The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 20, 1984 - Page 7 Dynamic due takes crowd to paradise By Mike Gallatin S OPRANO JUDITH Blegen baritone Hakan Hagegard are two of the most remarkably talented and artistic performers this side of paradise. At their performance Satur- day evening at Hill Auditorium, they proved this by thrilling and delighting an appreciative audience which ultimately was swept off its feet by a multi-faceted romantic lieder presen- ted in four different languages. With a combination of theatrics and histrionics, humor and affection, and sentimentality and charm, the singers surveyed the wealth of song literature from the 19th century, bringing to their rendition a whole spectrum of nuance as well as sensitivity. As might be expected, the themes were rather standard, beginning with the joys and regrets of love, as the singers presented twenty out of the fourty-six songs from "The Italian Songbook" by Hugo Wolf. If Anton Bruckner is considred the "Wagner of the Symphony" then Wolf may be called the "Wagner of the Lied." As a poet-vagabond himself, Wolf often studied scores while sitting on a park bench, integrating a sense of the emotional value of the word with a piano accompaniment of nearly Chopinesque proportion. Pianist Martin Katz dutifully allowed the dialogue between the singers to develop while adding his own light and playful or beautifully sad touches. The selection of songs moved from a more tragic tone to a comic, farcical mode, thereby utilizing the excellent acting skills of both singers, as Balkan bemoans what he calls the beastly ran- ting of this artless soprano who it turns out has had a triste in every port from Ancona to Castiglione. French love songs were the main fair of the second half of the recital with the fragrance and perfume of flowers as the primary metaphor of love in its various forms. The sampling of songs were chosen from among the ranks of Faure, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Duparc and Gounod. In "D'un coeur qui t'aime" by Charles Gounod, Judith Blegen best displayed her wares. While at moments her voice seemed almost faint, this ad- ded to a delicate shading of the syllables and produced a simple, plain- tive chiaroscuro in the vowel sounds as the hymn-like duet crescendoes to a bravura climax. A situation comedy scene from Act I of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" in Italian followed and was a real hit with the audience, and threatening to bring the house down. Out of costume but not out of charac- ter, Blegen plays a charming Norina who is instructed by Malatests how to pose in an ingenue in order to thwart Don Pasquale's marriage plans. Act I comes to a close with a play- within-a-play as Norina and Malatesta then rehearse this farce rich in mimicry. Hakan Hagegard was at his best as it was Malatesta whom he played in 1978 in his Metropolitan Opera debut-the proverbial part he could play without make-up. Last on the program were three ex- cerpts from "The Merry Widow," in English, which possessed an encore quality because it rounded out a superb selection of songs which ranged from the recondite but needlessly neglected, to familiar and well-loved with good reason. As the last waltz came to an end, Blakun swept Blegen off her feet and carried her offstage. Likewise three encores were to follow and the audien- ce's standing ovation revealed that they too were swept off their feet by the polished and most professional perfor- mance of these two renowned artists. Chicaiy o Bambaataa raps about (Continued from Page 6) adults were tired of dying for others' wrongdoing. It took singers getting together, people who were strictly into heavy metal or rock and roll and people who were strictly into soul or funk teaming up with each other, maybe doing a record together, or duet, to bring backgrounds together. Enter- tainers know a lot of each other's music. They buy each other's records. Like Talking Heads, they know how to use African sounds along with syn- thesizer, and rock guitar, and put it all together. This brings people of different backgrounds together, and makes people understand each other's music, and what they are trying to say. Music is definitely the message, and it definitely can change the world. It's not going to change it a lot , but it can make people think, "Well, why is the government doing this?" or "Why is there so much war going on?" D: The Hip-hop movement does seem analagous to the movement in the late 60's, but the music places a much heavier emphasis on technology, and electronics... B: Well, it became electronic when we r made Planet Rock, before it was really any type of music that had a basic beat, drum beat, percussion, bass line that was funky. When I did Planet Rock I was trying to please people that were into just beat music and people that were into just New Wave, so I took elements of Kraftwerk, Clint Eastwood g movies, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and For A Few Dollars More, and some old Hip-hop records like Superspy by Captain Skyy, and The Mexican by Baby Ruth, and put them all together. It started pleasing a lot of audiences. Japanese, Chinese, Irish, even old people who said that they hated it said they were glad that their children were doing some dancing. That's when the records starting coming out of New York with the beat boxes and syn- thesizers. There was always pop, or technopop in Europe, but there wasn't so much hip-hop or funk until we made Planet Rock. Kraftwerk was more into technopop, but now they're getting pressure from their company to sound more funky since all the music coming out of New York is basically making that type of sound. There is war going on in the music industry, against elec- tronic music, because it's taking alot of jobs away from drummers and people that play guitar. The synthesizer is an instrument that can basically duplicate all sounds. Only people with special ears can tell if there's a real horn, or if it's a synthesizer. The other people really don't care, as long as it's making them feel good. There's a real war going on between the two groups, real instruments and synthesizers. I feel that you've got to combine them both. D: When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? B: I was always into music, I wanted to get into singing, but I also wanted to be r a criminal lawyer, also a historian. That's when I was youngest. D: You've recently collaberated with James Brown on Unity, and your group Time Zone teamed up with P.I.L.'s John Lyndon. What's next? B: I already did some stuff with Nona Hendryx. Some of Soulsonic and Shango sing on the Art of Defense lp. I did a reggae thing with Yellowman. We just did a tour in England, Soulsonic and Shango, and we ran into Nina Hagen, so we did background on her new record, but I don't know if it's going to come out. It's called "Ec- stasy" and should be on her new album. I'm supposed to do something with Falco, George Clinton. But I've still got to finish my solo stuff, make some more Soulsonic records, finish Shango and Time Zones lp's. D: If you could get anybody into the studio for a collaberation, who would you want? B: Sly Stone. Thomas Dolby. Pat Benetar. Def Leppard. There's a lot of funk groups I want to do things with. Gap Band. Mell Mel.. . we're working on something... There are a lot of groups. D: You would never hear all of those performers on the same radio station. Why do you think that is? B: Program directors want to hear what they want to hear, or some of them have audiences that, if they try to play something different, will send them curse notes. But I say if you play hard heavy metal on a station, then you should try a group that's playing funk, but playing rock. Funkadelic plays a lot of hard, guitar stuff, too. If they play his life them and people stop worrying about skin color.. It's like The Bus Boys. A lot of black people didn't know that the Bus Boys were black until they saw the cover, because they sound white, but a lot of white people didn't care for them because they were black. They were caught in the middle, but they played good music. People have to take changes. If it's an all-country station, try a little ballad or soul record, or maybe a record like "Babe" by Styx, and see if the crowd likes it. It's going to take artists to change it. I've got rap records by country artists, like Tony Joe White. (Radio stations have) got to take changes. You never know until you take a chance. D: Is Afrika Banbaataa your real name? D: My real name is Bambaataa Kayan Assim. Afrika Bambaataa is my stage name. * " " 0 0 3 OO THIS ENTIRE AD GOOD FOR TWO TICKETS AT $3.00 EACH USE DAILY CLASSIFIEDS * Alan Bird is getting! * nothing he wants this Christmas: * From Bill Forsyth, the Director/< 9 Writer of "Local Hero" and "Gregory's Girl"" A " DAILY 1:00, 7:00, 9:00 @* 0 " " " " " (PG) * 77( c Academy Award Winner Giorgio Moroder presents Fritz Lang's classic vision of the future, now beautifully restored and with a contemporary music score. Songs Preformed by Pat Benatar 9 Billy Squier Adam Ant * Lover Boy & More! "And perhaps their children are the worst off of all, for they grow up in the ugliest possible surroundings with not a garden in sight and no nice little visits to the seaside..:' When, in 1933, J.B. 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