaped, he flailed…words can’t really do it justice, but as far as I was concerned, it suddenly made sense why the band consumed a record number of red bulls pre-show.
Anyhow, Youssou N’Dour gets my pick as best performance for the semester!
- Courtney
As a freshman, it was a night like this that totally sold the Union Theater for me … I had never experienced anything like it before… a theater where you can dance?! Who knew! Even now, when people ask me how the performance went, and I tell them that everyone was up and dancing…they’re skeptical… “you can dance in the Union Theater? I thought that place was just for formal concerts and stuff…?” Wrong, my friends… wrong.
I always enjoy watching the audience members experience the music in their own unique way…last night saw a college aged kid dancing with reckless abandon on his own, and then he moved toward an older woman in a wheel chair…where they bobbed their heads and danced together…certainly in a moment of mutual enjoyment - and, oddly, equality.
I love that music, especially world music, can provide these kinds of moments. Music and performance, moreso than most mediums (in my, albeit slightly biased, opinion), bring people together. At one point, N’Dour spoke of how Africa is always painted as a poverty and disease stricken place…while he admitted those kinds of statements certainly have their truth…they miss the overwhelming feeling of the happiness and hope of the people. He then sang a song dedicated to the people of Africa, and boy, did that joy ever come out.
Of special note, (to me at least) was one of the dancers. He was dressed totally in white and moved so incredibly, it left you in total and utter jaw-dropping amazement. He jumped, he leaped, he flailed…words can’t really do it justice, but as far as I was concerned, it suddenly made sense why the band consumed a record number of red bulls pre-show.
Anyhow, Youssou N’Dour gets my pick as best performance for the semester!
- Courtney
