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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 2000)
M" | nlay, ctivitii AGGIELIFE THE BATTALION Monday, January 24, 2000 IP BEAT0'1(| ilies who wasc - aid he wants! 'f .ill the >tudCsS8 IPUS.” n Welch, who C enter of*i ^ccjc , ?j Chamber players visit B-CS BY JEFF WOLFSHOHL The Battalion V iolist Miles Hoffinan founded the American Chamber Players in 1985 in an effort to com bine educational programs and outreach activ ities with concert touring. Since then the group has trav eled across the country and is making its first visit to Bryan-College Station. Chamber players violist Miles Hoffman, artistic di rector for the American Chamber Players, guest violinist Min-Young Kim, cellist Michael Mermagen, pianist Ed ward Newman, and flutist Sara Stem will be visiting Texas A&M this week. "This [presentation of the American Chamber Players] comes out of our mission to bring music to the people,” Dr. William Rogers, member of the Friends of Chamber Masic and a Texas Engineering Experiment Station as sistant research scientist, said. To fulfill the group’s effort to educate its audiences, the chamber players will also host the Miles Hoffman Residency program. Through the residency program, the American Chamber Players are giving more than just a performance — they are offering free workshops to the students of A&M, as well as those at A&M Consolidat ed 1 ligh School and Bryan High School. “We always have workshops to reach people you wouldn’t reach otherwise," Rogers said. The workshops will take place Tuesday and Wednes day during music classes on the A&M campus. Students not enrolled in these classes can attend these workshops and can contact the Department of Performance Stud ies at 845-3355 for more information on times and lo cations. The workshops and the performances are free. During these workshops, the chamber players will perform for the students and discuss their program. The workshops will feature other topics such as modem cul ture and music appreciation. “Students are invited to ask questions during these ses sions,” Rogers said. “The American Chamber Players en- American Chamber Players • Live Interview on KAMU 90.9 FM at beginning at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday •Open rehearsal from 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday at Bush Concert Center • “Coming to Terms” broadcast live on KAMU 90.9 FM at 7:30 p.m. • Free Concert Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Bush Concert Center courage conversation.” The workshops that will take place at the high schools will be different because the chamber players will per form for the students, and the students’ orchestra will also perform for the chamber players. “The experience will be very stimulating for the stu dents because the American Chamber Players will com ment and encourage the students,” Rogers said. Dr. Paul Parrish, Arts Development Coordinator and English professor, said he believes the chamber players’ visit is a step toward fulfilling A&M’s “Vision 2020.” "If you want Texas A&M to be among the top-10 public universities in the country, you need to have across- the-board strength,” Parrish said. Rogers said the live music is so powerful because of its immediate expression and because it is a very differ ent experience than listening to recorded music. “It’s like distinguishing the taste of frozen mid fresh vegetables,” Rogers said. “The recording is frozen, while the live is fresh.” Rogers said audiences can expect much from the chamber players’ live performance because the mu sicians make every concert unique. “They play the same notes, but play [them] dif ferently depending on how the musician feels, (which is] similar to [changing] tone in speech. The American Chamber Players’ free concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Bush Con cert Center. The musicians will play “Quartet in D for Flute and Strings” by Mozart, “Trio in G ’ for Flute, Cello, and Piano” by C.M. von Weber, the “Madrigal Sonata for Flute, Violin, and Pi ano” by Martinu and the “Quartet in G for Pi ano and Strings,” by Faure. An open rehearsal Wednesday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Bush Concert Center. In addition to the concert and workshops Hoffman will also broadcast his radio show, “Coming to Terms,” a show on musical com mentary, which appears on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” from the Bush Conference Center beginning at 7:30 p.m. During the “Coming to Tenns” event, audience members can submit a 1 question on a musical term for Hoffinan to address and he will accept questions photo courtesy of friend’s of chamber music from the audience. Before the broadcast The American Chamber Players will host a free concert at The there will be a reception at the conference Bush Concert Center and workshops on the A&M campus, as well center beginning at 6:30 p.m. as Bryan High School and A&M Consolidated High School. cus in Brid ications :udent Ser Audiences should not let media form opinions for them ts<, ► JACOB'S LADDER rsity has sew- "V x Te live in an age ant SOSttllHA/ that cherishes the a ;. ss . College ® T Y right to express College of font's opinions. And that's " Campus. S: really stupid. One cannot ,ide. mak such statements with- Of s are avy, out fear of reprisal in just ivernnxmt Ase am country. Here in modem ’7 Kokfus StuOSAmerica, “the people” have it senate.! the privilege of being able to > )tis are duefiabadmouth any thing from argyle socks to the Pope Contact and to go about their Saturdays full of sugary ce- > Tempore at l. reals and inspirational infomercials without wor- at (o.i' T.mqyine about receiving a visitor from the Vatican ration. ROBERT HYNECEK/l iik Battalion who is making a quick stop to “bless you’s knees wit’ this here pew leg.” Indeed, in some countries the slightest sideways comment about government-issue cheese could result in one being thrown into the streets and pelted with sun- dried goat droppings. The American dream of the opinion is beautiful, however iron ic. What Joe and Chloe Shmoe might not realize is that in a land where personal opinion is king, opinion is rarely, if ever, person al. The most extreme reformist, the most strin gent traditionalist, the most vocal social critic has an opinion not entirely his own. It is an accepted fact that the media has a strong influence on spending patterns, detennining whether con sumers should spend their hard-earned two weeks-worth of booze money on tire children’s teeth. So could mainstream America’s sacred opinions and personal tastes — its very personal ity — be swayed and set by the media? Can flashy editing make one support a position on gun laws? Can visual effects bring one to take a stand against stan dardized testing? Can a clever jingle help a candidate win the election? So how does one formulate his or her own opinion, free from the tyranny of the media? One must become completely alienated from influencing mediums. One must tear oneself away from those cushy, lovable appliances, those digital, radiating sur faces, those dials, those knobs. The wann, glowing wanning glow of televi sion, the swooning croon of radio, the agitated blinking of the modem, even the reprimanding tingle of the lip-hair remover. And when one does succeed in developing one’s own opinion concerning any of the aspects of life and its many touchy issues, there are count less ways to force that opinion onto others. Reader response letters, for example, are a reliable way of expressing one’s opinions. But while one’s message may be strong, its im pact could easily be diminished if the writer does not follow the reader response letter protocol. Pro tocol for such letters is akin to the very founda tions of American free speech. A certain order and rank of statements must be followed as such: Accusation, soap-box session, See Audience on Page 6. essions If nfire ava ial [wssessions >f the Aggie Bori' ;ti today from 2 P . in room 145 Me tenter. found include ct s. and watchesrf ’olo Fields during lanup of the 19^ rllapse. rash bags full ofs have been cats l for almost two n its must statewk how a form ofidf im an item, issary. Texas AA l I sponsor anotl* ister for student: is. Correction . 20 column "IF " the nameoftt 1 d have read Bria' nef tire named! Dustin Camp. cf du> Editor Ediior . (ir.iphlcs Editor (iraphics Editor lit News Editor f. Radio Producer . Web Editor iener <V Technology6” B i, Bradley Atchison. KimW Turner, Patric SchneiderC* nith. Elirabeth 0’ Farrell.^ anueva A Susan Redding renes. Eric Andraos, Jeffrey „ Richard Horne. David Sp^ ;vin Turner, Sean Gillespie it: Cristina Padron; Beth AW- 1 i Bennett, Brooke Corse, Carrie Jacobs. Melissa M** 1 iegH & Audrey Bohlmann oni Srldhara; Whitney SW* 1 .ocker, Chris Carter. v - Judy White, Scott Jenl* s! (I. i Division of Student Media,'’H ione: 845-3313; Fax: 845# ; on For campus, local, and na®*' V Pi Reed McDonald, and olf« B,literal .lei ,IIIII ! 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