Even though no one has ever come up with a precise definition of the word jazz, many of its most dedicated lovers jealously guard its borders, often to the exclusion of any other music. Paradoxically, whatever jazz is, it is...
Read MoreAs anyone who has heard the hundreds of literary introductions he has given around town over the last decade would suspect, Raymond McDaniel is a poet who revels in the textures of words. Many of his poems focus on the...
Read MoreAlthough he sings a traditional kind of jazz, Jimmy Scott's singing is an extreme thing. Most immediately unusual is its range: Scott was born with Kallmann syndrome, which prevented his voice from changing. The voice is...
Read MoreYou could feel the love in the air. And with seventy musicians onstage and 300 people in the audience, that's a whole lot of love on a warm, autumn Sunday afternoon in the Center for the Performing Arts in Dexter High...
Read MoreGrowing Pretty, making its world premiere at the Purple Rose, is a coming-of-age (and going-a-little-past) story of a young artist. Its theme is remarkably underutilized, and the playwright, first-timer Carey Crim, deserves...
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Writing music reviews is much like eating oysters. A lot of bands are worth a little hot sauce, but rarely do they offer up a pearl. And then comes Back Forty. This all-white, all-male Michigan band is not just good local...
Read More“?Do You Believe in Jesus I Do!” A rusty found sign sporting this run-on sentence — with its playful punctuation and jaunty hand-painted font — hangs next to a picture of itself in the U-M Museum of Art Off/Site. The...
Read MoreThe name gets your attention, but if it gives you the idea that the Mother Truckers play aggressive roadhouse punk, or country music of the black-and-blues-obsessed 1930s, when "Can't Nobody Truck like Me" was a...
Read MoreThe only time I've seen Trina Hamlin perform live was last summer in Glen Arbor, near Traverse City. It was an outdoor concert on a hot, humid, muggy night, and she walked onstage barefoot. Given the unpredictable nature of...
Read MoreLike so much else about culture and the arts in Poland, the story of jazz in that country reflects its complex history and politics. Banned during World War II, jazz was driven underground by the new Communist leaders. Only in...
Read MoreAs a musician, Derek Snyder wears at least three hats: performer, teacher, and arranger. The Cleveland-based cellist will be wearing all of them when he hosts the second annual “Cello Celli!” concert at Kerrytown...
Read MoreWho remembers the last time a piano player tried performing all thirty-two of Beethoven's piano sonatas in Ann Arbor? Yes, that's right. Ursula Oppens tried it back in 1997. The idea was that she'd juxtapose...
Read MoreThe music turns heads and makes necks crane on Main Street. Is this Crazy Wisdom Bookstore? Isn’t their usual fare singer-songwriters softly strumming acoustic guitars? What’s this rockin’ from upstairs? This...
Read MoreIn her recent book Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil, C. D. Wright quotes pianist Glenn Gould: "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline, but a gradual lifelong construction of a...
Read MoreWhat's the ominous whirlpool in the three-by-two-foot paper Words of Warcraft map in the Graduate Library's eighth-floor Map Library? "Oh, that's just a maelstrom," says library information specialist...
Read MoreFor sheer bravura technique, there's not a piano player in the world who can touch Lang Lang. His fingers are fleeter, his attacks stronger, his releases crisper, his pianissimos quieter, his fortissimos louder, and his...
Read MoreI'm no geneticist, but I was not surprised to hear that Natalia Zukerman, the daughter of Pinchas and Eugenia Zukerman, is a musician. Having parents who are both world-class musicians would certainly skew your odds. Can you...
Read MoreLike a bracelet around the Crisler Arena floor are ten sets of concentric circles: a circular drum, a circle of men playing it in unison with sticks and singing, and a group that gathers around them to listen. Sometimes, says a...
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