Arts

Arts

WEEKENDER: Talking with Fease ahead of Spring Fling

By Matthew Winkler | April 20

After winning Tufts University Social Collective’s Battle of the Bands, the Tufts student band Fease will be opening Spring Fling on April 29. Other live Fease performances can be heard Thursday at the Burren at 7 p.m. and at the Cantab Lounge on May 2 as the opener for Mega Mango. The band consists of vocalist and guitarist Jack Goldberg; lead guitarist Ben Schmelkin; bassist Jack Wish; vocalist and keyboard player Jojo Martin; drummer Jake Rubenstein; vocalist Sophie Rubin; vocalist Mari Shoop; trumpet player Zack Burpee; alto saxophonist Jonah Fox; and tenor saxophonist Andrew Kerpel.

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Arts

Wicked Queer film festival makes Boston a little more gay

By Henry Chandonnet | April 20

From March 31 to April 9, queer cinema invaded theaters across the Boston area. From bigger venues like the Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art to smaller film locales like the Brattle Theatre, Wicked Queer film festival put LGBTQ+ stories on the silver screen. With feature films and shorts alike, the festival provided a rare opportunity for queer filmmaking to take the spotlight. 

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Columns

Queeries: Sasha Colby takes the crown

By Jack Clohisy | April 20

The season finale of the 15th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (2009–) came to a glamorous conclusion on April 14 when Sasha Colby took home the crown as America’s next drag superstar. Colby’s win couldn’t have come at a better time, as she stands to highlight what trans and drag representation and excellence look like despite the slew of anti-trans and anti-drag bills attempting to harm such communities across the country right now. Joining an elite club of two, Colby joins Vanessa Van Cartier as the only two queens to hold the title of Miss Continental, an international drag pageant competition, and to claim a “Drag Race” franchise crown.

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Theater

Keep your eyes on Company One’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night’

By Odessa Gaines | April 19

For the second year now, Tufts’ Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and Company One Theatre have collaborated to put on a reading workshop of a play with Tufts students. This year’s workshop was “Morning, Noon, and Night.”

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Music

Ellie Goulding's ‘Higher Than Heaven’ may be her ‘least personal,’ but it still holds up

By Jack Clohisy | April 19

Ellie Goulding’s fifth studio album “Higher Than Heaven” (2023) was released on April 7, and she described it as her “least personal” album to date — a bold claim for the artist. Her first album in nearly three years, Goulding came back swinging with this upbeat electronic body of work. Featuring 11 standard tracks and five more on the bonus edition, “Higher Than Heaven” is swift, roughly 52 minutes of ecstasy, longing and ethereality.

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Arts

Declan McKenna’s long-awaited ‘Big Return’

By Ava Dettling | April 18

English singer-songwriter Declan McKenna shocked producers and listeners alike with his overnight YouTube sensation “Brazil” — a hit single released ages ago now in 2014. The self-released song gained wide recognition for its criticism of FIFA and the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil. Ever since then, it marked McKenna as a voice of his generation. 

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Arts

‘Coriolanus’: Queer Shakespeare in Boston

By Elizabeth Foster | April 18

Returning to live audiences, the Actors’ Shakespeare Project takes on “Coriolanus,” one of The Bard’s latest and least famous plays, with an all female/nonbinary cast. Running through April 23, “Coriolanus” unfolds an intricate political landscape and leaves no character unscathed in the eyes of the audience.

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Columns

Medford's Carrie Bradshaw: A weekend in NYC

By Megan Reimer | April 18

Anyonewhohaswatched“SexandtheCity” (1998–2004) or“GossipGirl” (2007–2012) has morelikelythan notdreamedoflivingouttheirdreamsintheBigApple.

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Arts

Dizzy’s Katie Munshaw talks vulnerability of sharing new music

By Rachel Liu and Sophie Dorf-Kamienny | April 14

“Nothing new to report; just it’s all doom and gloom over here still,” lead singer Katie Munshaw of the indie-pop band Dizzy joked about her forthcoming music in a conversation with the Daily last month.

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Arts

Indie-rock trio boygenius wows once again with ‘the record’

By Madeleine Aitken | April 14

In 2018, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker were three artists just getting started. Dacus and Baker had out two albums each: Dacus’ “No Burden” (2016) and “Historian” (2018) and Baker’s “Sprained Ankle” (2015) and “Turn Out the Lights” (2017), and Bridgers had released her debut “Stranger in the Alps” (2017) the year before. All are incredible singers and songwriters in their own right, but when they came together and released a self-titled EP under the name “boygenius,” their true magic was realized. In their solo work, their lyrics hit on similar themes — one might say they’re all the ‘yearning’ type — but they all have individualized sounds and styles, which makes their collective music work so well.

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Arts

Las Letras Encubiertas: 'El ciervo'

By Andrés F. Arévalo | April 14

The veins of Latin America have been drained for almost six centuries now. First, it was the European crowns of Spain and Portugal who happened to stumble upon our lands. With their flashy gadgets and their weapons of destruction they demolished our culture, attempted to eradicate our traditions, massacred our men and raped our women. After many generations of mestizos like me, our land finally expelled the white conquerors, just to have one hundred years of armed conflicts between ourselves; a society that has never known liberty was bound to turn on itself. The moment some sort of elusive peace arrived, the late 19th century also arrived, and with it came the imperialistic power of Western Europeans and North Americans, who used their technological advances, strong military forces and financial superiority to not only extract our resources but also to prevent us from any development or use of upright force. To this day, many developing countries are forced to adhere to the will of more developed governments who use their dystopian force to keep it that way, allowing their corporations to ravage our markets without having any care for our people or for our nature.

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Arts

WEEKENDER: Arts editors by day, Tufts Dance Collective choreographers by night

By Jack Clohisy and RaiAnn Bu | April 13

On Jan. 4, we had the pleasure of attending the advance screening of “M3GAN” (2022) at the AMC Boston Common 19. Our infatuation with M3GAN began long before this premiere, as we were first introduced to her by RaiAnn in a late-night viewing of everyone’s favorite YouTube videos. Watching M3GAN eat up her choreography and the horror genre simultaneously, we were wonderstruck. How could we best pay homage to the living legend herself other than in the spirit of dance? From the moment we saw the promotional dancers for the movie looking like random women pulled from the street wearing Party City honey-blond wigs given five minutes to learn the choreography, we had our inspiration. In came Tufts Dance Collective, affectionately known as TDC.

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Arts

Spring performance roundup: What to see and when

By Odessa Gaines | April 13

Tufts has a wide and eclectic arts scene, with everything from children’s theater to stand-up comedy available for the average student to view. As the spring semester comes to a close, many of these organizations present their final artistic offerings, providing a vast schedule for the everyday theatergoer. Here are some of the most exciting performances coming up this spring. 

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Columns

Queeries: How my sexuality changed my immigrant dad to a conservative American

By Saba S. | April 13

I was 16 years old when I realized that my attraction to individuals lacked the typical gendered format. This led to a chase for my sexuality. I was looking for a faultless description to describe myself. One day, feeling brash and bold, I expressed my frustration to my sister who unknowingly voiced my confusion to my parents. I had never been scared or sad about my sexual orientation, so I had not anticipated the feeling of relief that overcame me when my dad called me to tell me, “It’s okay, none of this matters.” Unfortunately, this relief was short-lived. 

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Arts

Annie DiRusso on friendships, clean rooms, her headline tour

By Elizabeth Barrett | April 12

Like many other recent college graduates, singer-songwriter Annie DiRusso has spent her year living with her friends (in her case, in Nashville) while also visiting her home state of New York. But, unlike most early 20-somethings, DiRusso is preparing to embark on a 27-show headline tour starting April 12, in addition to playing at Lollapalooza and opening for Ruston Kelly at four of his shows. DiRusso released her first EP “God, I Hate This Place”(2023) in February after years of releasing singles and embarked on a promotional tour that included appearances such as a musical guest spot on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (2015–). 

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Television

The humanity of ‘The Last of Us’ makes it stand out

By Tyler Frojmovich | April 12

Based on the hit Naughty Dogaction-adventure game of the same name, HBO’s “The Last of Us'' (2023–) took the world by storm, with the premiere episode racking up 4.7 million viewers. The critically acclaimed series is set in a post-apocalyptic United States ridden with zombie-esque creatures infected by a mutated fungus, ‘Cordyceps.’ It follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a world-weary smuggler who lost his daughter Sarah on the day of the outbreak, as he travels across the country escorting Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a young girl immune to the virus. The series focuses on the pair’s growing bond and their father-daughter connection, while also highlighting humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. 

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Columns

Winkler’s Weekly Symphony Guide: Young performers enliven old works at Symphony Hall

By Matthew Winkler | April 12

From April 6–8 the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed Unsuk Chin’s “Subito Con Forza,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. Assistant conductor Earl Lee led the orchestra, marking Lee’s second time directing the BSO, and pianist Eric Lu joined as soloist for the Mozart. 

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Tennis

Tennis brings love to the House of Blues

By Madeleine Aitken | April 11

Romance between band members is a tale as old as time — as old as music, at least — and it usually doesn’t end well. Take ABBA, The Mamas and the Papas, The White Stripes or the ubiquitous Fleetwood Mac. But Tennis, an indie pop duo made up of husband and wife Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, is a lovely exception who seem to have cracked the code to marriage and music. On tour for their sixth album, “Pollen” (2023), released on Feb. 10, they brought their ballads to the House of Blues on April 3. 

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TV

This is Pedro Pascal’s world — we’re just living in it

By Nate Hall | April 11

In 2019, the “Star Wars” franchise entered the world of live-action television with the premiere of “The Mandalorian” (2019–), a space Western series that catapulted its star, Pedro Pascal, to international fame. Pascal, who previously had a one-season arc on “Game of Thrones” (2011–19), has quickly become one of the biggest names in Hollywood over the last several years. His career is currently at a high point as he stars in two of this year’s most-watched television series: season 3 of “The Mandalorian” and season 1 of “The Last of Us” (2023–), a post-apocalyptic drama on HBO. 

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Columns

Medford’s Carrie Bradshaw: The importance of a movie night

By Megan Reimer | April 11

In my family, movies are a pivotal part of our connection, bonding time and ‘after work, after school’ let loose time. I grew up watching movies on designated nights, having been told that movies like “Blade Runner” (1982) would “blow my mind” and that “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986) would “change the way I look at life.” While both of those sentiments may have turned out to be truthful to an extent, there’s nothing like seeing the sheer joy a person has when prompting you to watch their favorite film. It’s like a little inside secret into how another person thinks, and that’s reflected in their movies of choice.

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