4B — Thursday, February 11, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Remembering my
beloved maestro
By DAYTON HARE
Daily Arts Writer
A month ago I wrote an
obituary of sorts for Pierre
Boulez. Now I find myself
embarking on a similar task,
but this time it’s of a far more
personal nature. Boulez wasn’t
really a part of my life — Leslie
Bassett was.
Leslie Bassett wasn’t nearly as
famous as Boulez; consequently,
his death hasn’t affected the
musical community with the
same feeling of enormity as did
the Frenchman’s. But within the
community of the University
of Michigan, its reverberations
shook more than a few people.
When Boulez died I felt sad
in a disconnected, abstract
sort of way. When I heard of
Bassett’s death I felt an actual
poignant pang of grief, the sort of
unpleasant twinge that seems to
almost physically shoot through
the body and land right in the
stomach. He was the very first
person to receive a DMA in
Composition from the University,
and — following a Fulbright
Fellowship and a few years
studying at École Normale de
Musique de Paris and privately
with the legendary Nadia
Boulanger — he began teaching
at the University in 1952. He
remained in that capacity for
nearly four decades, during
which time he received the
Pulitzer Prize and a Guggenheim
Fellowship.
I have heard it said in the
past that Leslie Bassett built
the Department of Music
Composition at the University
up from nothing into one of
the leading departments in the
country — and certainly his
influence is still profoundly felt.
My own composition teacher
studied with him when he was
a student, and whenever he
speaks of Bassett I see profound
admiration glimmering in his
eyes.
Bassett died on Thursday, but I
didn’t learn about it until Friday.
During Composition Seminar — a
class in which all of the students
of composition come together
to have discussions and share
music — my teacher rose to say
a few words about the man that
had once been his own teacher.
I must paraphrase a small bit —
and inelegantly at that — as I’m
working from memory, but as he
spoke my teacher seemed to have
a certain amount of heaviness
weighing upon him.
“Yesterday one of our
predecessors passed away …
Leslie Bassett was a wonderful
musician, but more importantly
he was a wonderful human
being. He was kind and caring
always, even as he struggled
through the hardships of his own
life,” he said.
In my composition lessons
Leslie Bassett is always present.
Hardly two weeks go by without
my teacher passing along some
piece of advice — either musical
or general in nature — from his
former teacher. Bassett’s words
even serve as a reliable answer to
small musical questions. When
discussing whether or not a
period should be placed after an
abbreviation of a musical term
in a score, my teacher remarked
“let’s see what Leslie Bassett says
…” as he moved to look through
a Bassett score on the bookshelf.
(Bassett agreed with me; a
period should be placed after an
abbreviation.)
I am connected to Leslie
Bassett because of my musical
lineage and because of the
university I attend — but I am
also connected to him far more
personally. In one of the curious
little ironies in which life loves
to dabble, Leslie Bassett retired
in the town where I lived. Not in
some thriving metropolis with a
robust cultural heartbeat — but
a small town in rural Georgia
whose cultural EKG has more
or less flatlined. I could easily
imagine that Bassett was the
only composer within a 50 mile
radius.
I didn’t really know him —
he was one of those people in
my peripheral, a figure on the
fringes of my life — but I met
him a few times. When I was
much younger, first realizing
that I maybe wanted to become
a composer, he offered gentle
encouragement to me. Whenever
I would run into him, at some
concert or other event, he would
simply say to me “keep writing.”
Around my freshman year
of high school I started taking
cello lessons with a wonderful
woman named Wendy Baker.
Her middle name was Bassett,
and as I’m sure you can deduce,
she is Leslie’s daughter. She
was patient and kind, with a
gentle sense of humor, and I
appreciated her unfathomable
ability to tolerate the hideous
cacophony I produced with my
beginner’s bow and cello in hand.
I didn’t stick with cello very long,
because I simply didn’t have
the time to give it the attention
it deserved, but I stayed long
enough to develop a friendship
with Wendy and passively learn
about her father.
When Leslie Bassett was just a
couple years older than I am now,
he went to war. As part of the
13th Armored Division during
the Second World War, Bassett
fought against Hitler’s Germany
in the last years of the bloody
conflict. As Wendy recounted to
me, somewhere in Southwestern
Germany the 13th rolled up into
an abandoned town, from which
the Wehrmacht had retreated
in some haste. Passing through
the empty buildings, the young
Bassett stumbled upon a band
room — instruments were
broken and strewn haphazardly
around the room, deemed too
unimportant to carry along with
the fleeing army.
Somewhere in this musical
wreckage Bassett noticed the
mahogany colored body of a
beautiful cello. Battered and
more than a little worse for
wear — the neck of the cello was
completely broken — Bassett fell
in love with it. He constructed
a box out of miscellaneous
materials he found around the
town, and with tender care and
delicacy he packed the cello
inside and shipped it back to the
states.
Many years later — after the
cello’s origin in c.1848 Barcelona
was known — the instrument
found a new owner. When his
daughter Wendy surpassed his
own abilities on the cello, Bassett
passed it to her, and she still plays
it today.
This is not the first time I’ve
written about that cello — in
my junior year of high school
I reflected upon a funeral I
attended of a fellow cello student,
at which Wendy played that
instrument — but this time I have
a very different point. Perhaps
it’s just me indulging in a bit of
hyper-sentimentality, but from
what I know of what sort of
person Bassett was, the anecdote
about the cello is an apt metaphor
for the way he approached life.
Leslie Bassett focused on the
good things among the bad and
approached everything in life
with care and compassion.
And so that brings me back to
the advice I received from him,
the simple direction to “keep
writing.” He had never heard
my music and he really didn’t
know anything about me, but it
didn’t matter. He just seemed
to genuinely want everyone to
succeed at what they loved. I
won’t pretend that Leslie Bassett
is the reason I’m a composer,
because that likely would have
happened anyway, but what
Leslie Bassett did do is provide a
small bit of hope for a young boy
who felt frustrated and trapped
— artistically, intellectually,
socially — by his surroundings.
He gave me one more reason to
keep moving forward, one more
dream to keep alive — and in the
small, strangely interconnected
way that the world is, I realize
now that in a certain way he gave
me my future.
COMMUNITY CULTURE
By MERIN MCDIVITT
For the Daily
Late one afternoon at Univer-
sity Flower Shop, a man stepped
in from the cold air of Nickels
Arcade. He stood a bit awkwardly
at the counter, glasses all fogged
up, until owner Danielle Vignos
looked up and smiled. “Do you
know what you’re looking for?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Can you
get, um, lilies? They’re a special
kind of lilies … ” He fumbled and
checked his phone for the name.
“Stargazer lilies.”
After placing his order, the
man, glasses now clear, explained
his strangely specific request. He
had asked his girlfriend what her
favorite flower was. Her answer?
You guessed it: stargazer lily. He
told her, “I’m gonna get you that
for Valentine’s Day.” She said,
“OK.”
Ladies and gentlemen, a love
story for the ages.
All kinds of people, and the
romances that follow them,
make their way into this small
storefront with its cheerful
window displays and warm
atmosphere. After all, that is the
nature of a flower shop. Working
here is about more than artistic
arrangements and begonia ship-
ments. People send flowers as an
expression of love in all its forms,
whether it’s the first kiss or final
goodbye, regretful apology or
blossoming friendship.
When everything from
accounting to relationship advice
is part of your job description,
making everything run smoothly
is no easy task. In little over a
year, University Flower Shop has
transformed from a quaint but
struggling business into a fresh,
welcoming space full of youthful
potential. The woman responsible
for this remarkable turnaround
is 22-year-old Vignos, a recent
University of Michigan graduate
and newly minted small business
owner. Vignos is also a former
Michigan Daily columnist.
Walking into the shop on a
freezing January day feels like a
long exhale. Summer air rushes
out for a moment as the door,
emblazoned with University
Flower Shop, est. 1959, swings
open. Vignos, always busy
arranging bouquets and tending
shop, greets customers warmly as
quiet music plays from the shop’s
tiny loft balcony overlooking
the arcade. Every surface of the
cozy space is covered with living
things — mauve, violet, green and
colors that don’t even have names
— a welcome contrast to gray
downtown that many customers
appreciate. A student with cheer-
ful clothing to combat the Feb-
ruary chill, stopped by for that
very reason. “I just think flow-
ers brighten up your day,” she
explained. A chalk sign by the
counter seems to agree, sharing
a handwritten Emerson quote:
“Earth laughs in flowers.”
With its old-fashioned air and
cozy interior, sometimes it seems
as though the shop sprung into
existence fully formed. But like
the flowers it carries, the process
was slow and challenging, and
Vignos continues to transform
the space.
“Everything is kind of
growing together slowly,” she
explained.
The seeds of the business,
however, were planted a long
time ago. Vignos has loved flow-
ers and plants for as long as she
can remember.
“My dad had a big garden
growing up; he had a bunch of
roses,” she said. “I had a little
garden outside my bedroom
called ‘Dani’s Garden.’ I remem-
ber in the summertime we’d
always do our potting and repot-
ting, we’d go to the nursery, and
my brother and I would get to
pick out all the flowers and decide
what we were going to plant that
season. ”
When Michigan winter came
around, she sought solace in her
local flower shops.
“Something about it made feel
so at peace and at ease,” Vignos
remembered.
Flash forward to her gradua-
tion from the University. When
she heard through the grapevine
that a local florist was going on
the market, she jumped at the
opportunity to bring her child-
hood love of flowers and her adult
business interests together.
“I had a kid dream about
owning a flower shop, and I was
interested in small business and
entrepreneurship, more into
brick and mortar spaces,” she
explained.
In a time when more and more
interactions from shopping to
dating take place online, Vignos
began to understand what an
important role physical spaces
play in town.
“I love community spaces,”
she said. “Small businesses in
general are just awesome, how a
space can inform how you feel or
what you’re thinking about, what
you’re doing.”
After spending time getting to
know the old shop and its owner,
they reached a deal, and the shop
was hers. Then the real work
began. The shop was in need of a
serious overhaul, something Vig-
nos and her dedicated employees
are still engaged in.
First order of business?
“Bettering our reputation,
because this place has gone in
and out of good times and bad
times. So I just wanted to bring
back our friendly nature and our
history a little bit. We’ve been
here forever, and so I feel like it’s
a place that … ” Vignos paused.
“It can’t leave, you know?”
This meant transforming
the inventory and renovating
the space, making it more open
and appealing to current tastes.
Even in a brick-and-mortar
environment, Vignos knew she
had to get the 60-year-old shop
up to speed, including establish-
ing a presence on social media.
“I had to get to know this
space a little bit better, and fig-
ure out what was not function-
ing well in order to figure out
what I wanted to change,” she
said. “And I’m still very much in
the process of doing that.”
No one, Vignos included,
anticipated just how much work
she and her employees need to
pour into the shop every day. She
said she has a new appreciation
for the daily trials of small busi-
ness owners, who form a sup-
portive community in Ann Arbor
to which she feels privileged to
belong.
“I see it as so much more than
a business, so maybe that’s how
everyone sees it,” she said. “Peo-
ple just seem to put so much time
and energy and extra 110 percent
in all the time.”
But while the sheer amount of
elbow grease the shop requires
has been a reality check, the
personal, touching surprises
that come with owning a flower
shop are a constant source of joy.
Vignos said she’s amazed at the
breathtaking variety and unique-
ness of her wares.
“You think you know a lot
about flowers and plants, and
then every day it has just been
turned upside down,” she said.
The personal connections with
employees, who are as passionate
about the shop as Vignos is, have
made her experience even more
rewarding.
“It does mean a lot that I know
the people who are helping make
this place are having a good time,”
Vignos said.
During our brief visit, Val-
entine’s Day was in the air, for
customers and employees alike. A
delivery person told Vignos about
her Valentine’s plans to visit her
daughter: “Give her a visit, make
her some dinner, tell her I love her
and that’s enough.”
And then, there are the
romances, new and old, that sit at
the heart of the shop. When cus-
tomers come in, they’re looking
for something beautiful, some-
thing tangible, that will express
a feeling they can’t explain in
words. Vignos’s bouquets are sent
to people in every sort of relation-
ship, from “just friends” to “just
married.”
“It’s a riot; I love it,” Vignos
said. “I see a lot of people evolving
through their relationships.”
Some come into the shop for
a single rose to ask someone out.
Months later, they come in for a
full bouquet, sharing that now
they’re happily dating the recipi-
ent of that first lonely flower.
Other times, the shop’s storied
legacy means that Vignos encoun-
ters love stories older than her.
“It’s definitely a place with a
history,” she explained. “I’ll
have people come back who
had their wedding flowers done
here like 40 years ago.”
Things have changed,
though, since the shop first
opened in 1959. This Valentine’s
Day, the boy-sends-girl-flowers
trope continues as always, but
other types of relationships,
whether it’s a same-sex couple
or a girl sending flowers to her
boyfriend, have become com-
mon as well.
“We get a lot of couples com-
ing in — boys and girls, and
boyfriends of girlfriends, and
girlfriends of girlfriends, (and)
friends,” she said. “And they
always — well, not always — but
they’ll come and tell me how it
went because I’m nosy and I ask
what the occasion is.”
While we talked, a couple
stood in front of the display
case, staring and pointing and
discussing in whispers for a
good 10 minutes. Eventually,
they order a bouquet of roses,
“orangey-red” ones, to be exact,
to receive this Valentine’s
weekend.
“We decided to do our Val-
entine’s shopping together this
year,” the woman explained.
His idea. “So we’re getting roses
together, and buying chocolates
together.”
Vignos smiled and wrote
down their order, her old-fash-
ioned notepad at odds with the
iPad where customers sign their
names. The couple strolled out
into the cold, though they’ll be
back in a few days for their roses.
The shop was quiet again for a
minute, the only sounds the rus-
tle of the plants and the broom
on the tile floor.
“It’s always really satisfying
and nice to hear people’s stories
about why they’re getting people
flowers. Sometimes it feels like a
bartending job, people just come
clean,” she said. “It’s rewarding
every day, truly.”
EPISODE REVIEW
Next to a certain glove
that didn’t fit, perhaps the
most iconic moment of the O.J.
Simpson
trial was the
infamous
White Bronco
chase that
unfolded
on June 17,
1994. Intense
and almost
inherently
cinematic, the
event became
a nationwide
fascination
as people
(95 million,
in fact) crowded around their
televisions to watch the highway
pursuit.
It’s no surprise, then, that
“American Crime Story”
devoted its entire second
episode to depicting this event,
capturing the frantic efforts on
both sides of Simpson’s (Cuba
Gooding Jr., “Jerry Maguire”)
case alongside the almost
perverse, yet unsurprising
obsession of the general public.
Everyone scrambles to pick
up the pieces in the episode.
Robert Shapiro (John Travolta,
“Pulp Fiction”) tries to salvage
his reputation; the LAPD tries
not to create an even bigger
fiasco and Robert Kardashian
(David Schwimmer, “Friends”)
tries desperately to make sure
his friend makes it out of the
situation alive. Everyone outside
of Kardashian is in damage
control as Simpson himself
fades to the background, not
appearing on screen until
more than 10 minutes into the
episode.
While director Ryan Murphy
(“The Normal Heart”) is able
to capture the tension of the
chase throughout the episode,
Simpson’s surrender being a
particular standout; the episode
most excels when it turns
its camera on the public and
how they decipher the event.
Foreshadowing the divisive
nature of the trial, people
interpret the pursuit through
the lens of their own experience,
the most profound being race.
Meanwhile, twisted
captivation glues people’s eyes to
the screen like a sporting event.
It may be warped pleasure, but
the audience isn’t exempt from
the same urges, as we realize
the fascination that drew people
FX
B+
American
Crime
Story
Season 1
Episode 2
Tuesdays
at 10 p.m.
FX
The power of flowers
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
As my fellow writer
Christian Kennedy so deftly
pointed out, Queen has returned
— and she’s
edgier than
ever.
Beyoncé
dropped
her latest
opus and
accompany-
ing video,
“Formation,” about an hour ago,
and I’m probably on my seventh
listen already. The whole she-
bang is completely off the wall
— lyrical shout outs are given to
Red Lobster, Givenchy dresses
and the hot sauce in Bey’s purse.
Weird, bouncy synths permeate
the tune — if you could even call
it that — while Beyoncé spits her
quirky affirmations in that slop-
py-sexy-whisper-command of
hers. At its core, using the most
virginal interpretation, the song
is an origin story: B is paying
homage to her roots: her “daddy
and mama,” the South and her
signature diva outlook.
The video is Louisiana
bayou, NOLA goodness at its
raunchiest — a fabulous collision
of plantation life and thigh-
exposing, burgundy couture
onesies. Blue Ivy serves up
some hand-on-the-hip realness;
Beyoncé thrashes atop a sinking
vehicle. And spliced into all that
are various high-octane dance
numbers with the Queen and
#squad.
“OK ladies, now let’s get in
formation,” she sings. She’s
beckoning those that eat out
of the palm of her hand (me,
admittedly, and pretty much all
of Daily Arts) to pull it together,
become their own Sasha Fierce’s
and werk.
“Formation” is both an ode to
where Beyoncé came fro m —
where she formed — and a call to
order. She’s telling us to prepare
for the most creatively unruly
version of herself she’s presented
to her fans thus far. She’s letting
us know she’s here. And she
slaaaaays.
- MELINA GLUSAC
A
Formation
Beyoncé