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Monday, February 7, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Accent the Arts' to focus on local talent
An arts festival for the University of Kansas is no longer a question very much up in the air. The name, content and focus have changed, and a new performer action will equal audience reaction.
By SHERI BALDWIN Entertainment Editor
Festival of the Arts has been replaced by Accent the Arts, a 25-day emphasis on what KU has to offer itself instead of a week long emphasis on what others have to offer KU.
Accent the Arts, Feb. 10-Mar. 6, features a minimum of talent from outside the Lawrence area. The largest of such events, the Jeffrey JB Company, opens the Accent program this spring.
Festival of the Arts began in 1967 as an offering of major films, speakers, popular entertainers and musical and dance performers thatstudied music simply by purchasing a book of tickets for all events.
Staff drawing by David Miller
Festival performers presented in the past included Ella Fitzgerald, Al Capp, Lou Rawls, the Dava Brueckner jazz trio, David Steinberg, B. B. King, Robert Moog, Gordon Lightfoot and the Tallerfingers, fullerting funds, broken contracts and rescheduled problems canceled the Festival in 1975.
Last spring, a partial Festival was offered because of last minute cancellations by Herbie Hancock and Loren Hampton. Ticket buyers had to pay the full price, as well as attendance and attendance at the concert given was poor.
After unsuccessful requests to several state and national endowment associations and local community sources for funding, Festival was killed and Accent became the best option.
in compiling the Accent the Arts schedule, SUA has included entertainment from about 20 KU music and forum series, or University groups that are a regular part of KU's fine arts community.
These include student and faculty recitals, the chamber music series, writers and poets, gallery exhibitions and Kansas Union art sales, theater productions, and performance workshops and music lectures and Rock Chalk Revue.
What SUA has added to KU's ordinary arts schedule is the real stuff of Accent.
the premiere of Paul Stephen Lim's third play, "Homeric—a Trilogy on Sexual Liberation," runs Mar. 1-6, ending Accent. Lim's first play, "Compassers," won KU the top prize in original American College Theatre Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., last spring.
A critical symposium will follow "Honorica" featuring Henry Hewes of Saturday Review, Sylvia Drake of the Los Angeles Times and Giles Fowler of the Kansas City Star.
"Dames at Sea," tailored to a dessert-nut dinner—theater atmosphere, will run Feb. 12-20 in New York City.
Informal recitals by students and faculty of the School of Fine Arts will be presented at noon each day of the festival (Feb. 10-Mar. 6) in Strong Hall lobby.
A bus trip to the Nelson Gallery and Akins Museum in Kansas City, Mo. will be led by KU professional artists who preview of the museum Art is also offered in addition to regularly scheduled exhibits.
Sequestra Cotta, professor of piano and a concert pianist will present a benefit performance for the pianist at the Winterfest.
And finally, there is Joffrey II, the only event booked and not just scheduled for Accent. The touring company of the New York City Center Joffrey Ballet, the third best ballet companies in the country, according to Joanna Miranda, publicity chairman for Accent.
In the booking terms, Joffrey II is smaller, more moveable and lower in cost—the exact characteristics and appeal to which Accent has been tailored.
Arts & Leisure
Foster's jazz challenges definition
By STEVE FRAZIER
Jazz fans, critics and historians have never agreed on a definition of the music they love.
Reviewer
In only 75 years, great innovators have blazed the trail from New Orleans to Chicago, New York and Kansas City; and then from there to Detroit. But each step encourages some to say that only what has gone before is jazzy, the new style is not.
Fortunately, few jazz musicians have slowed the process of perfecting their art long enough to become mired in the argument of what kind of hawaiian music, and today's listeners would be as shocked to hear the chord extensions of Charlie Parker and the off-bat" "bombs" of Kenny Clarke as were audiences a generation ago.
Gary Foster, who 15 years ago was a student at the University of Kansas, made one of his regular returns to Lawrence Saturday as he taught a jazz band to teach young musicians how to better approach jazz, but his performance at Paul Gray's Jazz Place Saturday night
was in itself a three-hour lecture on the meaning of jazz.
even those who hangle over drawing the fine line between jazz and its relatives could have little argument with Foster's lessons, for, above all, he is a master of improvisation. And improvisation, the instant creation of melody, is one of few constants in all the various styles of music rightly called jazz.
FOSTER, all-nall reedman whose specialty is alto sax, is a veteran-or perhaps one should say survivor—of the Los Angeles recording studios.
His jazz activities include records with Warne Marsh and Clare Fischer, and recently, with the brilliant Toshiko Akiyoshi-W Tabakin Big Band. With him at the Jazz Place were Bobby Show, lead and bass of Lawrence musicians who handled admirably the task of backing two gifted men with whom they'd never played.
To call Foster's solos merely improvisations would be to miss the beauty of his art, because his soles were marked with a sense of direction that made them actual compositions with definite beginnings, middles and ends.
This Week's Highlights
"RAISIN" the musical version of
the opera by Stephen Sondheim.
Feb. 12, Lyric Theater, Kansas City, Mo.
Theater
"OLD TIMES" 8 tonight through Saturday, William Ige Theatre.
Concerts
CARLOS VASQUEZ. South American guitarist, 8th. Kansas Union's Forum
EPHEMERAL FORMS; MOTHER MUSING'S FLIGHT PATTERNS," a concert in electronic sound and light by Ron Swartwhall. 8 tonight. Swartwhall Recital Hall.
"A CONCERT OF NEW MUSIC" woodwind, string and electric sound pieces performed by students and faculty. 8 p.m. Tuesday, Swarthout.
"A CONCERT OF NEW MUSIC," piano, vibraphone, film, flexiones, the Chamber Chair, percussion ensemble and electronic band, the band which features Ron Pellegrino, guest composer, 8 p.m. Wednesday, Swartwout, JOFFREY II BALLET COMPANY, 8
p.
INFORMAL RECITALS by students and faculty of the School of Fine Arts at noon every weekday. Thursday through Mar. 4.
Strong Hall lobby.
Lectures
"NEW VOCAL TECHNIQUES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY," associate professor of music history, who leads a series of lectures and concerts at Contemporary 10:30 am, today.
"A PHILOSOPHER'S VIEW OF NEW MUSIC," by Warner Morse, assistant professor of philosophy, 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Murphy Lounge.
MUSIC, WAVES, ELECTRICAL ENERGY, SYNERGY AND PHYSICAL FORMOS, by Ron Pellegrino, guest speaker; 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Swarthout.
"REAL-TIME COMPOSITION WORKSHOP," by Pellegroir on improvisation. 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Swarthwort.
GIRLS IN CHAINS and DETOUR-Two
BILTS "B" Films, both directed by
Edgar Ullmer.
Films
Foster's soprano sax ride on Plas
Johnson's indignant "Parking Lot Blues"
was such a composition. He started his solo
solo in 1972 with the Choris, chords,
inviting the audience to join him.
THE STRANGER-beautiful color cinematography and fine acting convey the existential message adapted from Albert Camus' novel. A French film with subtitles. A 28-minute, 30-minute, black-and-white film on homosexuality in prison.
AS HE BEGAN to proch the chords more intently, the notes came faster, and then even faster, and his half-shut eyes opened wide for an instant as surprise as he watched his fingers handle speedy octave tremolas. He was overcome with delight and need to blastily dazzle his listeners, yet when his thought demanded space there were no barriers.
Other highlights included mastery of "All Things You Are," "Round Night, Midnight," and "The Spectator."
Foster's flights were made possible by the remarkable craftsmanship that complemented his creativity: his tone was clear, his swing relentless and he knew himself so well that the audience never heard hints of limits to his ability.
MORE SUBTLE delights, such as a highly selective and effective use of vibrato, and skilful creation and release of tension, added to the audience's joy.
Shew would have been a show in himself. He growled, leapt and stumped through "Parking Lot Blues," then showed his rical lyrical flegelform style on Traj Jones "'A Child is Born," one of the prettiest jazz ballads of recent years.
Maybe today, when record stores' jazz bins are stuffed with everything from Oscar Peterson to Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie to Chuck Mangione, and Count Basie to Weather Report, there is great need to decide how hard musicians should be fine musicians whose definitions agree with theirs and just call it music.
Chances are that Gary Foster would be counted in, no matter what.
No one was able to prevent it, and the sixth annual School of Fine Arts Faculty Folles was presented in grand style yesterday afternoon.
And notorius American composer John Philip Boozer, a faculty invention, was back again in this year in full force. Many of the same jokes were used from Boozer's first appearance last year (his opera "Salma" is performed at many other works). But encamel Daniel Politokos, associate professor of music, made the best of his script between the "zippy" acts.
The hour-long revue parodied music at the mercy of faculty members, which resulted in a number of "in" jokes and horrible puns.
Highlighting the follies was an orange etude by Richard Reber, assistant professor of piano, Reber jugged oranges, both in the air and on the piano. His orange arpeggios and trills enhanced an actual composition entitled, "Chopin in the Citrus Belt."
Another highlight of the show included non-music types. Ralph Christoffersen and Jerry Hutchinson, associate vice chancellors for academic affairs, teach in music history; and Dick Wright, lecturer in music history; combined to sing a quartet from Rigoloette.
Hutchison and Wright were beaked as females, which proved entertaining enough, but the four also managed to come closer to a polished musical sound than all other acts.
Larry Maxey, associate professor of clarinet, demonstrated trombone and did prove that Cole Porter's "Night and Day" might be a never-die song without his help. Maxey managed to get through the song playing only one note—in the proper places—and also finished with a thoroughly greased and deslobed instrument.
The revue began with a flurry of con-
Puns follies' backbone
Feb.1-17
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top salary accommodations and benefits for all golfers in the country, particularly in any of the following Swimming (WSW) Team Championship, Water Golf Tournament, Golf Team Championship, Swimming Dramatic Troping, Photography, Data Management for information & application Act
Contact the SUA office before Feb.9 864-3477
Bus leaves at 12:30, tour is being lead by instructors from the department of Art History.
HARVEST
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12 $4.00
Bus Trip to the NELSON GALLERY ATKINS MUSEUM
fusion from fluorescent kaftans and Santa Claus nuits to assorted Halloween masks and two steps. And so it ended, with a final one that was a combination arrangement of the "Star Spangled Banner" and "Stars and Stripes." At least the faculty proved consistent.
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