After watching Nancy Heusel perform The Belle of Amherst at Kempf House in 2004, I wanted to run home and read every word Emily Dickinson ever wrote. The setting in a real nineteenth-century house made it almost seem like we...
Read MoreEvery string quartet ever written is a four-way conversation unencumbered by words. The term “string quartet” denotes both a musical composition and the intimate group that brings it to life for all to hear. By far...
Read MoreChicago’s double bass jazz tradition is anchored in the strongly rhythmic, percussive, and deep-toned playing of the late Wilbur Ware. Ware played mostly with traditional modern jazz musicians, but he was also fully at...
Read MoreCount Jan Potocki (1761-1815) was a Polish nobleman who fought at sea as a member of the Knights of Malta, traveled to Mongolia and carefully recorded what he saw there, and was the first Pole to fly in a balloon–just for...
Read MoreCertain folks seem like they were born into their careers, be they doctors, lawyers, or–in Dan Mulholland’s case–rock ‘n’ roll front men. Over the years he’s played with twenty-seven local...
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The colors of autumn are warm as we walk onto the sun-swept grounds of St. Vladimir Russian Orthodox Church for its first annual Russian Festival, serenaded by the largest balalaika I have ever seen. Four feet across at the...
Read More“If by hearing one of my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps strike a loved one, it will all have been worth it to me.” So wrote Tom Lehrer, whose hits make up the...
Read MoreLolita Hernandez, who worked on the line and with the UAW for thirty-three years before becoming an instructor at the U-M Residential College, has written wonderfully about the people she knew at General Motors. Her earlier...
Read MoreIf you’re new to the community, and this time of year so many are–welcome!–the Old West Side Homes Tour is a good way to inhale the aroma of one of Ann Arbor’s most iconic neighborhoods. For a lot of...
Read MoreEditor’s note: This event has been canceled.I read The Art of Fielding because it was a new baseball novel. I found out it was about a lot more than baseball.In Chad Harbach’s debut novel, published in 2011, the...
Read MoreAs if to inaugurate the autumn in burnished splendor, Arie Lipsky and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra will open their new season with three popular works by Ludwig van Beethoven, a prolific composer who wrote only one...
Read MoreSeptember of this year has somehow turned into jazz guitar month at the Kerrytown Concert House. The first installment, on September 11, features a trio with the somewhat disconcerting name Thumbscrew, made up of three...
Read MoreThe Crane Wives bill themselves as an indie folk group, even deriving their name from an album by one of that genre’s original stalwarts, the Decemberists. But despite the presence of a banjo, mostly acoustic...
Read MoreSarah Jarosz’s first recording was nominated for a Grammy before she even finished high school. Last year, soon after she graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, her third album also received a Grammy...
Read MoreThe Americana and folk scenes are full of married or partnered couples these days. Mandolin Orange, the North Carolina duo of Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz, follows in the footsteps of the couple that started this trend and so...
Read MoreI had to learn to waltz for a musical when I was in high school. My partner had a habit of going one-three-two while I was going two-three-one, and the results were like Arthur Murray gone horribly, horribly wrong.I kind of...
Read MoreIn the 1980s and 1990s, women had more room to be tough on the radio. From Natalie Merchant in 10,000 Maniacs to Suzanne Vega to the Bangles to the Cowboy Junkies, female pop stars maintained the memorable hooks and lighter...
Read MoreLouise Penny’s third appearance in Ann Arbor, this time to discuss and sign her latest Inspector Gamache mystery, will be at Washtenaw Community College’s Towsley Auditorium–the largest venue yet to host her...
Read MoreDetroit and its surroundings have been the birthplace and learning ground of countless great jazz instrumentalists but have also given the world a number of majestic singers as well. The jazz bug can lay dormant and only grow...
Read MoreMost of us in this part of the world remember the John Lee Hooker song about the 1967 riots: “Oh, the Motor City’s burnin’ /It ain’t no thing in the world that I can do … My home town is...
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