6A — Friday, September 27, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Few collegiate orchestras have the dexterity 
to maintain a stylistically disparate repertoire. 
And fewer still are capable of performing 
Beethoven symphonies alongside lesser-known 
mid-20th-century American orchestral works.
But the University Philharmonia Orchestra 
proved they were capable of this and much more 
at their year-opening concert this past Monday 
night at Hill Auditorium. This was the University 
Philharmonia Orchestra’s first concert since 
the departure of former conductor Oriel 
Sans. Adrian Slywotzky, the ensemble’s new 
conductor, proved that he is more than capable 
of continuing the adventurous programming and 
occasional classic repertoire of Sans’s tenure.
The 
concert 
began 
with 
Beethoven’s 
“Symphony No. 2 in D Major,” a turbulent piece 
that repeatedly fluctuates between simple, 
light material and loud, dark, complex material. 
The orchestra handled these shifts in the 
first movement with great dexterity, building 
towards a clear peak before falling back down. 
The lower string sound, in particular, blew me 
away in this movement.
Unfortunately, as with many performances 
of this work, the orchestra struggled slightly at 
the beginning of movement two — the energy of 
the first movement gives way to a slow, lyrical 
second movement, and many orchestras struggle 
to give this movement equal emotional weight. 
By the middle of the movement, however, the 
orchestra seemed to have found their stride 
again. I was particularly impressed with the 
length of the crescendi and decresendi that the 
orchestra was able to maintain, as they stretched 
these musical events over ten to twenty seconds 
worth of music.
While the orchestra had a few problems 
maintaining their blistering tempo at the 
beginning of the third movement, they recovered 
after a couple of measures and stuck together 
throughout the remainder of the movement. By 
its end, they had found their stride and were well 
within their element.
The fourth movement was thus a tour-
de-force 
in 
early-Beethovenian 
orchestral 
performance, as short motivic figures jumped 
around the orchestra and tension built before 
a final loud thematic recapitulation. Slywotzky 
decided to begin this movement with minimal 
pause, and I, for one, was taken aback by the 
confident, strident texture — and the movement 
only built from there. Melodic fragments jumped 
from bassoon to violin, for example, while the 
underlying accompanimental figures continued 
unrelentingly.
By the end of the piece, I was exhausted for 
the orchestra. They had made a valiant effort in 
tackling this staple of the repertoire, and though 
it wasn’t perfect, I couldn’t have been more 
impressed with their attempt. 
After a brief intermission, the concert 
continued with two works by lesser-known mid-
20th-century American composers, William 
Grant Still and Walter Piston. The first piece, 
Still’s “Poem,” was an interesting juxtaposition 
of jazz harmonies and orchestral compositional 
techniques. The fast writing in the beginning, 
for example, was not particularly memorable to 
my ears. Though there were some interesting 

surface-level ideas, the basic musical content 
never 
evolved 
past 
repetition 
and 
slight 
transformation.
The second half of the piece, however, 
consisted of a simple yet beautiful melody 
accompanied 
by 
slowly-evolving 
orchestral 
chords. It made the whole piece, if not the whole 
concert, worth it, and even as I sit and try to 
write this review a day later, I can’t quite get it 
out of my head.
The last piece on the program, Piston’s “The 
Incredible Flutist Suite,” was an interesting 
coalescence of various musical styles and genres: 

a “siesta,” a minuet, a waltz, a march and a polka. 
It was a fun, light ending to the program, a good 
balance to the complexity of the Beethoven and 
the simple beauty of the Still.
One aspect of the Piston that caught me 
off guard was the “Circus March,” in which 
members of the orchestra screamed as though 
they were attending a circus while the brass and 
percussion sections played traditional circus-
esque music. “The Flutist” was also impressive, 
the flute soloist’s impressive concerto-like 
playing easily earning the “Incredible Flutist” 
portion of the title.
The large orchestral forces at work in this 
piece stood in stark contrast to the smaller ranks 
of the other two pieces. (This was the only piece 
on the program that included a piano part, and 
I was quite impressed with the pianist’s ability 
to blend with the sound of the larger). My one 
complaint, if any, was that Piston’s orchestrations 
tended towards the percussion heavy ends of 
the orchestral spectrum, particularly in his use 
of bass drum and snare. But after two lighter 
pieces, this was an interesting change in flavor.
If this concert was a sign of what’s to come for 
the University Philharmonia Orchestra under 
Adrian Slywotzky this coming year, I can’t 
help but be excited. While doubts frequently 
accompany changes in faculty such as this one, 
it is obvious that the orchestra remains in good 
hands. 

University Phil Orchestra
impresses at Hill opener

SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Arts Writer

YOUTUBE

Statement 

Lucy 
Ellmann’s 
seventh 
novel 
“Ducks, 
Newburyport” was rejected by Bloomsbury, 
which published the previous six. It’s not hard to 
see why: the novel is nearly a thousand pages, and 
most of that length is taken up by one continuous 
sentence narrating the internal monologue of a 
Midwestern American homemaker, something 
like the “Penelope” section in “Ulysses” extended 
to the length of the whole book. The sentence’s 
units of construction are lists of alliterative 
or conceptually related words (“bento box, 
incense sticks, joss sticks, josser, equestrian acts, 
Patricia Highsmith,”) and statements, questions 
and speculations prefaced with the plaintive, 
grammatically-questionable phrase “the fact that.” 
It’s a texture that lends itself to a rumination/
free-association/referential chaos narrative made 
entirely of loose ends. 
The novel has gotten a lot of critical attention 
since its release. Justifiably so — it’s a wildly 
ambitious and totally unique masterpiece of 
the kind that doesn’t frequently appear in 
contemporary fiction. This also means the novel 
stands out in the current literary landscape like 
an octopus on a sidewalk, a standing challenge to a 
literary culture that tends to produce quiet novels 
in the 19th-century mold. Formal experimentation 
suddenly seems like the appropriate way to depict 
a character who might just be a passing presence 
in another novel — Ellmann doesn’t highlight 
a marginalized voice, she makes that voice the 
general case, makes it stand in for the anxiety of 
the moment. I’m reminded of Amitav Ghosh’s 
argument in “The Great Derangement” about 
literature ignoring climate change and societal 
catastrophe. Ellmann doesn’t just bring these 
themes to the forefront, she makes them scream. 
The book’s standing rebuke also makes the 
conventional book review look a little ridiculous. 
The general structure that reviews of “Ducks” tend 
to are comments on the length, calling it immersive 
or dazzling or important or worth it, or saying 
something about consciousness or subjectivity. 
Book reviews can at times resemble publisher’s 
lists: they never really do the work justice, they 
tell you what you already know about the book, 
they are vapid and sterile and hardly useful. This 
laughable piece on “Ducks” in the Chicago Tribune 
that is mostly a yuppie-scented meditation on not 
reading long books (“It’s not that I’m quick to give 
up if a book doesn’t immediately invite me in, but 
I find that I’m less eager to test my mettle.”) is just 
the worst example of a genre that is defined, in 
part, by its cursoriness. This is true for any even 
remotely complex work of fiction, but it’s doubly 
true for anything ambitious or unconventional. 
For my part, I’m not really interested in writing 
another “review.” I’m responding to Ellmann’s 
provocation with a list of my own — of ways into 
the book, ways that one could try to get around this 
unusual work of immense force. 

Stream 

Ellmann’s father is a notable Joyce scholar, 
something she seems to have distanced herself 
from. In an interview with the Washington Post, 
she says she “tuned out” all the Joyce talk her father 

would bring home “when my mother didn’t put her 
foot down.” One thing that sets “Ducks” apart from 
Joyce is all the commas. “Penelope” uses very little 
punctuation and seems to rely on a consistent sense 
of grammatical ambiguity that gives the thoughts 
a flickering quality. “Ducks” moves the unit of the 
stream from the clause or phrase to the thought or 
statement, thoughts that are usually fairly bounded. 
Ellmann’s protagonist even stops to correct herself 
when she creates ambiguity — a frequent move is 
to make a statement where a pronoun could refer to 
more than one person, whereafter the protagonist 
stops to clarify. 
There’s a turbulent quality to the book, a sense 

that the protagonist never stops trying to grasp 
hold of something solid. The constant references 
to books, films and other fragments of culture are 
footholds of sorts, the smallest unit of meaning in 
a world saturated with objects. The book’s stream 
of consciousness, then, is less of an unbroken flow 
of thought and more a kind of thought that gets 
caught up in everything, like a river flowing over 
rocks. 

Cognition 

More than one review has mentioned that 
“Ducks”’s aim is to create a more visceral, 
immediate representation of thought. It does do 
this very well. After reading the novel for a while, 
I noticed that I would emerge from an hour or 
two of it suddenly dazed at my surroundings. 
The narrator’s thoughts tend to take over those 
of the reader. Ellmann has reproduced the messy 
details of a wandering mind with surprising 
verisimilitude. Thoughts recur with no specific 
reason to, earworms float in and out of the frame, 
anecdotes get unpredictably broken down and used 
as jumping-off points for new ideas and threads. 
“Ducks” reminds me that the mind is a prismatic, 
unpredictable space.
However, it’s probably more accurate to say that 
Ellmann has less reproduced thought than created 
something that takes the outline of thought as a 
literary model. 

Ten ways of looking at 
‘Ducks, Newburyport’

EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer

In the new age of mixed media, sometimes it’s hard to tell if there are any 
boundaries between platforms. Will Smith is on YouTube, you can watch 
YouTube on television and now YouTuber Lilly Singh (IISuperwomanII) 
has taken over “Last Call with Carson Daly” with a late-night talk show of 
her own, “A Little Late with Lilly Singh.” As the first bisexual woman of 
color on lineup to host late-night television, Singh comes in with fervent 
energy and a new perspective. The transition from YouTube skits to late-
night TV is slightly awkward, but it’s a start nonetheless, and with a bit 
more time to hit her stride, Singh can rise through the ranks and easily 
find her niche in the late-night space.
The pilot starts off with a musical skit that reflects her peak YouTube 
days, and she doesn’t hesitate to call out the lack of diversity in Hollywood 
production and late-night television. The skit transitions to a rap dedicated 
to her workplace’s diversity and inclusivity standards, which can’t help but 
make political commentary on the nation’s current state. Whether this 
move brought in or expelled viewers is hard to tell, but her words were 
intentional and it likely had exactly the effect she intended. 
She first brings on Rainn Wilson (“Mom”) in a forced but clever bit 
about white noise machines, wherein the machine would make noises of 
white girls at brunch and the sound of Birkenstocks when they step. It’s 
a refreshing introduction to a late-night show that doesn’t consist of a 

rundown of the stupidest Trump tweets that week (although he does give 
comedy a lot of material to work with), and with Singh’s energy and sketch 
comedy background, there’s potential to get into some good material in the 
future. The scripted “surprise” guests are a classic and familiar device in 
late-night television, but on this particular episode it feels less surprising 

and more trying on the audience’s humor. But again, it’s a pilot and there’s 
plenty of time to improve. 
Her one and only interviewed guest was Wilson’s “The Office” co-star, 
Mindy Kaling (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”). Singh began with 
recognizing and thanking Kaling for paving the way for minorities like 
her, something that other late-night hosts don’t have the prerogative to 
talk about. It made the environment feel more natural, and Singh could 
smoothly transition from making jokes to making sure all necessary 
questions were answered. She can easily maintain this tone in her future 
interviews without it going sour. She might have been able to interview 
Kaling for a little longer, but she instead jumped right into two minigames. 
One was a “Euphoria” makeup inspired game, and the other an Urban 
Dictionary-type game where Kaling guesses the meaning of modern slang 
terms. They’re entertaining enough, but given the half-hour time slot NBC 
gave her, it felt rushed.
There’s little else to say. It’s irrational to be harsh toward a pilot of a 
late-night talk show, a flexible platform that can spin and adapt in any 
direction. It’ll be interesting to see how much Singh can improve from 
here on out, and especially interesting to see her fresh perspective given 
the current political and social climate. For now though, she’s definitely 
made an impression as a new host in this space and will likely continue to 
do so as the season goes on. 

‘A Little Late’ shows early promise

SOPHIA YOON
Daily Arts Writer

A Little Late with Lilly Singh

Pilot

NBC

Mon -Thurs @ 1:30 a.m.

TV REVIEW

The second half of 
the piece consisted of 
a simple yet beautiful 
melody accompanied 
by slowly-evolving 
orchestral chords. It 
made the whole piece, if 
not the whole concert, 
worth it, and even as I 
sit and try to write this 
review a day later, I can’t 
quite get it out of my 
head.

BOOK REVIEW
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

COURTESY OF TRINA PAL

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

By David Alfred Bywaters
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/27/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/27/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, September 27, 2019

ACROSS
1 Doing something
5 Infatuated, 
old-style
9 “The Goldbergs” 
actor George
14 Corner
15 First-rate
16 Hardly in the dark
17 Really terrible 
wine?
20 Master’s 
degree seeker’s 
assignment
21 Evaluate
22 Hosp. area for 
critical cases
24 Truck unit
25 PreCheck org.
26 Focus word in a 
Scripps logo
27 Dad jokes?
30 Extensive periods
31 “See ya”
32 Pork cuts
34 Beethoven wrote 
just one
35 Academic growth
36 Indian silk region
40 Trumpet sound
42 Mrs. King on 
“Scarecrow and 
Mrs. King”
43 HUD financing gp.
46 Hardware store 
window feature?
48 Tanning line
49 Mag. listing
50 Some PCs
51 Kitty alternative
52 Pertaining to a 
heart chamber
54 Facial feature 
named after an 
animal
56 Power nap?
60 Location
61 Innocent, for one
62 Keypad 
predecessor, in 
some cases
63 Rent-a-car choice
64 Cabs and the like
65 Multinational 
range

DOWN
1 A/C measure
2 Caterer’s item

3 35 to 5, say
4 Slangy assent
5 “Teen Angel” or 
“Leader of the 
Pack”
6 Sounds from the 
pasture
7 Holiday places
8 English cuppa
9 Spicy 
condiment
10 Farm moms
11 Summerhouse
12 Out of bed
13 They can make 
things clearer
18 __ scan: ID 
method
19 Soprani 
opposites
22 __ facto
23 Farm home
25 Helen’s home
28 Kazantzakis title 
hero
29 Fabled mischief-
makers
30 Montaigne work
33 Yoga class 
greeting
35 Greek rainbow 
goddess

37 Charlatan’s 
curative
38 “__ pinch ... ”: 
recipe direction
39 Labyrinthine
41 Disorient
42 Andean animals
43 Dad’s dad
44 Italian 
Christmas
45 Many
47 Contacted, in a 
way

49 Gobbled up
53 Ancient 
Peruvian
54 Wind warning 
indicated by two 
red flags
55 Icelandic poetic 
work
57 “Morning Edition” 
airer
58 Nuke
59 Little League 
leaders?

