Arts & Entertainment
8 Days In June
Using music as a road map to look at world issues, DSO festival explores the power of change.
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
T
od Machover seems a natural for
a career that enhances acoustic
instrumental music with high-tech
sounds. His morn is a pianist and music
teacher, and his dad is a computer graphics
pioneer.
Machover, a composer and professor,
shares his skills with people of very different
backgrounds through computer software
he developed to turn musical illiterates into
songsmiths.
Metro Detroiters will benefit from that
mission when Machover becomes part of 8
Days in June, the cutting-edge music festival
planned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
that runs June 13-21 at the Max M. Fisher
Music Center in Detroit.
The festival, in its second year, explores
the overall theme of the power of change.
Machover, who will be MC for the day's
theme "The Technical Mind" on Monday,
June 16, will introduce his computer-com-
posing software Hyperscore and ask some
local youngsters to experiment with it.
"I'm interested in the full gamut of what
technology can do to influence music on the
concert stage and involve the general public':
says Machover, 54, also a cellist and pia-
nist on sabbatical from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Media Lab and
working on an opera that will premiere in
England.
"Hyperscore rewards imagination and
creativity and makes it very easy to get
thoughts into a musical piece. Children from
all over the world have written pieces for
orchestra using Hyperscore, and orchestras
have played these pieces in their regular
concerts. We're glad to do the same thing in
Detroit"
The 8 p.m. program includes Machover's
works, such as Another Life, written for nine
instruments and electronics, and Flora, a
prerecorded fantasy of a soprano singing a
single melody that blossoms into all kinds of
elements and goes back to the voice.
Machover's compositions have been per-
formed and commissioned by individuals
and ensembles — from Pat Metheny to the
Kronos Quartet.
There also will be music completely
composed by software, music performed by
a robotic piano that can record notes and
play them back with alterations and music
planned for a uniquely modified player
piano.
Throughout the session, there will be
visual projections that reflect the moods
established by the music.
The festival, which will showcase all kinds
of melodic styles, also has segments featur-
ing drama, spoken words, film, lectures and
visual arts under the general direction of
Peter Oundjian, artistic director.
"8 Days in June presents music in a social-
ly, politically and environmentally relevant
world context': Oundjian says. "We are in a
time of great change as a result of new tech-
nological, scientific and medical discoveries.
"We will explore how music and the arts
chronicle and interpret change and experi-
ment with what changes take place within us
as we listen to music."
Other daily themes include "Spiritual
Progression" (Friday, June 13,) "The
Changing Earth" (Sunday, June 15),"Patterns
and Structure" (Tuesday, June 17),"Being
and Becoming" (Wednesday, June 18),
"Civil Disobedience" (Thursday, June 19),
"Spontaneous Creation" (Friday, June 20)
and "Chaos and Order" (Saturday, June 21).
"I'll be talking about how technology
expands the palette of music and how
ifs easy to participate in a new way:says
Machover, who studied at the Juilliard
School in New York and through a special
program in France while imagining compo-
Tod Machover: "The arts are among the
deepest, transformative experiences we
have."
sitions difficult to realize through traditional
orchestras.
"The only piece of mine never performed
was for a CD planned by a Jewish chorus,
but the recording didn't get off the ground.
I loved the melodies and wrote a new piece
for a friend, Matt Haimovitz, an Israeli-born
Jewish cellist:"
Machover, whose grandparents, Rose and
John Machover, had lived in Flint, resides
with his wife and two daughters in a rural
area outside of Boston, where he sometimes
Jews
ila
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Tony Time
1111111111P
The 2008 Tony awards, for excellence
in the Broadway theater, are being
presented on Sunday, June 15 (8 p.m.,
CBS). Here are the
Jewish nominees
in the major "non-
craft" categories and
one producer with
local ties.
Cry-Baby, a satire
about a rock singer,
Adam
got nominations
Schlesinger
for best original
musical and best
original score. The composer, Adam
Schlesinger, 40, is best known as a
rock singer/songwriter. His pop hits
include "Stacey's Mom." The lyricist
is David Javerbaum, 36, a top com-
edy writer and the main producer of
Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.
Also vying for the best original
score Tony are the songwriters of
B8
June 12 • 2008
The Little Mermaid, based on the hit
animated film musical. The Broadway
version includes songs from the film
and new songs. The music is by Alan
Menken, 58, with lyrics by the late
Howard Ashman.
In the Heights, featuring a salsa
and hip-hop infused score, is the
favorite to win the best new musical
Tony. Picking up the Tony if it wins is
the show's producer, Jeffrey Seller. A
graduate of Oak Park High School and
the University of Michigan, Seller is a
two-time Tony-winner as the producer
of Rent and Avenue Q.
Three shows with Jewish connec-
tions are nominated for the best
musical revival: Gypsy, South Pacific,
Sunday in the Park with George. First
staged in 1959, Gypsy was written by
the late Jule Styne and by Stephen
Sondheim, 78. Arthur Laurents,
who wrote the book for the original
production, is still sharp enough at
90 to helm the current revival and
he's Tony-nominated for best musical
director. Sunday was written (words
and music) by Sondheim. He will be
honored at this year's Tonys with an
award for lifetime achievement.
The new production of South
Pacific has been called brilliant and
surprisingly contemporary, and it's
the favorite to win. The show was
created by the
legendary team of
composer Richard
Rodgers and lyricist
Oscar Hammerstein
II. (Oscar's father
was Jewish; but he
was nominally raised
in his mother's
Stephen
Christian faith.)
Sondheim
opposes the 1968 Soviet invasion
of his country. Stoppard was born
(1937) in Czechoslovakia, the son of a
Jewish doctor and his Jewish wife. In
1939, his parents fled the Nazis. His
father died in a Japanese POW camp,
but Tom and his mother found a safe
haven (1942) in India. His mother re-
married a non-Jewish British soldier,
telling her new husband and young
Tom a vague story that she was "one-
quarter Jewish." In 1990, Stoppard
found out both his parents were
simply Czech Jews. Since then the
non-religious playwright has called
himself Jewish.
Danny Burstein,
30, is the lead singer
of South Pacific's show-stopping num-
ber "There is Nothin' Like a Dame."
Tony-nominated for best featured
actor, Burstein is the son of a Jewish
father and a non-Jewish Costa Rican
mother.
Rock 'n' Roll by famous British
playwright Sir Tom Stoppard is nomi-
nated for best play. The play's central
character is a young Czech Jew who
A New Season For Snow
On May 29, singer Phoebe Snow,
55, was one of four woman honored
for their philanthropy at a UJA
Federation of New York event. Snow,
who spoke to and sang for the 700
women in attendance, was singled
out for her compassion. In the words
of the federation, "She sacrificed
her career to devote herself to her
severely disabled daughter." One