By Susan Smolinsky and C.C. Burnikel
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/19/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

11/19/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, November 19, 2019

ACROSS
1 Longstocking of 
kiddie lit
6 “Jason Bourne” 
star Damon
10 Shell rowers
14 Biting, as criticism
15 Sound reduced 
by carpeting
16 Hill worker
17 Earl Grey relative
18 Old Roman 
fiddler
19 Buttonlike earring
20 #1 in Major 
League Baseball 
career earnings
23 Puppy’s cry
24 Chaney of “The 
Phantom of the 
Opera” (1925)
25 Acidity nos.
28 1970s joint U.S.-
Soviet space 
flight
35 Function
37 Actors’ union, 
briefly
38 Remove from 
office
39 Fortified city of 
Castile and León
41 Diamond stat
43 “MASH” corporal
44 “Cape Fear” star
46 Spinning toy
48 Building bricks 
brand
49 Math class 
surprise
52 Arles article
53 Salad dressing 
ingredient
54 Sis or bro
56 Musical genre of 
Tito Puente and 
Dizzy Gillespie
63 “See ya!”
65 Acting 
independently
66 “For real!”
67 “Um, that’s fine”
68 Villainous
69 Par-three clubs, 
often
70 Route-finding app
71 Risqué message
72 Common teen 
phase

DOWN
1 Hemingway 
moniker

2 Eur. island 
country
3 Chow kin, briefly
4 Voting substitute
5 Spanish airline
6 Darn
7 Asian PC brand
8 Really excite
9 “I can’t top that”
10 Job for a judge
11 Upscale hotel
12 LSU URL letters
13 Elope, say
21 They sometimes 
attract: Abbr.
22 Racing giant 
Bobby
25 Italian fashion 
house
26 Crude abode
27 David’s weapon
29 10-Across tool
30 Rainbow flag 
letters
31 National 
gemstone of 
Australia
32 Alpine melody
33 Customary 
practice
34 Binary system 
digits
36 Peace Nobelist 
Wiesel

40 Ann __, Michigan
42 Debtor’s promise
45 Team nicknamed 
the Birds
47 Italian tower 
town
50 Niche
51 Alphabetically 
last flower on 
a list of familiar 
ones
55 Tennis great 
Borg

56 All-inclusive, and 
a hint to 20-, 28-, 
49- and 56-Across
57 The Piltdown 
Man, notably
58 Operating system 
since the ’60s
59 Orion’s __
60 Sleep like __
61 Cab alternatives
62 Lemon peel
63 AAA service
64 “Eureka!”

6 — Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Billie Holiday once famously sang, “Autumn 
in New York, why does it seem so inviting?” 
Indeed, there’s a certain magic inherent to 
the fall season. But, while New York holds an 
alluring sway (I’m a New Yorker myself), I would 
argue that there’s a greater force at work than 
the call of the Big Apple when the leaves change 
color. Holiday is right about one thing: Fall is the 
season of jazz and swing. 
Think about it — there’s something incredibly 
fitting about embracing the music of an age 
gone by as nature sheds it summer green in 
exchange for autumnal reds and golds. There’s 
just something about the gravelly voice of Louis 
Armstrong when the wind howls, the warmth of 
a blazing saxophone solo and the romance of the 
music combining with that of the season.
But listening to swing doesn’t mean you have 
to barrel back into the past. The old hits are 
classics, but it’s time to make some room on 
the stage for new artists to continue the grand 
tradition of the genre. Here are a handful of 
contemporary bands who might just bring forth 
the new “Roaring ’20s” — after all, 2020 sits on 
the horizon, and history tends to repeat itself. 
Postmodern Jukebox, or PMJ, is an interesting 
beast. Created from the musical imagination of 
Scott Bradlee with the intent to bring “classic 
sounds (he) loved back into the mainstream,” 
PMJ quickly grew in scope, talent and popularity. 
The PMJ roster hosts nearly 100 musicians in all, 
including both vocalists and instrumentalists. 
Rather than a traditional band with the same 
members performing every track, PMJ “rotates” 
their musicians, with every song, album, or 
live performance offering a different musical 
combination, or as Bradlee puts it, a “rotating 
collective of musical outcasts.” The most fun 
thing about PMJ, however, is that they don’t just 
cover classic swing or jazz songs, or even write 
their own — no, they take modern, contemporary 
hits from any and every genre, and reshape 
them into vintage-style jazz/swing tracks. Like, 
for instance, a swing cover of Florence and the 
Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over,” or a smokey 
jazz-club version of Radiohead’s “Creep.”
Pink Martini, founded by politician Thomas 
Lauderdale, started as a musical group meant to 

provide entertainment to lackluster fundraisers 
and political events. Then, Lauderdale met 
vocalist China Forbes, and thus Lauderdale’s 
“little orchestra” became the multilingual jazz 
band Pink Martini we know today. To jump 
into the world of Pink Martini, start with their 
original hit “Hang on Little Tomato.” Not only 
is it a fun song — as the title suggests, about a 
lonely tomato who’s stuck in the rain — but 
the track works as a great example that not 
everything has been done before. When it comes 
to revitalizing genres whose heyday has come 
and past, there tends to be a general sense of 
“Well, what left is there to do?” Pink Martini’s 
answer: Sing about vegetables. And you know 
what? It works. Garden veggies aside, the band 
is unique in its strong dose of “international 
flavor.” Lead singer China Forbes regularly 
performs in various languages, including tracks 
(and even entire albums) sung in French or 
Spanish. Take “Sympathique,” a song composed 
in the traditional style of old-French music. Pink 
Martini, like many modern groups who foray 
into jazz and swing, do not limit themselves 
solely to those two genres. A characteristic that 
makes them even more fun to listen to — you 
never know exactly what to expect, but secure 
in the knowledge that disappointment is a non-
player. 
One would think Madeleine Peyroux had 
hopped right out of Woody Allen’s “Midnight 
in Paris” if common sense didn’t reason better. 
Her voice, slow and hypnotic, was born to be 
matched with the slow beat of a double bass and 
easy improvisation of the piano. Notable songs 
include her cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me 
to the End of Love,” her take on Frank Sinatra’s 
beloved “The Summer Wind,” and more. Yet her 
songs, while seemingly timeless, still contain a 
modern touch in the lilt of her voice. Her songs 
also lack the busy instrumentation characteristic 
of classic swing or jazz bands, but this absence 
allows Peyroux to maximize the charm of her 
voice, as if she’s a snake charmer and we’re the 
coiled serpent rising to her coaxing song. 
A special mention for Jeff Goldblum, too — 
but read our latest review of Goldblum’s new 
album for the full scoop. Take a chance to see 
how different the streets of Ann Arbor feel on 
a blisteringly cold evening with a well-formed 
swing playlist to keep you company on the 
journey.

Time to swing into 2020

MADELEINE VIRGINIA GANNON
Daily Arts Writer

POSTMODERN JUKEBOX PRODUCTIONS

MUSIC NOTEBOOK
BOOK REVIEW

I know mysteries. I read them all the time. 
Before applying my Origins overnight face 
mask, I might sneak in a couple of pages of 
Ruth Ware’s latest release. At airports, I make 
it my tradition to stop at Hudson Booksellers 
to grab a New York Times best-selling 
thriller to keep me preoccupied during my 
flight. They’re easy. 
They’re formulaic. 
There’s that mantra 
of “not everything 
is 
as 
it 
seems” 
embedded in each 
page. There’s the 
unreliable narrator 
and, if we’re lucky, 
the 
alcoholic 
detective. To top 
it off, there’s the 
clichéd twist at the 
very end. I know 
what to expect. 
“The 
Family 
Upstairs” 
is 
different. 
The 
novel opens from 
the perspective of 
Libby, phoning her 
mother 
to 
reveal 
news 
that 
she’s 
been 
waiting 
for 
her 25th birthday 
to announce. Libby 
simply 
tells 
her 
mom, 
“They’ve 
left me the house.” 
Hidden in this seemingly blasé report is 
the news that Libby has transitioned from 
a woman that splurged on inconsequential 
cosmetics and saved up six months of her 
hard-earned money for a weekend trip to 
Barcelona to the owner of a multi-million 
dollar mansion on Sixteen Cheyne Walk, 
SW3 Chelsea. It’s easy to understand the 
magnitude of her transformation by her own 
thoughts: “Now she owns a house in Chelsea 
and the proportions of her existence have 
been 
blown 
apart.” 
Indeed, 
Libby’s 
“existence has 
been 
blown 
apart,” but not 
in the way that 
she thinks. In 
the 
process 
of 
becoming 
a 
very 
rich 
woman, Libby 
investigates 
the 
sinister 
origins of the 
Chelsea house. 
Twenty-five years earlier, police were called 
by a “concerned” neighbor to 16 Cheyne 
Walk. There, in the kitchen, were three dead 
bodies: An elegant woman, a man with salt-
and-pepper hair and another unidentifiable 

man. They were dressed in black, hands 
clasped together. Upstairs, a baby was 
crying. According to the police report, their 
deaths have been deemed a suicide, but the 
circumstances are strange. Why hasn’t the 
family been seen in public for months? Who 
took care of the baby weeks after the parents 
died? And, most importantly, where are the 
other four children who supposedly lived in 
the Chelsea house? 
The novel is told in three perspectives 
— Libby Jones, Lucy 
and Henry — during 
the past and present. 
Whenever 
I’m 

immersed in the point-
of-views 
of 
several 
characters 
early 
in 
the novel, I tend to get 
distracted. I’m usually 
not 
invested 
enough 
in each character to 
continue reading. I 
didn’t feel that with 
“The Family Upstairs.” 
Each character offered 
relevant 
information 
that served to spur my 
curiosity more. Libby, 
Lucy and Henry could 
have easily been written 
as plot devices solely to 
heighten the stakes of 
the mystery. Instead, 
we delve deeply into 
their personal history 
and characterizations. 
Certainly, 
they 

are 
related 
to 
the 
mysterious 
Chelsea 
deaths in some way, but we’re only given bits 
and crumbs in each chapter. In the process, 
we learn the ways that Lucy juggles life as 
a homeless single mother and, in the past, 
Henry’s tumultuous relationship with his 
father as well as his burgeoning romance 
with a lanky blond-haired boy. Even as I 
approached the half-way point of the novel, 
I couldn’t have predicted where it would 
end up. Deliciously cult-ish, dark and 
surprisingly touching, “The Family Upstairs” 
subverts 
the 
traditional 
mystery-
thriller, 
blending 
together 
multiple 
genres. Don’t 
get me wrong, 
“The 
Family 
Upstairs” 
is 
still 
the 
perfect 
book 
to 
grab 
in 
between 
layovers, 
though 
at 
the same time, the mystery tropes are not 
overwrought. This attentive style and plot 
that Jewell has crafted will leave even a 
jaded mystery expert like myself guessing 
until the very end.

‘Family Upstairs’ is more
than an everyday thriller

SARAH SALMAN
Daily Arts Writer

The Family Upstairs

Lisa Jewell

Atria Books

Nov. 5, 2019

ATRIA BOOKS

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

This past Thursday evening, Hankinson Rehearsal Hall 
hosted an improvisational performance from the Creative Arts 
Orchestra. The orchestra consisted of SMTD students with a 
combination of violin, viola, trumpet, piano, melodica, voice and 
various percussion instruments.
The element of improvisation is what 
sets the Creative Arts Orchestra apart 
from other musical groups at SMTD. 
Improvisation involves a lack of musical 
guidance — no conductors, sheet music 
or organized practicing — in addition 
to the creative use of instruments, such 
as banging on stringed instruments or 
applying paper to piano strings for a 
crunch-like sound.
Each of the six musicians were free 
to play whatever they pleased, with 
no prior restrictions on what to play. 
That said, for some pieces there were 
certain “filters,” as SMTD professor 
Mark Kirschenmann called them, in 
place for the orchestra to fall in line 
with.
For one set, Kirschenmann informed 
the 
audience, 
“We 
will 
all 
play 
keyboard instruments, and we are all going to sing, other than 
that I have no idea what is going to happen.”
For another set, Weston Gilbert, the orchestra’s violinist, 
presented the orchestra with a brief sheet of music with certain 
chords and soloing sections for the individual musicians to 
follow. Outside of the framework of pitches for each musician to 
choose from, the rest of the set was all improvisational. In fact, 
I had a chance to take a look at the sheet of musical frameworks 
written by Gilbert. It was a sparse piece of music with only a few 

complex chord progressions. The final measure featured a single 
note for each musician to aim for as an end goal.
Outside of the musical framework, I was curious as to how each 
musician decided what to play and what noises to make. After 
the show, I spoke with Maya Johnson, an SMTD composition 
Master’s student, who was on the viola for the group.
“I pay attention to what is or is not being done,” Johnson said 
when asked how she decided what to play. “If everyone is playing 
long notes, I tend to do the opposite.” It is this sense of opposites 
attracting that I believe made the show 
so interesting. “I also have my bag of 
tricks ... I’m the only viola, so a low 
C is never a bad move.” Johnson took 
into account the unique properties of 
her own instrument and used these 
properties to add a new dimension to 
the improvisational work.
The improvisation involved little 
harmonization and few instances of 
synchronized sound. However, the few 
moments of resolve were welcomed, 
like an oasis in a sea of musical 
confusion. I found that I wanted to 
keep listening in hopes of hearing such 
a satisfying resolve or a discernable 
melody.
In terms of the sounds themselves, 
much of the improvisation actually 
had repeating tropes. Much of the 
concert sounded very “L.A. Noire” or like “The Twilight Zone,” 
an eerie and unsettling soundtrack for a winter night. With a 
muted trumpet and a ringing vibraphone, I felt as though I was 
supposed to be solving a mystery.
I felt unsettled, discontented with the music being played 
and what I was hearing, which is perhaps the purpose behind 
this improvisational method. The dissonance and discomfort 
builds to a point of relief, when the sounds finally assemble and 
come to a close.

SMTD’s Creative Arts Orchestra
improvises within set constraints

ZACHARY M.S. WAARALA
Daily Arts Writer

Kirschenmann informed 
the audience, “We 
will all play keyboard 
instruments, and we are 
all going to sing, other 
than that I have no idea 
what is going to happen”

