Concert Critique

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For my concert write up, I attended the UCR Chamber Singers Valentine's concert on February 9th at the Culver Center of the Arts in downtown Riverside. It was a mix of ensemble pieces, solos, duos, and trios. The setting for the performance was a beautifully lit spot in the center surrounded by art. The audience seats were set up close to the performance area, in about 5 or so rows surrounding the front half of the 'stage'. By the time the performance started, it was nearly full, seemingly diverse, and made up of all ages. Certain members of the audience were very responsive to each performance and it was very easy to tell who was engaged and enjoying the show. They showed this by smiling, laughing, making eye contact, and recording, or taking For example, I would say the song choices were gendered because everyone chose a song sung by their own gender, no one went the extra step to transpose a song done by the opposite sex. The closest would have been "Bésame Muchó" done by Alfredo Medina, this particular song is known to be very masculine and passionate because of the rises and range of the piano and vocal parts. Yet many of the songs resembled each other because we were to choose songs fit for a valentines theme. As for the audience, it was not gendered, everyone was intertwined with each other and the engaged members gave similar responses, nothing pertaining solely to their gender. Because it was an all vocal concert, the atmosphere remained neutral in terms of a gender divide, no one performed or acted particularly masculine or feminine. All of the performers voices were gendered in terms of expected vocal qualities and ranges. The exception was "Lay Me Down" performed my Nicholas Falo and Robert Yates because it contained strong use of the male falsetto which could be considered feminine. Overall, I would say the performance both did and did not live up to the gender ideologies described by Koskoff. The overall masculinities and femininities were limited because the environment simply did not call for it, if any male showed hegemonic masculinity of let's say California,

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