The Macpodz
"We invented this style called disco-bebop," one of the Macpodz tells the crowd during a Blind Pig show not long ago. There's a lot more to it than that, but if you have to sum up the Macpodz, you could do worse...
Read MoreFeb 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
"We invented this style called disco-bebop," one of the Macpodz tells the crowd during a Blind Pig show not long ago. There's a lot more to it than that, but if you have to sum up the Macpodz, you could do worse...
Read MoreFeb 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
At fifty, Stephen Petronio has a postmodern dance sensibility that remains a force of nature. Though he came to dance late, as a college student, his self-assured technique — developed in part through his experience in...
Read MoreJan 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
For many communities in the United States, a visit from Artrain is a celebrated event. When the museum in five railcars rolls into small towns, people of all ages travel for miles to see the paintings and sculptures on the...
Read MoreJan 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The Ann Arbor roots-country band Hoodang grew from a collaboration between singer-guitarist David Rossiter and bassist Rich Rickman. Rossiter is now backed by multi-instrumentalists Drew Howard and John Latini and drummer Pat...
Read MoreJan 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Marie Howe's second collection of poems, What the Living Do, has a unique place in contemporary letters. It is a widely read book that appeals to many different kinds of readers, often those who don't read much...
Read MoreJan 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
A long time ago, jazz big bands traveled throughout the land; many of their sidemen were as notorious as movie stars, and the leaders were treated as nobility. The days of peripatetic musical Dukes and Counts are over, and...
Read MoreJan 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
If they're the Takács Quartet, where's Takács? It's like this. When violinists Gabor Takács-Nagy and Károly Schranz, violist Gabor Ormai, and cellist András Fejér were...
Read MoreJan 1, 2007 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
First of all, my wife did not want to go. We were new in town, still unpacking, wondering what life in a "small town" was going to be like after we'd spent eleven years in Chicago. "I've never heard of any...
Read MoreDec 15, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
When I told Whit Hill I was writing an event review about her band, she started yelling into the phone, “Charmie, you can’t do that! You’re one of my closest friends. That is not appropriate.” She calmed...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
"I like to watch." This is the prophetic mantra uttered by a man named Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers). When Gardiner is befriended by socialite Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine) after a minor traffic accident, he becomes...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Kitty Donohoe has been making songs in Michigan for decades now, and the state's a better place for it. She's a folk-style road warrior princess, crisscrossing both peninsulas, playing for big fat festivals and for tiny...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
In the 1980s Mary Gaitskill exploded into the reading world with Bad Behavior, a collection of short stories that shocked and challenged what was left of complacent baby-boomer assumptions about our generation's social...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Big things are happening in the little, lightly trafficked UMMA refuge at South U and Forest. After the mesmerizing Barsamian exhibit of whirling modern zoetrope contraptions and the enchanting and mournful Plains of Sweet...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
There's a certain mode of between-song folk-music patter that Small Potatoes, the Illinois duo of Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso, exemplifies to the hilt. Call it midwestern, or Keilloresque — if you go out to hear...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
What’s the real meaning of Christmas? It’s Luke 2:10-14: “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born...
Read MoreDec 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Tye Tribbett and G.A., an African American gospel choir from Camden, New Jersey, with a young and extremely energetic leader, is coming to Hill Auditorium on Saturday, December 9. Gospel music tends to fly under the media radar,...
Read MoreNov 15, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
You gotta love Marcia Ball. I defy anyone to resist this willowy Gulf Coast piano pounder and her blend of roots rock and soulful R&B. Her Royal Tallness presides upright, sidesaddle on the bench, crossed-leg bouncing time,...
Read MoreNov 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The leaves have turned. The skies are cloudy. The wind is from the north. The first frost is on the ground, and winter is in the air. It's what the old-timers called Brahms weather. Some composers know no season —...
Read MoreNov 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Some songs by Broken Social Scene are mood music, edgy yet soothing, atmospheric postrock. Then the Canadian indie-rock collective hits you with cacophonies that are so packed with dueling sounds, so boisterous and brash,...
Read MoreNov 1, 2006 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
“Our house is burning,” sings local folk-rock band Canada on its debut CD, This Cursed House. “When the trees go, we go too. When the birds go, we go too.” I like to know that twenty-something kids are...
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