GENEVIEVE PFISTER, Staff Writer—
Denison’s Vail Series opened on Thursday with The Queen’s Cartoonists, a six-member musical group living in Queens, New York who performed for a full house in Swasey Chapel, packed with an audience of members young, old, students, and faculty. The group, which performs music from classic and modern cartoons and short films in sync with projections of the films, features Dr. Joel Pierson on piano, Mark Phillips and Drew Pitcher on woodwinds, Greg Hammontree on trumpet, Rossen Nedelchev on drums, and Steve Whipple on bass. Their goal as a group, according to their program, is, “creating a concert of classical music and jazz for everyone-regardless of age, gender, or familiarity with the concert hall.”
Much of the performance featured cartoon classics, with famous characters such as Popeye, Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, and Porky Pig. Between cartoons, the group also played upbeat instrumental classics such as “Flight of the Bumblebee” and performed several different stunts and challenges, one including playing multiple instruments at once and playing the Jeopardy theme on a saxophone while solving a Rubik’s Cube. In addition, they wove in a number of props from fake bumble bees on sticks to giant expandable foam pointers in order to create musical spectacles that earned plenty of laughs from the audience.
Later in the program, they also played along to several modern short films whose creators they had collaborated with previously. Among these was one film with a fish who was about to be fried singing opera, another with a wandering hedgehog lost in a fog, and another which personified the Earth, Sun, and Moon and told the story of Earth’s relationships with the other two. Dr. Pierson, who is also the Artistic Director of the group, composed the music for at least one of these contemporary films.
While at Denison, The Queen’s Cartoonists also visited and spoke with students in the Jazz Ensemble, a Jazz History course, and an Introduction to Music Theory course, and they are also performing for over 300 Newark middle school students during their stay in the area.
It’s concerts like this where musical talents are highlighted and shown to the entire Denison community, hoping that one day, former Denison students will be the stars performing!