Category: Entertainment

By Eric Tifft
Managing Editor

Last Sunday, Ohio Wesleyan faculty, students and the Delaware community were exposed to a unique form of music as part of the Performing Arts Series at Jemison Auditorium.

Peter Brötzmann and Jason Adasiewicz performed in a free jazz ensemble that left many concert goers a little perplexed at what they heard.
What appears to be a cacophony on the surface, free jazz pushes the boundaries of music interpretation.

With little or no melodic structure, free jazz is a difficult genre to define said Richard Edwards, assistant professor of music.

“Free jazz offers a different perspective of music,” Edwards said. “It is challenging to the idea of music. It shows that music isn’t always beautiful, it’s about expressing ideas.”

“Free jazz is all about broadening your horizons.”

Adasiewicz, a native of Chicago, tested the limits of the vibraphone by using multiple mallets in each hand, violin bows and even his fists in his dynamic performance.

Adasiewicz said he has always been involved with the music scene in Chicago, playing drums at a very early age.

“Chicago is definitely my biggest muse,” Adasiewicz said. “It is an outlet to experiment with music. Every night of the week you can hear different musicians perform their ideas.”

Brötzmann, originally from Koln, Germany, has played free jazz saxophone and clarinet all over the world for the past 40 years.

Brötzmann said he grew up playing music, but always wanted to be a painter. His musical inspirations come from all facets of his life.

“Sometimes I am inspired by a cigar,” Brötzmann said. “Other times it is a walk in the woods, or good company.”

Brötzmann heard Adasiewicz perform in Chicago two years ago.
“I didn’t care for the band (Adasiewicz) played in, but I could tell that he was a really talented musician,” Brötzmann said. “I then asked (Adasiewicz) to join me and he jumped on board.”

The performance surprised many students at OWU, who went into the concert with different expectations of the show.

Sophomore Connor Stout said he was very pleased with the performance.

He said he enjoyed how Brötzmann and Adasiewicz set out to expand the minds of audiences to new ideas about music.

“You can’t really go into an improvisational event with any expectations,” Stout said.

“You have to pay attention to the sounds instead of the music,” he said.

There isn’t a melodic structure. It is an improvised conversation between the two instruments.”

Senior Zeke Brechtel said he was surprised at how the musicians pushed the instruments to their limits, trying to draw unique sounds that we may not have heard otherwise.

“It was definitely a novel experience,” Brechtel said. “It was an interesting exposure to a world of performance that I wasn’t aware of.”

Others were not as accepting to call the performance music.

Senior Bret Irvine said the concert was very bizarre and the music was not pleasing.

“It didn’t really broaden my understanding of music because what I heard I wouldn’t consider music at all,” Irvine said.

“I would have just called it sound but it did expose me to a new kind of art work.”

Senior Josh Decker said he finds it very necessary to be educated about different genres, eras and cultures of music.

However, he said he does not agree that the free jazz performance was music that contributes to the art.

“This experience has broadened my musical sense, but did not contribute to my musical appreciation of the art form,” Decker said.
Edwards said the performance was made possible by the Conrad Kent Lecture Fund.

He said they chose Adasiewicz and Brötzmann because there was interest among the central Ohio jazz community and Adasiewicz and Brötzmann were passing through the Columbus area during their North American tour.

Efforts to contact Kent were unsuccessful.

The next Performing Arts Series event is The Cody River Show on Saturday, Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. in the Chappelear Drama Center.

Beehive Books buzzed with literature on Thursday when students shared their works that will be added to this year’s Ohio Wesleyan Literary Magazine, the OWL.

Among the students participating in the readings at Beehive were senior Diane Bizzarro, junior Alex Crump, sophomore Gus Wood and Bryant Dill, ’11. A majority of the OWL staff was in attendance, along with OWU faculty members and interested students.

Senior Maggie Sullivan, co-editor of the OWL, said she was glad with how the event turned out and believed it provided a great introduction to the newest edition of the OWL.

“I was really happy with how the reading turned out and the work that we were able to highlight at the event,” she said. “I definitely felt that the works that were read really helped give a great overview into the other amazing works that awaited our audience and readers throughout the rest of the magazine.”

Senior Mary Slebodnik, co-editor of the OWL, said this year’s magazine is the best quality she has seen in the past three years she has served as editor.

“The quality of this year’s magazine reveals (the students’) effort and commitment,” she said.

“I think student magazines sometimes turn into coffee table books–students and parents only read the works by students they know personally, but this year’s OWL is different. These works are interesting and entertaining whether you know the author or not. It’s definitely something I’ll pick up a year from now and read for my own enjoyment.”

The 83rd edition of the OWL contains literary works of 13 students and artwork of three students.

The preface of the OWL describes its eclectic endeavor to “reflect the variety and uniqueness of the student voices on our campus” and to introduce the genre of literary journalism in the magazine for the first time.

Junior Chelsea Dipman contributed two of her paintings to the magazine, and said she is glad to see her hard work pay off both in the OWL and in events to come.

“My work this semester has focused largely on the perception of female beauty,” she said.

“I choose my friends as my subject matter because the snapshots of them are timeless in a way … that’s the beauty of painting, you can create something that might outlive you. I also have a show coming up this summer with three friends in Edgar called ‘Women by Women’ and we’re really excited about it.”

Slebodnik said new recruiting techniques might have influenced the improved quality of this year’s magazine.
“I think our campus has had good student writing all along, we just weren’t finding it,” she said. “Students don’t often respond to campus-wide calls for submissions. We still did campus-wide advertisements this year, but we also started personally inviting students who we knew, without a doubt, were good writers. Those personal invitations were really effective in convincing students to submit.”

Slebodnik also said the large staff helped a lot in planning the magazine layout and planning the event, but also made it more difficult to choose which literary works and artwork to publish.

“These works of art and literature are truly the best OWU has to offer … (the magazine) was definitely a labor of love,” she said.

Free copies of the OWL can be found in the library, the English department and the Hamilton-Williams Student Involvement Office.

Nicki Minaj is by no means a conventional rapper.

Being a woman in the rap industry is, on its own, an anomaly, and having enough success to perform at this year’s Grammy Awards with an elaborate stage worthy of Lady Gaga’s attention is even rarer.

But Minaj has done this—and so much more—in her young career.

Her debut “Pink Friday,” along with notable features on Young Money’s “Bed Rock,” Trey Songz’s “Bottoms Up” and Kanye West’s “Monster,” propelled her to commercial success in the past two years.

She returned earlier this month with her sophomore LP, “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.”

This follow-up does play like a sort of sequel to its predecessor, as its title suggests—the two are similar, but each stands firmly on its own.

The record starts out incredibly strong—the first six tracks are an onslaught of Minaj’s best rapping.

“Roman Holiday” reintroduces Roman Zolanski, Minaj’s depraved alter ego. First unearthed on “Friday,” Roman is angry, erratic and uninhibited—and perpetually repressed by his mother, Martha.

Minaj goes back and forth between the two, Martha imploring her son to take a “short vacation” in the choruses and Roman rebelling in each verse.

These multiple personalities are what make Minaj so original. In an industry where rappers with copious amounts of braggadocio and little personal depth are the norm, Minaj breaks new ground by revealing the complex layers of her psyche one by one.

It’s honest, and honesty among conceit is always refreshing.

Minaj’s peculiar voice has also become one of her trademarks. Her inflections, especially on “Holiday,” are odd and somewhat unsettling, but fit perfectly with the ethereal synths and dark tribal percussion.

“Roman Reloaded,” another early bright spot, is a quintessential display of Minaj’s rapping prowess. Her rhymes and flow are clever, consistent and unwavering—she goes three solid verses before a particularly excellent guest spot from Lil Wayne ends the track.

The record then takes a turn into some of the most danceable pop songs to date. The beats on “Pound the Alarm” and “Automatic” are so infectious it’s impossible not to move to them.

Minaj’s rapping isn’t nearly as prominent on these middle tracks, but it’s still there and just as strong as it was in the beginning.

The transition between these two contrasting sections of the record is remarkable. “Right By My Side” and “Sex In The Lounge” are a perfect middle ground between the intensity of the first six tracks and the upbeat pop sound of the next five.

Once “Marilyn Monroe” comes up, however, the record definitely hits its low point. That track and the three that follow are largely nondescript, and just aren’t as catching as those before them. The production is bland and cliché—it feels as if these songs have been made before, just with slight variations (and they probably have).

This sound doesn’t feel natural coming from Minaj in comparison with the rest of the album. “Marilyn Monroe” especially contradicts her personality—the pairing of an artist as unique as Minaj with lyrics comparing her to the trite image of Monroe just doesn’t seem right.

But following “Gun Shot,” the record picks right back up. The wonderfully odd production on “Stupid Hoe” is perfectly conducive to Minaj’s plethora of inflections and quick-witted rhymes.

“Roman Reloaded” is a lengthy album, but its great diversity is well worth its apparent prolixity. It shows Minaj is unwilling to settle on just one sound, and with how distinct she is, she shouldn’t have to.

House of Thought’s “Socrates Café” aims to get people on campus discussing a variety of topics.

Senior Emily Knobbe, the moderator of HoT, said the house project has been in existence for several years.

Junior Erinn Colmenares has taken on the project and organized Socrates Cafe this year, totaling a number of four Socrates Café sessions in the past two semesters.

Colmenares said she had been interested in the house project for some time.

“It just intrigued me before I was a member of HoT,” she said.

Junior Natasha Franczyk, a member of HoT, said she thinks Socrates Café has become an ongoing tradition for the house.

“It’s one of those house projects that gets picked up by someone else almost every year, which means that it has taken a serious stature within the house,” she said.

Socrates Café is formatted as a series of discussions, sometimes regarding a particular theme.

“Last semester, the house project invited students for a general discussion without a given topic. The aim was to get people talking about “whatever is on people’s minds,” Colmenares said.

According to Colmenares, the attendance for last semester’s Socrates Café was low.

“There wasn’t any structure so that turned people off,” she said. “That’s why I made such drastic changes for this semester.”

In the spring, Colmenares decided to get professors involved. Professor John Stone-Mediatore, part-time instructor of Humanities-Classics, led the first discussion of the semester: “Radiohead Sucks.”

Colmenares said the theme of the discussion was whether an objective judgment could be made regarding what is good and bad art.

“There weren’t many people, but it didn’t matter because the discussion was good,” she said.

The event was “lecture style,” Colmenares said. Stone brought a painting, various CD’s and a book of poetry as pieces of art to discuss.

Colmenares said the group seemed to come to the conclusion that in order for something to be art, it must have a “sense of originality,” and that it is difficult to be “objective over something so subjective.”

The second Socrates Café topic was intelligence—what it is and why we need it. Professor Sarah Bunnell, assistant professor of psychology, led the discussion.

Colmenares said this discussion took the form of a debate, with IQ testing as a central topic.

Sophomore Ethan Hovest, who is taking child psychology with Bunnell, was present at the discussion and argued for IQ testing.

“I had to defend IQ testing by bringing up arguments related to its convenience and practicality, its effectiveness at predicting success in later life and relation to grade performance,” he said.

Bunnell argued against IQ testing, claiming it to be a flawed system.

“A few of her arguments involved the idea that (IQ testing) does not allow for divergent thinking, a.k.a. creativity, nor does it properly represent minorities,” Hovest said.

“The debate turned into more of a discussion with the people who attended … The audience brought up great arguments, as most of them were not from the field of psychology.”

Socrates Café’s third discussion involved love, and whether it was possible and real.

Professor Sally Livingston, assistant professor of Humanities-Classics, led the conversation and invited her students to come as an extra credit option, which Colmenares said created a “pretty big turnout.”

Colmenares said that senior Charley Donnelly argued on the “positive” side for love, while Livingston argued from the perspective that love could not exist.

Knobbe said he thinks involving different professors with Socrates Café was a successful shift from previous years.

“Erinn really revamped it this year,” she said. “The ‘professor vs. student’ format makes it really exciting, and the discussions are even better because people have had time to prepare.”

“ The past two events were very well attended and the most fun I’ve had at a Socrates Café.”
Franczyk said Socrates Café offers the opportunity for students to challenge professors while supporting the mission of HoT.

“Our mission is, essentially, to promote critical thought on campus,” she said.

“I think that one of the best ways to promote critical thought is to engage people in that process.”

“So coming to a debate between a professor and a student, and then turning that event into a discussion is a great combination.”

“We also give students the chance to be the ones who debate the professor.”

Knobbe said he thinks one of the most beneficial aspects of Socrates Café is that it brings many different perspectives together.

“It is open to all students, so we always end up with a wide variety of areas of expertise,” she said.

“For example, a philosophy major will base opinions on a topic very differently than a psychology or biology major. This way we get to experience a lot of new ways of thinking.”

Colmenares said this event is for anyone on campus.

“You don’t have to be a philosophy major to be good at discussing things,” she said.

James Cameron’s first mega blockbuster hit “Titanic,” which tells the tale of two star-crossed lovers fighting class biases and the infamous sinking of the title ship, was recently re-released in 3D in theaters for a limited time.

While some may argue the re-release is just a bid for more money, especially considering the extra cost of 3D, the experience is worth it.

Some 3D movies are a mess of flashy in-your-face special effects that induce headaches instead of awe (see the 2010 remake of “Clash of the Titans”). But other movies use 3D technology to the best of its ability, adding depth and immediacy to the film.

Before delving into the specifics, a disclaimer: as “Titanic” has been out for 15 years, no details of the movie will be spared in fear of spoiling the ending.

“Titanic: 3D” is one of those films that does use 3D technology in its best form, adding real depth to scene after scene. The bow of the ship cuts through the Atlantic and into the theater. Jack and Rose walk through the screen and into the viewer’s immediate area, and in the famous scene of an older Rose dropping the sought-after “Heart of the Ocean” necklace into the water, it sinks directly into the audience’s eyes.

The scenes depicting the events of the capsizing of the great ship induce an increased heart rate as the water seems to literally rush into the eyes of the audience.

The back end of the ship, sticking in the air as passengers fall to their deaths, is full of depth.

When the ship itself splits in two, one smokestack crushes a minor character (Fabrizio), and the water and sparks seem to fly into the theater.

There are scenes of beauty that are enhanced by the 3D, as well.

As Jack and Rose run through the boiler room, Rose’s purple dress flows behind her in a cloud of smoke—a scene already wonderfully shot is made even more so through the added dimensions.

Overall, the addition of 3D brings characters into focus in a very real plane of existence, creating a more dynamic space in which they play out their story, and it also brings the audience further into the experience.

Also, the three and half hour film does go by a lot faster than it may have otherwise because of the way the 3D brings the audience into the action.

The most unfortunate part of the film has nothing to do with the 3D action; it has to do with the fact that it’s most remembered for the romance between poor, essentially homeless free-spirited Jack and rich, high society Rose.

While the Titanic doesn’t actually hit the iceberg that would be its downfall until two and half hours into the story, the horrific events of that night aren’t focused on as much as the ill-fated love between the two protagonists.

As the older Rose states at the end of her tale, 1500 people died in the water that night, as twenty lifeboats floated nearby with plenty of room.

Most of the people in the water were part of the lower class, while those in the boats had the benefit of having money and immediate access to the lifeboats.

“Titanic” is not only a love story, it’s a tragedy; not only does Jack die, leaving Rose to live a life without him, but over a thousand innocent people—children included—lost their lives when they didn’t have to, but did because of greed for money, fame and a big splash when the ship docked in New York.

This fact may have been lost in the 15 years since the film’s initial release, but the big screen, with the added help of 3D technology, brings the depressing reality of April 15, 1912, into sharp focus.

It must be said that seeing Titanic on the big screen itself probably brings a lot to the experience as well.

The massive ship is most likely impressive stretched across a 60-foot screen whether it’s in 3D or not.

The 2D version is in theaters as well, and it will no doubt be an improvement over the two-tape VHS version most people own and watch on their TV screens at home.

But if it’s in theaters in 3D, why forgo the extra dimension when it’s there and adds so much to the existing movie?