Each week, SCC (Purdue Student Concert Committee) members pick their “Song of the Week.” The song can be new, old, or even undiscovered. Check back weekly for SCC songs of the week! More information about SCC can be found atwww.convocations.org/portfolio/scc/

1) “Over the Love Remix” by Florence & the Machine and SBTRKT (Chosen by Nigel Agboh)

2) “Big Jet Plane” by Angus and Julia Stone (Chosen by Mike Hofferth)

3) “Headbands” by B.o.B ft. 2 Chainz (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

4) “Need U (100%)” by Duke Dumont (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

5) “Beautiful” by Mariah Carey and Miguel (Chosen by Cody Thomas)

6) “Choices” by To Kill A King (Chosen by Alexandria Monterrubio)

7) “Panic Station” by Muse (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

8) “Blurred Lines” By Robin Thicke ft. T.I. and Pharrell (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

Congratulations to all Purdue Graduates! At this time I would also like to shout out for all the Purdue SCC Members that have graduated or will no longer be on the team next year. We will miss you!

That said, we will be accepting new applicants at the beginning of Fall Semester, something that we’ll discuss in greater detail later.  

Each week, SCC (Purdue Student Concert Committee) members pick their “Song of the Week.” The song can be new, old, or even undiscovered. Check back weekly for SCC songs of the week! More information about SCC can be found atwww.convocations.org/portfolio/scc/

This week contains our first summer playlist — Keep coming back to our website every Thursday to see our newest additions! 

1) “Suit and Tie” by Justin Timberlake ft. Jay-Z (Chosen by Nadine Hammoudi)

2) “Figure 8″ by Ellie Goulding (Xilent Remix) (Chosen by Mike Hofferth)

3) “I’ve Seen Footage” by Death Grips (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

4) “Ex-Boyfriend” by Lil Dicky (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

5) “Silver Lining” by Lee Dewyze (Chosen by Chris Costidakis)

6) “Car Radio” by Twenty One Pilots (Chosen by Mark Morton)

7) “Mouthwash” by Kate Nash (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

8) “Someday, Somehow” by Every Avenue (Chosen by Chris Costidakis)

9) “Addict” by Adventure Gallery (Chosen by Mark Morton)

10) “Power Trip” by J Cole ft. Miguel (Chosen by Nadine Hammoudi)

11) “Back to Black” by Andre 3000 and Beyonce (Chosen by Cody Thomas)

12) “San Francisco” by Mowgli’s (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

13) “Audio, Video, Disco” by Justice (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

As we surface from the insanity of “dead week” I would like to give you some music to get you through. Here are last week’s SCC Songs of the Week. We hope you enjoy.

Each week, SCC (Purdue Student Concert Committee) members pick their “Song of the Week.” The song can be new, old, or even undiscovered. Check back weekly for SCC songs of the week! More information about SCC can be found atwww.convocations.org/portfolio/scc/

1) “You & Me” by Disclosure ft. Eliza Doolittle (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

2) “SpottieOttieDopaliscious (HugLife Remix)” by Outkast (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

3) “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams (Chosen by Ashwath and Cody Thomas)

4) “Dat New New” by Kid Cudi (Chosen by Ashwath)

5) “Cold Skin” by To Kill a King (Alexandria Monterrubio)

6) “Ironworks” by Baths (Chosen by Becca Courtney)

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7) “Fear My Identity” by Best Coast (Chosen by Becca Courtney)

8) “Rock n Roll Lifestyle” By Cake (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

9) “Shut Me Up” by Mindless Self Indulgence (Chosen by Tara Christopher

10) “God of Joy” by ANTHM (Chosen by Nadine Hammoudi)

11) “I Will Steal You Back” by Jimmy Eat World (Chosen by Mike Hofferth)

As we surface from the insanity of “dead week” I would like to give you some music to get you through. Here are last week’s SCC Songs of the Week. We hope you enjoy.

Each week, SCC (Purdue Student Concert Committee) members pick their “Song of the Week.” The song can be new, old, or even undiscovered. Check back weekly for SCC songs of the week! More information about SCC can be found atwww.convocations.org/portfolio/scc/

1) “Get Free (What So Not Remix)” by Major Lazer (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

2) “Holdin On” by Flume (Chosen by Ashwath)

3) “Troublesome 96″ by Tupac (Chosen by Ashwath)

4) “If I Lose Myself” by OneRepublic (Chosen by Jason Diamant)

5) “Numbers” By Logic (Chosen by Jason Diamant)

6) “Shadow Moses” by Bring Me the Horizon (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

7) “Big Dipper” by The Cataracs ft. Luciana (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

8) “Ride On/Right On” by Phosphorescent (Chosen by Becca Courtney)

9) “Done” by The Band Perry (Chosen by Cody Thomas)

10) “TKO” by Le Tigre (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

11) “Hell and Back” by Kid Ink (Chosen by Nadine Hammoudi)

12) “Young Lady” by Kid Cudi (Chosen by Nigel)

13) “Lego House” by Ed Sheeran (Chosen by Mike Hofferth)

Each week, SCC (Purdue Student Concert Committee) members pick their “Song of the Week.” The song can be new, old, or even undiscovered. Check back weekly for SCC songs of the week! More information about SCC can be found atwww.convocations.org/portfolio/scc/

1) “Overgrown” by James Blake (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

2) “Rush Hour Traffic” by The Cool Kids (Chosen by Ashwath)

3) “Immortal” by Kid Cudi (Chosen by Jason Diamant)

4) “Habits” by Tove Lo (Chosen by Alexandria Monterrubio)

5) “Look At Where We Are” by Hot Chip (Chosen by Alexandria Monterrubio)

6) “Solo Dolo Pt. 2″ by Kid Cudi ft. Kendrick Lamar (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

7) “Wild Country” by Wake Owl (Chosen by Becca Courtney)

8) “Nobody’s Business” by Rihanna ft. Chris Brown (Chosen by Cody Thomas)

9) “Centipede” by Knife Party (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

10) “Brooklyn We Go Hard” by Jay-Z (Chosen by Nadine Hammoudi)

11) “Get Money” by Travis Porter (Chosen by Nigel Agboh)

12) “Nothing On Ya” by Gucci Mane ft. Wiz Khalifa (Chosen by Nigel Agboh)

13) “Let Her Go” by Passenger (Chosen by Mike Hofferth)

14) “Devotion” by Jessie Ware (Chosen by Laura Clavio)

On Thursday, April 11 the Brentano String Quartet will present the program Fragments: Connecting Past and Present-Six classic unfinished quartets and the six new works they inspired. Convocations director, Todd Wetzel, discusses why this program is so significant:

“I’ve known about the Brentano Quartet for 20 years–from nearly their beginnings. I heard them in the early 90s in a workshop sponsored by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. Convos presented them 16 years ago (Mar. 23, 1997) as a Discovery Artist, and their reputation has only grown since then. What I find interesting about them is their intellectual and musical curiosity. In order to put together the specific program that I booked (Fragments: Connecting Past and Present), they had to be interested in the questions that surround how creative works are made–or in the case of incomplete or unfinished works, why aren’t they finished? Did the composer get “stuck?” Did the composer switch midstream to a better paying commission? Did the composer learn something during the unfinished work that inspired a new piece thereby making that lesson-learned the “thing” of value rather than the originally started composition? We may never really know, but these fragments are nonetheless fascinating. It’s like finding parts of a fossil or portions of an old map, and then trying to imagine the world through the eyes of those few fragments. Of course, we hope to imagine them in the original context–for the sake of originality and truthfulness–but we also have the abiltiy to use today’s context to conceive how they might fit in our current landscape. So, when the Brentano commissioned composers to respond to these unfinished works, we get the best of both worlds: a look into the past that we may only dimly understand, but also a projection into a new world through the eyes of a composer today.” (more)

Each week, SCC (Purdue Student Concert Committee) members pick their “Song of the Week.” The song can be new, old, or even undiscovered. Check back weekly for SCC songs of the week! More information about SCC can be found atwww.convocations.org/portfolio/scc/

1) “Lost That Easy” by Cold War Kids (Chosen by Jeremy Ehrlich)

2) “Just Can’t Wait to Be King” by Simba & Zazoo ft. The Friendly Animals (Chosen by Ashwath)

3) “Feel Real” by Deptford Goth (Chosen by Alexandria Monterrubio)

4) “The John Wayne” by Little Green Cars (Chosen by Alexandria Monterrubio)

5) “Why? Where? What?” by King Fantastic (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

6) “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons (Chosen by Dylan Newman)

7) “Keep You” by Wild Belle (Chosen by Becca Courtney)

8) “Designer Drug” by Mayer Hawthorn (Chosen by Becca Courtney)

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9) “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke ft. T.I. and Pharrell (Chosen by Cody Thomas)

10) “Sail” by AWOLNATION (Chosen by Tara Christopher)

11) “Feel the Love” by Rudimental ft. John Newman (Chosen by Mark Morton)

12) “Hold Out” by Caught a Ghost (Chosen by Mark Morton)

13) “Black or White” by Michael Jackson (Chosen by Nadine Hammoudi)

14) “Demons” by Imagine Dragons (Chosen by Chris Costidakis)

Name: 

Major: Hospitality & Tour Management

Club Affiliation: HTM Society, Black Tie Dinner Board, HTM Career Fair Board, Eta Sigma Delta Honors Fraternity

Position in the SCC: 1st year member

What Has The SCC Done For You: It has taught me about all the little and big things one must consider when putting on such a large scale event. In addition to that, this committee has really given me an idea of what my future will be like as I will be going into event planning!

Best Music Related Experience: Going to a Phil Collins concert in Dubai, and standing 1st row at the Nicki Minaj Concert in Dubai.

Where Do You Go To Find Music: Friends and iTunes, and my sister more than anyone.

What Makes a Good Concert and Why: In my opinion a good crowd and an organized set up are needed in order to make a concert a good one. The good crowd creates the right atmosphere one needs when attending a concert, and the organized set up makes the experience pleasant and comfortable. Both of these are crucial to making a concert memorable as well as good!

Most Embarrassing Musician That You Enjoy: Justin Bieber

What Song Best Describes You: Fix You by Coldplay

I love Accelerando too, for the driving rhythms of Iyer’s compositions, which never lose you, but also for the trio’s delicate treatment of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” and a fun reimagining of “Mmmhmm” by Flying Lotus.

Part of what makes Vijay Iyer’s work so interesting is the way he thinks about music. His undergraduate degree was in math and physics, but Iyer says that the physical side of music, which he explored in an interdisciplinary PhD program in technology and the arts, has been more important to him.

“The research I did for my dissertation work in the 1990s, and the stuff I’ve been continuing to think about ever since,”  he explains, “is about the role of the human body in music perception and music cognition—in the doing of music and in the way we hear and understand it. Before it became something we stockpile by the terabyte, it used to be something we did with our bodies—with our hands and our feet and our voices and our lungs and so on.”

Ultimately, says Iyer, “When you say that music is made of our actions, then you realize that it has to be the way it is. It has to have the kinds of tempos that we’re used to hearing, it has to have the specific kinds of rhythmic detail and activity that it has, because it’s what we can do with our bodies, and it’s what we can do together with our bodies.”

And if music is all about action, Iyer writes in the liner notes of Accelerando, then today’s tempo seems to be speeding up, rising with the economic crisis and global unrest all around us. Though he didn’t set out to make an album with a theme, it emerged when the recording was finished. It’s only one possible meaning of the album, he says, but it feels right to him.

“At the moment we were putting it together, there was a certain feeling in the air. It felt like there was some kind of transition point, or we were on the verge of something, in terms of political turmoil and global climate turmoil, and these kinds of transformational moments like the Arab Spring. It felt like there was kind of this swirling sensation that you got from being in the world at the time. But of course as you zoom out from it, you see it moving on a more defined arc.”
But even when you’re able to take a step back, says Iyer, you’re still experiencing things in the same way as before. That’s what’s basically happening in the title track, he says: “they’re like nested or cyclical accelerandos.”

Iyer’s interest in so many types of music and art forms lends itself to wide-ranging collaborations, and several of the projects he’s working on now have direct or indirect associations with this year’s Convocations season.

When the Brentano String Quartet arrives just six days after Iyer’s trio, they’ll be featuring one of his compositions in their program of new works that respond to unfinished pieces by classical masters.

Iyer’s piece responds to a Mozart fragment. “It’s true that anytime I told anyone I was finishing an unfinished Mozart piece, they’d laugh at me,” says Iyer. “It’s a fool’s errand. Not that the music is not serious, but I found it funny in a way to be cornered like that. As an artist, it’s actually productive to have this career-threatening moment. You have to rise to it, or maybe you fail, but at least you become something in that moment. So for me it was a useful challenge.”

He had a range of fragments to choose from, but especially liked a short one. “It’s less than two minutes long, and it’s very empty. It has these sections where only one instrument is playing. He was going to fill in the rest and didn’t get around to it,” says Iyer. “And it ends on an unresolved cadence. So it really sounds unfinished, like it was cut off right in the middle of the last word of one sentence in the middle of a paragraph.”

This interruption became gave him an opening, he explains. “I actually cycle the point of interruption a few times, and then that starts to stretch and transform, and something else is born out of it.” After 15 years of violin lessons, and playing a lot of Mozart in orchestras and string quartets, he’s no stranger to Mozart’s work or composing for strings.  “I feel a strong connection to that sound and the possibilities of those instruments.”

Iyer also wrote the score for a project at Carolina Performing Arts celebrating the Rite of Spring at 100. (Many Convocations fans saw the Joffrey Ballet’s recent performance of Stravinsky’s classic ballet at Purdue.) While Iyer knows the story behind the piece very well, he’s a little skeptical about the riot. “It seems like an exaggeration – it seems like they were being heckled,” he says with a laugh. “A bunch of French people heckling is not exactly a riot.”

But when the invitation came to create something for this year-long celebration, either related to the original piece or to the idea behind it, he was more interested in the idea, asking himself, “What does springtime mean in India?” He collaborated with filmmaker Prashant Bhargava, who recorded the Hindu spring ritual of Holi in Uttar Pradesh, India, in the mythic birthplace of Hindu god and goddess Krishna and Radha. Bhargava edited the piece based on the episodic nature of Stravinksky’s work, then Iyer used the 12 episodes of the original as an outline for the structure of his score.

I couldn’t resist asking Iyer about one last collaboration of  a sort; his last four album covers feature images from the artworks of Anish Kapoor—the creator of Chicago’s beloved “Cloud Gate,” better known as “The Bean.”

“His pieces are so incredibly crafted that they seem other worldly,” says Iyer. “The Bean is a good example, because it’s such an impossible vast object that it seems like no one made it. It just kind of exists. And especially because it’s a mirror, it becomes more about you.”

Says Iyer, “I think what’s nice about his work is that it’s very open as an experience. It doesn’t force an interpretation; it doesn’t force any kind of specific reference or language. It’s really more about the simplicity of sensation. It accesses this part of your mind that’s pre-logical or pre-thought. It creates this interesting setting for you to experience yourself again, and that to me is a nice counterpoint to these albums. The albums themselves have a lot of cultural and historical references, but it’s nice to have something else there at the same time that’s really just about sensation.”

–Stacey Mickelbart, guest contributor