THE RO CKY MOUNTAIN
COLLEGIAN
SATURDAY’S SHOW INFO: ILLUSTRATION BY HUNTER THOMPSON
Where: GNU: Experience Gallery When: 9 p.m. Cost: $5 Who: WhiteCatPink with Snubluck Dinosaurus Rex J Dubious
A musical MEOW
WhiteCatPink prowls to the GNU Gallery Saturday By Bailey Constas The Rocky Mountain Collegian Music, cats, glitter, glam, euro-bass, girls, piano, makeup and synesthesia are all accurate terms to describe WhiteCatPink, aka David Jacoby. Fans of the eccentric musician can see his brand of electronic-based, live drum and dance performance at GNU: Experience Gallery Saturday. This out of the litter-box character started the conception of the idea not because of music, but through a trip to the costume shop. “I was looking in a costume shop and I found this mask and I thought, ‘It’s perfect.’” Jacoby said. “I developed this white glam cat character from that.” Jacoby recognized early on that his choice of costume warped people’s perception of reality.
“This shook things up for people, and they didn’t know what to expect,” Jacoby said. Behind the whiskers, Shamanism, old school rituals and David Bowie fueled feline persona is a resonation of his personality. “I’m a solo hunter, usually I crawl around at night, riding around neighborhoods, alleys in Old Town,” Jacoby said. “I’ll just disappear suddenly and people will be like, where’d he go?” “Rituals and dressing up, it’s a very human thing, and I think we’ve lost that.” Jacoby began to be interested in music from year one while still in diapers, banging on Tupperware. He then went on to take piano lessons, which he disliked at first, beginning when he was four. “I had this really cool teacher and she smelled like mothballs,” Jacoby said. “She was a really delightful woman.” From then on music continued to be a strong
part of his life. “I really hated high school. I really believe in what Matt Stone and Trey Parker say about the dorky kids who grow up to make cartoons and be white cats,” Jacoby joked. “And the cool kids grow up to be insurance salesmen.” Jacoby played in an experimental pop rock group in Boulder from 2004 to 2007. In 2006, WhiteCatPink was created. WhiteCatPink, according to Jacoby, is a blend of audio and visuals, blending Ziggy Stardust with Serge Gainsbourg — a French beatnik icon in the ‘60s — in the context of DJ Shadow with Kraftwerk, a German electronica band from the ‘70s, manning the controls. A unique part of Jacoby that’s filtered into his music is his synesthesia, a condition in which Jacoby’s senses can become crossed, mixing sounds, words, numbers and names with colors.
“The chords I use have specific colors, and that’s based on what I want to convey in the music,” Jacoby said. “I can see the different pitches that I use, the different sounds, bass sounds, even the filters that I run stuff through — like the phaser — it will affect that,” Jacoby said. “It looks like looking through water and it looks like rippling and that sort of thing.” Jacoby is anything but ordinary and does not believe in following the crowd. “What’s right isn’t always popular....I’m not breaking rules and stigmas to be cutesy or cool, but I’m doing it because it’s something I believe in. There’s more to life than just being spoon-fed something on the TV on Fox News,” Jacoby said. Entertainment and Diversity Beat Reporter Bailey Constas (@BaileyLiza) can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com.
University orchestra performs musique classique By Lianna Salva The Rocky Mountain Collegian The University Symphony Orchestra will prove tonight that French music isn’t just about the can-can in its first performance of the season. The performance will begin with the fast-paced “Roman Carnival Overture” by Hector Berlioz. CSU faculty Wesley Ferreira will join the symphony orchestra for the first time during “Clarinet Concerto” by Aaron Copland. In the final performance, the ensemble will be joined by CSU faculty Joel Bacon for Camille Saint-Saens’ “Organ Symphony.” “It’s great showpieces for orchestra. It’s loud and it’s exciting, fast music. There’s a lot of beauty to it as well,” said Maestro Wes Kenney, the conductor for the performance as well as the Director for University Orchestras. “If you’re looking for top-level orchestra music, this is the place to come,” he said. The pieces cover a broad timespan in the development of French symphonic music. The earliest of these was that of Berlioz, after which French symphonic music almost came to a stop until Saint-Saens “Organ Symphony” was written in the late nineteenth century.
“This is one of the great pieces for organ in orchestra. The organ that is in it is perfectly suited for the piece. It comes in rather quiet and mysterious and is a bit of a surprise, but at the end it’s very triumphant,” Bacon said. “It’s a lot of fun to play.” The organ being used was a donation to the university in the last year and has not been used in Griffin Concert Hall before, according to Kenney. The most recent of the three pieces is Copland’s “Clarinet Concerto”, written in the 20th century during his studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, one of the great French composition teachers. Copland originally wrote the piece for American jazz clarinetist, Benny Goodman, who has been called “the king of swing” but wanted to try playing classical music, according to Ferreira. “It’s one of the most beautiful pieces in the 20th century,” Ferreira said. “This is one of the more challenging pieces for orchestras to play. There are a lot of jumps and leaps and all the parts have really important, independent lines.” Ferreira also described the piece as being very lyrical with Brazilian rhythmic qualities. There are 74 students in the orchestra ranging from freshmen to second year graduate students. Some of the performers in the orchestra are
CONCERT DETAILS What: University Symphony Orchestra concert Where: Griffin Concert Hall, UCA When: Sept. 20 and 21, 7:30 p.m. Cost: $7 student, $1 youth, $12 general public not music majors, and each student had to audition to become apart of the orchestra, according to Kenney. “When you’re performing with the orchestra you can tell that the students look up to [Kenney], and as a soloist coming into an orchestra to perform, you can tell there’s a level of preparation and professionalism,” Ferreira said. “The great thing is that an orchestra can play just about anything, and to see students making this music come alive is very exciting,” Kenney said. “This high level performance experience gives them a point by which they can take any other musical experience that they’re involved in and move it forward.” UCA Beat Reporter Lianna Salva can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com.
The University Symphony Orchestra will perform tonight in Griffin Concert Hall in the University Center for the Arts. (Collegian file photo)
KCSU Top 10 Nautical Mile drops by Local Loco There’s nothing wrong with wearing jorts | Page 4
PAGE 5