Got Danger?
The next time you find yourself on the corner of State and Liberty, walk into the Potbelly Sandwich Shop and take a deep breath. Maybe even see if you can order something with peanut butter on it. Because that’s where, in...
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Wadada Leo Smith
The social and artistic revolutions in the mid-twentieth century created completely new spaces for individual and collective expression outside of mainstream American culture. One such center of creativity was the Association...
Read MoreJoshua Davis
Like Laith Al-Saadi, Joshua Davis was a Michigan artist thrust suddenly into the national spotlight on NBC’s singing competition The Voice. Although Davis didn’t quite make it to the show’s top prize–a...
Read MoreThe Mark Lavengood Bluegrass Bonanza!
Mark Lavengood, born in Grand Rapids, is an ebullient man who dispenses hugs freely–his bandmates call him Huggy Bear. The exclamation point that accompanies his band’s name seems essential once you’ve heard...
Read MoreMark Morris Dance Group
Lord Byron once called Layla and Majnun the “Romeo and Juliet of the East.” Based on a real-life Arabic poet who was said to have lost his mind over his cousin, the story has had as many lives as a cat. Most famous...
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The Films of John Hughes
Besides Rubik’s Cubes, Michael Jackson, and Max Headroom, few elements of pop culture are more stereotypically ’80s than the movies of John Hughes. From the hairstyles to the wardrobes to the pumping synth-driven...
Read MoreEast of the River
East of the River was founded by recorder virtuosi Nina Stern and Daphna Mor, who met while performing J.S. Bach’s delicately scored Fourth Brandenburg Concerto. They soon discovered a mutual interest in Middle Eastern...
Read MoreChina Mieville
“Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be,” wrote Andre Breton, the surrealist who tried to impose some kind of system on the movement that wanted to liberate our dreams and our demons. China Mieville has been...
Read MoreKamasi Washington
Los Angeles occupies a singular place in jazz history. Though many accomplished musicians have moved there, beginning with prominent New Orleans jazz pioneers early in the twentieth century, in many ways it has remained...
Read MoreManuel Alvarez Bravo
On two huge walls upstairs in the U-M Museum of Art are twenty-three small photographs. From a distance, they’re simple, unassuming, black and white. Don’t be fooled. This collection and its photographer, Manuel...
Read MoreJon Kimura Parker
The Ann Arbor Symphony will open its 2016-17 season on September 10 with the Festive Overture, written in 1954 by Dmitri Shostakovich. A friend who watched him dash off this cheerful piece at lightning speed later compared its...
Read MoreThe Gibson Brothers
Some performers are beloved by hard-core fans of a genre but hardly visible at all to the wider public. It’s worth chasing down such favorites, for eclecticism is overrated as an artistic philosophy–in the main,...
Read MoreJive 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,...
Read MorePetra 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...
Read MoreGeorge 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...
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