Browsing: Arts and Entertainment

When is 13 a lucky number? When it’s the number of years it’s taken for the music industry to post its first yearly increase in global recorded music sales, which is what happened in 2012, according to new figures from the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry.

The group’s annual Digital Music Report, issued Tuesday in London, noted that overall music sales rose from $16.2 billion to $16.5 billion, or 0.3 percent, from 2011 to 2012, the first time in 13 years that worldwide sales didn’t decline.

All-University Sing audiences were surprised when judges announced a tie for first place.

During Saturday’s Sing finale, both Kappa Sigma and Kappa Omega Tau won first place.

Woodway senior Stephen Harrison, Sing chair for Kappa Sigma, said he was practically shaking while pumping a trophy in the air.

Tonight Baylor Jazz Ensemble concert will include everything from Count Basie to Radiohead.

The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall in the Glennis McCrary Music Building and is free and open to the public.

“This is a concert where there will be literally something for almost everybody,” said Alex Parker, senior lecturer and director of jazz studies.

I had the pleasure of seeing the last performance of McLennan Community College Theater’s production of “Hairspray” on Sunday afternoon in the Ball Performing Arts Center on the MCC campus.

The play was directed by MCC theater director and choreographer Jerry MacLauchlin.

It is no secret that this play is probably one of the most well known since Adam Shankman remade the film, which came out in 2007. “Hairspray,” set in 1962 Baltimore, Md., is about a plump girl (Tracy Turnblad) who makes it on to a local dance show and becomes an instant celebrity. She soon makes it her mission to integrate the show and win the show’s pageant contest. The musical is a social commentary on race relations during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

The former Canadian ambassador to Iran who protected Americans at great personal risk during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis said Monday it was good to hear Ben Affleck finally thank Canada after Affleck’s film “Argo” won the Oscar for best picture.

“Argo” came under criticism from some Canadians, including former ambassador Ken Taylor, who said he felt slighted by the movie because it makes Canada look like a meek observer to CIA heroics. Taylor says it minimizes Canada’s role in the Americans’ rescue.

Iranian officials on Monday dismissed the Oscar-winning film “Argo” as anti-Iran, state TV dismissed it as CIA commercial, some viewers disparaged it as U.S. propaganda while others welcomed a fresh view of their recent history.

All this is despite the fact that the movie based on the escape of six American hostages from the besieged U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 has not been screened in any Iranian theaters.

Despite that ban, many Iranians have seen the movie. In downtown Tehran, bootleg DVDs of “Argo” sell for about 30,000 rials, or less than $1.

The 85th Academy Awards promised lots of upsets and surprises, and they delivered.

The night’s big winner was “Argo,” the fact-based drama about a mission in which the CIA teamed up with Hollywood producers for a rescue during the Iran hostage crisis. Although the film received seven nominations, it was initially discounted as a serious contender because its director Ben Affleck was not nominated.

You know those tall, leggy beauties that normally carry the Oscar trophies so the stars can present them?

They’ve been replaced this year by aspiring filmmakers. Six college students from across the country won a contest to help present the Oscar statuettes this year.

“This tradition of the buxom babe that comes out and brings the trophy to the presenter to give to the winner seemed to be very antiquated and kind of sexist, too,” said Neil Meron, co-producer of this year’s Academy Awards. “They’re just there to be objectified. Why can’t we have people who actually care about film and are the future of film be the trophy presenters?”

Baylor’s about to experience an influx of youth.

Starting at 6 p.m. today, Baylor will host many youth choir members for the Baylor YouthCUE Festival hosted by the Center for Christian Music Studies.

This event is expected to have nearly 400 registered singers and is sponsored by YouthCUE, the nation’s leading church youth choir organization. This will be the eight annual festival that Baylor has hosted.

Ever since he was 9 years old, Lorena High School senior Brett Hendrix has loved playing the guitar. By the time he was 13, Hendrix had already started his own band, the Brett Hendrix Band. Today, Hendrix’s band performs weekly at many different locations around Waco.

“I started playing in different places when I was 13 and drew a quick interest in having a full band rather than just me playing alone,” he said. “My brother was going to MCC and happened to have these two guys that wanted to start playing. I found a drummer and sure enough we kicked it off that summer.”

The spring semester is full of musical entertainment and diversions at Baylor, just as it is at McLennan Community College.

The MCC Theater will put on a reproduction of the Broadway hit “Hairspray” in the Ball Performing Arts Center located on the MCC campus at 7:30 tonight and Saturday.

Historians say the lesson of history is that there’s no such thing as a foreseeable future. Honest Oscar forecasters would have to agree.

When Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane announced the Best Picture nominees Jan. 10, pundits immediately declared a front-runner. “The contest has come down to one film, and it’s ‘Lincoln,’ an excellent, very popular movie by a great director on a subject that inspires, uplifts, redeems. … It’s the perfect Academy movie,” wrote Wesley Morris, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for the website Grantland.

The Dallas-based up-and-coming band Air Review is coming to Common Grounds on March 2 to play some songs from its new album “Low Wishes.”

The band currently has a single, “America’s Son,” playing on KXT, a Dallas radio station, and has been getting lots of media attention from organizations such as The Dallas Morning News, and the Denton-Record Chronicle.

Every year, Baylor holds All University Sing for Greek organizations but students not involved in a Greek organization don’t have to miss out – they can join Sing Alliance.

Sing Alliance is a student-run group for students who are not part of a Greek organization.

When I saw this necklace on Etsy, I immediately wanted one, but I was not going to pay $75 no matter how much it was calling my name. So I Googled the name hoping to find some instructions on how to make one for myself. I found a YouTube video with step-by-step instructions. The YouTube video explains this DIY the best, but I’ve tried my best to write out the steps and include what I did differently.

Baylor University’s School of Music will be hosting its 19th Annual Midwinter Organ Conference which started Thursday and ends Saturday at various locations throughout Baylor campus.

The conference, which chooses to focus on the younger generation of organists, will feature many new rising stars in the organ community like Stephen Buzard and David Baskyfield, who are both award winning, young organists.

If you have ever passed by Common Grounds, odds are that you have heard Savion Wright singing. Wright, a junior from Jasper, is a multi-talented musician and singer who said he has always had music in his life.

“Music is a big part of my family,” Wright said. “All of my brothers and sisters sing and play at least one instrument. I kind of had to outdo them all and play every instrument that they played plus one more.”

Nothing consumes and defines Baylor life in the spring semester so much as All-University Sing, a marathon of Broadway-style shows put on by Sing Alliance, Baylor Chamber of Commerce and various Greek organizations every year in front of family and alumni from all over the country as part of a 61-year tradition.

When the curtain rises, all the audience sees is the glare of stage lights against dramatic make-up, flashy costumes and newly painted props. This year, 18 acts are performing, including paired acts and Sing Alliance, which consists of students who are not involved in Greek organizations but still want to participate.

I’ve seen a lot of Sing acts — 6 or 7 years’ worth of them to be precise. I have a very strong idea about what makes a “good” Sing act. I look at song choice, creativity, story, execution and, to an extent, cleverness. I appreciate novelty and new-ness, as well as risk-taking. I’m going to try to reward acts when they are good, but I’m not going to hesitate to criticize them when they miss opportunities (or notes during a solo). This year, we will be working on a 5-point-scale. A 5 is near perfection and a 1 is barely showing up. Since Chamber is actually competing this year, no zeroes will be given.

My grandmother had this saying:

“A good cook never has a clean kitchen.”

Well, I like to think I’m a good cook, but I’m also a neat freak. I knew from the beginning that trying to make cookies from a cake mix had the potential to go horribly wrong. After all, cake mix is infinitely more runny than cookie dough.

Amid all the “House of Cards” chatter (e.g., ‘Hey, Kevin Spacey takes down the 4th wall Ferris Bueller-style!’ and “I watched all 13 episodes in five hours” OK, that was a stretch), Netflix has offered another talking point by announcing its partnership with DreamWorks Animation to produce a children’s series.

Prosecutors have asked a judge to revoke Chris Brown’s probation, saying there is no credible evidence he completed his community service sentence for beating Rihanna, and citing several other incidents they say point to anger management issues.

The motion, filed Tuesday by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, focuses heavily on issues with Brown’s community labor in Virginia, citing numerous discrepancies and claiming the R&B singer was essentially unsupervised.

Waco celebrities will get together Friday to celebrate education, potluck style.

The Waco ISD Education Foundation will host its seventh annual H-E-B Celebrity Cook-Off from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday at the McLennan Community College Conference Center.

Though the inaugural frenzy has settled, rest assured that there isn’t a fashionista worth her Louboutins who doesn’t want to see what Jason Wu (the man who famously designed both of Michelle Obama’s inaugural ballgowns) has up his high-profile sleeve for fall. They’ll get their chance Friday, when Wu shows his collection at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which runs from Thursday through Feb. 14.

Few lips in 2013 have been as scrutinized as Beyonce Knowles’. On Sunday evening during the Super Bowl halftime show, while the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers were recovering from an hour of head-bashing action, Knowles’ lips and the ringing, pitch-perfect voice behind them were the focus of a national drama that had unfolded in the weeks prior.

There’s a new group in town among the many vocal ensembles here at Baylor. They’re called VirtuOso and it looks like they’re here to stay.

The group was first started by Dr. Aaron Hufty, lecturer of music, in the fall 2012 semester. Hufty also directs the Baylor Women’s Choir and teaches Choral Conducting, Applied Conducting and Introduction to Music as well as VirtuOso.

Chinese New Year is in a little over a week, so when I was deciding on a DIY piece for this week, I headed over to pinterest and typed “Chinese New Year DIY.” Original? I’d like to think so.

I ended up finding a fortune cookie recipe. Not exactly a DIY, but hey, they’re fortune cookies. I mean how do you say no to fortune cookies?

Al Miraj, a new Mediterranean grill downtown, has the latest word in ethnic cuisine in Waco. This new restaurant has only been open since Tuesday and already the place has received dozens of positive customer reviews.

If you’re making a movie about WikiLeaks, this is the kind of thing you probably see coming.

Julian Assange says he has obtained a leaked copy of the script for “The Fifth Estate,” a DreamWorks film about the maverick computer expert and his famed secret-busting site.

The new “Star Wars” director J.J. Abrams is.

Disney and Lucasfilm announced Saturday that J. J. Abrams will direct the new “Star Wars Episode VII”. Abrams is best known for his involvement in television shows, including “Lost” and “Felicity,” both of which he co-created. He has also directed films such as “Super 8,” “Star Trek” and “Mission Impossible III.”