Professional ballet dancer Christopher Kaiser went through years of Boy Scouts before realizing his passion for dance. It was only natural that the maturation story followed in “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” resonated with and affirmed Kaiser’s personal journey. On Saturday, the Alberta Ballet from Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta will perform “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” under the artistic […]
Author Archives: Shreya Aiyar
Second Take: Beyoncé’s recent ‘7/11,’ ‘Ring Off’ signal thematic shifts
Followers of Queen Bey everywhere, rejoice: There are two new tracks in town. On Friday, Beyoncé spontaneously dropped a music video for dance anthem “7/11” and the full track for “Ring Off” after short clips of both had leaked online. With these two releases, however, the pop superstar seems to be changing direction after her […]
GuitAria to pluck heartstrings at Fowler Out Loud concert
Huddled in a corner of Schoenberg Hall’s main lobby, UCLA professor Peter Yates and student Alexandra Grabarchuk sit together, discussing a piece of music in low tones. With a fluid movement, Yates lifts a guitar to his knee and plucks a few strings, sending a vibrant chord through the hall. Yates then begins to play […]
Donald Neuen retires after 50 years of collegiate conducting
About 60 years ago, a church choir asked second-year Bluffton University student Donald Neuen to step in as conductor, a request that the undergraduate accepted hesitantly. But when he stood in front of the church choir, any uncertainty that Neuen had about his future – whether he should be a professional baseball player or a […]
Album Review: ‘Ghost Stories’
“Ghost Stories”ColdplayParlophone Records4.5 paws It’s obvious that actress Gwyneth Paltrow broke Coldplay frontman Chris Martin’s heart after the two announced their divorce in March, because “Ghost Stories,” the British quartet’s sixth studio album, is a more sophisticated version of the type of angst and misery found in a preteen boy’s diary. Not that all of […]
Spring Sing Profile: Alex Liu and Eric Jung
The first time Alex Liu and Eric Jung met was during a desperate scramble to fill empty spaces in a production roster. As a second-year student, Liu realized his fraternity’s 2011 Spring Sing production was lacking musicians and reached out to Jung, then a first-year, through recommendations by friends and fraternity brothers. Three Spring Sings […]
UCLA brings World Voice Day to campus
A one-on-one singing lesson takes place on Bruin Walk, but instead of a piano or a conductor’s baton, artificial larynges and high-resolution images of vocal cords lay close at hand. Rather than being a demonstration on the anatomy of the human throat, this unconventional vocal clinic celebrates and teaches something almost everybody has in common: […]