North Texas Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 98, No. 51, Ed. 1 Tuesday, November 22, 2011 Page: 3 of 6
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Tuesday, November 22,2011
Arts & Life
Page 3
Jesse Sidlauskas, Arts & Life Editor
NrDailyArtsLife@gmail.com
rumpet maestro to perform with O ne O'clock band
Pablo Arauz
Staff Writer
One of the world's most
renowned jazz trumpet players,
Terell Stafford, is performing at
the Murchison Performing Arts
Center with the Grammy Award-
winning One O'Clock Lab Band
at 8 p.m. tonight.
Stafford stands as a pillar
of the jazz community and
leader in jazz education. He's
played with groups such as the
Grammy-winningVanguardJazz
Orchestra. He's also an educator
and a board member of the Jazz
Education Foundation.
Steve Wiest, Grammy-
nominated director of the One
O'Clock Lab Band, said playing
with Stafford "will really be an
inspiration for the students.
Terell is simply one of the best
jazz trumpet artists in the world
right now."
For the past few months,
Stafford has been touring to
promote his new album "This
Side of Strayhorn."
Q: Have you been traveling
a lot this year? Do you tour
often?
A: I do; I've been traveling a
whole lot all summer. I came
back a little bit in the fall for a
couple of months to get things
started in school and I've been
out for the past month. I've
been to Europe; I was there
more through the summer [in]
London, Spain, Italy and France.
I'm getting through touring in
the states; I just got back from a
12-day tour in Japan. I've been
touring the Chicago area for
the past week, touring with the
Northern Illinois Jazz Ensemble
Photo by Melissa S. Mayer/Staff Photographer
Terell Stafford, trumpeter of "This Side of Strayhorn," rehearses with the One O'Clock Lab Band. Stafford will play at 8 p.m. tonight at the Murchison Performing
Arts Center.
and now I'm on my way to
Texas. I leave for San Diego for
three days and then I'll leave to
Barcelona for five days.
Q: You released a new album
earlier this year, "This Side
of Strayhorn." How did the
recording process go?
A: We came in one day and we
recorded everything for about
five hours, partly because we'd
been on tour for a week prior
so we got a lot of kinks worked
out, the materials already ready.
By touring with it for a week,
it just made the process of the
studio recording just much
more quick.
Q: What's the idea behind
the name of the album?
A: "This Side of Strayhorn"
is basically depicting my
vision and my sound for [Billy]
Strayhorn's music, so I took his
music and my good friend Bruce
Clark took the arrangements
from the commission project
and that week we had on the
road, we kind of formulated our
own sound.
Q: I read that you're on the
board of the Jazz Education
Network; what's new in jazz
education today?
A: Things are going well. The
organization is a great organi-
zation because we're all about
getting educators together so
that we can work for the better-
ment of the students and educa-
tion in general. So this organi-
zation has outreaches and does
different things throughout the
year to help develop a great foun-
dation for jazz education. Once
a year we have a conference
and all the educators come out,
which is a really big conference
and we all get together there,
we have different workshops,
different panel discussions and
performances just to continue to
expose more people to different
colleges and universities and
expose more people to different
information as far as jazz educa-
tion and approaches.
Q: What advice do you have
for students at IJNT who
aspire to become profes-
sional musicians?
A: Continue to follow your
dreams and your desires. My
point of view is always to prac-
tice as hard as possible and
to make yourself as visible as
possible in whatever scene you
want to be on and then let the
rest take care of itself. A lot of
people talk about the word
"networking." I'm not a huge
networker because most people
that network have been putting
their time into their craft. So
they network so people can hear
and try to find the end road to
find a career in anything so they
have to pay their dues. As long
as students are paying their
dues and talking to the right
people, which they are because
the faculty there is phenomenal,
they can find a career anywhere
and find a great future in jazz.
Q: What do you think of the
music industry as a busi-
ness?
A: It is a business. For me
personally, musicians that I
choose to be around represent
themselves well and have a great
attitude and are supportive and
open to the music and people
that take care of business. For
me, just to be on time is huge.
So many people take that for
granted. So to be on time and
have a great open attitude is
really important. From there,
you can really tell if musicians
are easy to travel with; if they
are, then they'll work. As far as
the business is concerned, when
contracts are sent to you and
negotiating deals for yourself,
it is a business because you do
want to represent yourself at the
highest level possible.
Staff members bring empty Murchison to life
Sarah Clement
Contributing Writer
Twelve hours before tonight's
One O'Clock Lab Band perfor-
mance at the Murchison
Performing Arts Center, its
1,400-seats will be empty.
There will be no musicians
mingling about the stage, nor
a conductor poised to deliver
the band's first downbeat.
Hours prior to shows at the
venue, employees will arrive
and bring the building back to
life for the performance.
By the hour before audience
members arrive tonight, stage
and house lights will be set
already at a specific level. The
stage crew will have installed
instruments and microphones
with help from performers.
Acoustic variables will be set to
provide high-quality sound.
Front-of-house staff will also
be busy preparing. This group
is composed of the ticket office
and ushers. They lock doors,
check bathrooms and meet
before the show to discuss
details. At this meeting they
will learn the start and end
times of the show, along with
the intermission time and any
other important information,
such as times for late seating.
After these meetings, the
front-of-house manager and
stage manager will stay in
close communication with
each other in order to deter-
mine when the theater is ready
to open.
The stage manager and
front-of-house manager,
along with Graeme Bice, the
Murchison event coordinator,
will be the first to arrive, and
then their crews will come in
an hour before show time.
"That's a massive setup,"
Bice said, referring to tonight's
One O'Clock performance.
The One O'Clock Lab Band
performance is one of the
largest events the Murchison
staff puts together.
"The multifaceted avenues it
offers in technical and admin-
istrative work, from the dream
of the performance to actually
having the performance; it's
awesome to see it all play out,"
Spanish and philosophy senior
Brian Morgan, said.
Opened in 1990, the
Murchison, affectionately
known to many UNT students
as "the armadillo-shaped
building," provides a place
for College of Music students
to practice and perform in a
state-of-the-art venue.
"We are trying to do our best
to provide the best work envi-
ronment we can for students
and faculty," associate dean
of operations for the College
of Music Jon Nelson said.
The Murchison hosts 85 to
100 performances a year, not
including rehearsals, record-
ings and unexpected outside
events.
"The atmosphere is unique
and will challenge you above
what you would experience
elsewhere," Morgan said.
An hour after the event has
finished, the stage will again be
cleared by the stage crew, the
doors will be locked, and the
lights will be turned off by the
I JKl
1
Photo by Rebekah Gomez/Staff Photographer
Harpsichord graduate student l-Fang Chiang practices on the Richard Ardon-Paul Voertman Concert Organ in the Margot
and Bill Winspear Performance Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center on Monday. Chiang has been playing the
organ for six years.
front-of-house manager and
the Murchison will become
simply another empty building
on campus awaiting students
for another day of classes.
UNT robots gear up for action
Holly Harvey
Staff Writer
At UNT's Department of
Electrical Engineering, faculty
and students are developing
autonomous robots that will
think by themselves and navi-
gate planetary surfaces through
cameras connected to a wireless
network.
Developers have worked to
improve visual processing so that
robots can take pictures and scan
surfaces of other bodies in space
to identify objects and terrain
and calculate ways to navigate
their surrounding, said Kamesh
Namuduri of the electrical engi-
neering faculty, who oversees
the project.
"We want to make the robot
think like an individual and
make it do what people can do,"
Namaduri said.
Funded by a $50,000 grant
from NASA and a $50,000 grant
from UNT, Namaduri plans for
some of the 25 robots to eventu-
ally be tested by NASA on lunar
terrain models in the next few
years. The robots range in size,
from several that are the size of
a toaster to the largest one, which
is a specially modified Segway
that's about 3 feet tall. Because
of the expensive cost of sending
human expeditions, 80 percent
of NASA's missions to space are
manned by robots, and the need
for smarter robots is growing,
Namuduri said.
Unlike humans, robots lack
decision-making capabilities.
The robots are programmed to
take pictures of objects to under-
stand what they are and add them
to a database of many images,
said Michael Mischo, a computer
engineering graduate student
who worked on one of the robots.
Recognition of objects is impor-
tant so that the robot can learn
how to navigate.
"You can't just go to the moon
and hope for the best," Mischo
said. "You have to know what
objects and surfaces you're
dealing with."
Some of the robots are
connected to one another so they
can communicate and collabo-
rate more efficiently, Namuduri
said.
"They're like a colony of ants
working together," he said. "They
can process the information and
determine which robot is best
suited for the job."
Together, the smaller robots
that communicate are called
"swarms," and can work to build a
map of the terrain with the goal of
KAMESH
NAMUDURI
helping space
colonization.
Each robot
can work
on fulfilling
a different
function so
that it is a true
team effort,
Namuduri
said.
The impact of object-identi-
fication programming reaches
beyond space exploration.
Whether the bots make it to
space or not, Mischo said they
couldpotentiallybe usedin other,
non-stellar applications, such as
airport security to identify faces
and in police work.
"The technology can be set up
in many facets of industry. Like
most technology, it invades every
area of industry," Mischo said.
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Pherigo, Josh. North Texas Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 98, No. 51, Ed. 1 Tuesday, November 22, 2011, newspaper, November 22, 2011; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth209205/m1/3/: accessed May 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.