The performers’ jewelry is big, their hair is bigger, their evening gowns are over-the-top, their nails are long and their heels are high on the Millennium Stage at the Cavern Club on a Saturday night. An elderly couple...
Read MorePokey LaFarge grew up (as Andrew Heissler) in downstate Illinois. His grandfather was a member of the St. Louis Banjo Society, and he discovered the remnants of the classic blues and jazz styles that survived along the...
Read MoreNext to the “on the road” theme, the immigrant’s story may have provided the most telling and poignant moments in American literature. There have been so many of them it’s hard to imagine that anyone can...
Read MoreAround here, everyone who has even a passing interest in jazz has heard pianist Tad Weed in more than one context. A native of Jackson, he fell in love with jazz at a young age, studied piano, and eventually went to Central...
Read More“You really are sick!”It’s the line that begins one of the most stomach-churning scenes in Eraserhead, and it’s also how many folks who saw the movie in 1977 regarded then-unknown writer-director David...
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I’m a jazzhead. Nah, not really–I’m not even sure if that’s a real term. I had some stuff in my library, Dizzy and Miles, but no real listening background to refer to; I’m an R&B girl,...
Read MoreThe story is compelling enough by itself. Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia were both born sighted in the Malian capital of Bamako in the 1950s. Both went blind as young people–Mariam because of untreated measles and...
Read MoreIn Moonrise Kingdom, the 2012 film by Wes Anderson, two wayward and love-struck twelve-year-olds run away together to the wilderness. Suzy (Kara Hayward) is the oldest child of two lawyers; Sam (Jared Gilman) is an orphan...
Read MoreEditor’s note: This event has been canceled. A notice in the Ark’s weekly email reads, “[Williams’] doctor has prescribed vocal rest and she has had to cancel a number of shows. We wish her a speedy...
Read MoreThere might be something rural or at least Midwestern in my reaction to memoirs. I enjoy reading them, but unless they are leavened by a self-deprecating wit I get bored very quickly. If the authors can’t laugh at...
Read MoreKnowing an artist’s biography is not essential to enjoying his or her work. Nor is it necessary to be familiar with the history of a work of art to appreciate it. It’s not our knowledge of Schubert’s tragic...
Read MoreHigh school rock bands aren’t generally known for their clarity of musical vision and certainly not for having a lasting legacy. But the members of Ann Arbor’s Sproton Layer mustered the former while they were still...
Read MoreNot many ingenue playwrights get profiled in the New Yorker before their plays go up on Broadway. That’s so true it sounds insane; few young playwrights get their stuff anywhere near Broadway, period. Katori Hall, a few...
Read MoreI’m not sure what other people expect when they read a writer and his or her teacher. Maybe they think the influence will be so great that it is overwhelming. I, on the other hand, usually think that the student will try...
Read MorePairing Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat and Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire for a chamber music evening at the Kerrytown Concert House on May 18 seems an obvious decision, given that they were...
Read MoreSinger-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips came on the scene in the early 1990s in Los Angeles, performing rural-gothic, sometimes political rock in a band called Grant Lee Buffalo. Many rockers of that era have tried to make the...
Read MoreShinyribs is Kev Russell, front man of the rootsy and durable Austin party band the Gourds. He got the nickname from a homeless woman whom he treated to some barbecue, and he began to develop a side band project under the...
Read More33 Variations, at the Purple Rose, is about the beauty of intellectual engagement. Its two central characters feel their value to the human race is so crucial, and their time so short, that they bumble and crash through their...
Read MoreThe rain was just letting up as we pulled into Cobblestone Farm for its annual Spring Fling (to be held this year on May 5). At first, it looked as if the event had been rained out–there were only us and the animals. My...
Read MoreAnn Arbor is fortunate to have local bands playing music across a wide range of genres, and in Ghost City Searchlight it’s got the classic Celtic pub band fully covered. The six-piece band led by singer-guitarist Tommy...
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