CONOR HANICK WITH KEIR GOGWILT AND JAY CAMPBELL

Friday, April 14, 7:30 pm

$10

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

Iowa City native Conor Hanick has been called the “soloist of choice for…thorny works” by The New York Times and is a champion of many composers of his own generation— as well as a brilliant performer of works by the full range of great composers. Hancher welcomes Hanick home for a performance that will feature solo, duo, and trio works.

TICKETS

Adults $20 / $25 / $30

College Students $10 / $10 / $24

Youth $10 / $10 / $24

EVENT PARTNERS

Mace and Kay Braverman

Hills Bank and Trust Company

H. Dee and Myrene Hoover

Emerson String Quartet

Friday, April 21, 7:30 pm

Gary and Randi Levitz West Music

Candace Wiebener

$10

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

Undeniably one of the finest string quartets of the last four decades, the Emerson String Quartet has announced it will disband in 2023. Hancher is proud to once again present these incomparable musicians as part of their final tour. Don’t miss your last chance to experience this essential ensemble live.

TICKETS

Adults $40 / $55 / $60

College Students $10 / $10 / $48

Youth $10 / $10 / $48

EVENT PARTNERS

Bill and Fran Albrecht

Richard and Judith Hurtig

American Ballet Theatre

Saturday, May 6, 7:30 pm

Over the last several years, American Ballet Theatre has delivered astonishing performances for Hancher audiences—including the whimsical Whipped Cream and an incredible outdoor show on the Fourth of July in 2021. Now the Company returns to close Hancher’s 50th anniversary season with a mixed repertory program—including ZigZag, choreographed by Jessica Lang to music by Tony Bennett—that is sure to thrill and delight everyone who experiences it.

TICKETS

Adults $70 / $85 / $95

College Students $56 / $68 / $76

Youth $56 / $68 / $76

EVENT PARTNERS

Charles Richard and Barbara S. Clark

Robert and Karlen Fellows

Sue and Joan Strauss

LaDonna and Gary Wicklund

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Hancher in advance at (319) 335-1160.

BYrN D. PaUL The Great Vehicle BYRNDPAUL.BANDCAMP.COM

Byrn D. Paul is one of those musicians on a wavelength entirely their own.

He plays guitar, cello, violin, oud, koto, pedal steel guitar and modular synthesizer on The Great Vehicle On previous releases he positively shreds on the guitar, but this latest album is not about virtuosity. Technical skill is a requirement for this kind of music, and it’s as much a product of Paul’s digital audio production mojo as it is his fingers on strings.

His lyrics are also ambitious, exploring a syncretic, multi-modal mysticism. He’s concerned with Life, the Universe and Everything. I still laugh at Beavis & Butthead So for this album I’ll take Ludwig Wittgenstein’s advice: It’s something whereof I cannot speak so I’ll remain silent.

Philosophizing aside, there are many great musical ideas here, elegantly performed, recorded and produced. Paul is a guitarist primarily and there’s plenty of texture and rhythm from his guitar. None of the songs are verse/chorus/verse pop songs. The closest contemporary analog to what he’s doing is Joanna Newsom. They both write intricately structured, sophisticated pieces that take you to unexpected places.

“Sophia Samsara” closes the album but is a good place to start examination. Beginning with the sound of flowing water, church bells and spoken word poetry: “I never saw the bushes stir to admit the sacred guardian fawn / Foltchain, in her snow-white pelt.” The vocals are subtly pitch-shifted and processed to sound portentous. But following that, you’re surprised by an almost conventional song, a lullaby of sorts. Though, I’m not sure a child would be comforted by the lyrics “Rejecting vice and nihilism / Embracing bliss beyond distinction.”

“Blue (III) Birds” is constructed in layers, including electric piano, inchoate rumbling found sound and the koto. Without being too on the nose, recordings of bird song enter during the song’s outro, which is awash with varied musical timbres including violin, cello, guitar and what I think is the wind rustling leaves. This is 21st century music, a digitally assembled bricolage.

Alongside the lyrics in the extensive booklet included with the album is discussion of specific guitars, effect pedals and VST instruments used in production. The technical detail is presented as earnestly important as the mystical lyrics and poems. It’s a bold, wonky move.

You don’t often hear an album so lush and deeply worked from an Iowa musician. Paul harkens back to the 1960s psychedelic explosion of Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues and Yes, but his music could only be created in this digital future.

Throughout The Great Vehicle, Paul saddles his lyrics with a lot of sincere ruminations on discovering the sacred and mysterious truths of life. Yet the music itself is also lovingly independent of his philosophical intent.

My alternate title for the album could be Never Mind the Gnosticism, Here’s Bryn D Paul. One can let the lyrics wash over them and focus on the pleasures of melody, harmony and auditory texture.

—Kent Williams

JaD FaIr aND

SaMUEL LOcKE WarD

Happy Hearts

JADFAIR1.BANDCAMP.COM

Cross-country collaborations with punk-rock legends are nothing new for Sam Locke Ward. His glorious work with Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, etc) under the SLW cc Watt moniker has been covered in this publication before. At the same time those albums were unleashed on an unsuspecting public, Ward made contact with Half Japanese founder Jad Fair, whose plans for 2021 centered on putting out one hundred (!!!) albums in a year’s time. Fair’s own pedigree is impressive, having worked with Daniel Johnston, Thurston Moore, Richard Hell, Moe Tucker, Teenage Fanclub and John Zorn among many distinguished others. The two began a “pen-pal” project, sending tracks back and forth between Iowa City and Austin, Texas at the slightly less grueling pace of one complete song per week.

Kill Rock Stars has just released the result: a dizzy, woozy, sugar-sweet collection of love songs fittingly named Happy Hearts. With 17 songs filling a 40-minute runtime, Happy Hearts fits neatly onto two sides of translucent yellow vinyl, and it feels positively “normal” after the maximum minimalism of Ward’s last album, the 9-minute, 40 song masterpiece Bubblegum Necropolis. Brevity is still key here, but the bouncy optimism could hardly be further from that album’s rage, tension and musical chaos.

Ward’s 2021 and 2022 releases felt like a means of venting the desperation and anger stirred up in Iowa during and before the plague years; the American nightmare set to music. Fair has a different vision: the glory of love. Their press release sums it up perfectly: “Happy Hearts is a very positive album,” says Fair. “It’s good to stay positive.”

The album is a rather askew take on that ancient touchstone of popular song, twisted at times in its unabashed moon-in-June bubbliness. Fair’s lyrics could have been scrawled in a notebook by a lovestruck middle-schooler. Some memorable lines: “A little bird whispers ‘She’s the one,’ go to her, it’s time for love”; “Cupid got me, and got me good, his arrow shot me right where it should … thank you Cupid, thank you pal!”; and a personal favorite: “It’s as easy as eating cherry pie or falling off a log; three wishes from a magic fish, or a magic frog.”

This is the intoxication stage of love set to music; the state of being too zonked on hormones to drive, awash in pastel colors and soft synthesizers. It’s the soundtrack to making reckless decisions, like matching neck tattoos or moving to Indiana, all for that darling one. The effect is so overthe-top that one wonders where the bit starts, or ends; the tone is somewhere between the stoned innocence of “Don’t Laugh, I Love You” by Ween and the deep satire of “Our Wedding” by Crass, or nightclub music in a David Lynch movie. It almost feels like there’s something wrong with it.

Ward’s music evokes everything from Sunday morning televangelist programs to ‘80s homecoming dances to wine-bar acoustics to straight-up punk rock. Used with extreme restraint, his familiar punk-styled vocals are all the more hilarious in their light application. The music becomes more ominous and at times even atonal by the album’s end, but the mood of celebration remains: celebration of living and laughing and loving and sweet, sweet junk food. More collaborations have been promised; they are awaited with great interest.

—Loren Thacher