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Friday, March 5, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Arts & Entertainment
Pianist graces KU stage
By JANET SCHMIDT
Misha Dichter is a world-
renowned pianist who plays
with remarkable skill and
sensitivity. He is also the
visiting artist-in-residence at
the Music Department of
Fine Arts and will perform in
concert at 8 tonight in the
University Theatre.
IN APRIL 1975, Dichler was appointed to the faculty of the School of Fine Arts as the artist-in-residence for spring
semester 1976. So far, he has conducted two master classes and given performances at KU, in addition to maintaining an active schedule of concert tours
DICHTER IS known internationally for his imaginative style as a pianist.
He was awarded the silver medal at the Third Tchikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1966 and was so popular that the Soviet Union has invited him three times to tour the country.
By CHUCK SACK
Script slightly flat in 'Sunshine Boys'
Reviewer
If Simon is simple, at least he's not repetitive. "The Sunshine Boys" deals with the vauduelle comedy team of Lewis and Clark. Willie Clark (Mathau) is unemployed and Al Lewis (George Burns) is spoken to each other since dissolving their partnership eleven years ago.
"The Sunshine Boy" may be the best script Neil Simon has written in the last five years. It is a bit weird to tell. Even his early hits like "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park" were superficial, but his recent work was surprisingly important in no impression on the memory.
Who can remember what three other Simon films and songs have in mind? In what four other have been acted by Richard Benjamin? For that matter, try to name three of the last four Neil Simon films.
THE PLOT revolves around the attempts of the Clark's agent-nephew Ben (Richard Benjamin) to reunite the pair for an ABC variety special on the history of comedy. Both men want the job, but neither wants to renew the 43-year-old act.
Such invitations are rare and have yet to be extended to an American artist.
In addition to his appearances in the Soviet Union, Dichler has performed with American orchestra and festival. He has also performed throughout Europe and in North America and South and Central America.
What sets this slightly apart
His engagements have included summer performances at Chicago's Ravinia Festival, Detroit's Meadow Brook Festival and the Aspen Festival.
from other Simon comedies is the cantankerous couple. Crusty old men, they are hard of both hearing and head. They irritate their relatives and the people around them as much as they irritate each other, and they wear on the viewer as well.
The first twenty minutes of the film are dominated by Clark, and Mattaah's portrayal makes Milla so irascible it is difficult to believe that she plays Matthew is simply a fine actor playing the role as it was written. Simon feels a great deal of affection for these aging clowns, but not enough of this role makes it way into the script.
It is George Burns's Lewis that makes the film bearable, and later, touching. In his first film since 1939, Burns cagely mellows the character enough to make Lewis acceptably This adjustment saves the film enough to make it entertaining.
"The SUNSHINE BOYS" isn't a dismal failure, but it's not properly diverting, either. Simon's light, frotty touch has gone slightly flat, and the experience evaporates when the audience applauds. Willie Clark's standard for judging his partner's jokes is: "If it were funny, I'd remember it." Take暖, Neil Simon.
HE HAS APPEARED at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York.
And he has performed with such well-known orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Dichter was born in Shanghai of Polish parents. At the age of two, he was brought to the United States, where he began studying the piano when he was six years old.
Dichter majored in English at the University of California at Los Angeles until he took a master class conducted by Mme. Rosina Lhevine. Heinerne became a concert pianist and enter the Jullard School of Music in New York.
DICHTER WILL conduct his third master class from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday in Swarthout Recital Hall.
Master classes are teaching sessions for students in the department of piano and are open to everyone.
Based on the opinions of some of those who have attended
Dichter's master classes, it seems that he has brought more to KU than just his skills as a pianist.
Piano student David Weir,
Richmond, Ky., junior, said
that Dichter's abilities as a
teacher were incredible.
"THIS IS HIS first official teaching position—be is only about 30 or 31—yet, you couldn't not taught before." Weir said.
Wehr said that Dichter's teaching methods were always clear and precise.
"He goes into a great deal of detail with everything he teaches," Wehr said. "He literally goes through a piece of music, but does the harmonic outline clear—making it all mean something."
"WITH DICHTER, there are always strong musical reasons for everything."
Wehr said that although Dichter considers himself an exponent of the Germanic, the French also draws from other areas.
"HIS PLAYING has a strong personality to it." Wehr said. You can tell right away that it is just like everyone else, but not like everyone else.
Dichter's style as a pianist is original and fresh, he said.
"He puts something individual into everything he plays."
Weir said that because he had known that Dichter would be on the faculty this year, he had transferred to KU from the University of Washington where he had been studying piano for the past two years.
"Dichter is certainly worth coming a long distance to study under," he said.
A piece of "Pieces"
Myra Colbert, Maideheadbers, Great Britain, sophomore, capts Kevin Kinkead, Mission junior, into making another attempt at being a world-class player.
"Pieces," an original play by J. R. McClure, graduate student. The play opened Wednesday at the William Ingle Theater.
Little is new in bits of 'Pieces'
By EVIE RAPPORT
by LIVIA AND CHAIN
Here we are again, back with our old friend, that trusty standby that tried-and-triumph at the firing line to communicate with his fellow man.
We've heard it before and we'll hear it again—it's a cliche now. People hurt each other, wound others deeply, because they don't really hear what's being said to them.
So, what else is new? In
Bands rock in blue collar, drag
Staff Writer
By CONRAD BIBENS
"Pieces," which opened Wednesday for a 10-night run in the Inge Memorial Theatre, not much.
About all that the rock groups Bad Company and Queen have in common is the British
This Week's Highlights
Theater
PIECES: An original play by J. L. McClure, Wichita graduate student, consisting of eight, thematically linked sketches. Directed by Rhonda Lawrence graduate student.
(8 tonight through March 12 in the Inge Theatre)
ROCK CHALK REVIVE; Five fraternity-sorority productions and a variety of in-between acts that exemplify the tenacity is the word—Reliving stories we have heard." Paul Revere's ride, the winter at Valley Forge and Captain America are among the stories
(7:30 tonight and tomorrow night in Hoch Auditorium)
Concerts
UNIVERSITY SYMPHONY ORCHETHEA SPRING CONCERT: Conducted by George Lawner, professor of orchestra, of which he works by Copland and Ger-shwin, in addition to "Concerto for Piano or Orchestra" by H. Leslie Adams, associate professor of music education. Professor of music education, professor of piano, will solo.
KANSAS WOODWIND QUINTET: Music of American composers, including works by John Boulton, Percival Perlischett, will be performed by the faculty quintet. Members are John Boulton, assistant professor of wind and percussion; Alan Hawkins, bushouse, associate professor of wind and percussion; on the horn; Alan Hawkins, assistant professor of wind and percussion; Lawrence Maxey, associate professor of wind and percussion; on the clarinet; and Robert Stanton, assistant professor of wind and percussion; on the oboe.
(3:30 p.m. Sunday in the University Theatre)
(8 p.m. Monday in Swarthout
Rental Hall)
at Wichita State University, formerly played with jazz vibist Gary Burton.
JERRY HAHN QUARTET:
Nationally known as a 'jazz
wizard' and a 'musician'
with drums, bass and keyboard.
Hahn, who is now on the faculty
(8:30 tonight and tomorrow night at Off-the-Wall Hall)
Recitals
MISHA DICHTER: An internationally acclaimed pianist, Dichter is Artist-in-Residence in the School of Fine Arts this will perform works by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Liszt.
Exhibits
DESIGN STUDENTS'
EXHIBIT: A variety of works by students in the department of design, selected by students and
(Monday through March 26 in the Kansas Union Gallery)
THE BOOB TUBE: A soap opera palpate so juvenile that it fails to keep abreast of the substandards of "The Groove
RAYMONT EASTWOOD: 31
landscape building by Eastwood,
member by J. L. Hobson;
ment of painting and sculpture
of landscaping; neatly
painted works depict
farmes, mountain scenes and
scaffolds in beautiful detail
Films
RECENT PAINTINGS BY
ROBERT BOBERT SUDLOW: Two professors of painting and architecture, who work oil and watercolor; dealing mainly with their reactions to nature and plant
SHERLOCK HOLMES'S SMARTER BROTHER: Gene Wilder, whose writing provided some of the saner moments of Mel Brooks's last two films, has a great wit and a gentle sort of old mysteries.
(Through March 27 at 7 E. 7th)
has stunning beauty, but it's the beauty of languald summer nights, when you watch stars move slowly in the vacuum of
Perhaps what's more troubling about these sketches is the tone that prevails through them—the attempt to make more of them than is there. And it's not the dialogue with it. The dialogue is often stiff and predictable, the situations more often fake than funny. One sketch, "Triangle," seems to ask the audience to sympathize with a man whose wife can't stand how he fell in love with a rock.
BARRY LYNDON: Stanley Kubrick's overlong moral pagam gama Ryan O'Neill manages his fortune and loses it. The film
What it actually does is show us a man and a woman in an apparently normal, everyday situation that is supposed to be perfectly affectionate far more meaningful than may be readily recognized.
END OF AUGUST AT HOTEL OZONE (Czechoslovakia) a female terminal director Jan Schmuth. The tale is set in the future after World War III, when eight women set out to find the last world.
ONE FLEE OVER THE CUECKOO'S REST:
Jack Nielsen's best: Jack Nielsen's performance charges Milos Forman's brilliant reworking of Kesey's material. Christopher Hooke's in the fine acting ensemble of inmates in the ice grasp of Louise Fletcher's Nurse Rat-
SWING TIME: One of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers band, the iconic Stevens. The musical numbers include: "The Way You Look Tonight"; "Bojangles of Harlem"; "Never Gonna Be
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE: Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tournure team up again to make this film. You will see the various elements of the film are packed in on top of each other too haphazardy, the psychological nature of the horror is more effective than it was made during the same period.
THE SILENCE? One of ingmar Bergman's bleakest films, so chilling that critics love it. It has the ingraming of the vision is. Denounced as "sick" and acclaimed as "fantastic," it is a harrowing film to see.
ALL THE KING'S MEN-
Robert Penn Warren's brilliant
novel of a Southern demagogue
through the experience of
handling by director Robert
Rosen in this 1949 film,
Broderick Crawford and
Katharine Hepburn with
Oscars for their super
performances.
Bad Company plays the part of the blue collar, street-wise punklook for kicks. Its vocalist is well-executed, Queen tries for the glitter and rouge image first personified by David Bowle, with music that depends heavily on his found in a recording studio.
MAGNUM FORCE- A wretched sequel to "Dirty Harry," starring Clint Eastwood, clips Kip Niven has a minor role.
nationality and talent. Their styles are nearly opposite.
Check ads for theater and films.
Bad Company got together during the fall of 1973, following the breakup of Free, a blues vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirk. They joined with former Mott the Hopleg guitarist Mick Ralphs, bassist Russ Crimson and bassist Boz Burrell.
THE GROUP'S first two albums, "Bad Company" and "Straight Shooter", each sold more than one million copies in the U.S., bringing many critics to call them a "super group" for the 1970s.
"Run With the Pack," Bad Company's third album, is very good but not as excellent as its peers. The songs like "sweet Lil' Sister" songs like "sweet Lil' Sister"
and "Honey Child" is that they sound exactly like Bad Company's first hit singles, "Can't Get Enough", "Movin' On."
The group shines on slower numbers, such as "Simple Silver," "Silver," "Blue and Gold." Rodgers, a singer who grunts gruffly蓝 or crone well, balances equally well, takes control.
This is a heavy burden to put on a comic scene—too heavy a burden, in fact, for most of the characters. Most of the scenes are contrived and obvious—the worst offender being “Rendezvous,” in which warm-hearted and worldly young woman is tricked into going to bed with a man who beats her is a virgin. Is that cute?
QUEEN'S FIRST album,
"Queen," was a heavy metal gem that came out in 1973. Guitarist Brian May got off riffs as good as anything Jimmy Page had ever done. But the next two albums, "Queen II"
and "Queen III," a little of the group's original sound by adding emphasis to the vocals.
The best song here is the title track, a jaunty rocker with Rodger's honky-tonk piano adding string accompaniment and All through the album, Ralph's guitar work dominates.
Lead singer Freddie Mercury has a tenor that would do credit to a frantic Dorsis Day. He can sing as well as he can his voice for anything more
ITS DIFFICULT to determine just what is missing in these sketches, what makes them fail. Maybe they're not quite zany enough, or abrasion enough, but they truly comic. And too often we are given a sudden twist at the end of a sketch that's supposed to reveal the hidden, human truth behind the jokes, but only whisms us on the head with a heavy-handed "meaning."
"A Night at the Opera," Queen's fourth album, is a better blend of guitar and voice. The example is the group's hissy-fit rap," Rhapsody." Starting with a melancholy Meryl singing and playing piano, the song suddenly becomes a hilarious operatic spoof that violently shifts into a rousing heavy chorus. It ends with Mercury repeating the opening theme.
than a parody of the whole glitter style.
In two other parodies,
"Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon"
and "Seaside Rendezvous"
Mercury sounds like Ruby Vallee singing through a megaphone.
THEN THERE'S "Unnatural Dealings," in which an aggressively pedantic young woman succeeds to the aggressively amorous stranger who enters a park bench. How clever.
THE BEST SONG is "38" written and sung by May. A sad song to remember the British volunteers of World War II, "38" sounds more like a song done by Peter. Paul and than an English glitter groun.
Queen, the subject of a recent Time magazine story, seems destined for stardom. They should be, considering that their manager is John Reid, the manager of Elton John.
In two other sketches we see a different approach, one that seems to be absurdist in intention but ends up being simply mystifying. In "Outing," and "Corn Flakes," we're given two married couples who turn into dramatic revelations of murder. But just as suddenly, all such talk is dropped and we're back in the midst of the dull familiarity of martial haggling.
Given the situations of the script, the actors and Rhonda Blair, the director, do well for themselves. Blair's blocking takes good advantage of the levels and areas of Bruce Rogers' set. Jeanne Averill, Tim Connors, Béleen Leardan and Jodie Sweetz give the strongest performances, animated with a vitality and sense of timing that brightens their scenes.
BUT THEY'RE working with essentially overdone material and don't want it to be more than it is, that can't carry the burdens it imposes on itself and that tries too hard to move it in a firm grasp of the obvious.
Diversity marks local art show
BY JEAN BLACKMORE
Sponsored by the Lawrence Art Guild and the Lawrence Arts Center, the exhibition Sushi with an impressive collection of 30 works created solely by Douglas County artists.
A visually pleasing combination of mature, disciplined talent and local color mark the Second Annual Painting Workshop until March 27 at the Lawrence Arts Center, 9th and Vermont.
The show features paintings by Lawrence professional and amateur artists, and University of Kansas faculty and students. Encompassed in their work is a wide variety of themes and oils, watercolors and acrylics to collage and mixed media
It must have been difficult for juror Charles Sanderson, president of the Kansas Watercolor Society, to choose two $100 award winners from the many qualified entries.
EQUALLY DIFFICULT is the viewer's task of agreeing with the decisions Sanderson finally reached.
A hexagonal oil by Kathe Koch, 356 Lawrence Ave., is the better of the two award winners. "Flowers" is a muted still life in dust; moody tones made up of the painting's unusual shape.
A bearded man, obviously enchanted with the suspicious green vegetation he is plunging through, highlights the other winner, "Kansas," an acrylic by Richard Seaman, Lawrence sophomore. This painting seems to some of the members of that class to be disciplined effort so apparent in most of the show.
The highest quality of theme and technique is found in several of the media categories of the remaining 28 works.
BEAUTIFULLY blended green and brown earth tones heighten the realism of the oil, minerals, lichen, and professional Paul Penny, 638 Ohio. This landscape, probably the best in the show, is punctuated in its traditional charge of natural splashing waterfall
Perhaps the prettiest of the oil paintings is "North Sun" by Lori Malott, Route 4.
One of several portraits in the exhibition is "John Brown," an emotional study of the infamous figure familiar to many Kansasans. Charles Oldfather, Pontius, Route 3, it captures excellent detail and realism. Charles Oldfather, emeritus professor of law, posed as Brown for the artist, and adda her familiarity to the work.
Well-organized and clean-cut
"Early Spring Greening I" is a delightful acrylic by one of last year's award winners, professional Colette S Bangert. Bangert, 729 Illinois, sends swirling paint colors across the room. Bangert maintains an airiness uncommon to such a style.
ULTRAREALISM describes an interesting acrylic still life by Tom Gulfoff, Overland Park senior, called "Fruit of the Earth," a sound of flowing fluff sky, each piece of fruit looks very edible.
describe the strongest geometric of the show, an acrylic by Edgar Heap of Birds, Wichita senior.
Emerging softly and tastefully from the canvas of Teresa Rasing, 1801 Missouri, a nude made almost indiscriminate by the artist's heavy use of white. Possibly the best example of this technique, it epitomizes the competence obvious in so many of the works.
IN WATERCOLOR, "Sunset," by Martin Cheng, instructor of mathematics, is the best work. Cheng effectively paints the color and mood of a sunset over a coastal scene.
Of all the paintings in the show, however, one stands out as the best of the 30 creations.
A Dwight Burnham, associate professor of painting and sculpture, uses mixed media for his elegant "Winter Bouquet," a staining white-framed, white-hued paper of a dry air motif.
The exhibition's only disappointment is its inclusion of several Bicentennial pieces. Although these aren't artistically inadequate, the collection added theme detracts from the show.
This is a minor fault, however, in an exhibition which the artist will be presenting at its art center may be justifiable. Well worth the time it takes to see it, the show is an enlightening experience. You continue in the coming years.
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