Arts & Entertainment 9

Weekly Concert: pianist performs phrygian piece

Students listen to trance music at show

Jeffery Howard Roundup Reporter

This week’s Concert at Pierce event featured pianist Frank Garvey, who took the stage to perform in the Music Building at Pierce College, showcasing his talents by playing the tranceinducing works of John Adams.

Originally from Ireland, Garvey played the meticulous music pieces “China Gates” and “Phrygian Gates,” two complex forms of contemporary work with delicate use of different sound levels in the same region of the piano, creating a hypnotic effect.

Friend of Garvey and adjunct instructor of music James Bergman was delighted to see the recital, noting that he does not often perform solo.

“He’s usually accompanied by someone,” Bergman said. “It’s going to be something very different.”

It has been said that all one needs is a bit of magic, and this Pierce College student makes the magic happen.

John Accardo, a 20-year-old history major and junior magician, is performing in the Close-Up Gallery of The Magic Castle at the end of May.

“My dad had an interest in magic,” Accardo said. “He had about 10 books and DVD’S so when I got into this I had a whole library in my house I could go to. That’s how I kept growing until I found out about the Junior Program at The Magic Castle.”

While continuing to practice his craft in hopes of joining the Junior Program, Accardo began to frequent magic shops where he found a postcard of magician Shoot Ogawa advertising lessons.

“If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have got into the Junior Program,” Accardo said. “It was all him.”

Accardo grew to see Ogawa as a mentor and was invited to Ogawa’s home country of Japan in 2011 to compete in the Magic Masters

Open where he won the junior competition.

“He is very talented and such a good person,” Ogawa said. “We need young talent that can show passion and have influence. I’m really happy because he’s a student of mine and we recognized him early on.”

That passion translates to every day life for Accardo and he is excited to share his talents everywhere, even on the Pierce College Mall. He performed a brief card trick for students Naama Abraham, 22, and Paniz Chavol, 20.

The trick involved Abraham writing her name on a card which was then folded into quarters, while Accardo wrote his on another. As she held her card in her clamped hands, Accardo turned his card face down and tapped it against her hands, and poof: they had switched.

He now had her signed card in his hand and in her hands she held his card folded up.

“That was so good. I have no how idea how he did that,” Abraham said. “That was amazing.”

Audience reactions like that is one of the many reasons Accardo loves to perform. He wants to share that thrilling feeling with as many

“Magic is so unusual,” Accardo said. “I think that feeling you get when you see a truly amazing effect that just completely baffles you, just an incredible effect, is unlike any other feeling in the world. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

The Academy of Magical Arts recognized Accardo’s talent as a performer at The Orpheum in Los Angeles April 13 where he and three fellow junior magicians were given the Junior Achievement Award.

“This year is his last year in the program and he was being recognized for being an exceptional junior magician,” said Donna Accardo, chair of the English Department and John’s mother. “He takes so much joy in performing and has such a fascination with magic.”

Last year Accardo performed at The Magic Castle for seven days, a rare feat considering evening performers have to be 21 and at the time he was only 19.

The Magic Castle has once again invited him to perform another engagement at the age of 20, from May 29 through June 1.

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Garvey also used the help of a slideshow of different environments and locations to match the sudden changes and twists called ‘modes.’

“It’s a long piece,” Garvey said. “So it’s good to have visuals to compliment the music.”

For the first piece, “China Gates,” Garvey presented a slide that explained why the composition constantly shifts in rhythm and configuration.

“What John Adams does in this piece is separate them into ‘modes,’” Garvey said. “He called this a perfect palindrome.”

These palindromes are meant to make the piece sound exactly the same played forward as it would backwards, which creates a trance effect for the listener.

The second and longer piece titled “Phrygian Gates” had many similarities to “China Gates,” except for the type of mood that they both presented.

While “China Gates” brought about a very calm demeanor, “Phrygian Gates” was a very erratic, unsettling piece with relentless and precisely timed echoing and tolling.

“It’s the recipe for producing trance,” Garvey said. “As a listener, you will hear all types of patterns, some that don’t link up or sound more accented.”

Although the two pieces were immensely complex and required a great deal of endurance and dexterity, the constant change in rhythm and lack of harmony provided no melody, but rather the sounds of natural surroundings translated through piano.

Michael Bovshow, a 20-yearold business major, operated the slideshow and expressed the importance displaying the different environment that went along with the compositions.

“John Adams wrote this piece with a certain visual in mind,” Bovshow said. “It was difficult to find the correct slides to correlate to the music.”

The next Concert at Pierce event features the pear-shaped stringed instrument called the Oud and percussions presented by artist Wahid on May 1.