Jive Colossus
Watching Jive Colossus take the stage before a set, it’s difficult to know exactly what sort of music to expect. Looking at the predominantly Caucasian ten-person lineup, with a wide variety of fashion senses and ages,...
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Petra Van Nuis & Andy Brown
Singer Petra van Nuis (pronounced Pay-tra van Nouse) and guitarist Andy Brown could legitimately be called Chicago’s First Couple of Jazz. The married pair is a fixture on Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene, frequently...
Read MorePeter Ho Davies
Peter Ho Davies’ new novel, The Fortunes, tells four stories of Chinese Americans over their long collective history in the United States.The first and longest is about Ling, the fictional servant of the very real Charles...
Read MoreThe 25th Annual Putnam Co. Spelling Bee
Unlike this one-act musical comedy’s title, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is short and sweet–and blunt. Conceived by Rebecca Feldman, with a book by Rachel Sheinkin and music and lyrics by William Finn,...
Read MoreAaron Burch
Ann Arbor fiction writer, editor, and teacher Aaron Burch has written a rare book. Neither exclusively criticism nor memoir, Stephen King’s The Body recounts Burch’s deeply personal, even intimate, engagement with a...
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George Bedard
George Bedard is soft-spoken, dead serious about the music he loves. There is a lot more to him than the crowd-pleasing Duane Eddy-style guitar rock for which he is justly famous. While uncommonly adept at that kind of...
Read MoreOccidental Gypsy
If it’s true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Django Reinhardt, were he still living, would feel very flattered indeed. Since his death in 1953, a whole jazz subgenre devoted to Reinhardt’s...
Read MoreWill McEvoy’s Third Coast Quartet
About a month or so ago, jazz night at the Old Town bar was packed. As a trio played an Ornette Coleman tune, my attention was drawn to the bassist who was driving the music, feeling the groove but constantly shifting his lines...
Read MoreMorning’s at Seven
Morning’s at Seven is a chance to catch the Purple Rose in a rare instance of mining–rather than cultivating–Michigan playwrights. This play by Paul Osborn is a find, although it’s a weird one. I watched...
Read More“Celebrating the Quilt”
Every two years, the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild turns the lobby of the WCC Morris Lawrence Building into an intricate grid, with hundreds of quilts ranged on precisely aligned racks. Most of the quilt patterns are linear too....
Read MoreShannon Gibney
I’d never heard the phrase transracial adoptee until I read Shannon Gibney’s young adult novel, See No Color, yet it describes something I’ve known about for a long time. Alexandra Kirtridge, Gibney’s...
Read MoreSeth Bernard
Seth Bernard has been a prominent presence on the Michigan music scene for close to two decades. He performs as a solo singer-songwriter, with his wife, May Erlewine, in the duo Seth and May, and in a variety of collaborations...
Read MoreTiempo Libre
It’s Friday night and you need to cut loose, so you head for Main St., climb the stairs to the Ark, and settle in for an evening with the Miami-based Afro-Cuban dance band Tiempo Libre. Twenty minutes into the set you...
Read MoreMichael Franti
Lanky, muscular, tattooed, barefoot, and dreadlocked, the poet crossing to center stage with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder stands six-foot-six and appears even taller. Extending both arms as if to embrace his...
Read MoreBebel Gilberto
Daughter of bossa nova pioneer Joao Gilberto and Brazilian vocalist Miucha, stepdaughter of “The Girl from Ipanema” vocalist Astrud Gilberto, and niece of the socially progressive poet and songwriter Chico Buarque,...
Read MoreRebecca Makkai
I started seeing Rebecca Makkai’s short stories a few years ago. They’d pop up in some of the finer literary journals (including our own Michigan Quarterly Review) and then get reprinted with amazing regularity in...
Read MoreA Night with the Polyonymous Watusies
It was a snowy January night back in 1984 when I first encountered the Watusies. Singer Dan Mulholland, fresh from a long stint with the popular Urbations, had recruited keyboardist Fred Klein and guitarist Chris Casello (and...
Read MoreElizabeth Schwartz
I don’t “presearch” art exhibits. No site checking. No bios. I want fresh eyes, a mind uncluttered by prejudice, and an openness to the art even if it’s not on my list of favorite styles.That objective...
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