Page 7 A birthday party for Sippie at the Ark By Andy Weine If you haven't heard of Sippie Wallace, your grandparents might have. In the twenties Sippie Wallace launched her blues on Okeh Records with tunes such as "Underground Blues," "Shorty George Blues,"and "Up the Country Blues." After around two decades of public silence, Wallace returned to singing her women-be-wise blues, and on Sunday at the Ark, she celebrated her 86th birth- day. She was hardly alone. The Ark buzzed with a huge crowd that laughed and tapped their feet as Sippie blued them out, and later sang her happy birthday and helped eat the cake. Many notable blues and ragtime musicians-friends of Sippie's-also joined the playing and the party, too. ("This is a party," said manager Ron Harwood, "not a con- cert.") These pounding pianists hosted the audience on a musical time trip to the days of Gatsby, speakeasies, and knee- shimmying. For an afternoon, the Ark became Ann Arbor's only speakeasy, and the belting blues had an authentic, quintessential flavor. "It's hard to keep Sippie off the stage," said Harwood, but he managed to do just that. In the nearly two hours before Sippie took the stage, Mike Mon- tgomery and Terry Parrish used two pianos to bang out fun rag tunes, in- cluding "Arkansas Blues," "I Found Me a New Baby," and that old favorite, Fats Wallers' "Ain't Misbehavin'." Mark Brown swayed and rolled his head as his fingers tapped out a more rollicking, foot-tapping blues in which a strong beat dominated the melody, not unlike the role of rhythm in reggae music. Bob Seely stoke the spotlight, though, is "one of the finest boogie woogie piano players around today," according to Harwood. Seeley's blues were smooth, slow, and sleepy, but not at all unin- teresting. A picture of the past was further painted by an overly long slide show documenting the lives of Sippie and her father (also a blues singer). Shots of Sippie in her twenties and of her early music releases were interesting, but the show turned downright boring with details such as record company correspondence, copyright sheets, and birth and death certificates. The concert-Oops, I mean party- was like the way it goes with all blues-you got to pay yer dues. Just before you reaches the verge of saying, "This isn't worth such a wait," Sippie and the Chicago Jazz Band shuffled on stage, and soon you knew it was worth it. "Play it, maestro," she bidded the band... Sippie's blues are best described as slippery and saucy. In her hoarse voice, she wailed lonely tunes like one that went, "All I want is a good man... " On the lighter, spunkier side was the song, "Everybody Loves My Baby But My Baby Don't Love Nobody But Me." "Now, gonna give some advice to the ladies," sang Sippie, displaying her true wisdom and most fun music. "Got- ta be wise: Keep yer mouth shet! Don't advertise }u man!" Another song war- ned the ladeez of those cruel gambling men who "gonna bring you to yer last." Sippie can shake an audience, too, as shown in her closing number, "Shake it, Jelly," which had her shaking and twisting like the hottest 86-year-old southwest of Motown. After blowing out all but two candles in her birthday cake, Sippie said, "I done pretty good, din' I?" As with the candles, Sippie did more than well in this concert/party. She showed herself to be a jewel, and the jewel is blue, through and through. Sicuib b The 14{ici Voie Daily Photo by Sippie Wallace celebrated her 86th birthday with a concert at the Ark on Sunday. The Masterplayers. Excellent, classical By Mike Gallatin M AESTRO Schumacher and The Masterplayers appeared at Rackham Auditorium for the first time this past Sunday afternoon and gave a performance which puts American groups to shame. The ensemble is composed of 17 leading solo and chamber music players from all over Europe whose only common language is the universal language of music. Their performance left no doubt as to the integral relation- ship between Baroque music and chamber music. The program consisted solely of works from the Baroque period; namely Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, and Telemann. Baroque in this instance is also synonomous with chamber music, the kind of music that might be played in both intimate and stately chambers of an aristocratic court: While each of the six concertos per- formed featured at least one soloist, the group played in a democratic fashion with every part having equal importan- ce and no one star outshining the rest. The sound was one homogenized murmur, balanced and was polished to impeccability. Perhaps the first piece of the program the Concerto Grosso in C major, "Alexander's Feast" by Handel best displayed the high quality of musician- ship the Masterpalyers possess. The strings played with a light and 'Thief of Hearts' is a crime * (contined from Page 6) man investigating, and delves. into :Scott's past. He even finds the abandoned warefoue where Scott keeps his stolen cache, and finds among the mountain of pilfered possessions, his own stolen property. This startling information in hand it's off to Mickey's rescue, and he lumbers along to its hackneyed con- clusion. Thief of Hearts would have been greatly improved had the director, Douglas Day Stewart (who wrote the screenplays for Blue Lagoon and An Of- ficer and a Gentleman) ditched all the ,dialogue and spent the entire 90 minutes of film on Bauer, the film's one and only interesting diversion, who might be best described as a modern Greek god. Canadian actress Barbara Williams, as Mickey, offers little to male viewers in compensation because (and I'm not ,eing cruel) she's no beauty and doesn't come across as that bright. It's the film's greatest mystery why Scott the thief would be so obsessed with her. Pleading for some comic value, refreshingly bouyand sound, the in- tricate passages were cleanly executed and the entrances were precise and ex- cellently timed. Yet the group was syn- chronized without being military or mechanical but rather a refined grace and regal elegance. The next Concerto for Violin, Oboe, and Strings in D minor by Bach was played even better if that was possible. The opening Allegro was bright and aggressive exuding the kind of never- ending drive and energy that is charac- teristic of music in the Baroque period. The subsequent Adagio featured the oboe accompanied by pizzicato in the strings outlining the major chord changes. It was one of those long, warm, lingering Adagios that have a hypnotic effect of which the audience was not exempt from. As the strings changed from pizzicato to a sustained-type pedal point, the spellbound audience sat enthralled in a rare moment of passionate stillness as the afternoon slowly wore on. The final Allegro no sooner concluded then it was greeted with a wild burst of applause. The next composition was a Concerto Grosso in D minor from Vivaldi's popular "Estro Armonico" which was made even more famous by J. S. Bach's transcription of it for two harpsichords. While a harpsichord accompaniment would have been a welcome addition to the continuo, the Masterplayers under the close direction of Richard Schumacher performed the opening Allegro with a bouncing lyrical quality that charged the music with electricity. Again the larghetto through a subtle downward, chromatic movement communicated that sense of time-always passing slowly but irretrievably. The second half of the concert opened with Bach's Double Concerto. The mid- dle movement, Largo ma non tanto, like Bach's "Air on a G String" is one of those sublime slow movements where time for an instant is temporarily suspended and each measured note is a single drop of water in the sea of eter- nity. The program concluded with the full ensemble playing a suite from Han- del's Water Music. The Masterplays are a welcome ad- dition to The University's musical community. Chamber music is always a pleasure when a few instruments can make so much music, create so many contrasting moods, and express such a broad range of emotions. In that sense Baroque music in par- ticular is generally the most accessible to the neophyte classical music lover. THE DAILY CLASSIFIEDS ARE A GREAT WAY TO GET FAST RESULTS CALL 764-0557 17i: .,i i~r '... . ., .4. N. 4- N v \ ":r" "". proudly presents CAMPUS MEET THE- PRESS STARTS TOMORROW in the Kuenzel Room of the Michigan Union Special Guests: BILL SPINDLE: Editor-in-Chief of The Michigan Daily SCOTT PAGE: President of MSA