(click here to download)

UPDATE: contest closed. Congratulations to Alex, one of Kevin Marshall’s Americans. Enjoy the show!

Kevin Marshall’s America is honored to be giving away two (2) tickets to see “Jaroslaw Kapuscinski: Catch the Tiger!” live at EMPAC on Saturday, April 16th at 7:00pm.

To win the tickets, submit a comment in response to this blog post [...]]]>  

UPDATE: contest closed. Congratulations to Alex, one of Kevin Marshall’s Americans. Enjoy the show!

Kevin Marshall’s America is honored to be giving away two (2) tickets to see “Jaroslaw Kapuscinski: Catch the Tiger!” live at EMPAC on Saturday, April 16th at 7:00pm.

To win the tickets, submit a comment in response to this blog post by Thursday, April 14th at 5:00pm and tell us:

Where is your favorite place (locally) to see a live event?

The winner will be chosen at random and notified by e-mail. In other words, USE YOUR REAL E-MAIL ADDRESS!

Saturday at EMPAC

In addition to providing stunning and adventurous visual art, music, and performance pieces, EMPAC (the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) boasts stunning architecture and even more astounding acoustics, making it literally one of the best locations on the planet to hear a concert.

The world-renowned pianist will engage the audience in a one-of-a-kind performance that is a delight to all the senses, not just the ears. From EMPAC:

Intermedia composer and pianist Jaroslaw Kapuscinski creates lighthearted and fanciful pieces in which musical instruments are used to control multimedia content. In these media compositions, he controls projections of videos and computer-generated graphics as he plays piano. The images, words, and music combine to entertain, but also provide insight into the artistic relationship between words and music. The witty integration of his virtuosic piano playing combined with a precisely timed flow of images informs his latest work, Where is Chopin?, in which he plays excerpts from Chopin’s 24 Preludes in conjunction with videos of people in various countries listening.

More information on the event and the artist, from EMPAC, is after the jump.

+ Website: http://www.jaroslawkapuscinski.com/
+ A trailer for Where is Chopin?: http://vimeo.com/21792605
+ A lengthy lecture on his process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyWYAcvwPOg

Tickets are required and are available through the EMPAC box office for $15 general admission; $10 for students, seniors, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute faculty and staff; or $5 for Rensselaer students.

Evelyn’s Café will open at 6 PM. Parking for this event is available in the Rensselaer parking lot on College Avenue.

Additional event information can be found on the EMPAC website: http://www.empac.rpi.edu/. Questions? Call the EMPAC Box Office: 518.276.3921.

Jaroslaw Kapuscinski is an award-winning intermedia composer and pianist whose work has been presented at New York’s MoMA; ZKM in Karlsruhe; the Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou in Paris; and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, among others. He trained as a classical pianist and composer at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and expanded into multimedia during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and through doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. Kapuscinski is an assistant professor of composition and director of the Intermedia Performance Lab at Stanford University.

SJ with Comment #95!

Congratulations to SJ and thanks to all who participated.

Bummed you didn’t win? Don’t be! I’m pleased to announce that you can get a $5 [...]]]> And the winner of two tickets to see “A Conversation with Steve Martin” on March 30th at the Palace Theater is…

SJ with Comment #95!

Congratulations to SJ and thanks to all who participated.

Bummed you didn’t win? Don’t be! I’m pleased to announce that you can get a $5 discount off tickets through this blog!

Click here to purchase tickets. In the “promotions and special offers” box, enter the following code:

Clever, no?

Thanks again for everyone who participated. Having done my good deed for the day, I’m off to a weekend of debauchery in New York City.

See you on Monday, Capital Region!

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Earlier in the week I wrote of my early appreciation of and exposure to Steve Martin through you can still enter to win two tickets to see “A Conversation with Steve Martin” at The Palace Theater. The contest ends tonight at 11:59pm! Get crackin’!

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Image via Wikipedia

Earlier in the week I wrote of my early appreciation of and exposure to Steve Martin through Saturday Night Live. Another early attachment I have to Martin is through the film “Three Amigos.” The film was an early favorite and bonding moment for my father and I, and continued to serve as a barometer for those with whom I would develop the closest friendships (including friends like Eric and my roommate Steve). I find that if someone likes the film “Three Amigos,” I’m more or less guaranteed to like them.

But it’s not just his film or even his comedic roles that is at the root of my admiration. It is his body of work as a whole. It’s his range as an artist, and the fact that his range does not effect the quality of his work. Martin is not a celebrity who dabbles in different projects with middling (or lesser) results. He’s a legendary comedian, a good director, a wildly entertaining playwright, a fascinating playwright, an engaging orator, and so on and so forth.

He didn’t have to extend himself in the ways that he has through his career, and he certainly isn’t one of those that comes across as pushing his work on the basis that he’s a celebrity. Rather, he does it because he is compelled to do so artistically. That’s something I identify with; not in the sense that I think any of the output I have or will generate is at or neat the quality of his work, but that there’s nothing wrong in doing the things that you want to do and not being afraid to branch out past the expectations of those around you.

That’s why I consider him one of the few people that I’d liken to a role model that continues to push me to do different and varied things.

Which is why I plan on being in attendance on March 30th. I want to hear this man talk about his art, and his continued art. I want to get an insight into what his creative process is and what gives him the right to be a wild and crazy guy and a mad scientist and write two very well received novels and tell the story of a chance meeting between Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile. I want to thank him for showing me that one can be both thoughtful at times and silly at others, and embrace both aspects of life.

Then I want to ask him “what the Hell is that?”

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I was a big fan of comedy growing up, and in particular the old Saturday Night Live episodes that used to air on Nick [...]]]> If you haven’t already, you can still enter to win two tickets to see “A Conversation with Steve Martin” at The Palace Theater. Contest runs through Thursday at 11:59pm.

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Image via Wikipedia

I was a big fan of comedy growing up, and in particular the old Saturday Night Live episodes that used to air on Nick at Nite. Of all the talent that was on that early cast, my favorite cast member was always Steve Martin.

You read that correctly and yes, I was mistaken.

Martin hosted Saturday Night Live on occasion, but was never actually a part of the cast. It just seemed that way because he was such a vibrant and electric personality that stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the early cast.

One gets the impression from watching those early years that the cast members know they’re onto something big. The backstage stories that later leaked out through interviews, anecdotes, and memoirs showed on the stage; they were comic rock stars, the whole lot of them. Steve Martin was different. He seemed to be genuinely having fun, regardless of who was on stage or what the material was. As a result, he stuck out like a sore thumb; a tall, white-haired figure who shot exuberance out of his fingertips.

It wasn’t until I was almost in my teens that I found out Martin was only a host and not a cast member. I had seen every episode and memorized so many skits by heart. How could I have operated under such a wildly incorrect assumption? I checked back thinking maybe – just maybe – Martin had hosted and appeared with such frequency that he might as well have been a cast member. To my surprise, he was a frequent host but still in those early years only appeared a half dozen times. Though he would go on over the course of the next two decades to host the program a record fifteen times, the fact that he was only a semi-frequent host rather than a regular cast member was surprising.

Martin with Dan Akroyd, seen above trying to convince Martin that 9/11 was an inside job.

The reason I thought he was a permanent cast member is because I wanted him so badly to be one. When watching those old episodes now, many of the bits don’t hold water. Some jokes are so hyper-relevant they dated themselves the morning after they aired, while others seemed so inside you could almost hear the audience faking their way through a skit, hoping the others around them will think they’re in on the joke and this special thing occurring onstage that they didn’t quite understand.

Martin was different. He brought with him a weighty charisma and enthusiasm that put him leaps and bounds above his contemporaries. I always imagined watching Martin perform must be the closest thing we can approximate to the experience of seeing those old Vaudeville performers that gave it their all in front of an audience, which would look desperate were it not for the fact that it worked and, more importantly, a complete lack of self-consciousness.

That’s what made Martin truly special to me. Murray, Chase, Belushi and others didn’t want you to know they were performing. Martin knew you knew, but it didn’t matter. As the youngest of five children who was desperate for acceptance and trying to carve out an identity for himself, I latched onto Martin’s performances and he became an early and lifelong favorite.

I still remained an SNL fan through the years, and that original cast and writing staff contianed some truly gifted minds. But as great as those old episodes of Saturday Night Live were, imagine if instead they had ten or twelve Steve Martins performing every weekend. Now that would be something worth staying up for.

“A Conversation with Steve Martin” goes down March 30th at 8:00pm at the Palace Theater.

The evening will feature the comedic legend – and a personal idol of mine – talking at length in [...]]]>

Steve Martin

One of my lucky readers is going to win two of the most sought after tickets of the season.

“A Conversation with Steve Martin” goes down March 30th at 8:00pm at the Palace Theater.

The evening will feature the comedic legend – and a personal idol of mine – talking at length in an impromptu moderated panel that will include a question and answer period. In addition to his acting and comedic roles, Martin will be discussing his work as a novelist, filmmaker, playwright, and musician.

To win your tickets, please post your favorite Steve Martin memory in the comments below. A winner will be drawn at random, and all comments posted on this blog post between now and Thursday March 3rd at 11:59pm will be eligible to win. Only one entry per person, please, and use a valid e-mail address when posting.

Also keep an eye on this space later today and throughout the week, as I’ll be sharing my own memories of Martin and the effect he’s had on my creative endeavors.

So have at it, folks, and good luck!

I wish I’d saved some of them. I recall one that used Comic [...]]]> Anybody who attended college at the undergraduate level saw their fair share of awful syllabi (those semester outlines that college professors hand out on the first day). I know I sure saw some terrible ones myself.

I wish I’d saved some of them. I recall one that used Comic Sans MS (alternating with another font type) and others that were clearly done the night before, which would be confirmed via weekly updates that we’d have to make in pen, making it look more like the wall of Russell Crowe’s office in “A Beautiful Mind.”

If you’re a current or former student and have an embarrassing one you want to share, you could win a $10 Starbucks Gift Certificate courtesy of Intellidemia.

Go to the official event page on Facebook for more information.