Ann Arbor Symphony
What sort of "resurrection" is Mahler's Second Symphony? Well, the agony of its opening Funeral March, the charm of its Lndler, the irony of its Scherzo, and the simple faith of its Folk Song all lead to the...
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Elvis Costello
It's impossible to love, or even keep up with, everything Elvis Costello has done lately. He's collaborated on albums with Brill Building pop songwriter Burt Bacharach and opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter. He's...
Read MoreFiamma Fumana
Is Fiamma Fumana the first folk group to specify beats per minute in the track listing on its album? Or the first electronic outfit to feature bagpipes? You can decide for yourself when these young Italians — three women...
Read MoreDonning the mantle
Listen to Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion’s new CD, Exploration, for any number of reasons, if not just to hear the word lieu used in a song. For the average folkie, this collection of twelve distinctly American songs...
Read MoreHummingbirds
Two things lured me to the music of the Ypsilanti country music duo the Hummingbirds before I heard a note. One was the stark black-and-white picture on the cover of their debut CD, Depot Town. The photo of singer and rhythm...
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Portrait of a People
Cloves. The sharp brown smell lingers in the dainty silver spice box, resembling a cross between a pagoda and a chalice, and is released when event coordinator Harriet Teller unlatches the tiny door for a sniff. Like this vessel...
Read MoreK. E. Allen
Chapbooks are a small but interesting phenomenon of the publishing world. Most people would look at one and simply call it a "pamphlet," but poets prefer their own vocabularies. Chapbooks allow poets to put their work...
Read MoreMilonga Picante
I watch from a distance as the young man in neatly pressed khakis and a polo shirt approaches a young woman at a table. They shake hands in mock formality. They chat and laugh for a moment. Then he motions toward the dance...
Read MoreSchlepping through the Alps
In Schlepping through the Alps, Sam Apple invites us to accompany him on journeys into the Austrian mountains, the world of a wandering shepherd, and his own confused psyche as he searches for love, roots, and anti-Semites. His...
Read MoreThe Stillness between Breaths
Meet the O'Shays — four sisters of varying age, height, and hair color, with distinctive personalities to match. Joseph Zettelmaier's The Stillness between Breaths, which ends its six-week world premiere run at the...
Read MoreUnforgiven
Unforgiven opens with a wide shot of a barren landscape, a solitary farmhouse, and a man working an ax. Over this serene though stark sunset, director Clint Eastwood uses plain rolling text as an introduction to the main...
Read MoreThe Children of Abraham
It starts with a song — a simple one, like something heard around a thousand campfires on a summer night: eight young people on a bare stage, standing in a circle, snapping fingers, throwing in more and more gestures and...
Read MoreDan Zanes and Friends
When I realized that Dan Zanes's show at Rackham Auditorium on Saturday, March 5, may be sold out, I felt like crying. Then I thought — I should throw my own house party. After all, that's this former rock...
Read MoreKarl Leister
When Karl Leister joined the Berlin Philharmonic as principal clarinetist in 1959, the orchestra had been under the autocratic directorship of Herbert von Karajan for five years. Leister served for more than thirty years, at the...
Read MoreThis Fertile Land
A collection of prehistoric tidbits, desperately scraped in 1928 from an archaeological site undergoing looting, washed up at the Kelsey Museum some sixty years later. Now on exhibit at the Kelsey, This Fertile Land offers a...
Read MoreKing Wilkie
When I saw the young bluegrass band King Wilkie at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in January, they weren't quite what I'd expected. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, they've been hailed as the next big thing in...
Read MoreNorma and Wanda
As the oldest (and bossiest) of three sisters, I went into the premiere of Jeff Daniels's new comedy, Norma and Wanda, with a fair amount of arrogance. I consider myself an expert in sibling argument and allegiance,...
Read MorePenelope Crawford
Last April, Penelope Crawford was scheduled to perform a recital of harpsichord music at the Kerrytown Concert House. Everything was all set — the repertoire had been picked and learned, and the hall had been booked...
Read MoreHarry Mark Petrakis
Right or wrong, we expect something from Chicago writers. The prose will be hard edged, the stories realistic and tough. With Greek American authors, however, we have a different stereotype, perhaps of a certain kind of...
Read MorePhoenix Ensemble
For the past seven years, the Phoenix Ensemble, perhaps Ann Arbor's most versatile musical group, has performed a wide variety of programs, from folk to jazz to classical. Although the personnel of the ensemble change from...
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