Rodgers and Hammerstein had huge hits with their first two collaborations, Oklahoma and Carousel, but their third, Allegro, flopped. So in staging their fourth, South Pacific, they hedged their bets in a number of ways,...
Read MoreGiuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata is perhaps the most-performed opera ever. The tragic story of Violetta, the courtesan with the heart of gold, who sacrifices her last chance at true love to protect the honor of the man she...
Read MoreMany years ago, a friend passed along a copy of Whiskey River by Michigan writer Loren D. Estleman. The book is a crime novel about booze smuggling set in Detroit during Prohibition, and I burned through it in record time. I...
Read MoreThe greatest moments of the celebrated Detroit jazz tradition took place at times when jazz was a popular art and when music was widely taught in the schools. In recent years other kinds of music have achieved a broader appeal,...
Read MoreIn the photo exhibit Cheap Shots III: Blurred, Not Shaken–a clever take on James Bond’s shaken, not stirred martini–the Ann Arbor Area Crappy Camera Club pays homage to an older, slower, more artistic...
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Watching Rollie Tussing play, you get the feeling that the Ann Arbor-born guitarist and singer ought to be holding court in a college classroom rather than brightening the corners of noisy bars. Tussing’s knowledge of...
Read MoreClassical composers have long used the rhythms and structures of folk dances, but Bach’s gigues or Beethoven’s minuets were never intended for the dance floor; they don’t often back Riverdance routines or...
Read MoreOpening night! Nothing else is as thrilling, even if the “performers” are works of art, and especially when the curtains open on a new era. For its inaugural exhibition of the “Art NOW” series, the Ann...
Read MoreThe Purple Rose’s founder, Jeff Daniels, has a special relationship to Lanford Wilson, and every time the company produces one of his plays, the program tells some version of the story. Wilson may be best known for his...
Read Morehe year 2015 marks Tchaikovsky’s dodransbicentennial, a fancy way of saying it’s the 175th anniversary of his birth. Vladimir Putin’s government is sponsoring commemorative concerts; Leonard Slatkin and the...
Read MoreCrime fiction (and its best known subcategory, the murder mystery) is one thing; historical fiction with its meticulously researched re-creation of a time period is another. These genres have often been married, with various...
Read MoreThe late folklorist Alan Lomax, born 100 years ago this past January 31, collected and first recorded a good deal of what has become known as American traditional music, laboriously dragging huge open-reel tape machines around...
Read MoreJust inland from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula, a field of jagged, white stumps named the Kingston Plains stretches as flat and bare as the nearby cliffs are high and crowded with tourists. Most people...
Read MoreEditor’s note: This event has been cancelled.Stephane Grappelli once said of Mark O’Connor, “He’s not what you would call … human.” No small compliment coming from one who many agree was...
Read MoreIn the words of poet Jacques Prevert: “It is spring, the needle goes wild in the compass.” Conditions are ideal, then, for a visit from a chamber ensemble named after an uncontainable forest goddess. On April 19 the...
Read MoreAfter we walk down the long hallway back to the cafeteria for Skyline High School’s Brick Bash, ten-year-old Little Brother stops dead in his tracks when he sees the twelve-foot-tall skyscraper, all clear glass and blue...
Read MoreSomeone once wrote of the German poet Heinrich Heine that he delighted in blowing big sentimental soap bubbles and then deliberately pricking them. That’s a good description of the songs of Steve Poltz, the Friday-night MC...
Read MoreAlmost forty years ago two renowned jazz pianists, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, put their other projects on hold and went on tour together. By then they were in mid-career, approaching their forties. They had started out...
Read More“Shakey” Jake Woods’ legend is well known among Ann Arborites, but the late street performer’s legacy has taken on a surprising new dimension: a tribute band. You probably wouldn’t guess at first...
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