Responding to Chaos
Guard your hearts, tender people. And you tough ones may want to crack open those aortas. The current exhibit at U-M’s Rackham Hall, Responding to Chaos: Art as action, engagement, and revelation, may flood them with...
Read MoreCulture
Opera on Tap
On the first Tuesday of every month, there’s opera at the Sidetrack in Ypsilanti. Yup–opera–in a bar. Highbrow meets Loewenbraeu. Granted, the Sidetrack’s event space, where Opera on Tap reigns, is not a...
Read MoreStones in His Pockets
Hilarious, brilliant, engaging, slapsticky, cerebral, challenging. And in 1999, when it was first produced, Stones in His Pockets, a play by Marie Jones, was joltingly original, too.In the intervening years, either by cultural...
Read MoreKirstin Valdez Quade
Kirstin Valdez Quade has recently joined the faculty of U-M’s creative writing program as a Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor. This new position brings emerging writers to the U for a few years as they work to solidify...
Read MoreAnn Arbor Film Festival 2015
As more and more mainstream films make it their mission to deliver as much eye-popping spectacle per second as humanly possible, it’s refreshing to see a movie that actually asks its audience to wait. That’s a common...
Read More
Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra
This year’s vernal equinox will roll in with a spring tide of Russian classics performed by the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra at the Michigan Theater March 21. The concert will open with the Polovtsian Dances from Alexander...
Read MoreScott Beal
My book of Scott Beal’s poems, Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems, has more pleats than a Catholic schoolgirl’s skirt–from my habit of turning down a page with something I like, twice if I like two...
Read MoreMartin Espada
It may or may not be correct to call Martin Espada “the Latino poet of his generation,” but it is certainly right to understand him as one of a handful of writers of the generation now around age sixtywho broke open...
Read MoreCold Tone Harvest
Cold Tone Harvest lets its music come to you, creeping subtly and hypnotically with a sparse, campfire-reminiscent sound. The band, featuring singer-songwriter Andrew Sigworth on acoustic guitar, Ozzie Andrews on stand-up bass,...
Read MoreDeath Dogs
For ancient Egyptians, death marked the start of a harrowing journey through the underworld, past fiery lakes and through gates and caverns guarded by strange and dangerous creatures. There was a monster with a knife for a head...
Read MoreSteel Magnolias
Last fall the newly resurrected Performance Network led with Driving Miss Daisy, most familiar as a 1980s sentimental Hollywood crowd-pleaser about the South. And now Purple Rose weighs in with Steel Magnolias, ditto: originally...
Read MoreBela Fleck & Abigail Washburn
Opposites attract. When it comes to Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, the old adage is mostly true. They are both professional banjo players; but there the similarities end, and the opposites and differences begin. As another old...
Read MoreNatalie Diaz
One of the most interesting poetry debuts of the last few years has been that of Natalie Diaz. Part of the interest in her is certainly because of a compelling personal story. Diaz grew up on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation...
Read MoreAlbert Lee
You might be surprised to learn that Eric Clapton called his fellow English guitarist Albert Lee the greatest guitarist in the world. Lee is hardly a household name, has recorded just a few solo albums, and isn’t...
Read MoreFix-It Friday
What if there were an enchanted place where you could meet magical people, the Wizard of Wood among them, who would expertly and enthusiastically repair your household goods, small appliances, and clothing for free? Fix-It...
Read MoreHenrik Karapetyan & Francis Yun
You expect a lot of strings at a violin and harpsichord concert–four on the violin and at least 120 on the harpsichord (harpsichords are not uniform, so the number of strings varies from instrument to instrument). But,...
Read MoreMendelssohn’s Elijah
Composer Felix Mendelssohn was also a skilled graphic artist who painted landscapes in watercolor and oils. In 1829, while touring with his sketchbook through Scotland’s Hebrides archipelago, he visited the isle of Staffa...
Read MoreDeliciously Dark
In Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice, set in 1970, the bumbling private eye Doc Sportello laments the pop-cultural demise of his profession: “… [A]ll you see anymore is cops, the tube is saturated with...
Read MoreTomasz Stanko
Polish jazz has a fascinating history. The postwar government initially drove it underground, but during the cultural thaw that took place after 1956 the music came out of the shadows and thrived. One of the leaders of the...
Read MoreThe Understorey
Editor’s note: The Understorey’s February 4 performance has been cancelled.The Understorey truly is a marriage of music: the band’s history began when vocalist Jess McCumons and guitarist Matt McCumons sang...
Read More