Art of the Lega
Leopard's-tooth jewelry, elegant plumes of elephant hair, and a scaly hat made of the skin of a pangolin — an animal suggesting a cross between a giant tadpole and a pineapple — draw the eye of a visitor to the...
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Phil Ogilvie’s Rhythm Kings
At the start of every show that Phil Ogilvie's Rhythm Kings play, a small glass piggy bank hangs from pianist and music director James Dapogny's mike stand. Many jazz bands of the 1920s and 1930s displayed a similar pig....
Read MoreShe Loves Me
Europe in the decade before World War II, under the looming specter of fascism, has supplied some of our best plotlines for musicals. In Berlin we have Sally Bowles consorting with Nazis and the demimonde. In Salzburg the von...
Read MoreMatthew Thorburn
Okay, I'll admit it right up front. A decade or more ago, Matthew Thorburn was a student in a U-M poetry workshop I was teaching. I'd like to say he was "my student," but that wouldn't be quite right. Matt...
Read MoreVocal Arts Ensemble
Only in later iconography are angels depicted with harps. Earlier, they are shown singing before the throne of God. While some might reasonably doubt the literal veracity of the earlier representations, the implication that a...
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Madeleine Peyroux
If you listened to WEMU around 1997, you've heard Madeleine Peyroux, the jazz and blues singer who sounds unnervingly like Billie Holiday and was constantly on the air singing Bessie Smith's "Reckless Blues."...
Read MoreThe AASO’s family concerts
Last November I took my nine-year-old daughter to the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra's family concerts, Tchaikovsky Discovers America. After the show we ran into one of her schoolmates. The boy's dad told me that when the...
Read MoreEyedea & Abilities
The sheer cleverness of the Minneapolis hip-hop duo Eyedea & Abilities begins with their name, a punning reflection on the genre's fundamental duality of rapper and disc jockey, of conceptual and kinetic energies. But...
Read MoreJeffrey Foucault
Trains, traveling, love, loss, violence, and the snapshot views from a highway you'll never go down again — Jeffrey Foucault takes these stalwarts of the Americana vernacular and has his own excellent way with them....
Read MoreTony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland is one of the best of a new group of American poets who all share certain qualities: witty without being archly comic, accessible without being simple, political without being strident. Even the title of...
Read MoreHorse Cave Trio
When it comes to a night dancing at the bar, I admit I've gotten older. Gone are those sweat-soaked, head-banging throw-downs on the dance floor until 2 a.m. But I miss them, and I still have the energy for at least one set...
Read MoreKamrowski’s last hurrah
It’s an anchored iridescent fish with spiky dragon fins. Or is it a scaly dinosaur in fatigues on a stick? Nearby, an enormous abstract canvas of burnt ochre and persimmon sizzles with life-affirming energy. Upon closer...
Read MoreDave Liebman
The soprano is a difficult and quirky saxophone to master. It was popular in classical music and jazz in the early decades of the last century but was eclipsed by its bigger and more reliable siblings, the alto and tenor. By the...
Read MoreOz’s drumming class
Steve Osburn definitely has a way with kids. He's kind and funny, yet he easily manages a potentially unruly group without being a girly man. He also gives each kid in his drumming class a big colorful drum, a clever trick...
Read MoreThe Prism Quartet
For a musical experience that is full, rich, warm, and smooth, try a sax quartet. A string quartet may be the most human-sounding ensemble and a woodwind quartet may be the most diverse-sounding, but a sax quartet is...
Read MoreLe Concert Spirituel
From 1688 through 1697, the French waged war against the Spanish, the English, the Dutch, the Danes, the Swedes, the Germans, and the Holy Roman Empire in what was later called the War of the Grand Alliance. Louis XIV, the aging...
Read MoreRaymond McDaniel
In his first book of poetry Raymond McDaniel has created a fascinating, mysterious story and then shattered it into sixty glittering, polished fragments that, as McDaniel puts it in his preface, “describe by accretion,...
Read MoreBrian Wilson
In the beginning was Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations." Given its world premiere by Wilson's Beach Boys in 1966 in Hill Auditorium, the song sold a million copies within a week of its release, and 16 million in...
Read MoreEric Kelly and the Dirty Johns
Before hearing his music, I interviewed Eric Kelly about Dylanfest, which he organizes. I figured he'd probably be as quick-witted onstage as he is face-to-face, and I was right. Between songs, Eric banters with pedal steel...
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