Chapel Hill
Saul Williams
Memorial Hall, UNC CampusA few years late, plenty of Americans discovered Saul Williams through the 2008 Nike Sparq Training commercial featuring athletes training as Williams’ “List of Demands (Reparations)” pumped in the background. Dark, in your face, and toting an IV bag of energy, the song served as an anthem beneath the Nike slogan “My better is better than your better.”
Williams first released “List of Demands (Reparations)” in 2004 on his self-titled fourth album. The track also came stapled as a bonus to his 2007 Trent Reznor-produced album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!
Newfound public awareness or not, Williams remains as he’s long been, a powerful poet with four books and five albums to his name. He takes the stage tonight with the Arditti String Quartet to perform the U.S. premiere of NGH WHT, Thomas Kessler’s setting of Williams’ poem “The Dead Emcee Scrolls.” The show, which also includes pieces by Charles Ives and Arnold Schoenberg, concludes William’s five-day residency at UNC. The 7:30 p.m. performance costs $10-$15. Also, look for a free Williams concert with UNC’s New Music Ensemble at 4 p.m. in Hill Hall Auditorium Wednesday, March 4. Andrew Ritchey
Raleigh
This is an Experiment
School of Communication ArtsMusic recorded on film has taken various forms through the years: There’s the rock opera, the live performance, the final show documentary, the best of and even the rock mockumentary. North Carolina filmmaker Zack Cookman wanted to contribute to the genre by documenting a band that is just starting out. The result, This is an Experiment, is a narrative of the making of a debut album as the camera follows Arkansas-based indie band Mar to a studio nestled in bitterly cold Iceland. Here, the camera plays witness to the creative process as the band faces financial woes, creative frustrations and relationship tension. Catch the film for free at 7 p.m. Kathy Justice
