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?