Purple lights lit the stage of the Dawn Theater Nov. 8, welcoming Fred Radke back on stage to play songs that have defined the world of jazz. Families, students, couples, and even Dennis “Gate Guy” Cook filled the theater, sinking into the mish-mash of theater chairs and velvet love seats, ready for a dynamic performance. ...
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Jazz musicians bring the sauce
During Pizza Jam students perform with professional musicians. Courtesy | Sophia Bryant While snow covered the ground outside, pizza and jazz warmed McNamara Hall the night of Nov. 9 as students gathered to play or sing with professional jazz musicians at Pizza Jam. Trumpeter Fred Radke, bassist Paul Keller, pianist Terry Lower, and Adjunct Instructor...
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Junior jazz pianist is fluent in bebop and blues
Junior Nick Heide started playing jazz piano during middle school in Las Vegas. Now he skips campus weekly to play professional gigs in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Toledo. “If you love something enough, everything kind of falls in place to make it happen,” Heide said. Heide’s first teacher played on the Las Vegas strip and...
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Q & A with Chigozie Obioma
How do you structure the creative writing class you teach here? Here we divide the class into two, the semester is 16 weeks approximately, and about eight weeks is craft. The point is to teach the students how to read creatively, as opposed to other kinds of reading. There’s reading for leisure: for instance, you...
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Can an AI ‘actress’ replace the film club?
Tilly Norwood is not a real person. Courtesy | Tilly Norwood Instagram Tilly Norwood looks like any other Hollywood hopeful. She’s pretty, slim, brunette, and age can’t touch her. Seriously. That’s because “she” is not human. Norwood is the first AI-generated actress being marketed to talent studios for film. Based on the handful of clips...