Arts Briefs

Blood Brothers, a musical directed by sophomore Daniel Hatkoff, opens with its two main characters lying dead on the floor. It then backtracks several years to fill in the story behind this tragic, Shakespearian ending. But an early scene, in which a man grabs his wife-to-be’s behind as they dance, signals that this play has a smirk on
its face.
Indeed, when Blood Brothers is at its most brooding and dark, it tries to be its funniest. A sinister, rhyming narrator appears in foreboding interludes, laughing at each character’s suffering and woe to the sound of ominous keyboard music. But the mock-tragic humor that Blood Brothers cultivates quickly gets old. Sesame Street mastered this type of humor in the ‘’80s with its “Heartstrongs” sketch, about a family that cried over lost shoelaces and bookmarks. To expect that a college audience will eagerly lap it up for two and a half hours is just wishful thinking.
Wilder Main. Today at 7:30 p..m. $3 in advance; $5 at the door.

With its typical flare and precision, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble performed its first concert of the year last Friday at 8 p.m. in Finney Chapel. Under the direction of Timothy Weiss, the ensemble opened the performance with Sheree Clement's “Chamber Concerto” and concluded with “Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum” by Harrison Birtwistle. In a constant state of timbral, melodic and rhythmic shifting, this piece kept with Birtwistle's expressed position on the regularity of pulse: “It's something you get off on and you forget about. I intend to never let the listener get off on it.”

The second piece on the program, performed by Weiss and members of the Oberlin Wind Ensemble, was “Yun” by Chou Wen-Chung, one of the most influential contemporary Chinese composers. Here the composer elegantly develops and transforms the pitch material respecting the principles of the I Ching. Following this was the unconducted “Quartet for Viola, Cello and Digital Processor” by Tom Flaherty, featuring 5th-years Amy Cimini playing viola and Sarah Biber cello, with sound support from 5th-year Susana Sitomer. In this piece, the viola’s output is transposed and delayed in two channels, creating amongst these three voices a rhythmically complex texture of viola sound in different tempi and meters. The output of the cello is not delayed, but rather filtered (through flanging and phasing) so that it sounds as one cello voice, and the electronic modification is only perceptible on longer notes at the end of the piece. The overall effect of the piece is, as T.J. Vander Molen said, “like being in a big echoy metal room with bright lights!”
The next CME concert will be in Finney Chapel on Friday, Nov. 10.

—Katie Young

Next Tuesday Marc André-Hamelin will give a recital as the second installation of the Conservatory’s Artist Recital Series. The concert will feature, among other works, Schubert’s “Sonata in A major, D 664,” Chopin’s “Souvenir de Paganini” and Liszt’s “Six Grand Etudes D"Apres Pagnini.” Hamelin, a Canadian-born pianist, has been dubbed by the New York Times as an artist whose capabilities “revitalize classical music,” and a musician who has “made a career of playing the seemingly unplayable.” He is known for his attention to lesser-known works of the late 19th and early 20th-centuries and has appeared with many of the major orchestras in North America and Europe, as well as orchestras throughout Asia and Australia. Hamelin has been nominated for numerous Granny Awards and won the highly-coveted Gramophone Instrumental Award in 2000.

Finney. Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. Tickets for this performance and all Artists Recital Series Concerts available through CTS in Hall Auditorium. Prices are: OCID $7, General $20, additional $2 charged at the door.

—Douglass Dowty

This coming Thursday in Warner Concert Hall, the Conservatory Piano Faculty will perform a dedication concert for the Hannan Hamburg Steinway Piano, donated this past July by the family of William J. Hannan (OC ’64) in his memory. Performers in the recital will include Robert Shannon, Haewon Song, Peter Takács, Angela Cheng, Alvin Chow, Lydia Frumkin and Sedmara Zakarian Rutstein. Works on the program will span from Bach to Debussy, including the Romantic-era piano masters along the way. The Steinway piano measures nine feet in length and weighs over 1,000 pounds. More information on the piano can be found at: http://www.steinway.com/html/tech/specs_d.html.

Warner Concert Hall. Thursday, Nov. 17 at 8 p.m.
—Douglass Dowty

Oberlin took home a slew of top prizes from Northern Ohio Live magazine’s Annual Awards of Achievement ceremony, held on September 23th at the State Theater in Cleveland. Dan Chaon, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, won the first prize in literature – a new addition to his growing awards collection for “Among the Missing,” his book of short fiction. Michael Grube, Managing Director with Oberlin’s Theater and Dance Program and Jonathan Field, director of Oberlin’s Opera Theater Program, received honorable mention for their production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which went up this summer at the Lyric Opera in Cleveland. Robert Dodson, Dean of the Conservatory, David Boe, Professor of Organ and Haskell Thomson, Professor of Organ, were also honorably mentioned for their part in spearheading the efforts for Finney Chapel’s new Fisk organ.

—Kate Antognini

Earlier this week and in the coming months the Oberlin Orchestra will be heard throughout New York City and the surrounding Connecticut and New Jersey area when selections from some of last year’s concerts are performed on classical radio WQXR, the radio of The New York Times. This past Wednesday, the McGraw Hill Young Artists Showcase kicked off with Miguel De Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, from the orchestra’s April 14th concert with guest conductor Kevin Noe. Upcoming Oberlin airings will include other noteworthy performances, such as the “Finale” from Alberto Ginastera’s Concerto for Harp, Op. 25 with senior soloist Nuiko Wadden on October 30 at 9 p.m. and selections from the alumni production of Royer’s Le Pouvoir de l’Amour paired with performances from the Conservatory’s Concerto Competition on Nov. 6 at 9 p.m. In conjunction with this program, Robert Sherman, the host of the Youth Artists Showcase arrived in Oberlin earlier this morning, October 11, and will spend the weekend nurturing and judging Con students’ abilities. At noon Sherman conducted a career seminar for students in Bibbins Room 223 and later on today he presented a shortened version of The Business of Music, a class he teaches at the Juilliard School in New York City. He will be a non-faculty judge at the Conservatory’s Concerto Competition on Saturday.

—Douglass Dowty