Event Reviews

Cavafy’s world

Constantine Cavafy is the leading poet of modern Greek, although he never published a book in his lifetime or lived in Greece. He lived mostly in Alexandria, Egypt, a member of the Greek-speaking minority that was one of the...

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Steven Curtis Chapman

The youthful faithful already know all about Steven Curtis Chapman's appearance Thursday, March 14, at Hill Auditorium. Although contemporary Christian music doesn't register much on weekend things-to-do lists, he filled...

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Jim Roll

Jim Roll has long been known as a literate and sometimes witheringly honest folk-rock wordsmith, and on his third CD, Inhabiting the Ball, he raises the literary stakes by taking on noted novelists Denis Johnson and Rick Moody...

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Ambassadors of Rumba

Among fans of Cuban music, the city of Matanzas has long been known as a cultural mecca. Founded in 1693 by the Spanish as a port for the sugar cane industry, the city quickly became home to tens of thousands of African slaves....

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U-M Powwow

Asked to list their hometown's world-class attractions, most Ann Arborites could easily rattle off several, but very few would name one of Ann Arbor's most remarkable annual events: the U-M Powwow. Every March (March...

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Twyla Tharp Dance

Modern dance is a tricky term, often used as a catchphrase for nearly every nonclassical (read: nonballetic) theatrical dance style in Europe and America since the early twentieth century. Twyla Tharp challenges even that...

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Anne Waldman

Poet is almost too limiting a term to describe Anne Waldman: she seems to be a force of nature! She came from a family steeped in bohemian culture and moved quite easily into the artistic ferment of New York City in the...

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Uncle Earl

Uncle Earl is the brainchild of two women, K. C. Groves and Jo Serrapere. Serrapere writes blues-tinged originals and made local music headlines last December when she won a slot on the Hill Auditorium program of Garrison...

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Carlo Actis Dato

European improvised music is becoming well known in this country. German, Swedish, British, and Dutch jazz artists have found different routes to original styles, having long ago abandoned the imitation of American models, and...

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Laura Kasischke

I hate to do it, but I can't talk about Laura Kasischke's new novel, The Life before Her Eyes, without giving something important away — the beginning. Two young women, inseparable best friends, juniors in high...

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The Ron Brooks Trio

The Bird of Paradise has been serving jazz seven nights a week for more than fifteen years, and throughout that time a trio led by bassist Ron Brooks, who owns the club, has been a featured attraction. But the band antedates the...

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Tilt

Scene: A guy's apartment; couch, table, a couple of chairs — and in the corner a barrel of monkeys. Enter the guy and a girl, after a first date. He: "Can I get you something to drink?" She: "I'd...

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The Art Oasis

The high-quality exhibit Contemporary Artists of Ann Arbor at the Art Oasis on Main Street tempted me to take one of the classes held in the studio space behind the gallery. If I did, I realized, some of my fellow students would...

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Doc Watson

"Oh, I have seen the David," sings Guy Clark. "Seen the Mona Lisa, too. And I have heard Doc Watson sing 'Columbus Stockade Blues.' " My own favorite Doc Watson moment is more modest. It came the last...

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Germany versus France

What do you get when you cross a metaphysically inclined German tough guy with a liberté et égalité French orchestra? Beautiful music? Maybe. Maybe not. Christoph Eschenbach is the metaphysically inclined German tough guy....

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Timothy Liu

Early in Burnt Offerings, his second collection of poetry, Timothy Liu writes: “All my life / the sound I’ve been trying to hear is the sound / of my own voice.” It is perhaps too easy to put that as a kind of...

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The Starlight Drifters

A few days after George Harrison’s funeral I saw the Starlight Drifters at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti, and it was, believe me, very easy to imagine a world in which the Beatles had never existed, despite being told...

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