Richard Russo on Writing
Richard Russo likes big, sprawling nineteenth-century novels told from the omniscient point of...
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Event Reviews
Lunar Octet
If you lived around here in the 1980s and 1990s you couldn’t miss the music of the Lunar...
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If I Forget
By turns funny and heartbreaking, If I Forget is the rare play that manages to make several...
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The Jewish Film Festival
There is a particular “what if” game that many people like to play: if you were alive...
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Historic Keyboards
Even if you’ve never heard of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America, you might...
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The Pherotones at The Last Word
It’s easy to miss the nightclub entrance on West Huron, with its dark red door recessed like...
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Sherlock Holmes
How often do people meet Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes these days? We seem to be...
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Emily Strelow
All the characters in local writer Emily Strelow’s first novel, The Wild Birds–or at...
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Hot Club of Cowtown
The Quintette du Hot Club de France, headed by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane...
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A South African Journey
Jazz is often described as the quintessential American musical form. But even in its early years,...
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Steve Nardella 2018
I am Steve Nardella’s Number One fan. Self-professed. And he gives me that, with a wink....
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Russell Brakefield
We remember and honor Alan Lomax for the work he did traveling around the country collecting...
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Suzanne Hodges
Some ingredients stand alone perfectly well, but when they come together, something truly special...
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Danilo Brito & Joao Luiz
When you think music of Brazil, you think samba and bossa nova. But choro, a less familiar genre,...
Read MoreTarfia Faizullah
Tarfia Faizullah’s first book, Seam, published in 2014, revitalized and changed documentary poetry in America. To write that remarkable book, Faizullah returned to her parents’ native Bangladesh, where she...
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The Ann Arbor Film Festival 2018
The concept of tradition seems inescapable in today’s world. How important is it? How much...
Read MoreSteve Lehman’s Selebeyone
Jazz studies have come far in the century that separates young Louis Armstrong picking up the cornet at the New Orleans “waif’s home” from today’s graduate music programs at major universities. What was...
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Apollo’s Fire Does L’Orfeo
Orpheus, the ancient Greeks tell us, was the son of Calliope, muse of epic poetry. Orpheus...
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The Death of Stalin
British writer-director Armando Iannucci has trained his vicious sense of humor on contemporary...
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