The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, September 17, 2018 — 5A
ACROSS
1 Potato chips
source
5 __ bean
9 Rick’s
“Casablanca”
love
13 “Aww!”
14 Spring bloom
15 Les __-Unis
16 Neighbor of
Yemen
17 Large-scale
departure
19 Island setting for
Melville’s “Omoo”
21 Court order to
testify
22 Mindless
memorization
24 Farm sound
25 Blue expanse, on
a clear day
26 Cost of a car,
in most family
budgets
31 1860s White
House nickname
32 Thought
33 Traffic light color
37 Gardener’s bane
39 Quick taste
41 Produced
42 American flag
feature
45 At hand
48 Buddhist school
49 Edmund Hillary’s
conquest
52 Fermented quaff
55 Slugger’s stat
56 Get up
57 Removing from
the text
60 1971 New York
prison riot site
64 Region including
Egypt, Israel, etc.
66 “__ be fine”: “No
prob”
67 Sad verse
68 Spell-checker
discovery
69 Not virtual
70 __ a one
71 The “Y” in “YTD”
72 TV award, and
a homophonic
hint to the four
longest puzzle
answers
DOWN
1 Loch Ness local
2 Adidas rival
3 Home of the
NBA’s Jazz
4 Robert of “Dirty
Grandpa”
5 Restricted in
number, as an
edition
6 Nest egg
acronym
7 Hit’s opposite
8 Take for granted
9 “Was __ hard on
you?”
10 Stows cargo
11 Caused some
nose-pinching
12 Evaluate, as
metal
15 Bring to light
18 Traditional black
piano key wood
20 Singer Amos
23 Old flames
26 Big mouths
27 Help rob the
bank
28 Taunt from the
bleachers
29 Emulate Degas
30 “Slippery” tree
34 Do nothing
35 Wordsworth
works
36 Attended, with “to”
38 Reduce in
brightness
40 __ pressure
43 Rotund
44 Jazzman Blake
46 Pilot
47 Take ten
50 Distance
between bases,
in feet
51 Go to bed
52 Commercial
writers
53 Bizet opera
priestess
54 Tribal leader
58 Avant-garde
59 Motown’s Marvin
61 Receipt detail
62 Linguine
seafood sauce
morsel
63 One on your
side
65 Daycation
destination
By Craig Stowe
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/17/18
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
09/17/18
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Monday, September 17, 2018
There’s something utterly
charming
about
comedian
Hasan Minhaj. He has big
eyes that bug out whenever
he delivers a joke and he’s not
afraid to be self-deprecating at
any chance he gets.
Last
weekend,
comedian
Minhaj visited the Michigan
Theater with his “Before the
Storm” standup show. The show
is meant to be a preview for his
upcoming show on Netflix,
“Patriot
Act
with
Hasan
Minhaj,” which will debut in
Oct. 28, 2018.
Ann Arbor didn’t disappoint
in its enthusiasm, delivering
two sold-out shows. Hundreds
of people flocked outside the
Michigan Theater’s entrance,
and their nervous energy was
infectious. I felt like I was
waiting outside of the movie
theater to watch a Bollywood
movie premiere in the U.S. after
it became a huge hit in India.
Minhaj immediately thanked
us for agreeing to lock up our
phones with Yondr so that we
wouldn’t leak any spoilers for
“Patriot Act.” At the beginning
of his tour, he had asked the
audience
to
refrain
from
taking and posting videos, but
inevitably, he would look down
at the front row and see lots of
“old uncles” with their phones
up, taking a video even as he
asked them not to.
With the quick wit that
brought
Minhaj
to
“The
Daily
Show”
as
a
senior
correspondent, he launched into
the heart of his show, discussing
politics in an entertaining but
serious way. Minhaj is a master
of using our emotions to build
up our laughter and energy so
that when he tells us something
somber, we feel it hard. Using
video
clips,
graphics
and
some funny pictures, Minhaj
commented on the country’s
political and cultural landscape,
from the fear of terrorism to
media portrayals of people from
different ethnic backgrounds.
For the same reason we
had to lock up our phones, I’m
not going to spoil too many of
Minhaj’s bits about politics.
What I will say is that if you’re
looking to figure out the cost
of terrorism insurance, then
Minhaj is your guy.
My favorite part of the show
was
the
conclusion,
when
Minhaj stepped aside from
politics and delved into his
personal life with the story of
how he proposed to his wife.
Upon deciding it was time to
finally make the commitment,
Minhaj set out to buy an
engagement ring, and saw his
bank account hit $0 for the first
time in his life.
Then, Minhaj realized he
still needed money for the
actual proposal part.
He turned to the ultimate
source of good deals — Groupon
— to book a sunrise hot air
balloon ride on a Wednesday
morning. After facing a few
challenges
(his
soon-to-be
wife thinking he was going
to murder her when he drove
her to an empty field at 4:00
a.m., realizing the hot air
balloon pilot would come up
with them in that tiny basket
and another couple going up
on a balloon next to them
and the guy proposing to his
girlfriend with a massive sign),
Minhaj drove her to the closest
breakfast place he could find
that was open (Applebee’s) and
proposed.
This show was everything
I wanted it to be and more. As
Minhaj has stated earlier in his
Netflix special “Hasan Minhaj:
Homecoming
King,”
there
weren’t many people of similar
backgrounds for him to look
up to while growing up. Going
to school, dating and pursuing
his passions all came with their
own complications in addition
to his confusion with identity
as an Indian American from a
Muslim family. Looking at the
audience last weekend, it was
clear that others felt the same
way. But in simply sharing his
stories, Minhaj is telling us it’s
okay, because we’ve all faced
similar challenges, and now
we’re better for it.
“Before
the
Storm”
was
just a taste of how Minhaj
seamlessly talks about pressing
issues in today’s American
society without becoming too
dark.
Sometimes
the
truth
can be hard-hitting, but with
Minhaj’s
eyes
bugging
out
every five seconds and his self-
deprecating personal stories,
it’s much less scary with lots of
laughter.
Hasan Minhaj brings joy
to the Michigan Theater
NITYA GUPTA
Daily Arts Writer
NETFLIX
It has become something of
a tradition for me to begin the
year by writing about Strange
Beautiful Music, an annual
contemporary music marathon
put
on
by
the
musicians’
collective New Music Detroit
— and who am I to break with
tradition?
Running now for 11 years, the
Strange Beautiful concerts had
their latest iteration over the
weekend, and there’s as much
to say about them as ever. This
year the marathon was divided
across two days and three
different venues, presenting a
genre-defying hodgepodge of
performances. Friday saw the
Charles H. Wright Museum
of African American History
and The Detroit Institute of
Art play host to a variety of
different sets, and Saturday
saw 10 hours of music at the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s
The
Cube.
Due
to
the
expansiveness of the events, I
wasn’t able to catch the entire
marathon (missing the Wright
Museum sets on Friday), but
what I did see proved to be
an effective reminder of the
cultural vibrancy of Southeast
Michigan’s avant-garde music
scene.
Friday evening’s sets in The
DIA were intense and viscerally
moving in a way that I haven’t
encountered too many times
in my life. The performance
space was the Rivera Court,
a spacious chamber in the
center of the museum named
after the painter of the famous
“Detroit Industry” murals that
adorn its walls, Diego Rivera.
I arrived partway through
a performance by the James
Cornish Light Opera, a group
of some 13 musicians and two
dancers, who were performing
a musical interpretation of the
poem “I Come From There” by
the late Mahmoud Darwish, a
poet who has been called the
national poet of Palestine. I
later learned that the music
and
dancing
were
largely
improvised, but by that time I
was taken by the raw emotion
of it. Making use of drones and
a free sort of meter, the sonic
space the musicians created
was meditative and ritualistic,
infused
with
the
sort
of
aching
melancholy
familiar
to those who have yearned
for
something
unattainable.
By
the
end,
however,
the
music turned ferocious and
terrifying, a clamour that filled
the reverberant walls with a
harrowing sound of apocalypse,
a thunderous noise that left me
shaken to the core. The best
way I can describe the music is
simply as essential (in the true
sense of something being part
of one’s essence) and somehow
referential to a longing at the
core of the human spirit.
After a brief interlude the
next set went on, Marcus
Elliot’s
Beyond
Rebellious
Ensemble.
Made
up
of
a
rotating cast of characters, this
weekend’s version of the group
played a set of tunes coming
out of the avant garde jazz
tradition. Elliot, as bandleader
and
conductor,
provided
a
collection
of
melodies
and
structures
beforehand,
and
during the performance would
direct the feeling of the music
and cue the ensemble as needed
throughout,
occasionally
writing directions on a small
whiteboard he would show
to the group. Afterward he
described
this
process
as
“conduction,” a term which
he credited to the composer
Butch Morris. The set itself
was incredibly engaging —
one man who sat to my right
described it as “transcendent”
— and incredibly varied. At
some moments there were
catchy head tunes I later
found myself whistling, and at
other times there were wild,
raucous explosions of sound or
ethereal squeals that offered a
new perspective on the sorts
of sound an ensemble like that
could produce.
Saturday featured around
10 hours of performances
at the DSO. As one might
expect, these ranged widely
in style, tone and genre, varied
in such a way that nothing
ever seemed to grow stale.
As one also might expect, I
won’t touch on everything
that happened during the 10
hours, but I do feel like it’s
important to mention a few of
the performances that I found
to be the most meaningful.
One
of
the
more
conventional
groups
to
perform on Saturday was the
Detroit Composers’ Project, a
collective formed by composer
Harriet Steinke (who was a
peer of mine a couple summers
ago at a music program in
Paris) to promote the work of
Michigan-based
composers.
When
I
say
conventional,
it’s important not to think
of it as a pejorative; I say
“conventional” only insofar
as it refers to what you tend
to
find
at
“contemporary
classical”
concerts,
which
is to say classical musicians
performing notated music on
classical
instruments.
The
project already premiered a
number of compositions earlier
this month, at the DIA, and it
was a delight for those of us
Strange Beautiful
Music and the mosaic of
Detroit’s avant-garde
CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN
DAYTON
HARE
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW
DETROIT SYMPHONY MUSIC
who weren’t able to attend the
first show for them to present a
set at Strange Beautiful Music.
The group played a variety of
compositions, each with its own
personality, and by the end one
was left with a good impression
of the diversity of music being
made contemporary classical
scene today.
This impression of musical
diversity was only augmented as
the day went on. Another group
stemming from the classical
tradition was the University’s
own Contemporary Directions
Ensemble,
which
presented
a
stunning
program
of
works
from
three
living
women
composers,
Anna
Thorvaldsdottir,
Angélica
Negrón and Julia Wolfe. The
Thorvaldsdottir in particular
was wonderful and spacious,
enveloping the listener in a
meditative sound-world until,
near the end, a beautiful melody
appeared,
breaking
through
the music like sunlight through
clouds. Set in contrast to the
Wolfe, which was thrillingly
energetic, the piece made quite
a lasting impression.
Throughout
the
rest
of
the day audience members
heard from groups like the
freewheeling and noisey group
ONO,
the
“sono-cybernetic
exoskeleton”-donning
Synergistic Mythologies, the
experimental band saajtak, the
New Music Detroit collective
itself — I could go on, but
the point is that there wasn’t
any one dominant idea at
the marathon. It was a wild,
wacky amalgamation of all of
the vaguely out-there music
being made around Detroit,
and
a
beautiful
reflection
of the artistic diversity of
the
city.
Strange
Beautiful
Music continues to be an
invaluable platform for the
avant-garde, the weird and the
unclassifiable, and one of the
highlights of the year.
DETROIT SYMPHONY MUSIC