Arts & Culture
Vocal Presence on Campus
If there's one phrase that resonates with just about every UW-Madison graduate, it's “State Street.” Now, two campus groups are hoping those words will resonate literally as well as figuratively. State Street is the title of a joint recording from the campus's premier a cappella ensembles, the all-male MadHatters and the all-female Tangled Up in Blue (TUIB).
State Street is a two-disc set that includes not only a CD with ten stereo tracks, but also a DVD with audio and video formats for 5.1 surround sound mixes. The 5.1 configuration gives sound from five full-range channels — plus a sixth channel, the .1 channel, for low-frequency effects — making listeners hear songs as if they were standing in the middle of the group.
“In 2002, when the CD was produced,” says Chris Yahng x'02, one of the MadHatters' founders, “this was the first time 5.1 had been used for an a cappella album. State Street even made the last round before the final five selections for the 2002 Grammy Awards in the ‘best engineered nonclassical album' category.”
The accomplishment is all the more impressive because the group is less than six years old. “The CD was recorded over a period of two and a half years in Madison, Chicago, and Los Angeles,” says Yahng, who now owns a film production company in New York. “The MadHatters got the opportunity to work with the best professionals in the music business. They received coaching from people who work with Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand. It was like being in charge of our very own, Madison American Idol.”
State Street is a two-disc set that includes not only a CD with ten stereo tracks, but also a DVD with audio and video formats for 5.1 surround sound mixes. The 5.1 configuration gives sound from five full-range channels — plus a sixth channel, the .1 channel, for low-frequency effects — making listeners hear songs as if they were standing in the middle of the group.
“In 2002, when the CD was produced,” says Chris Yahng x'02, one of the MadHatters' founders, “this was the first time 5.1 had been used for an a cappella album. State Street even made the last round before the final five selections for the 2002 Grammy Awards in the ‘best engineered nonclassical album' category.”
The accomplishment is all the more impressive because the group is less than six years old. “The CD was recorded over a period of two and a half years in Madison, Chicago, and Los Angeles,” says Yahng, who now owns a film production company in New York. “The MadHatters got the opportunity to work with the best professionals in the music business. They received coaching from people who work with Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand. It was like being in charge of our very own, Madison American Idol.”
Yahng, a San Francisco native, says he wanted to form MadHatters in part to reveal a different side of Wisconsin — to showcase the university's musical strengths and prove that the UW could match up with Ivy League schools, which have a long tradition of a cappella singing. The group has performed at more than a dozen collegiate venues, as well as at Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle ‘67's inauguration, at a Milwaukee Brewers game, and on The Caroline Rhea Show in New York.
Since the CD's release, says business manager Tyler Knowles x'06, the seventeen-member group is experiencing “some fame and great support from the community.” CD sales have topped four thousand, and his group's priority this year is “giving back” by doing more charity events.
“When I first heard the MadHatters in 2002, I could not stop smiling. I got goose bumps,” says Knowles. “Now that I'm a part of the group, it remains the same. Our music makes people happy, and when we show up and bust out into a tune, that's worth something to someone.”
Since the CD's release, says business manager Tyler Knowles x'06, the seventeen-member group is experiencing “some fame and great support from the community.” CD sales have topped four thousand, and his group's priority this year is “giving back” by doing more charity events.
“When I first heard the MadHatters in 2002, I could not stop smiling. I got goose bumps,” says Knowles. “Now that I'm a part of the group, it remains the same. Our music makes people happy, and when we show up and bust out into a tune, that's worth something to someone.”
Five of the ten songs on the CD are performed by Tangled Up in Blue, the MadHatters' seventeen-member sister group. Senior Laura Kruschke, TUIB director, says in the almost five years the group has been around, it's been a “wild ride.” In the past two years, TUIB has played three sold-out concerts at the 1,800-seat Orpheum Theatre in conjunction with the Madhatters, State Street has received national recognition, and their song “Breathless” was featured on the 2002 CD Best of College A Cappella. MadHatters also had a track on the CD, titled “I Was Brought to My Senses,” marking the first time that the annual collegiate best-of album had selected two tracks off of one album.
The popularity of unaccompanied singing seems to be growing on campus. Rounding out the UW's a cappella groups is Redefined, a co-ed ensemble that made its debut performance in February 2002 at Mills Hall. The sixteen-member group would like to increase its performance schedule in the near future. Ambitions, it seems, are running high all around.
“We hope to record our own CD at the end of April 2004,” says Kruschke. “It's really an exciting time for a cappella on campus.”
— Candice Gaukel Andrews ‘77
The popularity of unaccompanied singing seems to be growing on campus. Rounding out the UW's a cappella groups is Redefined, a co-ed ensemble that made its debut performance in February 2002 at Mills Hall. The sixteen-member group would like to increase its performance schedule in the near future. Ambitions, it seems, are running high all around.
“We hope to record our own CD at the end of April 2004,” says Kruschke. “It's really an exciting time for a cappella on campus.”
— Candice Gaukel Andrews ‘77
Voice of Experience
Unlike Professor Henry Higgins, the famous linguist created by George Bernard Shaw in the play Pygmalion, Susan Sweeney ‘70 is not able to determine a person's home, birthplace, family origin, and income simply by hearing him or her speak a few words. Nevertheless, she's still awfully good with a dialect. According to theater department chair Linda Essig, Sweeney, who joined UW-Madison's faculty this fall, is one of the nation's leading voice, text, and dialect coaches.
Sweeney is teaching undergraduate and graduate acting courses, but she's also serving as University Theatre's voice and text coach. In this role, she aids UW actors and acting students as they attempt to master their roles. “There are two facets to this kind of work,” she says. “There's vocal production, so that an actor's delivery is dynamic and colorful, and then there's the language — its articulatory demands and also its poetic demands.”
Sweeney comes to the UW from the Professional Theatre Training Program, based currently at the University of Delaware. But she's no stranger to the Madison area. For many summers, she's served as a coach for the American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, a company that performs classical drama such as the works of Shakespeare in an outdoor amphitheater.
Sweeney is teaching undergraduate and graduate acting courses, but she's also serving as University Theatre's voice and text coach. In this role, she aids UW actors and acting students as they attempt to master their roles. “There are two facets to this kind of work,” she says. “There's vocal production, so that an actor's delivery is dynamic and colorful, and then there's the language — its articulatory demands and also its poetic demands.”
Sweeney comes to the UW from the Professional Theatre Training Program, based currently at the University of Delaware. But she's no stranger to the Madison area. For many summers, she's served as a coach for the American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, a company that performs classical drama such as the works of Shakespeare in an outdoor amphitheater.
“If I have a specialty, it's Shakespeare,” says Sweeney. “It's my passion, and he's been my teacher.” During the summer of 2003, she helped coach actors for productions of Hamlet and Two Gentlemen of Verona. She also lent her dialect skills to a production of Pygmalion.
“I can teach just about any accent or dialect,” she says. “The system I use is phonetically based, so for any particular dialect, I note its lilt, rhythm, and phonetics. With the right notation and a little practice, a student can pretty much do anything. That's the wonder of an actor.”
— John Allen
“I can teach just about any accent or dialect,” she says. “The system I use is phonetically based, so for any particular dialect, I note its lilt, rhythm, and phonetics. With the right notation and a little practice, a student can pretty much do anything. That's the wonder of an actor.”
— John Allen
Drama Unfolding
One of Susan Sweeney's first coaching jobs at the UW has been training members of the cast of Les Blancs, which University Theatre will be performing until November 23.
The opening of Les Blancs, the last play written by Lorraine Hansberry x'52, coincided with a symposium on the work of female African-American playwrights. The symposium, entitled Unfolding Plays by African American Women, gave students and faculty a chance to share their analyses of the work of such authors as Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and to hear from Tim Bond, the Lorraine Hansberry visiting professor and director of Les Blancs.
— Staff
The opening of Les Blancs, the last play written by Lorraine Hansberry x'52, coincided with a symposium on the work of female African-American playwrights. The symposium, entitled Unfolding Plays by African American Women, gave students and faculty a chance to share their analyses of the work of such authors as Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and to hear from Tim Bond, the Lorraine Hansberry visiting professor and director of Les Blancs.
— Staff
Collections - Got the Drift?
Everybody says that no two snowflakes are alike, but has anyone ever proved it? Actually, Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley tried. The Vermont cloud physicist developed a system for taking photomicrographs — pictures of very tiny things. He used it to make slides of thousands of snow and ice crystals from 1885 until his death in 1931. Some 1,183 of his slides are now available for viewing online, thanks to the Schwerdtfeger Library at UW-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center.
Now, it's natural to ask: why is Vermont snow on display on a Wisconsin Web site? Don't we have enough native ice crystals? According to Schwerdtfeger librarian Jean Phillips, Bentley was adamant that his pioneering work belonged to the world, not to him or Vermont, so he made his pictures available to as many scientists as possible. Around 1900, a collection of the slides found its way to a UW physics professor — Professor Benjamin Snow, naturally. Snow (the professor) used them in a popular lecture about snow (the weather phenomenon). After his retirement, the slides drifted into the possession of the meteorology department. In 2002, the Schwerdtfeger decided to follow Bentley's spirit. With the encouragement of Phillips, the library digitized the images and put them online, so that anyone, anywhere, can see snow — one flake at a time. Find the collection at http://mail.ssec.wisc.edu/snow/.
— J.A.
Now, it's natural to ask: why is Vermont snow on display on a Wisconsin Web site? Don't we have enough native ice crystals? According to Schwerdtfeger librarian Jean Phillips, Bentley was adamant that his pioneering work belonged to the world, not to him or Vermont, so he made his pictures available to as many scientists as possible. Around 1900, a collection of the slides found its way to a UW physics professor — Professor Benjamin Snow, naturally. Snow (the professor) used them in a popular lecture about snow (the weather phenomenon). After his retirement, the slides drifted into the possession of the meteorology department. In 2002, the Schwerdtfeger decided to follow Bentley's spirit. With the encouragement of Phillips, the library digitized the images and put them online, so that anyone, anywhere, can see snow — one flake at a time. Find the collection at http://mail.ssec.wisc.edu/snow/.
— J.A.
Bach to the Future
Three centuries ago, Johann Sebastian Bach created masterpieces of musical genius using technology no more advanced than a quill pen. Yet, as three UW-Madison undergraduates have set out to prove, the composer may have been totally PC-compatible.
Jerry Hui, Eugene Chan, and Ryan Wong have spent nearly a year designing computer programs that they believe can learn, and eventually even imitate, Bach's music. Begun as a class assignment, the project has turned into an exploration of the power of computers and the very nature of creativity.
“If we could be successful in synthesizing music that can fake some people into thinking that it's Bach, that would show that certain styles of music can be explained by math,” says Hui, a dual major in computer science and music composition who has written music since high school. “We might be able to understand more about the creative process behind music.”
The system uses statistical probability to create a master list of Bach's go-to devices: how often he returns to a theme, inverts it, or transposes it a few notes. Within a year, the students hope to feed in enough data so that the computer can churn out compositions that mirror Bach's tendencies — music that Hui expects to sound “like Bach on a bad day.”
Jerry Hui, Eugene Chan, and Ryan Wong have spent nearly a year designing computer programs that they believe can learn, and eventually even imitate, Bach's music. Begun as a class assignment, the project has turned into an exploration of the power of computers and the very nature of creativity.
“If we could be successful in synthesizing music that can fake some people into thinking that it's Bach, that would show that certain styles of music can be explained by math,” says Hui, a dual major in computer science and music composition who has written music since high school. “We might be able to understand more about the creative process behind music.”
The system uses statistical probability to create a master list of Bach's go-to devices: how often he returns to a theme, inverts it, or transposes it a few notes. Within a year, the students hope to feed in enough data so that the computer can churn out compositions that mirror Bach's tendencies — music that Hui expects to sound “like Bach on a bad day.”
Bach's use of formalized themes and structures has made him the grand nerd of composers, a man studied as much for the inherent logic behind his music as its creative grace. And this isn't the first attempt to use artificial intelligence to replicate his work. A few researchers have tried to get computers to fill a gap in Bach's final, unfinished fugue, but no one has yielded anything that doesn't stick out as decidedly un-Bach.
Hui, Chan, and Wong don't expect to solve that problem. The real value of their project may be instructional, both by creating and deploying a tool to break down and understand elements of a composer's style. Just building the foundation of their system was enlightening — they had to teach their programs what notes were, and how notes combined into melodies and harmonies, and it wasn't just the computer picking up new things.
“I didn't know a lot about music when we started,” says Wong, a computer engineer. “But I've developed more and more interest in it.”
— Michael Penn
Hui, Chan, and Wong don't expect to solve that problem. The real value of their project may be instructional, both by creating and deploying a tool to break down and understand elements of a composer's style. Just building the foundation of their system was enlightening — they had to teach their programs what notes were, and how notes combined into melodies and harmonies, and it wasn't just the computer picking up new things.
“I didn't know a lot about music when we started,” says Wong, a computer engineer. “But I've developed more and more interest in it.”
— Michael Penn
Artifacts
Classic literature gets a new look in the work of Tom Pomplun ‘77. His book series, Graphic Classics, takes short stories and poems by Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jack London and gives them comic-book style illustration from artists such as Gahan Wilson and Shary Flenniken. So far, Pomplun has produced eight volumes in his series, and the books are available at www.graphicclassics.com.
The UW-Madison dance program will wrap up its 2003 concert schedule with three days of faculty performances at Lathrop Hall, November 20–22. Guest artists Sara Pearson and Patrick Widrig will join faculty members such as Li Chiao-Ping, whom the Anchorage Daily News calls a “one-woman movement theater revolution.”
Margot Peters ‘61, MA'65, PhD'69 aims to capture the magic of one of the most famous acting couples of the twentieth century in her eighth book, Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne: A Biography, published by Knopf this fall. Publishers Weekly calls the book “a potent, provocative journey” full of “breezy humor, along with darker insights into complex personalities.”
The UW-Madison dance program will wrap up its 2003 concert schedule with three days of faculty performances at Lathrop Hall, November 20–22. Guest artists Sara Pearson and Patrick Widrig will join faculty members such as Li Chiao-Ping, whom the Anchorage Daily News calls a “one-woman movement theater revolution.”
Margot Peters ‘61, MA'65, PhD'69 aims to capture the magic of one of the most famous acting couples of the twentieth century in her eighth book, Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne: A Biography, published by Knopf this fall. Publishers Weekly calls the book “a potent, provocative journey” full of “breezy humor, along with darker insights into complex personalities.”
