Event Reviews

Tumbao

Jan 1, 2005 | , |

I'm not a seasoned listener to Cuban jazz. I have to say that up front, because my brother-in-law, Marc Taras, is the host of Cuban Fantasy on WEMU and writes about Cuban music with the skill of a devotee. In comparison, I...

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Yiddishe Cup

Jan 1, 2005 | , |

It's only in the last twenty-five years that klezmer music has moved into concert halls. Before that it was always dance music, played at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and parties. Occasionally it was the vehicle of Jewish comedy....

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NoMo

Dec 15, 2004 | , |

With seventeen members, NoMo may be the biggest band in town outside of the Ann Arbor Symphony. It's got a whole crowd of horns and winds, backed up by multiple keyboards, guitars, and a large percussion section with African...

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Bill Charlap

Dec 1, 2004 | , |

When I listen to younger jazz pianists, I sometimes wonder if the instrument does not have too many keys. Most of them have prodigious technique developed by many years of classical training, and many of them take their cues...

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Jen Cass

Dec 1, 2004 | , |

If you're a music lover who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, you probably have a story about how a record saved your life, or at least got you through some dark days. If I had a dollar for every time people have told me that...

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Art of the Lega

Dec 1, 2004 | , |

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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She Loves Me

Dec 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Matthew Thorburn

Dec 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Vocal Arts Ensemble

Dec 1, 2004 | , |

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

Nov 15, 2004 | , |

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."...

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Eyedea & Abilities

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Jeffrey Foucault

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

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....

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Tony Hoagland

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Horse Cave Trio

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Kamrowski’s last hurrah

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Dave Liebman

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

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...

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Mr. B

Nov 1, 2004 | , |

Mark Braun (aka Mr. B) returns to the Ark on Saturday, November 27, for his tenth annual Thanksgiving weekend show. He also has a new CD — and a new piano. He's clearly in love with this piano. The new recording, B at...

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