Culture

Guitarist George Bedard has been one of the brightest stars in the Ann Arbor music firmament for nearly forty years, and the Kingpins, the trio he formed with bassist Randy Tessier and drummer Rich Dishman, has been serving as...

I’ve got nothing against kids, exactly, but they do seem to be gaining ascendancy over the darker months of the year. They’ve already got Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah, the original family-values holidays, sewn...

The early seventies were a time of transition for improvised music in New York City. The first generation of rebels against the standard jazz order had already made its statements, and a new crop of young musicians was trying to...

Mandolinist Chris Thile’s recent recording of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin makes him one of just a few contemporary pop performers to have both hit the pop top twenty and released a major classical...

We’ve all heard the longing: “If I’m going to write the book(s) I need to write, I need to quit my job and get to it.” Most of us never do it, but Ann Arborite Donald Lystra is living the dream. After a...

If the old saw “laughter is the best medicine,” is true, then a Lou and Peter Berryman concert ought to cure everything that ails you. The pair write and sing some of the funniest songs, with the highest LPM (laughs...

Dooman River opens so slowly that for a long time I thought my DVD player was frozen. On an ice-covered river, two people make a long, slow approach. Finally, they look down, and the camera pulls back to reveal a child’s...