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 MoreOkay, 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 MoreOnly 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...
Read MoreIf 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 MoreLast 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 More
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 MoreTrains, 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 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 MoreWhen 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 MoreIt’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 MoreThe 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 MoreSteve 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 MoreFor 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 MoreFrom 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 MoreIn 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 MoreIn 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 MoreBefore 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...
Read MoreLet me just say this right up front: I am not a cat person. Oh, I know this just sets me up to receive hate mail, but (1) I don’t like boxes of shit in my house, and (2) they get mad at you and pee on your stuff anyway....
Read MoreHumble Boy, the season opener at the Performance Network, is a perfect storm of transcendent script, stellar ensemble acting, and the directorial hurricane force of Malcolm Tulip. Tulip can usually be counted on to deliver...
Read More