Rock, pop, metal, punk — all these and more were on show last week from Hopkins and Peabody’s student bands. Harnessing the power of live music to raise money, two fraternities threw a Battle of the Bands event and donated the proceeds to charity.
Bryson Tiller: a name synonymous with R&B, known for his hits such as “Don’t,” “Exchange” and “Whatever She Wants.” Tiller has nearly 22 million monthly listeners on Spotify, three Grammy Award nominations, multiple Billboard Music Award wins; and for only $15, any Hopkins student could see him up close during a campus concert on Nov. 9 hosted by Student Affairs.
Sharp angles. Bare sides. Flat features. Only lines. Am I talking about Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or about Elon Musk’s relatively new Cybertruck? If you weren’t sure either, maybe you’ve already made the connection that the Cybertruck is our modern version of cubist artwork. We’ve moved away from the canvas and oil paints and ventured into the world of stainless steel and armor glass.
The Peabody Concert Orchestra (PCO) displayed an exceptional performance on Saturday, Nov. 9 in the Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall. The excitement in the packed hall could be felt, especially as Dean of the Peabody Institute Fred Bronstein dedicated the opening of the annual PCO in memory of Steven Muller — former president of the Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Hospital — who passed away in 2013. The program notes describes him as — “a visionary leader who reshaped and reinvigorated JHU during his long tenure as president.”
Do you feel winter on its way yet? The Arts & Entertainment section is here with another list of media to make your next week a little more colorful. This week’s picks include a new book by Haruki Murakami, an alternative album, a fresh take on classical music, two blockbusters and a documentary.
If you could have everything you could ever dream of, you would probably grasp tightly onto this new reality. In Sean Baker’s Anora, a sex worker who goes by Ani becomes roped into a life of extravagance and grandeur after impulsively marrying the son of a Russian oligarch.
On Monday, Oct. 8, my First Year Seminar, Writing with Pictures: An Introduction to Writing Picture Books and Graphic Novels, was glad to welcome Elizabeth Lilly as a guest speaker. Lilly is a Baltimore local, a professor at MICA and Towson, and both an illustrator and a writer.
Hello everyone and welcome back to our “To watch and watch for” series, where the Arts & Entertainment section compiles a list of all the upcoming films, TV shows, books, albums and live events happening on campus, in the wider Baltimore area and beyond. I’m excited for this new format we started, because it means I get to share even more new releases. This week was extremely hefty in the musical department, with plenty of big names like Jon Batiste, Gwen Stefani and Mary J. Blige, and the list of live events continues to grow as we get further into the semester.
You loved it in the beginning, but the older it got the messier it got, and you started feeling mad more than anything else, especially when you kept finding pee on the carpet, and in the very end, it died a rapid, out-of-left-field death caused by rabies: violent and hard to watch but harder to stop watching, and once it was over you wished none of it — the dog, the death — ever happened in the first place. Before you click away from this article or my editor can highlight and leave a comment for revision — “Rephrase for clarity” — let me tell you: I’m the first one to admit that my description is over-the-top, vying for attention, maybe not the best option and overall confusing, even if it does leave you with a visceral image.
On Oct. 1, the University’s very own alumna Louise Erdrich published her latest novel The Mighty Red, an idiosyncratic story following the teenage, gothic intellectual Kismet Poe. Throughout the narrative, Poe survives her tragic newlywed life in her small, sugar-beet-farming town in North Dakota, backdropped by the 2008 financial crisis.
There has been an almost perverse public obsession with Donald Trump ⸺ 45th president of the United States, convicted criminal and renowned business tycoon. Ali Abbasi’s latest film, The Apprentice, explores the latter of Trump’s identities.
Listening to Machine Girl can sometimes feel like being inserted headfirst into a meat grinder; it’s an unrelenting assault that leaves you strangely exhilarated but also satisfied. Their latest release, MG Ultra, which dropped earlier this month, strays slightly from their usual aesthetics, but still manages to deliver the sonic violence that unmistakably qualifies it as a Machine Girl album.
What if, somehow, scientists discovered a way for us to regain youth? What if suddenly, we had the means to not just feel younger, but actually become a younger version of ourselves again? Should we have this ability? And is there a cost to chasing this societal ideal of the perfect (read: young) woman?
A new take on the love story ended prematurely by illness, We Live in Time gives us a realistic and bittersweet view of what it means to love without regrets. Its genuine interactions and nonlinear plot create a relationship that’s beautiful because of the characters’ efforts toward each other, rather than their tragic premise.
On Oct. 4, Netflix released The Platform 2 which is a Spanish dystopian thriller that reimagines the prison system as a vertical self-management center. A second installment to The Platform universe, the movie begins with two cellmates Zamiatin (Hovik Keuchkerian) and Perempuán (Milena Smit) who wake up on level 24 of the prison.
Hello and welcome! It’s time for another week of new media. Whether you’re on the lookout for inspiration, entertainment or both, the Arts & Entertainment section is here with our list of fresh recommendations.
The rollout for Chromakopia — a series of dystopian, auteurist videos set to abrasive musical snippets — felt like deceptive advertising...There is a disconnect between the album’s industrially-tinged, barren aesthetic framing and its actual lyrical themes. On first listen, I found myself questioning: Why the mask, the military-inspired imagery and the shipping containers?
For their Fall 2024 show, Hopkins’ longest-standing theater company, The Barnstormers, performed one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays, the romantic comedy Twelfth Night. I made sure to attend their first performance on Oct. 24, which had a sparse crowd — likely due to it being on a Thursday — but an energetic atmosphere.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Judah Akers, lead singer of indie folk band Judah & the Lion, says that they make music, “for people… to point people to hope.” Their newest album, The Process, is a journey through the five stages of grief.
On Oct. 13 from 2—4 p.m., four faculty filmmakers from the Film and Media Studies department screened their work... The event highlighted the presenters’ labors of love, with a program that featured the following works: unravelling by Susan Leslie Mann and John Bright Mann, Manger by Jimmy Joe Roche, Turf Valley by Adam Rodgers and Tom Ventimiglia, and I’m Not Your Monster by Karen Yasinsky.
