University Daily Kansan
We Jnesday, Aug. 19, 1987
Arts / Entertainment
5
New director connects to cultures, composers
By BRIAN BARESCH
Jorge Perez-Gomez, new director of the University Symphony Orchestra, sees his job as more than just conducting students playing tunes. For him, music is the nonverbal way of connecting with other cultures and other ways of living, as well as with the lives of composers.
"I directed an orchestra for young professionals in Mexico City," he said. "It was composed of young graduates from all over the world — Hungary, France. My experience with this orchestra left a deep image of how musicians can reach from each others' experiences."
Perez-Gomez wants to bring this experience to the University of Kansas, so he is hoping eventually to set up exchange programs that would allow KU students to play in Europe and bring European music students here. One possibility he outlined would be for a KU group to be an orchestra-in-residence somewhere in Europe for a few summer months.
For now, however, Perez-Gomez is organizing the fall season and getting ready to encourage his students to love and understand
music as communication, feeling and expressiveness.
"I realized the possibilities of having an orchestra as your instrument," he said of his decision to become a conductor. "The art of conducting is a driving force."
And he is excited about being at KU.
"There is a tremendous love and a tremendous response and sincerity toward music," he said. "I'm happy to be in this position. There are great things that can be done. I have great hopes, and I think things will work out wonderfully."
Perez-Gomez was offered the job at the end of last year, while he was conductor-in-residence at the Tulsa, Okla. Philharmonic. He attended spring concerts in Lawrence and Wichita, and became as familiar as possible with the orchestra to smooth the transition from former director Zuohuang Chen, who returned after spring semester to his native China to conduct the Central Philharmonic in Beijing.
Robert Foster, director of bands, who was on the committee that selected Perez-Gomez, said the new director had done a good job preparing to take over.
Music is a vital way of communicating for Jorge Perez-Gomez, the new director of the University Symphony Orchestra. Perez-Gomez came to the University of Kansas after one year as the conductor-in-residence of the Tula Philharmonic.
"I don't think there has been a loss of momentum at all." Foster said. "He's a different person (from Chen), with a different style, different background, but no momentum is lost.
"We're looking to have the best orchestra years in the history of the University in the next several years.
"We had every reason to believe he'd be successful because he had been successful before," Foster said.
Perez-Gomez said that when he was in Italy seven years ago as a student of the late Franco Ferrera, he was struck by how his teacher instructed students to play by concentrating on the composer's feelings and the character of the work, as much as on the technical aspects. Ferrera emphasized the role musicians to play with mystery or excitement where appropriate, Perez-Gomez said.
This experience was central to Perez-Gomez's musical development, he said, and he intends to pass it along to his students at KU.
Music is wordless communication, telling a story, setting a mood or relating the life story of the composer, he said.
"The conductor has the very important job of interpreting what the composer meant. The composer is not writing in the abstract; he's writing in relation to something."
The conductor must work for the audience, he said.
"You can have an impact. You interact with the orchestra, and the audience leaves, and you contribute to their state of being," he said. "I hope we will continue to grow and have an impact on our audience."
The impact of instruments and the range of dynamics, from the softness of piano to the power of guitar, is an important factor in the listener. Perez Gomez said.
He used an example from a production planned for the orchestra's Oct. 4 concert — the overture to Carl von Weber's "Der Freischutz" — in which a dark, sinister horseman was the counterpart to the hero of the piece.
That kind of feeling, he said, sometimes is more pronounced in university orchestra than it is in larger professional companies because young musicians often pour more feeling and intensity into a piece of music than a professional who may have already played it 150 times.
Despite cuts, fall shows go on
Bv a Kansan reporter
Although budget cuts forced the University Theatre to close this summer, it is planning to offer a variety of entertaining plays this fall, said Ron Willis, chairman of the theater department.
"The fall schedule looks superb. It is intellectually and aesthetically intriguing stuff." Willis said.
This year, the theater will stage eight plays including a musical, an opera, a Shakespearean play and two children's plays.
Jack Wright, artistic director,
said, "I am real excited about the
whole season. The plays should appeal to students a lot."
The theater was a victim of last year's University budget cuts, which eliminated about half of all summer school classes.
"I was certainly disappointed," Wright said, "but nothing surprises me."
Willis said, "The cuts were done the only way they could be. It was open and above board. I don't feel illused by any of the people I dealt with."
Before the cuts, Willis said, three plays had been planned for the summer, but afterward, he and Wright and 25 students suddenly were looking for jobs.
"I spent time planning stuff for this year," Willis said. "Some students went elsewhere and participated elsewhere. Some went to K-State and others went to New York. Some took jobs and worked in town."
The plays that will be presented this year are "The Marriage of Bette and Boo," "Hamlet," "Getting Out," "Carousel," "The Code Breaker," "Monkey, Monkey," "The Fox," and "The Trojan Women."
Wright said, "I spent my time teaching, doing administrative work and getting ready for this year."
Dru Davidson, Johnson sophomore, browses through the collection of posters at Fields, 712 Massachusetts St. New and returning students are flocking to local stores to buy supplies for decorating their apartments and residence hall rooms.
Students banish boring walls
Staff writer
Bv IULIE McMAHON
Dull, boring, bare walls are facing KU students as they begin moving in this week.
To remedy this problem, students are buying posters and other wall hangings to liven up residence hall rooms and apartments. For many, this is a chance to show their originality and personality.
"I like some colorful posters. I like places and paintings, but not the regular hunk or car pictures or scantily clad people," Anne Jones, Shawne sophomore, said. She and her friend Tanya Reichenborn, Wichita sophomore, were poster shopping Sunday at The Palace, 8 W. Eighth St. They said they wanted to buy posters before they became scarce.
Posters are selling fast. Last week and this week, stores such as Pier 1 Imports, 738 Massachusetts St., have noticed a big jump in sales.
"It's been a killer, tons of people."
Chuck Coeus, alerk at L.I. I said.
The most popular posters are
Barbara Nesbitt, who also works at Pier 1, said movie stars were popular, too.
prints of paintings by artists such as Pierre Renoir, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. Geiger said.
Geiger said, "James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are the biggest."
But not all students want movie stars, cars or paintings on their walls. These people take a non-traditional route.
"Wal-Mart, garage sales and taking stuff other people threw away." That's how Dave McGhee, Manhattan junior, described his freshman decorating experience. He said he had also experimented with 45-speed records and matchbook covers on his walls.
This photograph by Aaron Siskind, titled "Salvador 170," depicts painted wooden boards photographed in 1984 in El Salvador. It is one of about 60 works included in a Siskind photography exhibition beginning Aug.23 in the White Gallery of the Spencer Museum of Art.
Some of the best decorating items are not found in obvious places. Museum gift shops have unique decorations, and flea markets have antique posters and other things. Specialty stores such as sports, gourmet and outdoor stores may have old posters to promote products that they sell. For instance, a sporting goods store
might sell basketball ball hoop posters picturing Michael Jordan, or a record store might sell posters of popular bands.
Another place to get wall hangings that not many people know about is through Student Union Activities, which rents pictures. Prices range from 75 cents to $7.50 for a semester. Most of the pictures are prints of paintings by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.
Decorations that show originality depict hobbies, musical preferences, favorite sports, ancestry, idols and other interests. It can be difficult to find a commercially made poster that shows a student's personality, so some students cut pictures out of magazines or photocopy a collage to fit their needs.
"I cut pictures out of Spin magazine," Jody Downing, Atchison junior, said.
Photographer creates new dimensions Artist's abstract exhibit depicts facets of life in fragments
By MARK TILFORD
Staff writer
A photographer has only two dimensions to work with, but an upcoming photography exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art will create the illusion of many more.
The work of Aaron Siskind, whose abstract interpretations of the world around him have earned him a reputation as one of the United States' premiere photographers, will be on display in the museum's White Gallery from Sunday through Oct. 18.
Siskind's abstract works are photographs of fragments of walls, graffiti, landscapes and other objects and scenes. Many are tributes to his friend, the late abstract-expressionist painter Franz Kline.
The exhibition will display about 60 photographs, a part of the 228 photographs promised as a gift to the University from Robert Drapkin and Lee Arnold of Florida.
Thomas Southall, curator of photography at the museum, said Siskind began his abstract works in the 1940s, around the same time he began painting became known in the United States.
"With the abstraction of words," Southall said, gesturing toward a Siskind photograph of illegible graffiti, "you get more of a sense of the struggle to communicate. In this case, the letters are probably more important than the words."
He added, "Most of these photos are about environments man had created."
He said that Siskind was one of the great
masters of 20th century photography and that the museum's collection would be one of the nation's important archives of Siskind's work.
"The original photograph was of a glove laying on a pier with the pier going away in the background, and it appeared to be just a glove. Then he took a picture of it from up above."
- Thomas Southall curator of photography
In addition to works primarily from the 1970s and 1980s, the exhibition of black-and-white photographs will include earlier works from the 1930s to give an idea of how the photographer's themes have evolved.
At one time Siskind used more literal photographs to express himself.
Southall held up a photo of a glove that appeared to have come magically through planks of wood.
Other photographs include images of Hawaiian lava flows in which human figures seem to appear.
"The original photograph was of a glove laying on a pier with the pier going away in the background, and it appeared to be just a glove," Southall said. "Then he took a picture of it from up above."
Siskind will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 28 at the museum. He will be accompanied by Carl Chiareana, a professor of fine arts at the University of North Carolina, who has written a critical biography of Siskind.
Siskind was born in 1903 in New York City. He graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1926.
In 1961, he became head of photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. In 1967, he went to New York to
The Aaron Siskind Archive is housed at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The display and lecture at the University of Kansas are made possible through the Franklin D. Murphy Lecture Fund.
The Spencer museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and from noon until 5 p.m. on Sunday. The museum is closed on Monday. Admission is free.
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