The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Friday, March 212008 - 5A DSO brings Bach to Ann Arbor "That's it, no post-apocalyptic sex for a month." Doome...d to failure By ABIGAIL B. COLODNER DailyArts Writer Today, Bach fans will mark the com- poser's 323rd birthday. Also today, Chris- tians will mark the death of Jesus Christ. That quirk of this year's early Easter cal- endar makes tonight's Hill Auditorium per- Bach's St. formance of Bach's Matthew "St. Matthew Passion" especially timely. The Passion choral piece that rock- Tonight at eted Bach into post- 7:30 p.m. mortem popularity draws from the Gospel At the Hill of Matthew's telling of Auditorium Jesus's crucifixion and $10-$56 debuted on Good Fri- day in 1727 in Leipzig, Germany. The size and complexity of tonight's 7:30 p.m. performance - a col- laboration between the Detroit Sym- phony Orchestra, the University Musical Society Choral Union, the Michigan State University, Children's Choir and seven professional vocal soloists - lives up to the reputation of the piece itself. This "Passion" is the first of its kind on campus. Jerry Blackstone, the direc- tor of the Choral Union and Chair of the Conducting department, will be direct- ing the DSO for the first time, although the Choral Union routinely sings in the DSO's performances of large choral works. The University is itself the eventual product of local church choirs wanting to collaborate in singing the perennial holiday blockbuster, Handel's "Messiah." Today, according to Blackstone, nearly 600 people sing in choirs on campus each week. The music school has 11 choirs, largely comprised of vocal performance students. The huge scale of many choral pro- ductions is often a contemporary twist on choral pieces' original design. In an interview, Blackstone said that Handel probably wrote "Messiah" for about 20 singers. "In the 19th century, when bigger was better, large groups began to perform these works," Bpakstone said. "Besides. that,-Bach used onlymenand boys in the church. We use men and women, and the' soloists are sopranos where he would have used boys. It's a modern perfor- mance." The piece itself is a significant work in the Western Canon, one whose redis- covery by Felix Mendelssohn - nearly 100 years after the piece was written - helped redefine ecclesiastical music. The piece's masterful composition makes it an enduring and high-profile work, and its emotional impact is not lost on mod- ern listeners.. "There are moments - no, 'moments' is too light. There are hours that move me," Blackstone said of "Passion." For so many separate creative groups to come together successfully might seem to depend on weeks of rehearsal. In fact, the DSO played with Blackstone conducting for the first time on Tuesday. Blackstone explained that for profes- sional orchestras, having a handful of rehearsals before a performance is "pret- ty standard," since the orchestra would likely have been booked with a different performance the previous weekend. "They're at the top of their game," Blackstone said of the DSO. "That's why they're great - because they have to be great instantly." According to Kathy Operhall, the manager of the UMS Choral Union, 3,000 of Hill's 3,538 seats had already been sold by Monday. "Messiah" is a reli- able ticket-seller every year, and along with the Choral Union's collaboration with the DSO in "Beethoven's Ninth" in May, tonight's performance rounds out a surefire set. Perhaps partof the appealof"Passion" Bach's b-day? Jesus's death day? A recipe for orchestral success is how narrative the three-hour work is. "Bach doesn't just present beautiful music - for him the story is paramount," Blackstone said. He argued that the work is highly accessible (English supertitles will sup- plement the sung German), a fact that may be born out by the participation of the MSU Children's Choir, which is composed of young adults aged 10 to 14, according to Operhall. "Bach uses all those arias (melodic solos) to make the story very personal," Blackstone said. In a nod to the catgut stringed instru- ments Bach's musicianswould have used, Blackstone intends for the DSO's string sections to play a "less brilliant sound," as is often heard from contemporary steel-wrapped strings. "The piece sounds more beautiful to my ears given that elegant, crisp clar- ity associated with the original instru- ments," he said. "But with a big chorus, there will also be warmth and richness." Expect a demanding performance that will be impressive for its gravity.In Black- stone's words, "It's living with greatness, the time I spend with this score." Should-be terrible action flick finds occasional bright spots throughout dim story By PAUL TASSI DailyArts Writer The "Doomsday" trailer was almost a promise that one of the worst movies of all time was about to be released. A post-apocalyptic Doomsda fdd re. 'th punk rock cannibals on dirt bikes? At Showcase I'm thinking "Roller- and Quality16 ball." Unfortunately for Rogue lovers of awful movies, the end result is surprisingly somewhat watchable. It's the year 2035 and Scotland is just getting over a pandemic that has wiped out its entire population. The landmass is quarantined with a giant wall that stretches across the island, and orders are to shoot on sight anyone that comes near it. The pandemic in question is no zombie-creating virus a la "28 Days Later." Instead, it's simply a plague that gives you boils and makes you die a slow, painful death. Yummy. Now that the disease has run its course in Scotland, everyone is presumed to be dead. But that all changes when satel- lite photos start showing people climb- ing over the wall. Conveniently, this is right about the time the disease breaks out in London (called the "Reaper" virus in one scene and the "Doomsday" virus in another by indecisive scientists). A special ops officer named Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra, "Nip/Tuck") is picked to lead a team to figure out how the hell people survived. Back in post-apocolyptic Scotland, there are two groups of survivors. The first group Sinclair encounters is a wild group of goth-rock 20-somethings whose hobbies include running around with bat- tle-axes and eating each other (despite the inexplicable fact that Sinclair's team runs into about io,ooo cattle a few miles away). They quickly capture and kill most of the team and proceed to cook and eat one of the generic soldier boys in a scene so over the top that it's not even disturbing. In fact, the goths are so entertaining, with their facial tattoos and surprisingly convincing rock-star leader Sol (Craig Conway, "Vera Drake"), that you'll actu- ally find yourself wanting to chant along with the barbaric crowd. The fight scenes are incredibly well choreographed for a movie that would seem like it would have the budget of "Saw" and Lord knows you'll have no idea what happens next. And what does happen next? Sinclair escapes and takes a train across the coun- tryside where she finds the second group, the Renaissance fair crowd. They've taken up refuge in an old medieval castle and proceeded to dress and act like it's the Dark Ages. If you thought these guys were good compared to the goths, think again - Sinclair finds herself in a medieval gladiator fight to the death in no time. So far we've gone from modern day to 2035 London to anarchist Scotland to the Mid- dle Ages. It's hard to believe there's not a flux capacitor anywhere in this film. All of this concludes with a car chase involving an indestructible Bentley and a "Mad Max"-like parade of vehicles pimped out with skeletons and gimps tied to the front. All things said and done, it's probably unreasonable to think there might be a "Doomsday 2" - that is, unless you're a bloodthirsty 19-year-old, sitting by your- self ARTS IN BRIEF Television Dull concept destroys latest biographical show "Ax Men" Sundays at 10 p.m. History Channel We have reached the bottom of the barrel. The History Channel has an hour-long pro- gram on logging. "Ax Men" follows four logging companies in the northwestern United States as they cut down trees and face the dangers associ- ated with logging .. . like not getting out of the way of falling trees. The forced drama is completely over the top, yet it's possible this is the most boring show on television. When you have loggers endlessly spouting off things like, "the first time you make a mistake, it can hurtyou bad," followed by an hour of non-stop dullness, nothing can come from that but a bit- ter audience. Where are all the accidents? Yes, these log- gers are experienced, but they're also making a TV show, so at least one of them should be forced to take one for the team per episode. If they don't, there's no use for this show outside of a cure for insomnia. JOHN DAAVETTILA Event Preview Multimedia show translates meaning through media CommShow Tonight at 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m.and 8 p.m. Video studio in the Duderstadt Center In a time when modern conveniences such as text messaging and BlackBerries are ubiqitous, human communication begins to take on a more unseen form. It is undeniable that our culture is intertwined with a constantly evolving role of technology. The advantages and consequences are left for time to reveal. As for right now, all we can do is investigate. Such a task inspired students studying music, performing arts tech- nology, dance and art and design to collaborate on a project investigating how humans inter- act with each other in the modern world. The result of their inquiry will be presented in a multimediadance performance, "CommShow," today and tomorrow at the video studio in the Duderstadt Center on North Campus. Appropriately, multimedia will be used to examine the digital world. The original six dances, music and video were choreographed and composed bythe students themselves. The video, modern dance and ambient style music create an atmosphere that helps to explain how today's society relies on multitasking through multimedia. The project began last April when members began talking about themes of social networking. "Things like MySpace and Facebook have really changed the way we interact with one another, and so we were trying to bring some forth some of these things, and trying not to make a commentary on it, but rather, acknowl- edging the implications of these things, and making the audience aware of them," said School of Music, Theatre and Dance student Aidan Feldman, a choreographer of the show Just as technol- ogy will be the central theme of the perfor- mance, it * 6 will also be used as a form of art. * Embrac- ing the digital age may also mean drawing some boundar- ies. As we grapple with the question of how much is too much, Feldman poses a necessary question: "What is the bare mini- mum we can get by with?"' PRIYA BALI Minimalist electronics rule Toronto duo's debut By GABRIEL BAKER Daily Arts Writer With their self-titled debut, Crys- tal Castles attempts to outdo an extremely fine catalogue of EPs and singles by bulking up on even more Atari 5200 bit sounds and contorting them into sometimes glitchy, some- times groovy, electronic music. The Toronto-based duo of Alice Glass and Ethan Kath formed in 2003, but didn't cross into vocal-friendly terri- **** tory until two years later. When an acci- Crystal dental recording ofC Glasspracticingsur- faced as "Alice Prac- Crystal tice" on the group's Castles MySpace page, com- Last Gang pany heads began, to notice the duo's eccentric, midi-obsessed sound. Since then, the Crystal Castles craze has only gained steam, and with this album, the band is prepared to make the leap from dance floor obscu- rity to electro-digging indie circles everywhere. In many ways, Crystal Castles's music is minimal and economic. Sure, you've got video game noises entering from all sides of a given track, but vocal samples and har- monies are often used resourcefully. "Untrust Us" opens like some long- lost soundtrack to "Castlevania," with dark rhythms and indecipher- able, pitch-shifting vocals recycled over and over again. Elsewhere, sam- ples are dropped for Glass's voice. On "Good Time," she repeats the phrase "Good times keep rolling / Got to / Got to escape now," in a plucky man- ner. It adds a refreshingly human touch to balance out the glitchy bleeps and warped sounds. The best - and perhaps safest - move on the album is the inclusion of the band's earlier single, "Crime- wave." The track was one of the best singles of the year when it came out in last August, and now with a full- length album behind it, the track stands sating vocals s flourisl ing sou of now with st Risl del fir infectic onset feel lik electro to tecto Crys weirde tures a vocal s much 1 song'sI to assu out even more. Over a pul- word "goo" pronounced with differ- rubber-band beat, tweaked ent inflections. The song's whimsi- tutter alongside game console cal qualities are equally illustrated hes reminiscent of the shrink- in its music video, which shows the nd in "Mario Bros." But out two band members walking around here, the vocals are replaced town withice cream cones for heads. accato electronic dribbles as Each passerby generally enjoys get- ting served a hefty scoop. Whether they're trying to make some joke about "Coneheads" or "You Got k k gg u Served" is left up to you. livers on their When music magazine Loud And Quiet declared Crystal Castles "the st full-length most exciting and original band in the world right now," it overlooked one fine detail: To be the most excit- ing and original band in the world ous as they are bizarre. At the does not guarantee responsive lis- af the song, it doesn't really teners from across the globe. Crystal e a club hit, but these bouncy Castles is sure to turn off even some blips really elevate the track of the music-blog-lapping indie kids nique status. out there. Nonetheless, with this full- tal Castles gets a little bit length album, the band holds true to r on "Air War," which fea- its spastically inventive sound. The plodding electronic beat and 8-bit sounds adorning each track are nippets that sound way too produced and manicured with fore- ike baby mumbles. Until the sight and meaning. There is a delib- lyrics are decoded, I'm going erate order to the chaos. If only more tme the sample is just the video games sounded like this. I