The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts & Sports
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 — 7A

‘M’ looks for another 
win in lopsided rivalry

By CHRIS CROWDER

Daily Sports Writer

Michiganders agree on many 

things. 
There’s 
widespread 

acclaim over Euchre and drinking 
Vernors when 
you’re 
sick. 

But 
there 
is 

one 
question 

that 
divides 

the state more 
than anything 
else: Michigan 
or 
Michigan 

State?

Michigan 

softball coach 
Carol Hutchins 
was 
born 
in 

Lansing 
and 

played 
for 

Michigan 
State. But she will give you a 
straight and short answer to the 
question.

“I’m not really caught up in the 

rivalry,” Hutchins said. “I know 
Michigan fans don’t like to hear 
that. To me, I only care about 
Michigan. I work for Michigan, 
my team is Michigan, and I want 
Michigan to win. And I don’t care 
who we’re playing.”

Wednesday, the fourth-ranked 

Wolverines (10-2 Big Ten, 37-6 
overall) will head to East Lansing 
to play the Spartans (1-11, 16-24). 
The Spartans haven’t given the 
Wolverines much of a challenge 
historically, as Michigan leads 
the 
all-time 
series, 
82-27. 

Michigan State’s last win came 
in 2009.

Despite Michigan’s consistent 

success against Michigan State, 
junior second baseman Sierra 
Romero said the rivalry hasn’t 
become any less competitive.

“(The rivalry) is kind of like 

the Ohio State one,” Romero said. 
“We go out there with that kind 
of chip on our shoulder that it’s 
a rivalry game, and that makes it 

all the more fun. Other than that, 
it’s just another game.”

Added 
sophomore 
pitcher 

Megan Betsa: “If you asked me, 
I don’t think they’re our biggest 
rival. It’s always fun to play an 
in-state rival, but we just play the 
same regardless. We don’t play 
who’s across the chest.”

Betsa said that a team like 

Minnesota may be more of a 
rival than Michigan State. And 
there’s something to that. While 
Michigan and Minnesota occupy 
the top two slots in the Big Ten 
standings, Wednesday’s matchup 
will be a battle of worst versus 
first in the Big Ten.

Michigan State has the worst 

batting average in the conference 
(.274) and has a team earned-run 
average of 5.13. The Wolverines 
maintain the best ERA in the Big 
Ten with a 1.65 mark and have a 
whopping 60 more home runs 
than their in-state foe.

With Michigan being the 

Spartans’ first ranked opponent 
of the season, they’ll face an 
uphill battle trying to pull off 
an upset. Leading the charge 
will be starting pitcher Kristina 

Zalewski, who is sixth in the 
conference with a 3.15 ERA. 
Zalewski has 117 strikeouts and 
12 wins, and she will likely be the 
Wolverines’ biggest challenge on 
Wednesday.

No matter the statistics, the 

rivalry still has meaning. Both 
teams want to boast bragging 
rights for softball supremacy in 
the state.

“I’ve 
always 
grown 
up 

knowing about the Michigan 
State/Michigan rivalry,” said 
junior 
right 
fielder 
Kelsey 

Susalla. “It’s always a fun game 
for us because it is a rivalry 
game, but it’s just a matter of 
how we play and focusing on our 
game.”

If the Wolverines stay focused, 

they should have no problem 
beating the Spartans. As for 
the always-focused Hutchins, 
her players know where her 
allegiance lies in the rivalry.

“Her 
heart 
bleeds 
blue,” 

Susalla said.

Added sophomore shortstop 

Abby Ramirez: “She’s definitely a 
Michigan woman now.”

And that can’t be debated.

Michigan 
at Michigan 
State

Matchup: 
MSU 16-24; 
Michigan 37-6

When: 
Wednesday 
4:30 P.M.

Where: 
Secchia 
Stadium

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily

Megan Betsa has helped lead Michigan’s pitching staff to a 1.65 ERA.

Jazz legends to 
perform at Hill

Hancock and Corea 
prepare an acoustic 

piano set

By COSMO PAPPAS

Daily Arts Writer

The last time jazz titans Chick 

Corea 
and 
Herbie 
Hancock 

performed at Hill Auditorium 
would have been Jan. 26, 1978 , 
but winter conditions kept the duo 
from 
flying 

out of New 
York 
and, 

memorably, 
closed 
the 

University 
for the last 
time 
until 

2014. 
The 

rescheduled 
concert, set a 
month 
after 

the first date, 
featured 
Miles Davis’s two former sidemen 
— and by this time widely 
renowned jazz musicians in their 
own right — in an intimate setting, 
pared down to two acoustic pianos. 
They elected such a performance 
just as they were fully immersed 
in the electronic experimentation 
of jazz fusion that defined the late 
’60s and ’70s.

It will be one of the most 

significant events UMS puts on 
this year as Ann Arbor welcomes 
the pair back for a performance 
that will feature the two pianists 
with just acoustic instruments 
between them on the famous Hill 
stage. For two careers that have 

been defined by groundbreaking 
experiments in electronic media 
and forms in jazz, it’s a special 
opportunity to see Corea and 
Hancock going back to basics.

“(The piano) is the instrument 

that they have gone through their 
career with and that has gotten 
them to this point,” said University 
alum 
Brendan 
Asante, 
who 

graduated from the University 
School of Music, Theatre and 
Dance program in Jazz and served 
as a former ticket associate for 
the University Musical Society. 
“From a foundational perspective, 
it signifies a lot of home-growing 
and ‘this is where we started.’ ”

Audiences can expect a concert 

both historic and historical. It’s a 
big deal any time famous musicians 
perform 
in 
their 
hometown. 

But this concert will, further, be 
historical because Hancock and 
Corea themselves embody the 
history of avant-garde jazz since 
the early 1960s. Herbie Hancock 
and Chick Corea are “two of the 
major jazz piano voices to emerge 
in the post-Coltrane era” along 
with McCoy Tyner and Keith 
Jarrett, as Don Heckman of the 
Los Angeles Times describes.

“I think that these two phenoms 

of the piano ... are joining forces 
to try to present a history – their 
playing styles and everything. 
They’re trying to present that in a 
duo format,” Asante said.

As Harvard Prof. Homi K. 

Bhabba says in his introduction to 
Hancock’s lecture, “The Ethics of 
Jazz” through the Norton Lectures 
series at Harvard University, “In 
the musical field alone, (Hancock) 
has ventured from post-bop to 

hip-hop, funk to film soundtracks, 
Miles Davis to Joni Mitchell, Lang 
Lang to P!nk.”

Hancock has also championed 

jazz in his humanitarian career as 
a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. 
Professor 
Bhabba 
develops 

Hancock’s view on the politics or 
ethics of jazz that play out in “the 
disjunctive terrains of a world that 
is in some aspects synchronized 
and 
simultaneous, 
while 
in 

other respects, dramatically out 
of sync with itself and others.” 
He 
emphasizes 
the 
“mutual 

cooperation” that, in Hancock’s 
ethics of jazz, allows musicians 
to “respect (their) neighbors” by 
“(working) and (playing) with 
them.”

Chick Corea’s career in music 

is no less illustrious as we track 
his involvement with Miles Davis 
for the latter’s foundational fusion 
albums Bitches Brew and In a 
Silent Way, his tenure with the 
fusion group Return to Forever 
and his work in classical music 
and Latin American music. Chick 
Corea is the fourth-most Grammy 
nominated artist of all time, 
counting 63 separate nominations, 
as well as an unprecedented 
trove of three “Best Instrumental 
Album” Latin Grammy awards.

Hancock 
and 
Corea’s 

performance this Thursday will 
animate a history of more than 
half a century of jazz, an expansive 
archive of the “idiom of jazz” 
(Asante’s phrase) unfolding in 
real time for Ann Arbor audiences 
through Corea and Hancock’s 
unquestionable historical import.

UMS

“How are your theton levels Herbie?”

ISLAND RECORDS

“We’ll let you down as soon as you make us look cool.”
Riding in cars with 
moms ... and Bono

By REGAN DETWILER

Daily Arts Writer

After meeting people I’ve 

never met before, trying things 
I’ve never tried before, study-
ing things I’ve never studied 
before, and having had pretty 
much every preconception I 
carried with me to the Univer-
sity challenged, freshman year 
has given me a lot to reflect on. 
This is what I thought of as my 
mom and I drove for the ump-
teenth time down Route 23 back 
to Columbus (yes, I’m from 
Columbus) listening to The 
Unforgettable Fire.

Although it was my first time 

driving home from Ann Arbor for 

Easter weekend, my grandparents 
have always lived in Perrysburg, 
just south of Toledo. As a result, 
we have made the trek south-
east to Columbus countless times 
throughout my life. The wide, 
open, flat fields of corn and soy-
beans have seen me through baby-
hood, toddlerhood and childhood. 
They’d seen me as a lost middle 
schooler, a high schooler way too 
preoccupied with extracurricular 
activities and GPAs, and now an 
Ann Arbor-fied college student. 
We’d been through a lot together.

This time when we drove down 

23, the clouds were that lovely, 
swimming blue-gray as an April 
storm settled over the strikingly 
unassuming landscape of the bud-

ding fields, punctuated by darkly 
beautiful dilapidated farmhouses 
and barns. My mom’s new Volvo 
sedan was not yet set up with an 
aux cord, so we were left to the 
basket of CDs she brought for the 
three-hour drive.

We listened to late ’80s to early 

’90s Tanita Tikaram on the way 
out of Ann Arbor, and it was time 
to pick something new as we got 
on the highway. The Best of the Girl 
Groups, Vol. 1, Tanita Tikaram, Van 
Morrison and several of my mom’s 
favorite U2 albums … Who did we 
feel like listening to?

I know people have strong opin-

ions about U2 and what they have 
done with recent releases, but it 
has been my mom’s favorite band 

for almost 30 years. That’s a long 
time. My mom would play U2 
around the house while she made 
dinner, while she cleaned and 
fixed up the house, while we sat 
out on the front porch in the sum-
mers and all the time in the car, 
whether it’s a five-minute drive 
to the grocery store or sprinkled 
over eight hours on the way to 
D.C. to see the band in concert. 
I’ve listened to the band’s music 
mindlessly for pretty much my 
entire life, and eventually came to 
know their entire collection with-
out realizing it. Over the years 
my mom would rewind the songs 
and make me listen to her favor-
ite lines and we would play over 
and over again those parts of their 
songs where Bono’s ever-clear 
voice slips into that gristly, splin-
tery growl.

“I want to listen to U2,” I said. 

My mom said that was good 
with her, and then I asked which 
album we should put in. Shuf-
fling through them, I landed on 
one that she had raved about and 
I knew was legendary. I asked, 
“Are you okay with The Unforget-
table Fire?”

“Oh, Regan, I’m always okay 

with The Unforgettable Fire,” 
she replied.

I had heard the album before 

piece by piece. My mom would 
play certain songs she loved, 
playing a song’s regular version 
and a live version one right after 
the other, or two songs on the 
album together that blend into 
one another seamlessly. But I had 
never listened to The Unforget-
table Fire all the way through, 
uninterrupted. My mom calling 
it “required listening,” so I knew 
listening to this album was some-
thing that had to be done.

The Edge’s distinctive guitar 

welcomed us to the long highway 
drive as “A Sort of Homecoming” 

trickled through the speakers – an 
all-too-appropriate opening song.

And then it was the two of us, 

the open road and our dog, Lucy, in 
the backseat. Classic, right? It was 
perfect. We passed by our favorite 
billboard for Beef Jerky Unlimit-
ed, stopped to pee at a McDonald’s 
in North Baltimore, “the armpit 
of Ohio,” as my mom calls it, and 
commented on the exquisitely 
uncomplicated landscape of the 
Midwest. We admired the way the 
overcast lighting brought out the 
contrast between all of the colors 
– the bright green budding fields, 
the golden brown of the ones that 
hadn’t yet recovered from winter 
and the bright red-shelled semi 
trucks we shared the road with.

After the firm and quick beats 

of the album’s title track echoed 
through our ears, hearts and 
minds, the album settled into 
the contemplative, “Promenade,” 
which flowed beautifully, like 
water into “4th of July” – the 
heady, wordless predecessor of 
The Unforgettable Fire’s master-
piece, “Bad.”

It’s a song that we’ve listened 

to countless times, giving it both 
bouts of silence and our best Bono 
impressions belted out when the 
song deserved it. We both looked 
forward at the patch of gray 
highway immediately in front of 
our car as it continuously raced 
underneath us. The same not-yet-
stormy, but already heavy and 
foreboding blue-gray swarms of 
vapor hanging above us as if they 
had some kind of awareness of 
what they were witnessing. This 
time, almost impishly, The Edge 
drew us into the song, remind-
ing me of my presence here with 
my mom, listening to her favor-
ite band and giving her favorite 
album of all time the respect it 
beckoned for.

The thing about “Bad” is that 

it starts out mellow and smooth. 
Only “The Edge” is playing. But 
then comes a distant tambourine, 
then Bono singing gently, then 
the bass and drums, and soon the 
song gains a sort of pulse. The 
song builds, the cymbals pick up 
and the lyrics move into “this 
desperation, dislocation, separa-
tion, condemnation, revelation, in 
temptation, isolation desolation … 
Let it go … and so to find away…”

Then Bono’s voice cracks into 

that gristly, painfully organic 
growl as he iterates, “I’m wide 
awake … I’m wide awake …” with 
this certain vitality that reminds 
you of all it is to be human. Almost 
suddenly, just as the song has built 
to this, the cymbals fade out, the 
song slows, and soon we’re left 
again with just Bono, “The Edge,” 
my mom and I. “I’m not sleep-
ing…” and the music leaves our 
ears to tire on concrete.

What does it mean to listen to 

your parents’ favorite music – to 
really listen to it, to really give it 
your attention? I see it as a form 
of empathy. Listening to my moth-
er’s music was to put myself in her 
shoes and to experience humanity 
as she experiences it. It’s to rec-
ognize something that speaks to 
her, and by extension to recognize 
something that has contributed 
to who I am. And we were doing 
it together, here, on the road we’d 
travelled so many times – just me 
my mom (and yes, Lucy).

The band that does this for you 

may not be U2, and if you’re not a 
U2 fan, then I’m sorry you’ve had 
to endure my ranting all the way 
up to 1000 words. But if your par-
ents have an affinity for music, 
you should take a look at their col-
lection if you haven’t already. Ask 
what their favorite album is, and 
don’t go to iTunes – get the CD. Go 
out to the car and go for a drive. 
And listen.

DID YOU KNOW IT’S IYAZ’S 

BIRTHDAY TODAY? 

EVENT PREVIEW

An Evening 
With Herbie 
Hancock and 
Chick Corea

Thursday, April 
16, 7p.m.

Hill Auditorium 

$35-$125

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

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@MICHIGANDAILY

