Cheik Lo and his group are absolute rockstars! Their music was entertaining, lively, and wonderful to experience. The percussive instruments used combined with a stellar saxophone player created a unique sound, and the liveliness and excitement of the performers really led to an enjoyable night. This was an interesting choice for a UMS concert, as it toyed the line between proper concert and dance concert. I felt uncomfortable watching the people in front jump up, dance, and put dollar bills in the mouth a performer, but it still seemed as though this easiness was encouraged by the group. An interesting and fun night!

The third installment of the San Francisco Symphony’s Maverick works was wonderfully delicate yet exciting at the same time. It definitely fit the notion of a concert more, without all the excitement and extreme staging of Cage’s songbook the previous night. I particularly enjoyed the Concord Symphony; it really spoke to the performers’ ability to create simplicity, excitement, relaxation, and expression all in one piece. The Ruggles piece was particularly dark and gloomy, and likewise the Feldman piece kept me uneasy yet felt lighter. This was a truly Maverick performance by the SFS, and a great pick by UMS.

This was a very nice concert, and a definite risk for UMS compared to their normal repertoire! It was a very enjoyable time, and definitely different. The Cage Songbook performance was a delightful mashup of weird and expressive, and was filled with expressive moments and wonderful weirdness. The set was fantastically designed and showed the marvelous skill and adaptiveness of the San Francisco Symphony. Great job!

The Random Dance performance of FAR was amazing! The physical and mental skill required by the dancers was absolutely amazing, I’m sure the performance was exhausting! The movements and choreography were absolutely creepy and alien-like, but in a good way! I also enjoyed the lighting and backdrop, and watching the choreography interpret the changing lights was exciting. The music accompanying the performance felt random and eerie, and I think added nicely to the overall show. I left feeling like I had just seen aliens invade from a “FAR” away land, with intense movements and coordinated lighting. Connecting these movements as human is a challenging idea that pushes us to think differently about our everyday motions. A fantastic performance!

The Renaissance music performed by the Tallis Scholars is not a genre of music I typically listen to or focus on. That being said, I found myself quite engaged and entertained hearing it performed beautifully by the Tallis Scholars. The church setting for the performance instead of an auditorium on campus was a great choice; it was nice to draw a connection between the music and its content. The performance was very well done by the Tallis Scholars, and the church filled with sound quite majestically. I enjoyed noting moments of expression and word painting in the renegades’ works and thoroughly enjoyed my time at the concert!

We had been building up this opera for many days in my Mavericks and Renegades class, and I was very excited to finally complete my picture of “Einstein on the Beach”. The show was much, much more than I could have imagined. I was especially struck by the ability of the performers and sets to move slowly, yet still make changes that I did not notice. This happened frequently to me during the first Act, although I may have gotten more accustomed to watching afterwards. I found myself focusing on a few set of performers moving, then noticing a clock that had suddenly appeared from the ceiling, or a paper airplane that seemed to appear from nowhere. Wilson’s ability to disguise such profound movements really peaked my interest. I also found it particularly satisfying to notice (or create myself) allusions to my view of Einstein. In particular, the final bed scene in which the beam of light moved like the hand of a clock stirred my thoughts. It brought of ideas of Einstein’s “Light Clock”, and when the beam shrunk at the end, I couldn’t help thinking about time dilation and length contraction.

Overall, the opera was very enjoyable and a unique experience. Bravo to all of the performers on their wonderful and arduous task!! It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I am glad it could happen here in Ann Arbor.