Play Me, I'm Yours!

If you are in Morningside Heights right now and have nothing to do, or something okay-not-great to do, go to St. John the Divine to listen to people play the piano.

But wait! These aren’t just people, and this isnt just any piano! Professional musicians will be playing music all day at the Cathedral in celebration of  the fourth annual celebration of Make Music New York, a celebration of free music on the Summer Solstice. Today is also the first day of Play Me, I’m Yours, a new public music initiative in which pianos are placed all around the city for anyone to play. Check out the schedule for St. John here (music till 8 tonight) and the full schedule of events for Make Music New York here. The pianos will be hanging out on street corners in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn until July 5; click here for more information about the project and a list of piano locations.

You want to be here!

Bwog got so into capital-H-Housing today that we almost forgot that it’s an alternate Wednesday–which, of course, means QuickTix, our biweekly glance at what’s selling on and off campus. Thanks as always to the Arts Initiative for the info. (And a tip: just about all of these–and more!–can be found on our Bucket List.)

Tickets sold for on-campus events this past week: 3050

And a few choice cuts:

• The CU Players production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman: April 9th and 10th in Lerner Black Box, $5 w/CUID.
• Haitian Students Association presents Ayiti Cherie: April 16th, Diana Event Oval, $5 w/CUID.
• The Barnard-Columbia chorus’ spring concert, a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion: April 17th, James Chapel (UTS), $3 student ticket.

Tickets sold for off-campus events this past week: 47

Do enjoy:

• For students of Profs. Brietzke and Knapp (and you, too!), Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at BAM: April 11, $18.50 w/CUID.
• The New York Philharmonic performing Stravinsky’s Firebird: April 22nd, $45 w/CUID.

The world’s best known former Ruggles inhabitants, Vampire Weekend, released their new album Contra yesterday. The album has received positive reviews so far, including  a shockingly high 8.6 from notoriously picky Pitchfork Media.  The band was recently interviewed for a Wall Street Journal music blog, Speakeasy. The band talked about books and wore cardigans.

VW also discussed their temporary move to California, and about Columbia’s reputation. Said frontman Ezra Koenig: “I feel like Columbia is a very different place than Princeton or Harvard, but to a lot of people writing about our band it might as well be George W. Bush at Yale in the ’60s. So it doesn’t always pay to be nuanced.”

Koenig even held forth on on Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: “I felt like the central theme was identity.” Uh huh…maybe he took Interpretation of Culture, too!

Last night, Culture Editor Tony Gong attended Dimensions’ South Asian food/dance/music showcase benefit concert: The Guria Benefit. Despite language barriers and unfamiliar food, Tony rocked out, and even developed a newfound appreciation for vegetarian food.

First of all, the decorations at this thing were off the hook. Our hackneyed and usually depressing Roone Arledge, with red tablecloths and drapes adorning most surfaces, suddenly became bright, vibrant, and energetic. The glass centerpieces on our tables (see picture!) balanced candles precariously in water in ways that defied all current understandings of physics. Even the paper plates had flowers on them. Flowers.

But would the performances and food measure up to these high standards?

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Last night, Bwog enjoyed the literary and cuisinary culture of the Latino-Caribbean  with the volunteers and novice poets of Voices UnBroken.

Bwog arrived to the Voices UnBroken Poetry Slam a little late last night, but there were still plenty of maduros to be eaten and plenty of amateur poets to be heard. The reading drew a relatively small group of socially inclined and literary minded students to pay tribute to the work of the Voices Unbroken volunteers, whose mission is to bring creative writing workshops to prisons, residential treatment facilities, and various other transitional settings in Spanish Harlem and the Bronx.  Despite its small size, the event lasted a solid three hours and filled the auditorium on the fifth floor of Lerner with  the smells of what could be called pan Latino-Caribbean cuisine and the sounds of what it is to be young and of color in New York.  

Although the poetry of isolation and ethnography can often air on pedestrian side of things, last night the poets expressed a remarkable sense of honesty and cogency. The student poets embraced the open-mic and unabashedly read, rapped and sung work that ranged from highly crafted mediations to recent observations to spur of the moment improvisations.   

It seemed all too auspicious that moments after Bwog arrived that one Stephan Vincenzo, infamously of CC ’12, stepped up to the mic to read his lengthy Bildungsroman styled poem, “Where I am and Where I would be.” And indeed his poetry is as epic as his persona.  

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You’ve heard of LectureHops, you’ve heard of RoomHops, and BarHops. Meet the latest species of the Hopping persuasion: the LibraryHop.   Here, Bwog offers a guide to the NYPL’s Performing Arts Library.  Happy studying! 

O, autumn! That time of year when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang! This may or may not be such a great thing depending on whether you’ve become a part of Butler’s permanent collection. But the problem with dear Butler is that it’s everyone’s favorite library: On any given visit you’re likely crosses paths with your freshman year roommate, the TA from the poetry class you regularly skip, the entire PKA pledge class or that guy you were hitting on at Cannon’s two weeks ago. 

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Earlier this weekend, Culture Editor Tony Gong attended Liga Filipina’s inaugural “Taste of the Philippines.” Between bites of crispy lumpiang and creamy flan, Tony found a few golden moments of serenity brought on by an atmosphere that could only have been: the Philippines, a.k.a., Lerner Party Space.

Never one to pass up an inexpensive meal or a chance to broaden my cultural lens beyond M2M (no offense, M2M – you my dawg), I decided to check out “Taste of the Philippines,” the first Liga Filipina (translation: league of Filipinos) event of the semester.

For those readers who are not as good at navigating Wikipedia as I am, the Philippines is a collection of thousands of islands that constitute a small country in Southeast Asia, known for its unique confluence of Hispanic, Indian, Chinese, urban, and indigenous cultures. Its vice president is Noli De Castro.

…And my favorite dish, after the jump!

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Last night, Culture Editor Tony Gong went to CCSC’s massive multicultural event “Passport to Columbia,” and returned a little more appreciative of diverse foods, arts, and Columbia, the nation. His account of the night follows.

Some people (naysayers and cynics, mainly) don’t think you need a passport to go to Columbia. “Columbia is a university, not a country,” they may argue. Well, last night, the CCSC Campus Life Committee finally showed us that Columbia is actually a country with over twenty smaller countries inside of it. Correspondingly, we’ve got a pretty kickass flag (see picture to the right). And yes, you do need a passport to enroll, naysayers. More proof and pictures after the jump.

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