Posts tagged ‘Eisenhower Auditorium’
Two Thumbs Up for ‘Straight No Chaser’
I went to a show last night in Eisenhower Auditorium that provided one of the best evenings of entertainment I’ve seen in a long time. Straight No Chaser—a 10-man a capella group with its roots at Indiana University—did a terrific concert for an enthusiastic Penn State audience.
You may have seen their lively mash-up of “The 12 Days of Christmas” on YouTube—it has garnered more than 11 million views to date and was the viral video that made Straight No Chaser a minor national sensation. Since then, they’ve signed a record contract, released a couple of CDs, and done several national tours. (The dates on the current tour are here.)
Their repertoire ranges from Motown to rock: Last night’s set list included songs like “Joy to the World” (the Three Dog Night version, not the Christmas carol), “Heard it Through the Grapevine,” Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” and a mash-up of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” with Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl,” among others. They did a lovely rendition of the Cold Play song “Fix You,” a Red Hot Chili Peppers song called “Under the Bridge,” and a hilarious send-up (more…)
Béla Fleck and His African Pals Rock Eisenhower Auditorium
Back in the late 1980s, I was one of the hosts of the Folk Show on WPSU-FM, Penn State’s public radio station, and Béla Fleck was pushing the boundaries of bluegrass music as the banjo player for the decidedly niche group New Grass Revival. We played a lot of his stuff on the show, but I doubt that most people outside the bluegrass world knew who he was.
Then Fleck started branching out even more, musically speaking, with groups like the Flecktones and collaborations with musicians like Chick Corea. Now, 20 years later, the guy has 13 Grammy Awards. And he’s got a reputation as one of the most adventurous musicians in the U.S.: He has done jazz recordings, and classical, and country, and pop.
Just this year, Fleck won two Grammy Awards for a world-music recording: Throw Down Your Heart, a collaboration with musicians from Africa. Fleck has brought some of those musicians to the U.S. to tour with him this winter, and last night he brought the show to Eisenhower Auditorium.
It was cool to see how he showcased the musicians—first introducing a pair of musicians from Tanzania, Anania Ngoliga on thumb piano and John Kitime on guitar (see photo at left), then leaving the stage so they could play a few numbers for the crowd, then coming back to play with them as a trio. Similarly, he introduced a group of musicians from Mali—Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba—then let them play, before returning to the stage to jam with them.
And “jam” is really the right word. It’s kind of funny to say that a bunch of African musicians, playing instruments made out of gourds and wood and the like, rocked Eisenhower Auditorium, but that’s exactly what they did. It was electric.
You can see the remaining tour dates here and more photos from last night’s concert here.
Tina Hay, editor
Monterey Jazz in Eisenhower Auditorium
(click to see larger)
The Center for the Performing Arts brought a modern-jazz supergroup to Eisenhower Auditorium last night: the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour. The six-member group has something like 13 Grammy nominations and awards among them, and pianist Kenny Barron (who has nine of those Grammy nominations) was just named an NEA Jazz Master—the nation’s highest jazz honor—last month.
I got to shoot some photos at the beginning of last night’s show. The one above shows the entire ensemble: from left, Barron, bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa, violinist Regina Carter, guitarist Russell Malone, drummer Johnathan Blake, and vocalist Kurt Elling. Below are two other shots I got last night.
Elling, by the way, just won a Grammy a few weeks ago in “Best Jazz Vocal Album” for Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman.
You can see more photos (taken by Andy Colwell of Penn State Public Information) here, and you can check out what else the Center for the Performing Arts has coming up this spring here.
Tina Hay, editor
Penn State Greeks Strut Their Broadway Stuff
"Mamma Mia" won for best short performance.
Students from 50 Penn State sororities and fraternities showed off some impressive talents in music and dance yesterday in the annual “Greek Sing,” held in a sold-out Eisenhower Auditorium.
Basically the Greek Sing is a talent show in which members of two or three IFC/Panhel organizations (usually one fraternity and one sorority, or two fraternities and a sorority) team up to perform selections from Broadway musicals. Each team performs for six to eight minutes, then there’s a quick change-over, then the next team is on. So, in the course of three hours, audience members saw performances from 19 different Broadway shows.
"Tarzan" was one of 19 performances at Greek Sing.
Many of the students were singing, acting, and/or dancing onstage for the first time—and to perform in the 2,500-seat Eisenhower Auditorium had to be a little intimidating. But nobody seemed especially nervous, and quite a few of the singers could really belt it out.
I’m told that the groups had been working on their performances since September—not just rehearsing, but choreographing, building elaborate sets, coming up with costumes, the whole bit.
Greek Sing participants perform "All That Jazz" from the musical "Chicago."
The overall winner yesterday, as decided by a panel of judges, was Mary Poppins (Zeta Tau Alpha, Sigma Phi Epsilon, and Phi Beta Sigma). “Best costume” and tops in “spirit points” went to The Wedding Singer (Pi Beta Phi, Sigma Phi, and Kappa Alpha Psi), and Mamma Mia won for “best short performance” (Alpha Omicron Pi, Tau Kappa Epsilon, and Theta Delta Chi).
Greek Sing started at Penn State in 1968, though it didn’t last long; it was restarted in 1983 and has become especially popular in the last few years—as evidenced by the fact that nearly 2,500 students were willing to spend nine bucks a head to see it yesterday. Proceeds go to the Gayle Beyers Scholarship Fund. We won’t know for a couple of weeks how much money was raised, but last year’s Greek Sing brought in $13,000, which is not too shabby.
Read a Daily Collegian story on yesterday’s show here.
Tina Hay, editor
A Funny Moment with Howard and Karl
The politically polarized nature of any discussion on American health care was on display Tuesday night at University Park, when Republican strategist Karl Rove and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean debated the topic at Eisenhower Auditorium. The event, part of the Student Programming Association’s Distinguished Speaker Series, provided some entertaining moments. Tony Madonna, a Penn State undergrad and aspiring photographer, captured this one: the moment when Rove, apparently disagreeing with Dean about the costs associated with reform, pulled out a prop to emphasize his point.
Entertainment value aside, the debate doesn’t appear to have solved anything. As one student told the Daily Collegian afterward, “I thought it was a circus… there were no winners, just varying degrees of loss.”
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Man, Can These Guys Play Guitar Hero
My brother and sister-in-law have Guitar Hero, and I just adore it. But I’m really, really bad at it.
If it’s a song from my era—like, say, Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way”—and if we set the difficulty level to “easy,” I can get by. But the majority of the songs are ones I don’t recognize, by bands I’ve never even heard of, and if I try to play at “medium” difficulty I make so many mistakes that I soon get booed off the stage. The “hard” and “expert” levels? Out of the question.
So last night I went to Eisenhower Auditorium to watch some Penn State students show how it’s done.
The Center for the Performing Arts was sponsoring its first-ever Guitar Hero Tournament, hosted by local radio personality Jeff Brown of 93.7 The Bus. It was part of a larger “patio party” designed to make students aware of the upcoming CPA season lineup.
Sixteen finalists—15 male, one female—competed on the Eisenhower stage, two at a time. Here again, I think I recognized one song the whole night (Blue Oyster Cult’s “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll,” released in 1972). But it was just a blast to see these students play at the “expert” level with such ease. And it was fun to photograph them in rock-star lighting.
The guy pictured here with the headband, by the way, was the ultimate winner—Ron Rieker, a telecommunications major from Allentown. He won a 26-inch flat-screen TV from Best Buy, the tournament sponsor.
You can see a slide show of 20 images from last night here. Special thanks to our senior editor, Lori Shontz ’91, for identifying the contestants for me—she was there last night, too, and took good notes!
Tina Hay, editor
Help—We’re Being Overrun by Bass Players
Summertime at University Park often brings a wide range of conference-goers—this morning, for example, I encountered dozens and dozens of high school kids in those classic blue-and-gold Future Farmers of America uniforms streaming toward Eisenhower Auditorium. I checked the Web, and sure enough, their annual “FFA Activities Week” is taking place right now at Penn State.
Northwestern University student Samuel Suggs tries out one of the string basses for sale during the International Society of Bassists Convention at Penn State. (Photo by Andy Colwell/Department of Public Information)
But the conference that intrigues me the most is the biennial convention of the International Society of Bassists—you know, people who play the musical instrument known as the upright bass or double bass.
All week long, there have been bass-intensive recitals (both jazz and classical), lectures, and jams all over the place: Schwab Auditorium, the Music Building, Eisenhower Chapel, the Pavilion Theatre. One recital featured a piece of music written for eight upright basses! And the lectures run the gamut from “History of the Double Bass in Argentina” to “Careers in Early Music” to (my favorite) “Injury Prevention.”
Altogether, there are most than 1,200 bass players from 44 countries here. One guy on Twitter referred to it as “Double Bass Geek Utopia.”
We’re on deadline with the magazine this week (OK, we’re actually past deadline, but not yet finished, which is worse), so things are a little hectic around the office. But I’m hoping to get up to see a performance or two tomorrow. If so, I’ll report back.
Tina Hay, editor
Haydn’s “The Creation” in Eisenhower Auditorium
The view from the back row of the chorus during rehearsal. There were a lot more people than this photo would suggest: 100-plus singers and 35 musicians.
I spent a pretty good chunk of time this weekend in Eisenhower Auditorium, taking part in rehearsals for, and then the performance of, Haydn’s The Creation. I sing alto in the State College Choral Society, a town-gown mix of singers that was marking its 60th-anniversary year with today’s big production. I say “big” because we don’t always sing in Eisenhower Auditorium with a 35-piece orchestra and soloists flown in from out of town.
I joined the Choral Society maybe five years ago and have really grown to enjoy classical choral music. These days I’m just as likely to pop Vivaldi’s Gloria into the CD player in the car as I am to listen to Mary Chapin Carpenter or the Eagles. A sure sign of middle age, I know.
I like the Monday night rehearsals (most of them, anyway—some are just hard work) and I’m very fond of our conductor/director, Russ Shelley ’97g—especially his patient, encouraging approach to teaching us the music, and his cheerful good humor in the face of an impending deadline. I’m constantly wishing I could do a better job of emulating his management style.
Today’s concert was a lot of fun, with an all-star cast of instrumentalists, including School of Music faculty Daryl Durran (bassoon), Smith Toulson (clarinet), and Lisa Bontrager (horn), among many others. We even had Kim Cook, the first-ever University Laureate, playing cello. And, oh my, could those soloists sing. The tenor was Richard Kennedy of the School of Music; the bass was a guy from New York City named Andrew Gangestad; and the soprano was Tamara Matthews, who teaches at Furman but who, rumor has it, flew in from Prague for the concert.
Choral music has a really long tradition at Penn State. One of these days we should do something on this in the magazine; it’s one of those topics that we just haven’t yet figured out how to shape into a story. But there are at least seven different choirs a Penn State student could join—from the Glee Club to the Concert Choir to Essence of Joy—and a lot of talented students and faculty doing great things with music.
Tina Hay, editor
Ax-Perlman-Ma at Penn State
Photo by Annemarie Mountz ’84
I was at State College Choral Society rehearsal last night (we’re working on Haydn’s The Creation for a concert at Eisenhower Auditorium in early May) when I got a text message on my iPhone from two friends who were missing from the rehearsal:
Hey you should hear these cats rock!
Dan & Cath
It turns out they (and a lot of other Choral Society members) were skipping rehearsal to attend the Ax-Perlman-Ma concert on campus. Pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Itzhak Perlman, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma were performing together for the first time ever—and doing it at Penn State. It’s one of only two shows they’ll do, the other being tonight at Carnegie Hall.
You can see photos from last night’s concert here.
Tina Hay, editor
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