ENTERTAINMENT
University Daily Kansan, September 13, 1984
Page
Larry Weaver/KANSAN
Pianist Claude Frank reherses on the Steinway grand piano in benefit concert in that theater last night, and the proceeds will Crafton/Preyer Theatre in Murphy Hall. Frank gave a go to the KU Music Scholarship Fund.
Musician performs classical style
By SUSAN WORTMAN Entertainment Editor
That air of formality so typical of classical musicians — the one that comes with the black tuxedo and stark stage lighting — wasn't there this time. Maybe just a little, but it vanshed like the dying note of a song.
"That is because the music is so formal," said Claud Frank who is the artist in residence at the University of Kansas and a visiting artist. He will be at KU at least six more times before the end of the school year, performing and teaching.
He has intense brown eyes and a casual manner. He talks leaning back in his chair, smoking a cigarette. He smokes only one. His music may be formal, but the man isn't.
R KANK WAS BORN into a musical family in 1925. His mother was a semiprofessional singer and his father was a lawyer. From his
parents, and especially from his mother, he developed his love for music. His love began her love.
"My mother said that I was singing at nine months," he said. "But you know mothers. Take that for what it's worth."
Frank isn't quite sure why he liked the piano. Maybe, he said, it came from the fascination he had with the Steinway piano that stood in their living room in Nuremberg, Germany – off limits to him.
"It was beautiful," he said, "but I didn't get to really play it as a child. Most German schools have music classes."
HIS MOTHER let him start piano lessons when he was 6. After three or four weeks, most children kick all the way to the piano bench, begging for a ride. Rather than abogot, the piano even then
He was 12 in 1938, when everyone feared that every day would erupt into World War II. Frank fled from Germany to Paris, then to the United States.
"But I continued lessons through all the
rigamarole of immigration and moving," he said. When he arrived in the Unites States, Frank began studying the piano full-time.
"NOW, I PLAY some bad tennis. I play very badly, and I love to ski. I'm passionate about skiing. Even when I'm on tour, I find a free day to ski."
Even though he was a serious player from the beginning, Frank said he didn't miss out on any part of his childhood, except baseball. "In Europe, we don't have baseball so that was one thing I missed, but I did a lot of it, running bicycling, and I played football," he said.
that is how he keeps himself from having to play the piano instead of getting to create music
But still, he said; he struggles to keep the excitement in the everyday playing. "It is what you have to do and what you want to do," he said. "But the interest is constantly kindled. The work is so exciting, so creative so difficult. The music is so difficult that one never plays well enough."
Film shows complexities of author's life and works
By KAREN MASSMAN
Associate Entertainment Editor
"Burroughs." Showing Sept. 14-18 in the Spencer Museum Auditorium of the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art. A reception with author William S. Burroughs and director Howard Brookner will follow the Sept. 14 showing. Advance tickets for Sept. 14 are available in the Spencer Museum bookstore. Tickets may be purchased at the door for the other showings.
The critics have called William S. Burroughs a writer, poet and prophet. He has traveled the world and has done what most people only read about.
This weekend, Lawrence audiences will have an opportunity to see him from a different point of view — from that of the movie camera.
Howard Broinker, director of "Burroughs," has拼 together a portrait of Burroughs through photographs and excerpts from his books.
However, the film is not an analytical portrait of the life and works of a man. Brokker has managed to put the quiet, reserved man at ease so he can film this rare view of Burroughs' mannerisms and lifestyle.
HE GETS BURROUGHS to talk almost detached, as if he were telling a story about someone else. He talks about his romantic relationships with men and women, the accidental killing of his wife, his writing and his 15-year addiction to heroin and morphine. He talks about his books, including "Junkie," "Nova Express," "Naked Lunch," "The Ticket that Exploded" and "The Soft Machine" They are, for the most part, reflections of the attitudes, activities and people who have influenced his life.
The film opens with a cut from "Saturday Night Live" featuring actress Lauren Hutton reading excerpts from his works. It quickly moves to an interview with Burroughs.
As he walks through his parents' house in St. Louis, where he was born in 1914, he rememberes be afraid of everything. He shared a room with his brother. Mortimer, because he was afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep at night.
HE CARRIED HIS CHILDHOOD fears with him into his adult life and into his writing. He remembers trying opium for the first time, told it would make him have sweet dreams.
Burroughs' dry humor is captured not only when he reads excerpts from his novels, but also in his character acting. In one of the funniest clips, Burroughs plays a strange unethical doctor, Doctor Benway, a character that he often resurrects in other works and speeches he gives.
Burroughs once studied to be a doctor in Vienna after he graduated from Harvard University where he studied literature, linguistics and anthropology. But, because he was discontent with his future as a doctor, he decided to become a professional spy. It would, have been an ideal profession for someone with such a mysterious incination like Burroughs, but he was rejected by the OSS, the agency that later would evolve into the CIA. Burroughs attributed the rejection to the hatred of an acquaintance.
"Burroughs" leaves the viewer with great insight into the works and life of an interesting, yet very complex William S. Burroughs.
THE RELATIONSHIP between Burroughs and his wife, Joan, is recounted by Allen Ginsberg, a fellow writer and one of Burroughs' lovers. He remembers that Burrough's and his wife were very similar in attitudes and spirits.
At a party one night, Joan Burroughs persuaded her husband to perform their William Tell act, Ginsberg said. She placed a champagne glass on her head and Eurrourbis aimed his pistol. However, after a night of drinking, he missed the glass and shot Joan in the head.
it was after her death that Burroughs began to write seriously. Ginsberg said. Burroughs spent several years in Tangiers and wrote often to him. The letters were later published.
In 1951, he traveled to London to get help for his drug addiction. Howard Hunke, another author and the man who introduced Burroughs to drugs, describes Burroughs as one of the few heavy drug addicts who was able to recover.
MATTHEW VARIOUS CLIPS are dispersed throughout the 90-minute film, it never rambles. Brookner has assembled the material almost in chronological order. It is often humorous, often sad, and always precise.
"Burroughs" leaves the viewer with great insight into the works and life of an interesting, yet very complex William S. Burroughs.