Showing posts tagged “Duke Performances”
Chris Toenes ·
26 Feb 2010, 6:28 PM ·
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Mapfumo
Cold as it was last night, walking into Duke Coffeehouse’s transcendental dance vibe was wholly warming. The room filled up to a comfortable crowd, and as Mapfumo, “The Lion of Zimbabwe,” led his band in songs both traditional and fused with the funky, dancing spread from person to person like fever.
The Blacks Unlimited, Mapfumo’s current band, appeared onstage as an electric outfit, not unlike a funk band outfitted with twelve-string bass, guitars, keyboards and a Western drum kit. But a set of congas stood to one side, and buried behind the group’s front line, a sole mbira player sat. The mbira is a handmade thumb piano encased in a semi-circular wooden shell, and Shona mbira music is a cornerstone of Zimbabwean music and Mapfumo’s Chimurenga pop. It provides the beautiful undulating tones behind this band’s rhythmic base, and last night, the band’s sound was tight as they moved through those tones. Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Duke Performances, Thomas Mapfumo
Chris Toenes ·
19 Feb 2010, 5:24 PM ·
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Dean and Britta, always a pleasure
Dean and Britta
Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010
Duke University, Durham
It could have ended up just another lesson in how the visual cannot be married to the musical easily, or vice versa. But there Dean and Britta were, with band members Lee Waters and Matt Sumrow, delicately balancing the two and winning. The project was offered to Wareham by the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and initially I thought, surely that offer was based on his experience with dreamy, atmospheric pop that might lend itself well to Warhol’s voluptuously slowed down film shorts.
Wareham has experience putting music to film: Dean and Britta contributed to The Squid and the Whale’s score, and Luna had songs in films before that. With a monstrous screen behind them, allowing the films to take appropriate visual dominance over any stage show, the band started into the set carefully, with Waters out on bass.
Then the tone was set: Wareham or Phillips gave a blip of background information, usually with a telling slice of life, for each of the 13 chosen film subjects. It made for an entirely different experience than an open viewing of these strong characters in Warhol’s circle, turning their non-performance performances into something much more revealing. So, while the Luna song “Teenage Lightning” was used for Paul America, and a Nico song, “I’ll Keep it with Mine,” was used for hers, some of the most effective combinations were less obvious. Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Dean and Britta, Duke Performances, Lee Waters, Matt Sumrow
Grayson Currin ·
13 Nov 2009, 6:11 PM ·
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Lambchop's Kurt Wagner at XX Merge, preaching like he means it (Photo by Brian Vetter)
We spoke with Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner Wednesday, on the eve of the announcement that his longtime band Lambchop would release its life-changing/affirming/ending/reviving set from this year’s XX Merge fest in Carrboro, N.C., as Live at XX Merge. Tonight, they’ll see if they can repeat the magic of that night at Duke University’s Reynolds Industries Theater at 8 p.m. Lambchop splits the sold-out bill with Alejandro Escovedo.
INDEPENDENT WEEKLY: Are you playing Asheville on the way to Durham, or Asheville on your way home?
KURT WAGNER: We’re playing Charolette first, then ya’ll, then Asheville. It’s like a tour of the state of North Carolina. We’re playing state-by-state, I guess. [Laughs.]
You’re like a touring Sufjan Stevens.
You know, he took that back and admitted it was a mistake. He probably wasn’t that serious about it to begin with, and people made much more of it than he did. That’s what happens when you say something, and people don’t forget.
What’s been Lambchop’s biggest mistake in terms of saying something that sticks to you?
Calling ourselves a country band early on. We were sort of kidding, and it sort of stuck pretty hard. Then I started thinking, “Well, we kind of are.” It was partially a joke, then we started thinking about it conceptually, and thought that it was not that outlandish.
Given the chance to do it again, would you have described Lambchop as a country band early on?
At the time, we probably would have. What was funny was we didn’t even know what a one-sheet was. Mac [McCaughan] and Laura [Ballance, both of Superchunk and Merge Records] told us we had to make a one-sheet. We asked our friend Ira [Kaplan] in Yo La Tengo, “What’s this one-sheet?” and Ira said, “Believe it or not, whatever you put in there will haunt you for the rest of your life.” I don’t know exactly what prompted him to say that. I don’t know if they had a bad experience where something was misconstrued early on, and it never went away. Oddly enough, he was right.
Well, music journalists are notorious for perpetuating the half-truths they’re fed.
Once something gets out there, it just kind of sticks whether it’s accurate or not. It’s a rare person that actually checks those facts, particularly with the advent of blogs and stuff like that. [Journalists] don’t seem to have the kind of ethics they used to have. I understand all that. Whether it’s true or not, it still exists. There’s nothing you can do. Continue reading »
Interviews and Long Cuts, You Should Do This Duke Performances, Lambchop, XX Merge
Chris Toenes ·
29 Sep 2009, 4:05 PM ·
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Mingus Big Band and Sun Ra Arkestra
Page Auditorium, Duke University, Durham
Saturday, Sept. 26
Wild horses were not obstacles getting into Page Auditorium, but they were about the only things missing: Duke University’s homecoming football game had a kickoff time matching the start of a double bill with the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Mingus Big Band, so West Campus looked like some mad maze teeming with cars and pedestrians in every direction. M.C. Escher would have been proud. Of course, there was the rain, too. My fellow travelers and I determined that the reason the traffic cop directed the lane across from us endlessly, without giving us equal time, must have been a hatred of jazz. Too bad for him… Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Charles Mingus, Duke Performances, Sun Ra
Grayson Currin ·
20 Jul 2009, 6:29 PM ·
1 Comment
Aside from a successful Garden show at Duke last week, things have been unexpectedly quiet on The Love Language front of late given the buzz the band’s self-titled debut generated earlier this year. There have been consistent rumors of a significant The Love Language development on the horizon, but, for now, the band’s got some new live action to keep momentum moving. They’ll hit the road for 15 dates with Cursive later this week. The band’s due back in Chapel Hill for a show on August 20 as part of the Locally Grown series. Those dates after the jump. Continue reading »
News flashes Cursive, Duke Performances, The Love Language
Grayson Currin ·
22 Apr 2009, 11:03 AM ·
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Pull out your planners or your iPhones or however it is you keep track of what you’ll be doing in a few weeks, and jot down the dates of Duke Performance’s Music in the Gardens series. Mixing stand-alone bills featuring area favorites like Eric Bachmann and Dex Romweber with new local lights like The Love Language and Megafaun, the series represents another coup for Duke’s ground-level, plugged-in booking under the leadership of Aaron Greenwald. All shows begin at 7 p.m. in or around the Duke Gardens, and each shows cost $10 for the public and $5 for Duke employees. Duke students and children under 12 get in for free. A rad series for the right price.
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Live Actions: New Bills Alina Simone, Chris Stamey, Ciompi Quartet, Dex Romweber, Duke Performances, Eric Bachmann, Mallarme Chamber Players, Megafaun, Peter Holsapple, Thad Cockrell, The Love Language, The Rosebuds
Grayson Currin ·
13 Feb 2009, 1:05 PM ·
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Tonight marks the world premiere of 1969, the new piece from modern classical ensemble Alarm Will Sound. After sitting in on the piece’s rehearsals for the past four days, I’ve realized I undersold the piece dramatically in our print preview. While Alarm Will Sound is a dexterous, dynamic ensemble that can play most anything you put in front of it, this show offers much more than that. It shouldn’t be missed: A multimedia exploration of the cultural turmoil and creative triumphs between 1968 and 1971, 1969 pushes the boundaries of Alarm Will Sounds’s two-dozen-plus musicians, directors and assistants until they—by any other standard—should break. By imagining the dialogue between John Lennon and Karlheinz Stockhausen (they were phone buddies, and Lennon once sent Stockhausen a Christmas card), 1969 links their thoughts on the creation of electronic music and music’s place in the political world through The Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” Stockhausen’s Hymnen, Berio’s Sinfonia and Bernstein’s Mass. It’s a fascinating, dense and ambitious work, and it’s so exciting and new that, right now, I’m watching Stockhausen’s actor debate whether he should be saying potentiator or potentiometer. See it tonight at 8 p.m. at Duke’s Reynolds Industries Theater for $5-38.
You Should Do This Alarm Will Sound, Duke Performances
Brian Howe ·
11 Feb 2009, 8:22 AM ·
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Duke Performances Presents Akoka: After Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time
Page Auditorium, Durham
Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009
Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, a work of apocalyptic beauty inspired by the book of Revelation, employs a spare and slightly unusual chamber ensemble: piano, clarinet, cello and violin. This was a matter of necessity, as Messiaen composed and premiered Quatuor in a German POW camp during World War II. He used what was available. New Yorker classical critic Alex Ross wrote that it “stops time with each performance,” and perhaps this is a matter of necessity as well: From Messiaen’s vantage, it must have seemed that little time was left. Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Duke Performances
