Music Performance Report 2

Welcome back fellow follower. What an amazing semester this has been. I am very sad to report that this will be my last blog post and I hope that I don’t disappoint you. I am writing the Performance Report of my music class over a recent musical that the University of Texas At Dallas was hosting. This musical was Side show. The storyline starts off introducing these two Siamese twins who are part of the circus. Upon meeting these two men who promised to train them and their voices to make them a wonder of the world. They leave with these men to hopes of one being famous and two finding love. After trials and tribulations, in the end the twins end up with each other.

The Performance was quite a show starting off with a song. Everybody in the cast was dressed in costumes even the people that didn’t participate actively, meaning the manual labor people were even dressed. They dressed to give a sense of being a circus ambiance. The costumes and personals that were displayed consisted of a bearded lady, a cannibal King dressed in a loin cloth, normal city people, belly dancers, snake charmers, chicken eater, fortune teller, reptile man, and the head of the circus. At first it seemed like all the dialogue was sung but there actually were some parts that the dialogue was just speech. It was pretty interesting to see that the crew of Side Show amplified their voices by have a square microphone on the middle of their forehead. Sometimes in monologues, while one person was speaking all the other people were frozen lead the audience to focus their attention on the speaker. I believe the one two was and alto and the other was a soprano.

The Music of Side Show, the first song, Come Look At the Freaks was very loud and had a very fast tempo which caught the attention of the audience immediately as if the light didn’t give that clue. All the lyrics sung were memorized which gives the audience a sense of how much time and effort the cast put into to making Side Show very professional. From, what I heard each phrase of the songs all rhymed. I believe the rhyming scheme for most song was A:B:A:B. Many times I heard one twin sing the melody while the other sang the harmony. Buddy and Terry, the two male leads of the show sang with much emotion as displayed on their facial expressions. Buddy was definitely a tenor while Terry was a baritone.

The Audience of this show on Thursday night especially because it was free, I saw a wide variety of people in seats. It funny to see that even though the ages of the audience ranged from 18 to seventy seven, the back was mostly filled with students while the front were filled with the elderly people. The audience clapped after every song and every act. There was comic relief during the musical which did illicit laughter among the audience members.

The time and space of the Side Show consisted of being held at University Theatre. This particular production had many props. They had a freak sign, stairs on wheels, signs that told the audience which scene that cast was performing, and the heart-shaped chair which was used during the song the Tunnel of Love. The floor was decorated with the colors red, yellow, and blue with five circles and the red circle was in the middle. The lights always dimmed when the show about to start. Dr. Stone had his own TV screen to see what the audience saw because his back was facing the crew members’ back so in order to cue the orchestra correctly he need to know what was going on. There were moments when the different light would shine on the performers creating a shadowing effect on the curtains as well as the stage. Side Show indeed proved to show all the elements of a music performance.

Words Cited

Side Show. Bill Russell. Director Kathryn Evans. UTD. University Theater, Richardson, 16 April, 2010.

Evans, Kathryn. Program notes. Side Show.16 April, 2010. Richardson. UT Dallas University Theater.

Rock Post

Welcome back fellow follower, the blog post that I am going to write about today is about a subgenre of rock music. This subgenre is call psychedelic rock. The perfect example would have to the beach boys. They created many songs in which replicated the feelings of the high of using drugs. In many of their songs used rock elements which were the reason why they are considered to be in the genre of rock music. Often, they used electric guitars and they had small ensembles. This group of guys also had an emphasis on singing. One great example would be of their song “Wouldn’t it be Nice”. Although this song isn’t specifically psychedelic rock it also fits into another genre of rock and that subgenre of rock would be soft rock. In, this song you could hear electric guitars being played as well as seeing that they were really creative in using the technology of the time by creative an album. One psychedelic rock song the screams to me when psychedelic rock comes to mind would have to be that song “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane. Both of these songs employ certain techniques in the lyrics to get a certain emotional response from the audience and that is one of the many elements of rock.

Post 11

Welcome back fellow follower, today is all about the music culture of the Gullah People. This is an island in which all the historical aspect is a struggle to preserve. This island was one of the many original islands that was a port for slaves to be shipped to. The culture here is distinctive in that it is slowly deteriorating because many developers have come to develop the land and make it a home for others. More than half the land is developed with country clubs and rich high costly areas. The Gullah music culture uses the membranophones in their dances. They say that there always needs to be rhythm. In their performances there are many people dancing and screaming or screeching. They have cultural garbs that wear and they always want for their culture to be restored. In some examples of this culture their song starts in with a person harmonizing then they switch to dialogue. I don’t quite know if it is all in English or maybe in a different language but English is definitely spoken and sung. Then, they start to sing again. Also, they sometimes have bells to keep an beat as well as use their feet to stomp the floor. The Youtube video gives different examples of the Gullah music culture. One example consist of a women singing but at the end of every phrase that she sings she slurs up her words raises the note along with the words.

Music Performance Report 1

Welcome back fellow followers, for this music performance report I went to this concert called Shakespeare in Song. This concert was composed of the chamber singers choir, under the direction of director Dr. Kathryn Evans, and the accompanist Michael McVay. Throughout this whole concert the choir sang different songs related to Shakespeare’s different plays. They sang songs from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, The Tempest, Hamlet, Cymbeline, As you like it, The Merchant of Venice, A Winter’s Tale, Othello, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Twelfth Night.
The time and space of the performance was at night, beginning at eight o’clock lasting for about an hour and a half. It was performed at the Johnnson Performance auditorium at the University of Texas at Dallas. The Stage consisted of four layers of stair stepping risers. From the audience member’s point of view, the order of the choir from left to right started with the sopranos furthest to the left standing next to the altos. In the middle standing next to the altos would be the tenors and standing next to them are the basses or baritones. In front of all of them was Dr. Kathryn Evans herself with her back facing the audience so that she could direct the choir. There were ushers at the door greeting the members in the audience while handing out programs. On stage there were six different podiums. Five of the podiums were for the soloists to come in from to the stage and give their solo. The last podium was hidden in the back for the person who worked all the technical issues out if they were to occur. In the background of the stage was a power point that followed along as the singers sang their songs for the purpose of keeping the audience members updated.
I went on a Friday night so the audience members were mostly students, but I did see both young and old people. I would guess that the age range would be that of seventeen to seventy-one year olds. Some of the students there didn’t really have proper concert etiquette and clapped at inappropriate times. There was an intermission and then most people just talked to each other. The music was all played on the piano. This concert was a constant shuffle of music, then dialogue, then music. Sometimes the choir members were singing in unison, and sometimes they were singing in different octaves of one another. They all had their sheet music available.
The Concert Performance consisted of both acting, singing, and just reading straight from their music scores. They were all in costumes acting with props such as a beer bottle. They also moved their hands to convey messages in the music score. In some parts of the performance some of the soloists that were girls moved to the very right of the stage and when they sang as a choir it became apparent to me that the men had been sandwiched by the women on the stage. They sound was immensely amplified at that moment. Many of them had practiced singing because it had become clear to me that they had tall vowels. Their music was not at all memorized but many singers would start moving to the beat of the song and it looked as if they were doing chest and head pumps. With a wave of her hand Dr. Kathryn Evans controlled the volume as well as the musical techniques that she wanted them to employ such as a decrescendo, crescendo, or a staccato. Her hand also kept the beat for the singers. Sometimes, she would wave her hand in make a tilde shape in the air and the singers would hold their note. It was mostly noted that her right hand directed the men while her left hand directed the women.