First Thursday Night Series

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First Thursday Night Series

BIG NEWS!!! The Museum of Art is proud to unveil a new performance series on the First Thursday of each month. Like the idea of open mic nights, but don't want to slog through hours of bad poetry and songwriting 101 to get to the good stuff? FIRST THURSDAYS cuts to the chase. Premiering Thursday, Feb. 3 at 7:30 pm, the Museum presents a monthly showcase featuring four carefully chosen students and/or student performing groups. Music, theater, dance, performance art... each night will be different. We do the work to bring you the finest in student performance, in a casual, coffee-house atmosphere in the Museum Apse. This month's featured performers are:

TALK TO US (this very popular interactive theater ensemble has written a new piece about the rewards and frustrations of looking at art. The piece features a collage of excerpts from the Museum's own "comment cards" filled out by patrons. Hmm... very funny.)

DICKS & JANES: This hugely popular a cappella group needs no introduction. Check out how they sound in the Museum's amazing acoustics.

BRAVE NEW WORKS: Flutist Emily Perryman, member of Brave New Works will perform Debussy's Syrinx and Varese's Density 21.5

THE FOURTH ACT: surprise guest!
Want to perform in an upcoming First Thursday? Call me, Whit Hill, at 647-2063.
Admission to FIRST THURSDAYS is free. There'll be coffee and treats for purchase. Come early and wander the galleries. We're open til nine every Thursday.

7:30 pm, Thursday,
February 3, 2000
Ann Arbor Art Museum
For more info all 800-896-7340 

For Directions to the Ann Arbor Art Museum Click here for a map. It is across from the Michigan Union on State Street 

Syrinx
Impressionism is a major style of French music, characterized primarily by soft, hazy, broadly defined harmonies, delicate nuances of timbre, and freedom of form and phrase structure. This style is personified by Claude Debussy, who was the key figure in the development of the truly modern flute literature. His orchestral Prélude à l^ÒAprès-midi d^Òune faune and Syrinx for solo flute foreshadowed the course of French music and flute music for many years to come. Debussy wrote Syrinx, the first 20th century unaccompanied flute solo, as incidental music to a play by Gabriel Mourey, which told the story of the mythical creature Pan. He dedicated the piece to Louis Fleury, who premiered it in 1913.

Syrinx is paired with the landmark Density 21.5, written by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. Composed in 1936 for the inauguration of George Barrère^Òs platinum flute, Varèse^Òs piece is judiciously titled21.5 is the exact density of platinum. Similarities abound between Density 21.5 and Syrinx and are probably more than coincidental, as Varèse was highly influenced by Debussy^Òs work. For example, both compositions are for unaccompanied flute solo, and both were dedicated to former students of Taffanel. More significantly, however are the thematic comparisons that can be made. Both Syrinx and Density 21.5 begin with a haunting motif that is immediately repeated and augmented. In Syrinx, Debussy then restates his motif a third time the octave lower, expanding it into sweeping slurs of notes that create elegant coloristic effects. Varèse, on the other hand, uses transposition to develop the third motivic statement in Density 21.5. Large leaps, extreme dynamics, and meticulous articulations characterize the cold, metallic nature of the piece and create a sharp contrast to the pastoral beauty of Syrinx. The two pieces come together again when their respective motifs are stated a final time, each just before the climax. While Syrinx ends with the sound of Pan^Òs flute fading into the distance, Density 21.5 crescendos to one last culmination, its final arpeggio resonating soundly as it is played into the sustained strings of the open piano. - notes by Emily Perryman

Syrinx Claude Debussy for flute Density 21.5 Edgard Varese for flute Emily Perryman, flute