Browsing: Arts and Life

As a working student, I don’t have much free time. To save myself a few, precious minutes, I often compromise my nutritional needs for junk food or takeout, often resulting in fatigue and a vague and nagging guilt over the state of my health.

Plans for the future of Showtime’s long-running serial killer drama “Dexter” have been vague as the series heads into its eighth season. But in a discussion with Wall Street analysts, CBSCorp. Chief Executive Les Moonves may have revealed when the series will end.

There were few empty seats in the audience of Jones Concert Hall Monday night as Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney read a compilation of his poetry including an exerpt from Beowulf. Heaney’s poetry reading was part of the 19th annual Beall Poetry Festival.

“It is my great honor to be at Baylor University, where there is such great respect and sponsorship for poetry,” Heaney said.

Tonight, the Baylor Symphony Orchestra concert will feature classic works as well as a newer work by Dr. Scott McAllister, professor of composition at Baylor.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall in the Glennis McCrary Music Building.

The program will begin with the second suite from Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The seven-movement suite was extracted from the ballet score, that Prokofiev composed in 1934.

The third annual Baylor Percussion Symposium, with events both today and Saturday, hopes to not only offer audience members an auditory and visual experience, but a visceral one as well.

“We had our sights set on this at the beginning of the year,” said Dr. Todd Meehan, assistant professor of percussion.

A Baylor student will share the stage with some of the biggest names in country music on Sunday.

McGregor sophomore Trannie Stevens will sing at the 2013 Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Hall of Fame Awards Show. Stevens will join Toby Keith, Jack Ingram, Larry Gatlin, Ronnie Dunn and Sonny Curtis as performers at the show in Austin.

A country music legend will perform 9 p.m. on Saturday at Whiskey River.

Johnny Lee, a Texas Country Music Hall of Fame artist with chart toppers from the late 1970s, will headline the event. Some of his top singles include “Lookin’ For Love,” “One In A Million” and “Bet Your Heart On Me.”

Sam Badar, owner of Whiskey River on Bosque Drive, said he looks forward to having Lee on the Whiskey River stage.

Saturday night, the Waco Symphony Orchestra will perform its second concert of the year, entitled “Paris of the Roaring Twenties.”

The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Waco Hall.

Stephen Heyde, music director and conductor of the Waco Symphony Orchestra, said the program will hearken back to a time and place that was unique and perhaps unparalleled in cultural history.

The musical numbers on Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast by most accounts were hit and miss, but in some respects the most impressive song wasn’t one of the big production numbers from “Les Miserables” or “Skyfall.”
It was the one host Seth MacFarlane and singer Kristin Chenoweth sang while the closing credits rolled, “Here’s to the Losers.”

In a drastically revamped version of the Jack Segal-Robert Wells ode to underdogs recorded by Frank Sinatra for his 1964 album “Softly, as I Leave You,” MacFarlane and Chenoweth served up a swinging musical salute to those who ended up with the short end of the Oscar stick Sunday.

Eight years ago, a former clown of the Ringling Bros. Circus opened the doors to a unique theater with live, family-friendly stage comedy in Central Texas.

After Saturday, those doors will close.

Grainger Esch, an alumnus of Duke University and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, is the artistic director and co-founder of the Silver Spur Theater in Salado, a town inside Bell County, 50 miles south of Waco.

Some of Baylor’s best singers will display their golden pipes for the community.

The Baylor Bella Voce choir will perform at 7:30 p.m. today in Roxy Grove Hall. The concert is free and open to the public.

The choir of 34 female singers will perform a concert titled “By, For, and About Women.”

Regal Entertainment Group, the nation’s largest theater chain, has purchased Waco’s Hollywood Jewel 16 and 42 other Hollywood Theaters across the country for $191 million.

Hollywood Jewel 16 is located at 7200 Woodway Drive.

Regal Entertainment, based out of Knoxville, Tenn., operates 6,880 screens across 38 states.

The study of Robert E. Browning, English poet and playwright, just got a little more contemporary.

Melinda Creech, a graduate assistant at the Armstrong Browning Library, has uncovered a connection in the library’s online digital archives between Browning and Highclere Castle, the set of the hit PBS show “Downton Abbey” — a British period drama which focuses on the fictional, aristocratic Crawley family in the early 20th century.

Before the start of the third season of Downton Abbey on Jan. 6, PBS aired a historical piece on the show, called “Secrets of Highclere Castle.” Creech, like many “Downton Abbey” fans, watched the piece to learn about the real history behind the show.

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.