Bruce Mills
In An Archaeology of Yearning, Kalamazoo College English professor Bruce Mills gives a completely loving but totally honest account of living with his autistic son, Jacob, now a young adult, and the ways Jacob’s needs and...
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The Collages of Brenda Miller Slomovits
In early April, in the days following their release from this winter’s hush of snow and ice, my outdoor surroundings chattered and sang in response to the warmth and light. The yards in my neighborhood uttered words I...
Read MoreThe Clarinet and Saxophone of Michael Moore
Most jazz musicians finish their local apprenticeships and musical education and then head off to New York or Chicago to hone their craft, immerse themselves in a richer musical environment, and find success. Woodwind player...
Read MoreEasy Virtue
The Michigan Theater’s Hitchcock Film Series began in February and runs through May, featuring thirty-three films in all. It’s quite an accomplishment. All the Hitchcock classics are included; April brings Notorious...
Read MoreA.M. Homes
Despite all the complaints we hear about shrinking attention spans and the trivialization of our culture, we live in an age of expansive, even sprawling novels. Those of us who like to disappear into a book, submerge for a week...
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Doris Duke’s Shangri La
Upon entering the current temporary exhibit at UMMA, my boyfriend and I said, “This is bullcrap!” Really, it’s an exhibit about Doris Duke, American heiress, once described as “the richest girl in the...
Read MoreAkademie fuer Alte Musik Berlin
More than thirty years ago, musicians employed by orchestras in Soviet-controlled East Berlin began a clandestine collaboration that led to the formation of a collectively run early music ensemble, operating in defiance of state...
Read MoreVenus in Fur
Venus in Fur by David Ives made a big splash off Broadway and an even bigger one on Broadway when Nina Arianda won a Tony in 2012 for playing the role of Vanda in this two-hander based on a nineteenth-century erotic novella....
Read MoreAlex Belhaj
Around 2010, when a certain modest, good-natured young guitarist began sitting in with established traditional jazz masters James Dapogny and Paul Klinger, it became clear once again that no style or genre belongs exclusively to...
Read MoreLooking Back at L.A.
The city of Los Angeles receives an often-withering examination in two noteworthy films screening at this year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival. The first, Los Angeles Plays Itself, considers the city as portrayed on film with...
Read MoreCurtis Sittenfeld
Not yet forty, Curtis Sittenfeld has published four big books that navigate the difficult space between literary fiction and the expectations of a large audience. The main character of her first novel, Prep, was the consensus...
Read MoreInto the Wild
A little shorty of a play at Purple Rose clocking in at an hour and fifteen minutes, no intermission, is for all its brevity a hefty piece. You know how one-acts sometimes seem so light and trivial that they don’t demand...
Read MoreHeywood Banks
The next time I go to hear Heywood Banks do his standup comedy concert–which will be on April 15, when he comes back to the Ark–I’m going to lay in a supply of Advil for after the show. The last couple of times...
Read MoreThe Act of Killing
In late 1965, after a coup attempt whose circumstances remain murky, Indonesian society exploded into one of the paroxysms of mass killing that form a kind of grim leitmotif of twentieth-century life. Supported by the Indonesian...
Read MoreGospelfest
I knew I’d get the question, and, sure enough, less than five minutes after I arrived someone asked, “So, what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing here at Gospelfest?” Fair question, but those familiar...
Read MoreHabib Koite
In 1983 I saw King Sunny Ade and His African Beats at Soldier Field in Chicago–a whirlwind of melody, rhythm, and motion, watched and heard by tens of thousands of people. African music has never again reached that level...
Read MoreJoshua Breakstone
The electric guitar is probably the most common instrument in popular music in our time. But until the invention eighty or so years ago of the amplified version of the instrument guitarists worked mainly in the rhythm sections...
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