Blog

To close out this season’s Dance Series, we had three mesmerizing performances by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago on April 22-24. For a long time, members of our staff had wanted to try out the concept of a “post-it wall” in the lobby for a performance. We thought it would be interesting to try this with a dance company because dance can inspire so many different feelings, interpretations, and questions.

When over a thousand teens and adults pile into the Power Center on May 15th, they are expecting the unexpected…whether it is comedic folk, a Chinese guzheng player, a crew of bhangra dancers or avant-garde jazz. Teen curators from the Neutral Zone, with the help of UMS professionals, work all year to mount a successful muti-genre show made up of all teen acts. Only once a year is teen talent featured in such a highly professional way!

I’m always curious when I stumble across pieces that I’d never heard of. I know and love Mozart’s, Brahms’s, Verdi’s, and Victoria’s Requiems (and know and intensely dislike Berlioz’), but I never knew that Dvořák had even written one. I immediately searched for it on YouTube, and am listening to it as I write this; the Introitus sounds like the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

In March, Alex Ross gave a lecture at the Royal Philharmonic Society in London about the seemingly age-old tradition of not applauding during classical music (as a tradition, it actually dates back…

After their performance of The Rest Is Noise in Ann Arbor on Sunday, April 25, Alex Ross and Ethan Iverson spent some time Monday morning exploring Ann Arbor.  Check out their reports…

UMS was profiled on the Big Ten Network’s “Out of the Blue” program.  The two-part profile provides a look into UMS’s history, artistic presentations, and education programs, as well as a behind-the-scenes…

Later this month pianist Ethan Iverson joins author Alex Ross for The Rest is Noise in Performance — a live performance based on Ross’s award-winning book about music in the 20th century. Iverson is better known as the pianist of the jazz trio The Bad Plus.

We realize that not everyone wants the multimedia bells n’ whistles when it comes to getting the information about the new UMS season. That’s why we’ve created a link (back on www.ums.org) where you can download a simple listing of the entire 10/11 UMS season.

How was the concert? Did you go to the post-show dance party?