U-M Collage Concert

continued

The theater department's first slot is a comic scene from Romeo and Juliet. Then the Symphony Band's brass and winds blow Ives's raucous Variations on "America" into the middle of next week. Soprano Adrienne Webster tries to do things with Xavier Montsalvatge's scrumptious Canto Negro that no sane singer should agree to, and a quartet of cellists saws its way through "Creeping Death" — Metallica's hymn to the seven plagues of Egypt. And finally, the winds and brass of the Symphony Band, augmented by a percussion section the size of Rhode Island, blast, blow, bang, bash, and bludgeon Daugherty's bodacious Bells for Stokowski.

That's the first half hour. Then comes the intermission. Wait till it gets to the end. It'll blow your mind.

[Review published April 2006]