performance report 2

I attended “side Show the musical” April 17^th. It was the last showing after they had been performing for the past two weeks. Since it was the last showing it would be obvious that this would probably be their best performance because they were able to review their past performances and fix up any mistakes that they made. Since it was a Broadway Musical the whole play was in song and dance and at the same time it tells a story to the audience. The musicians and the performers must work together in order for the musical to be in sync.

The music in the show was playing constantly throughout the whole play. I noticed that the tempo of the music depending on the mood of the play. When the play was sad and depressing then the tempo was slow and sounded gloomy, however when the play was happy the tempo was more upbeat and sounded happier. I couldn’t really see what kind of instruments they were using because they were in the back but I did here a couple of instruments such as the drums. The actors and actresses singing went along smoothly with the music playing in the back, which gave it a nice flow to the overall performance

There were two different types of performers in this play, the actors and the musicians. The musicians were in the pit located in the back of the stage and were covered by two big stages so you couldn’t really see them. When I first walked into the stage I didn’t notice the musicians until they started playing their first song, which let me know where they were. The actors and musicians were in sync because the flow of the music and the singing were together and whenever one song ended and the next one was starting it went along exactly when the actor started singing. The performers seemed calmed and new which song to play next, probably because it was their last show and they had the feeling for it.

Nearly every seat in the theatre was filled. I was sitting more to the back so that I could get sort of a bird’s eye view. Unlike the opera singing that I attended before where almost the whole audience had no idea when to clap for the performer, in this musical it was pretty obvious when to clap, which was basically after every song, because the actor would bow and would wait for an applause. The audience was very active they would clap intensely and would laugh at every joke, and seemed very attentive to what was going on. At the end of the musical the whole audience got up and gave a standing ovation for the performers hard work.

For the time and space the main thing for me was that I was not able to see musicians play. They were all the way in the back and were covered by the movable walls. That however did not stop the music from being heard clearly throughout the whole audience. I was sitting in the second to last row in the right corner which was pretty much the farthest seating area on in the theatre and I could hear the music clearly. The main actors and actresses had strong voices and I was able to hear them clearly too. However there were a couple of side characters who did not sing loud enough for me to here. Sometimes the characters would say a joke to the audience, and the only way that I knew it was a joke was because the first 5 rows bursted into laughter and the rows behind that seemed clueless as to what was going on so some characters also didn’t speak loud enough.

The different songs and tempo throughout the entire performance defines a Broadway Musical. Since the performance is live the musician’s instruments must be in sync with the actors singing in order for it to work. The different elements come together in order to bring out this music culture.

blog 12

I picked classic rock for my sub genre for rock. One of the more popular kinds of rock. One of the main instruments used is the guitar. I really don’t know much about this genre but saw that it would be interesting to write about. One of the most famous groups associated with this type of music are “ The Beatles”. They use the electric guitar in their music equipped to an amplifier. They usually perform in front of big crowds because of their popularity and because they are well known the audience are familiar with their type of music. I would say that this type of rock is geared towards younger people but however anyone can play. The music can be fast tempo or slow depending on the song, the music is very loud so the audience can hear it very clearly. Usually the performers are consisted of a band and each person plays a different instrument. There are many different instruments including the drums. Usually there is one lead singer followed by back up singers. The male voice tending to be a little higher in vocals than what they are today, some of it because they required it for the song they sang. The clip shows a couple of the Beatles hit songs.

Gullah culture

In the Gullah culture I noticed that many of their performances take place outside. There culture requires dances and since they move around a lot they need lots of room in order to dance freely. Their music contained polyrhythm and noticed that they used many drums in order to play a song. I also hear a couple of tambourine players in the background. The dances seem to have the same dances because in one of the youtube songs there were people all dancing in sync in one of the songs or as close to sync as they could be. Everybody seems to be part of the music culture from men to women to even children they all come together and start dancing when they hear the music. They don’t seem to be professionals but more rather they do it for fun and you can notice that crowds start to gather once the music starts, which means that everybody seems to be familiar with this music culture and knows what’s going on. They even seem to have choreographed dances that go along with the songs because in the video you notice that they are trying to practice a certain dance in unison while the music is playing.

performance report

Performance report

For my performance report I attended “Shakespeare in song” at UTD at 8:00 pm. When I walked into the building a guy handed me a program and when I took my seat I began to look at it and it basically gave me the run down of all the songs that were going to be performed at the concert as well as a little background history behind the song so that you can try to familiarize yourself with the song.

As I started to look up I saw that people were starting to file in because I did get there a little early. In the audience I noticed that probably half of the seats were taken, some were students who also were taking notes so I assumed that they were also amateurs when it came to opera and the other were parents who seemed to just watch for fun. To me the audience seemed inexperienced with this kind of type of performance because the conductor, after a couple of songs, would have to face the audience and wave her hands toward her performers to let the audience know that they were allowed to applaud. The audience mostly seemed laid back and not really engaged in the performance other than when they were instructed to clap. The audience did seem a little lazy and not that into to the performance. Yet again most of the people there were students with notebooks and were probably there to complete an assignment so the weren’t really concentrating on the story of the performance but rather the elements that go along with performance.

Before the performance began I noticed that there were two people that walked in from the audience entrance I knew they looked out of place because they were dressed in costumes that looked like they were from the medieval times and they just casually walked in and sat in the front of the auditorium. As the performers began to walk into the Johnson performance hall I noticed that they were all wearing extravagant costumes that was relevant to the era, they seemed well rehearsed which I thought it was because this was their third performance of the weekend so they probably fixed up all the glitches from their last performance to make it perfect. Since the performance consisted of monologues I noticed that when a performer was performing a monologue that the other performers were just standing still as if they were not there, probably to make the monologue look more realistic.

During the actually performance I noticed that there were different tempos going on during different songs. It seemed to me that the faster tempo songs were very happy songs and that the slower tempo songs were more dark and gloomy. The concert consisted of monologues within characters that also sang fast and slow tempo and after the person was done the conductor would again turn towards the audience in order to instruct us to applaud.

For the time and space of the performance the seating was very close to the performers so we were able to watch the performers carefully and pretty much be able to detail there every move. Since we were so close the conductor was able to communicate with the audience very clearly so that the audience wouldn’t get confused. Since we were so close to the performers we didn’t have to go overboard with the clapping and cheering because we were so close so everybody basically gave a nice polite applause each time the conductor instructed us to.

Throughout “Shakespeare in song” the four elements, music, audience, performers, and time and space played a major role of shaping the concert. All four are required in the performance because they show and describe how the performance is regulated.