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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 27, 1999)
Former UNL student brings jazz to NETV Josh Nichols Staff writer Get a taste of French culture on local television, compliments of a for mer heartland act Tonight at 8 p.m., the Nebraska Showcase will feature Karrin Allyson and the French Connection on the Nebraska ETV Network. The concert, filmed in May at the Brownville Concert Hall in Brownville, provides a “magical blend of melody, nostalgia and romance.” Allyson, a nationally renowned jazz musician, combines her talents with guitarist Rod Fleeman and accordionist Pat Bunch to bring a blend of Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Cole Porter and the Beatles to the Brownville Concert Hall. Singing mostly in French, Allyson and the French Connection perform songs such as “Les Guilles Mortes” and “Hymne L’Amour.” The Brownville Concert Hall is one stop of many on Allyson’s touring schedule. Although she currently resides in the Kansas City area, Allyson has been touring nationally and internationally to promote her latest of seven compact discs, collage. She has played such venues as Chicago’s Green Mill, Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., and New York’s Birdland. Before she hit the big stage, Allyson, an Omaha native, started her musical studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the late ’80s. She studied classical piano but also had an interest in folk music. She played a gig at die Zoo Bar with an all-girl rock band while in college, said Zoo Bar owner Larry Boehmer. While in college, she discovered jazz music and has been performing it ever since. Boehmer said more recently Allyson played a jazz concert at his club and the annual July Jam in downtown Lincoln. Allyson has received rave reviews from publications across the nation. The New York Times described her as “die young jazz singer with a classi cal foundation who is building a nation al reputation from her Kansas City base... a blonde Edith Piaf with swing and sunshine in her voice.” The Chicago Tribune called her “spell-binding with flawless rhythm and a cool, savvy musical insight.” Troika Ranch to perform at Omaha’s Lied Center When the dancers of Troika Ranch held an impromptu perfor mance on the Staten Island Ferry, their efforts were cut short by threats of police action. But that hasn’t stopped this innov ative dance-theater company from regularly taking over public sites to perform. These spontaneous performances, which the company calls RAIDS, are indicative of Troika Ranch’s experi mental approach to dance. They want to see all the various places the art can take them. Saturday, Troika Ranch raids Creighton University’s Lied Education Center for the Arts with the Midwest premiere of “Vera’s Body.” The piece combines dance, music, theater and interactive tech nology. In one section, a dancer performs with a miniature, wireless video cam era, projecting her face and body onto a back wall. In another section, a dancer moves through floor to ceiling laser beams, triggering musical notes. The effect has been compared to a gui tarist plucking his guitar strings. Troika Ranch performs in Omaha Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Lied Center, 24th and Cass streets. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $8 for stu dents. For more information, call (402)280-1448. r Sunday, September 5,1999 6:00 p.m. zoot suit review high energy jump swing ■ ■ ■ kai asian R8<B group • B.E.T ■ ■■ various vibes reggae rap The Shadow 1516 Jones St. Old Market Omaha portion of proceeds go to benefit m.m.m.b.c. A Star Jamm Event Revamped LI hits Knickerbockers stage L7 from page 14 _ employs singing rather than whining, and “Freeway,” a song that actually has a crummy hip hop beat layered into the groovy tune. All in all, it seems the ladies are ready to mount a comeback despite never having left According to the lat est issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Issue 821, Sept. 16, L7 crashed the party of two of this summer’s biggest concert tours. During the Dixie Chicks’ set at the Lilith Fair, an air plane flew over followed by a banner that read: “Bored? Tired? Try L7.” Another banner flew over the Warped Tour that said “Warped Needs More Beaver...Love, L7.” Nice touch, ladies. Last Wednesday, L7 finished a tour supporting Ministry. Tonight’s show marks their second outing as the headlining band for this tour. Supporting L7 tonight is Honky and Lincoln’s own M80. Concert Preview Hums ■mHF Who:L7 Where: Knickerbockers, 9010 St. When: Tonight at 6 p.m. Cost: $12 The Skinny: The reserved ladies of L7 get “Slap-Happy* in Lincoln ‘Butter lady* fashions dairy Last Supper DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - With a 5-pound glob of butter in one hand and the thumb of Jesus in the other, Norma Lyon laments over how the main figure in her Last Supper keeps getting in die way. “I’ve knocked three fingers off of him today,” Lyon said, her graying head swaying from side to side as she reat tached the thumb. “Maybe we should have saved him for last, but we thought he was too important.” Norma Lyon, 70, is called “Dully” by her friends but is known to most Iowans as “the butter lady.” She has been sculpting a life-sized, 600-pound butter cow at die Iowa State Fair each year since 1959. And she hasn’t missed a year. She carved her first cow when she was preg nant with her seventh child, and she carved other cows when she was either pregnant or recovering from giving birth to her eighth and ninth children. “I live for it all year long,” Lyon said as she snuggled in a pumpkin-colored jacket to warm up after hours in a 40 degree refrigerated showcase. Each day of the fair, from dawn to dusk, scores of people line up to see the display in the Agriculture Building, stamping Lyon’s work as a crowd 66 It s one of the most popular things at the fair. You wouldn't want to do away with the butter cow, ever ” Kathy Swift Iowa State Fair spokesperson favorite. This year was no exception. “My gosh, there are lines 20 feet deep. People are clamoring to see the Last Supper out of butter,” said Kathy Swift, fair spokeswoman. Visitors this year included Vice President A1 Gore, a bevy of Republican presidential candidates who had their photos taken with Lyons and her work and an observer from Yale University’s art library, who viewed Lyon’s sculpture as an example of folk art. “It’s one of the most popular things at the fair,” Swift said. “You wouldn’t want to do away with the butter cow, ever.” Carving a butter cow was not Lyon’s idea. The state fair has featured one every year since 1911 as a promotion for dairy products, Swift said. Before Lyon, there was J.E. Wallace, who died in 1956. Earl Dutt, the sculptor who took over for Wallace, didn’t impress Lyon. “I saw a picture and thought, ‘I could do better than that,”’ said Lyon, a self-described housewife. This year, as a celebration of her 40th anniversary at the fair, she decided to take on her most ambitious butter sculpting project to date - a 1,700 pound butter sculpture of the Last Supper. Asked if some might find her Last Supper butter sculpture offensive, Lyon, cleaning the butter off her hands with paper napkins, replies like a hue artist. “It’s a statue, and that’s my medi- * um,” she said. Research counters theory on classical music, smarts (AP) -Two studies published today in the journal Nature challenge earlier research and the popular belief about the effect of music on intelligence. The results call into question 1993 research that showed college students temporarily gained up to nine IQ points after listening to a Mozart piano sonata. The widely reported findings spawned an industry of supposedly mind enhancing recordings. South Dakota, Georgia and Tennessee, as well as the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, give away classical CDs to new mothers. Several “Mozart Effect” CDs have been on the Billboard classi cal charts since January 1998. However, researchers found that any IQ improvements from listening to Mozart were not statistically signifi cant. “Listening to classical music is probably good for kids — good for rea sons other than it’s going to make them smarter,” said Harvard Medical School researcher Christopher Chabris, who analyzed 16 previous studies and pub lished his findings in today’s issue of the journal Nature. In an accompanying study, other researchers reported they tried to repro duce the 1993 results and failed. The authors of the previous research said if s too early to play a requiem for the Mozart effect. The latest studies tried to find evidence of improvement in overall intelligence, while the original results were more limited, they said. “In every talk that I give, I make it very clear that there is no scientific evi dence that listening to music will make you smarter,” said Fran Rauscher, lead researcher of the 1993 study and a psy chology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. She said her test subjects showed the greatest improvement in spatial thinking skills, which are useful in doing math or playing chess. But Chabris’ analysis, involving 714 people, found no significant improvement in either broader abstract reasoning or spatial thinking. “The bottom-line message is that there is either no Mozart effect or a very small Mozart effect,” Chabris said. male dance revue Sat. Aug. 28 $10 gen., $15 VIP Doors at 8, Show at 9 pm 19+ admitted The Royal ©rove 340 W. Comhusker Hwn. 474-2332 I