7-Opinion

Wednesday, January 20, 2021 — 5
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts

Artist Profile: SMTD 
senior Addison Tharp 

digitizes jazz 

Innovation in the performance 

community is not a new phenom-
enon during the COVID-19 pan-
demic, but what about here on 
campus? The School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance has a whole host 
of performers who have not stood 
by and waited for the pandemic to 
pass, and SMTD senior Addison 
Tharp is no exception. 

As a jazz studies major, Tharp 

has faced the challenges of remote 
music production head-on as he 
navigates the new digital world of 
music production. “As a musician, 
you have to sort of adapt to the 
lifestyle because obviously, I don’t 
have any gigs or performances or 
anything like that anymore,” Tharp 
recently told The Daily in a virtual 
interview.

Despite the challenges that have 

been presented to him, Tharp has 
been working on multiple projects 
this semester. Although a trumpet 
player by training, he also plays 
piano, composes and writes music 
whenever he can. 

Tharp’s most recent endeavor 

was a virtual big band piece en-
titled “Awakening,” performed by 
Tharp himself alongside a small 
group of musicians. Tharp com-
posed, produced and performed 
the piece along with his peers — 
the total process took four months 
to complete. 

When recalling the making of 

“Awakening,” Tharp describes the 
process as an interesting and dif-
ficult one, especially for a jazz mu-
sician. When a jazz ensemble per-

HADLEY SAMARCO

Daily Arts Writer

forms or records live, it is common 
for the musicians to rely heavily on 
improvisation instead of strictly 
following the written music. How-
ever, when virtual, this natural flow 
between players is near impossible 
to replicate when the perform-
ers cannot hear and react to each 
other — instead of the usual spon-
taneity of someone taking the lead, 
the parts have to be organized and 
planned out more than they would 
in a typical jazz performance.

“It requires listening, being all 

there together, reacting to every-
body playing,” Tharp said. “That’s 
the one downside to this format, is 
that you can’t really do that.” 

Each part of Tharp’s piece was 

recorded individually and then lay-
ered together one by one instead 
of the traditional group recording 
style.

This was a new experience for 

Tharp, who had no exposure to 
recording in this kind of digitized 
way, with its lengthy process and 
discombobulated parts. However, 
the experience offered Tharp the 
opportunity to learn new skills 
mixing and arranging pieces of 
music digitally. 

“It was just a lot more focused 

in terms of having to record every-
thing, whether that was soloing or 
just the written parts,” Tharp said, 
revealing a consolatory advantage 
of remote production.

Although it was months in the 

making, Tharp’s song was finally 
completed on Nov. 27, 2020, and 
can be streamed now. 

When asked about the inspira-

tion for the piece, Tharp replied, 
“Basically, the overlying message 
of the chart is like, trying to find 

beauty with all the stuff that’s go-
ing on right now. Trying to find 
beauty in things as simple as hear-
ing the birds sing or something 
along those lines.” 

His words, as well as his music, 

strike a common chord — beauty 
is something the world is sorely in 
need of right now more than ever.

Tharp championed “Awaken-

ing” as one of his more complex 
pieces of work, and the lyrics were 
personal to him: “I used it as sort of 
like a way to cope with the initial 
shock of COVID. Because that was 
like, one of the first things that I did 
over the summer was start writing 
this tune.” 

It has been a difficult year for 

many, and Tharp’s story is not an 
unfamiliar one. Seeing the beauty 
and art that has bloomed out of 
hardship is inspiring and heart-
warming.

With this piece finished and be-

hind him, Tharp has more time to 
focus on his long-term project, a 
five-to-six-song EP he has been ex-
perimenting with. With one song 
finished and another on the way, 
he is branching out from his acous-
tic roots and delving into electronic 
music, resulting in something akin 
to a mixture of Anomalie and Rob-
ert Glasper.

Excited for what comes next, 

Tharp is ready to take his new 
skills with him into his career post-
graduation. “It’s adding a whole 
new dimension to (my) creative 
ability.” 

Although it hasn’t been perfect 

by any means, Tharp’s work is 
proof that jazz performance has 
persevered.

Photo by ADDISON THARP

The gap between semesters is 

always a perfect time to catch up on 
the movies I was too busy to watch 
during the school year. Yet, return-
ing home also gives me a chance to 
access the countless DVDs that my 
family has bought and kept over the 
years. So every winter break, I face 
a dilemma: Watch the latest films 
in order to get in on the conversa-
tion, or gravitate toward the old 
favorites? The answer, of course, 
is both. But while I finally got 
around to seeing Film Beat favor-
ites like “Emma,” “Never Rarely 
Sometimes Always” and “Sound of 
Metal,” it was the old favorites that 
I enjoyed the most.

After the time I’ve spent on the 

Film Beat, it’s certainly a little 
weird to watch films that I’ve loved 
for most of my life and learn that 
they have low Rotten Tomatoes 
scores and divisive critical reviews. 
With old favorites, though, that’s 
not what’s important; it’s more 
valuable to focus on how much I 
enjoy watching these movies, even 
though I have seen them countless 
times and can quote nearly all of 
the lines. 

The National Treasure series 

may have a critical rating that is 
thirty percent lower than the audi-
ence rating, but I will never get 
tired of watching Ben (Nicholas 
Cage, “Face/Off”), Abigail (Diane 
Kruger, “Inglourious Basterds”) 
and Riley (Justin Bartha, “The 
Hangover”) run around historical 
landmarks on improbable treasure 
hunts. With movies like the Chron-

icles of Narnia film series, I’ve 
decided that it’s less about whether 
the films follow C.S. Lewis’s books 
perfectly and more about how they 
bring the world to life in such a 
lovely way. And sure, “Night At 
The Museum: Battle of the Smith-
sonian” is not quite the epitome 
of comedy that I once thought it 
was, but it makes me laugh, and 
my sister and I have been parrot-
ing Kahmunrah’s (Hank Azaria, 
“The Simpsons”) utterly quot-
able lines to each other for over a 
decade. These movies come with 
the perfect kind of caveat, fueled 
by a nostalgic bias: They may not 
be perfect, but I love them anyway.

— Kari Anderson, Senior Arts 

Editor

I simply don’t know how I went 

so long without watching “Jen-
nifer’s Body.” Since I, like many 
others, had nothing going on over 
break, I decided it was finally time 
to see what this acclaimed movie 
was all about.

For those who haven’t seen it, 

“Jennifer’s Body” follows pos-
sessed teen Jennifer (Megan Fox, 
“Rogue”) who hunts down and 
kills her male classmates, as her 
best friend Needy (Amanda Sey-
fried, “Mank”) tries to stop her. 
Yeah. It’s crazy. Going into it, I was 
excited because I love Diablo Cody 
(“Juno”), and I know that this film 
is regarded as a cult classic.

But what I was not expecting 

was the hard-hitting social com-
mentary. I don’t know if I was 
taking it too seriously, but I feel so 
passionately about the themes of 
sexual violence and toxic mascu-
linity that make up this story. Obvi-

ously, it has an iconic script, with 
lines like “He looked like lasagna 
with teeth” and “You’re lime green 
jello and you can’t even admit it to 
yourself” being some of my favor-
ites. 

But when I wasn’t laughing, a lot 

of this movie made me so sad. The 
reason that Jennifer is possessed in 
the first place is because an indie 
rock band uses her as a “virgin 
sacrifice” to Satan in exchange for 
fame and wealth. However, Jen-
nifer was not actually a virgin, so 
she is perpetually possessed in the 
movie. Most unfortunately, if that 
isn’t a metaphor for how sexual 
assault can traumatize someone 
or monumentally change their life, 
then I don’t know what is.

I see myself watching this movie 

many times more, but I’m glad that 
the first time I watched it was over 
break. A well-written, clever, at 
times heartbreaking and (dare I 

say) genius film is just what I need-
ed to end 2020 with.

— Judy Lawrence, Daily Arts 

Writer

Sometimes I feel like I’d be a 

great test subject for an anthropo-
logical study on the amount of time 
Gen Z’ers spend in front of screens. 
Some graduate student could write 
about how the strong economic 
growth of the ’90s influenced my 
parents, originally from working-
class families, to start a large bour-
geois family. Or perhaps they could 
write something about how the 
economic downturn of the aughts 
meant we couldn’t always afford 
great childcare, but they could sit 
us down in front of some video 
games or a computer or a TV to 
shut us up for eight hours. When-
ever I’m with my family over win-
ter breaks, we tend to blow through 
a lot of new and revisited media, so 
let me break it down.

The good stuff is easy to talk 

about, since they were the films I 
revisited with my siblings for the 
comfort of familiarity:

It’s no secret that “1917” is a 

masterpiece. The score by Thomas 
Newman (“Skyfall”), the cinema-
tography by Roger Deakins (“Blade 
Runner 2049”) and the exhausting, 
relentless performance by George 
Mackay 
(“Captain 
Fantastic”) 

make me want to read T.S. Eliot 
and Virginia Woolf or whoever had 
anything to say about World War I. 
A few of my friends brushed it off 
as just another movie full of white 
guys, but I genuinely think there’s a 
place for films like this that explore 
masculinity so deeply. 

When I watched “1917” in 

theaters last year, I saw a young 
boy, his (assumed) father and his 
grandfather seeing the film togeth-
er. Observing that family, and then 
seeing how Blake (Dean-Charles 
Chapman, “Game of Thrones”) 
spoke about his brother and moth-
er and how Schofield (Mackay) 
interacted with the infant and 
stared at the photo of his wife 
and children resonated with me. 
I think we should talk about why 
male strength is so often repre-
sented through war, and why gen-
erations later men still hold such an 
attachment to these stories — just 
as director Sam Mendes (“Skyfall”) 
clearly does in his adaptation of his 
grandfather’s firsthand accounts 
of the war. 

And, obviously, all those one-

shots. I mean, how can you not 
appreciate the work put into them?

Additionally, 
“My 
Neighbor 

Totoro” is Hayao Miyazaki at his 

finest. This film is a comforting 
and stunning story about children 
told in a completely non-conde-
scending way. I could try to explain 
it, but it’d be better if you just watch 
it and see what I mean. 

I watched some bad stuff too, 

though:

“Spree” was a heavy-handed 

attempt at social critique but, at the 
same time, I always love a chance 
to see Kyle Mooney (“Saturday 
Night Live”) in anything. That’s all 
I have to say about that. 

“Wonder Woman 1984” was 

horse-tranquilizer-to-the-face 
levels of boring, but Pedro Pascal 
(“The Mandalorian”) seemed like 
he was having fun, particularly 
during a climax that my siblings 
and I struggled to hear over our 
own slightly mean-spirited laugh-
ter. Kristen Wiig (“Bridesmaids”) 
seemed lost — or maybe on auto-
pilot — and it just made me want 
to see her in something like “The 
Skeleton Twins” again. 

Anything I could say about the 

film’s imperialist undertones or 
nauseating nostalgia for the 80s 
has already been said, so I’ll just 
say I absolutely could not believe 
that they thought I cared enough to 
watch two and a half hours of this 
garbage. And this is coming from 
someone who actually really liked 
the first movie! I guess my closing 
thought is: “Imagine all the people 
…”

— Mary Elizabeth Johnson, 

Daily Arts Writer

My 

What the Film Beat Watched Over Break

‘Bridgerton’ proves there’s 
nothing like a good period piece

Netflix’s 
period 
drama 

“Bridgerton” 
has 
taken 
the 

world by storm, and with good 
reason. You don’t have to be a 
fan of period pieces to see how 
the series immerses viewers in 
a riveting universe while also 
confronting relevant issues in 
our modern world. “Bridgerton” 
proves my long-held belief that 
period pieces are among the top 
tier of television, when they are 
done right.

With the vast amount of new 

television series coming out 
these days, I’m faced with a dif-
ficult question to tackle: What 
exactly makes a series “good” 
when the range of available 
content is so extensive? Amid 
a broad variety of genres, sub-
ject matter and creative per-
spectives, what is the common 
thread that runs through every-
thing worth watching?

“Bridgerton,” 
and 
period 

pieces at large, can be our case 
study to answer these questions. 
For one, good TV ought to pro-
vide a mode for escapism.

The beauty of period dramas 

is that there is escapism inher-
ent within the genre because 
the whole concept is based on 
another time period. “Bridger-
ton” is set in 1813 London and 
revolves around aristocratic life, 
particularly that of several fami-
lies with children of marrying 
age. “Bridgerton” finds the per-
fect opportunity for escapism 
by walking the line between the 
reality of the time period and 
extravagant fantasy, through 
using striking costume design 

that defined the Georgian peri-
od. Beyond costume design, the 
bright, vibrant cinematography 
and editing style mean that, 
while the show may be set in a 
society with an abundance of 
rigid and boring rules, it’s also 
visually 
striking 
throughout, 

immersing viewers in a world 
far, far away from their living 
rooms.

Escapism is also achieved 

through 
emotion. 
Nothing 

makes you forget the problems 
of the real world like taking on 
the problems of fictional char-
acters and resonating with their 
experiences.

This is easily done through 

period pieces because the set-
ting in a different time period 
implies that there’s going to 
be a different set of values and 
standards of success. Because 
this world is so different, view-
ers can easily decipher what it 
means to succeed while main-
taining a degree of emotional 
separation from their own lives. 
In “Bridgerton,” success comes 
through 
maintaining 
wealth 

and status within aristocratic 
society, which requires adher-
ence to a strict, repressive set of 
social rules.

For Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor, 

“Younger”), the protagonist and 
eldest daughter of the Bridger-
ton family, this means marrying 
well so that her younger sis-
ters can benefit from the status 
she achieves. As the show pro-
gresses, Daphne’s understand-
ing of success begins to include 
her desire for love. Escapism is 
provided by how much we can 
empathize with Daphne and 
how we can understand the ten-
sion between wanting to take 

care of our families while also 
seeking our own personal hap-
piness. The passionate relation-
ship between Daphne and the 
Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean 
Page, “Sylvie’s Love”) is thought-
fully built, and it feels real. This 
passion also leads to an absurd 
amount of sex scenes — which 
is another form of escapism, if 
you’re into that.

It’s clear that escapism is 

rooted in our ability to empa-
thize with the problems of the 
characters in the show. “Bridg-
erton” not only creates a vibrant 
world but a world whose prob-
lems we can easily adopt every 
episode. This notion isn’t exclu-
sive to period pieces, obviously, 
but I think period pieces do it 
better because the distinctive 
rules and values make the emo-
tional struggles of its characters 
more blatant.

However, escapism alone isn’t 

quite enough to merit a series’s 
quality. At the end of the day, the 
problems have to mean some-
thing, otherwise we wouldn’t 
actually care. There are definite-
ly shows that provide escapism 
for escapism’s sake, but in order 
for a show to be meaningful and 
have longevity, there ought to be 
context and relevance behind 
the problems the characters 
face. Ultimately, there needs to 
be a message that connects the 
show back to our current reality. 
This is easily achieved in period 
pieces because, while they may 
take place in a different time 
period, they still exist within 
our own universe.

In 

the 

NETFLIX

SARAH RAHMAN

Daily Arts Writer

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGHANA TUMMULA

DAILY FILM WRITERS

Daily Film Writers

With four weeks off of school, having fewer responsibilities gave the Film Beat more time to watch films, old and new. 

Here are some things that the Film Beat watched over the winter break

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

