A new production of William Finn and James Lapine’s Falsettos opened on Broadway on Oct. 27. The Lincoln Center Theatre production opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre and was directed by Lapine, the original director and co-book-writer. Finn also co-wrote the book and composed the mostly sung-through score.
The 24-year-old, Brooklyn native started self-producing her music back in 2014, writing her own lyrics, creating her own beats, and receiving help from friends to mix the track. In 2014 she released “BROOKLYN (Chiraq Freestyle)” featuring Rell & La Danger (RedLyfe) via her Sound Cloud profile. In 2015, she began to earn a following within the New York music world and also gained a presence on social media when she released her mixtape Sleep Walkin. The mixtape features 10 tracks with upbeat raps such as the highly emotional track, “Through The Day,” which is a personal track which talks about the murder of her older brother; his murder took place in September of 2009. This past May, she released her debut single “OOOUUU.” Since its release, “OOOUUU” has rocketed from a Brooklyn street anthem to number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.
Kenneth Womack, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, is set to release his new book, The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four, on Nov. 30. The book is an updated version of the original, which was published as two volumes in 2014.
Every semester, Monmouth’s student-run record label, Blue Hawk Records, creates and records a compilation album featuring various artists on campus. The Applied Music Industry class creates and produces this album; this includes holding auditions in Lauren K. Woods theatre to releasing and promoting the album.
Tears, screams, and rumors. Yes, Bravo’s popular reality show, Vanderpump Rules returned on Monday, Nov. 7 for its fifth season, and certainly without a shortage of drama. I’m typically a fan of reality shows; I find the scripted drama of “reality” to be entertaining, which is a quintessential quality of this series. However, the first episode was a mere disappointment, as looks the rest of the season.
From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 4, MU’s college radio station, WMCX, celebrated national College Radio Day.
Indie survival games are an excellent option for consumers, particularly in terms of affordability; however, with the recent No Man’s Sky debacle, some might be feeling a little wary of the indie games market. No Man’s Sky, and indie/survival title, turned out to be an excellent example of all that’s wrong with the indie games market; the game was incredibly overpriced, it released in an under-developed state, and it employed deceptive marketing strategies. Steam has actually changed its store policy as a result of No Man’s Sky; there is a new rule that screenshots must represent footage captured in-game. Despite the disaster that was No Man’s Sky, consumers should not allow themselves to be turned off of the indie market by a single game. There are a number of other titles that offer both affordable prices and immersive gameplay of survival sims.
Anyone who’s ever played the board game Risk would understand the basic premise of Civilization VI gameplay, and that of 4X strategy games in general. Civilization VI (or Civ VI) is the latest entry in the Civilization series of videogames. Like its predecessors, it belongs to the 4X subgenre of strategy games. In a 4X strategy game, the player is put in charge of a faction which they control through turn-based gameplay. Typically the goal of this is advancement/development of the faction despite competition from other factions. In the case of Civilization VI, players control a nation, like America or India, as a historical figure/leader, such as Teddy Roosevelt or Gandhi. What sets Civ VI and most other 4X games apart from Risk is the amount of overlapping in-game systems, which add complexity to the title.
Since the birth of rap and hip-hop, hyper-masculinity has been a constant trend, bleeding through the majority of songs under the genre. But in 2016, several rappers are starting to go against the gender norms that the culture of rap and hip-hop has created.
The Center for the Arts at Monmouth University has announced that tickets are now on sale for an Nov. 13 concert featuring the one of the greatest bands in Country music, Grammy winners Shenandoah, hosted in Pollak Theatre. Part of the 2016-2017 Performing Arts Series, the 7 p.m. concert is one of several fall events presented under a special partnership between the University and the L.A.-based Grammy Museum.