Chris Morris-Lent

As an undergraduate at a college that fetishizes requirements, the English major seemed like a breath of fresh air. And then I looked a little closer.

Adrift in Macao begins with the portentous sound of a mallet crashing against a gong, producing a broad clangor that is distinctively Oriental in character.

urator Matt Raibert, GS, is putting more than artwork on the walls of Postcrypt Art Gallery this Friday. He's also displaying a word: "Masculinity," the title of the new exhibition. "Usually masculinity is implied," Raibert explained. Citing various aspects of the Core curriculum, Raibert noted that many of Columbia's classes are taught from a masculine perspective.

The New York Philharmonic embraced a palindromic program last Thursday, with two Beethoven warhorses-the overture from King Stephen and the Symphony No. 5-framing two modernist works by Gyorgy Ligeti and Bela Bartok.

By Chris Morris-Lent

Columbia Daily Spectator

The most striking feature of the Soho Rep, an intimate venue with a seating capacity of 70, is the brutal brightness of the stage. Three white walls mark the boundaries of a single room, and on top of the light-gray carpet lie three alabaster desks and several fair boxes of bleached printer paper.

On Thursday evening, the New York Philharmonic held a concert pairing the works of two icons of French music, Maurice Ravel and Camille Saint-Saëns.

For the first half of the event, the orchestra was joined by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and a formidable battery of vocal soloists for Ravel's little-performed "L'Enfant et les Sortileges," a "lyric fantasy" detailing how a child's miscreant behavior causes various household objects to come to life and rise up against his cruel and thoughtless rule.