Contact: Anna Lien @ 434.547.7986 or gorillatheaterproductions@gmail.com
He said. She said. Judgement. Hypocrisy. Hearsay. Rumor. Scandal. Irony. So much Irony. And Epic Fail (with just a dash of Win). Sound Familiar? Time-warped from 1666 to the present living room of her parent’s place down the street where we go hang out, Gorilla Theater Productions Presents Moliere’s comedy THE MISANTHROPE June 27, 28, 29 & 30 at 8pm. Tickets $5.00 students, $7.00 adults. Come and see our final show at Random Row Books (before they’re gone and missed forever) @ 315 West Main St, Charlottesville VA 22902. Call 434.547.7986 or Email gorillatheaterproductions@gmail.com for ticketing and show information.
| Charlottesville’s contemporary Afro-Brazilian percussion ensemble Morro Azul joins two Harrisonburg (Petrol-Free music tour) bands, EARS TO THE GROUND FAMILY and MONEY CAN’T BE EATEN in the Random Row Parking Lot for a night of live music, message, and celebration of a new culture of compassion and Justice. Support these bands from the Petrol-Free music tour. |
Improvised Musical Score for the Passion of Joan of Arc
Coogan Brennan returns with his improvisational wizardry this time for Dreyer’s 1928 classic The Passion of Joan of Arc. 8 PM on Thursday, June 13th.
Come question candidates Bob Fenwick, Melvin Grady and Adam Lees at The People’s Forum for Charlottesville City Council Candidates
Wednesday, June 5th 7pm-9pm
Format to maximize interaction and flow:
-30 second questions from audience (moderator will have prepared questions if audience is slow to participate)
-1 minute responses from each candidate
-Candidates can answer quickly and take their time to address whatever they like.
Stuart Jackson, percussion Approximate program duration: 50 minutes
Rebonds B Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
Etudes Boreales (for piano solo) John Cage (1912-1992)
Psappha Iannis Xenakis
Messe de Nostre Dame Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)
Kyrie 1
Christe
Kyrie 2
Kyrie 3
Sanctus
Psappha is the Aeolic version of the name of Sappho, a greek poetess who was born on the island of Lesbos somewhere between 612 and 630 BC. She is known for writing very personal poems where she passionately expressed the difficult feelings of love longing, of which the target of her affections were often women. However, instead of taking inspiration from the content of the poems, Xenakis makes use of her innovative and complex meters, which manifest themselves as rhythmic themes throughout the piece. Although the rhythms are extremely precise, much of the timbre in the piece is largely indeterminate. There are six groups of instruments labeled A-F. A-C should be skins or wood, and D-F should be metal. Beyond that there are no restrictions other than group E contain a single, non-resonant instrument, and the other groups contain three instruments with the pitches organized from high to low starting with group A.
Rebonds B was written in 1989, fourteen years after Psappha, and although still a relentlessly physical piece, it is perhaps a bit less harsh and brittle than his earlier work. One interesting aspect of both pieces, and in fact many other Xenakis pieces, is the appearance of passages that are actually physically impossible to play. This forces the performer to accept defeat and develop a way of presenting the music in a way other than a purely literal reading of the score. As a result, every performance of one of these works will never be executed exactly the same way.
The Etudes Boreales is just one work in a series of etudes written by Cage in the 1970’s, which also include the Freeman Etudes for violin and theEtudes Australes for piano. There are two versions of the Etudes Boreales: one for solo piano and one for cello, and Cage specifies that they may be played as a duet or separately as solos. All of these etudes were composed using star atlases that were compiled by the Czech astronomer Antonín Bečvář in 1950’s and 60’s. In the Etudes Boreales for Solo Piano, a piece in which the performer is required to hit various parts of the piano with various beaters and mallets, Cage used the Atlas Borealis to determine what part of the piano construction the hits were to be made (wood or metal) and where they would be made (right rear, left front, etc). In this way, the piece effectively repurposes the piano as a percussion instrument. This idea is exemplified in the fact that the pianist Jeanne Kirstein, to whom the piece is dedicated, and who had previously performed Cage’s earlier piano pieces, declared the piece to be unplayable. The first person to figure out a way to play the piece was the percussionist Michael Pugliese.
John Cage, who was never known to create overtly social or political pieces, nevertheless viewed art as a social exercise, claiming it to be a “process set in motion by a group of people” in his Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse. About the etudes, Cage offers this explanation in regards to the social implications:
“These [the etudes] are intentionally as difficult as I can make them, because I think we’re now surrounded by very serious problems in the society, and we tend to think that the situation is hopeless and that it’s just impossible to do something that will make everything turn out properly. So I think that this music, which is almost impossible, gives an instance of the practicality of the impossible.”
Messe de Nostre Dame is a polyphonic mass that I first came across in the form of a piano transcription by György Kurtág. I transcribed them to be played here on an antique set of bells.
We Are Star Children bring their adventure power rock sound to Random Row Books. Opener Erik the Red, with his backing band, The Romantics, delivers an inimitable blend of roots and folk with a dash of Frank Sinatra. We dare you to listen.
Random Row Books, 315 West Main St., Saturday June 8th, doors at 8pm, $7.
Cindy Sheehan June 25th TOUR DE PEACE
Charlottesville to Be a Stop on Coast-to-Coast Bike Ride for Peace Led by Cindy Sheehan
An open-to-the-public pot-luck dinner will be held at
6 pm, followed by remarks from Cindy at 7, at Random
Row Books in Charlottesville on June 25th.
Sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/events/170687569764624
WHAT: Gold Star Mother and “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan will lead a Tour de Peace bike ride across the United States from the grave of her son Casey in Vacaville, Calif., to Washington, D.C., following the mother road, historic Route 66 to Chicago, and other roads from there on to D.C. Bicyclers will join in for all or part of the tour, which will include public events organized by local groups along the way.
You can join Cindy biking from Culpeper down to Cville! Complete route:http://tourdepeace.org/the-route.html
WHEN: The tour began on April 4, 2013, nine years after Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq, and 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed in Memphis. It will conclude on July 3, 2013, with a ride from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House.
WHY: This August will mark 8 years since Cindy Sheehan began a widely reported protest at then-President George W. Bush’s “ranch” in Crawford, Texas, demanding to know what the “noble cause” was for which Bush claimed Americans were dying in Iraq. Neither Bush nor President Obama has yet offered a justification for a global war now in its 12th year. The Tour de Peace will carry with it these demands:
To end wars,
To end immunity for U.S. war crimes,
To end suppression of our civil rights,
To end the use of fossil fuels,
To end persecution of whistleblowers,
To end partisan apathy and inaction.
Thursday June 6th
Random Row Books 
