Don Giovanni
It’s not unusual for modern opera directors to take liberties with an opera’s story, changing the locale or period to a place or time the composer and librettist never dreamed of. Some controversial productions that...
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Pianist Fred van Hove
Jazz is an American art form, but in the 1960s and ’70s jazz-related music for the first time became an international phenomenon. Inspired by the more radical players from the homeland, European musicians began to explore...
Read MoreMyth of the American Sleepover
I grew up in suburban Detroit, and there was an odd sort of stagnancy to my childhood. Growing up in a place where people bragged they hadn’t been to downtown Detroit in decades made me feel the defining feature of the...
Read MoreBich Minh Nguyen
A few years ago Bich Nguyen had a remarkable debut as a writer. Her memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner–which was, among other things, her story about growing up as a Vietnamese immigrant in Grand Rapids–won some...
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African Time
Before you even walk into the gallery housing the African Art and the Shape of Time exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, you hear the driving drumbeat and techno music and sounds of the street. That drumbeat...
Read MoreThe White Ravens 2012
Like most kids raised in Michigan, siblings Amy and Will Bennett of the indie-pop band The White Ravens submerged their summers in local lakes and rivers. These memories, mingled with lyricist-vocalist-bassist Amy’s...
Read MoreThe Great Chuseok Party
The children and I had kites on the brain last year (from the U-M Center for Chinese Studies’ fiftieth anniversary kite festival), so the first thing we noticed as we walked up to the Nam Center for Korean Studies’...
Read MoreTracy K. Smith
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I came to Tracy Smith’s Life on Mars only after she won the Pulitzer Prize for it. I had seen the title, and I immediately remembered the wonderful David Bowie song, and I felt just a...
Read MorePhil Ogilvie’s Rhythm Kings
The roaring twenties and thirties of the last century were a golden age of popular dance and dance bands. The new record industry was working overtime, but canned music did not permeate all public spaces as it does today, and...
Read MoreBeethoven’s Ninth by the AASO
I’ve heard the Ann Arbor Symphony play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony twice, and both times I was blown away.The first was in September 1988, under music director Carl St. Clair, and it was truly hair-raising. This was...
Read MoreWorks by Michigan Artists
Every fall during college, after all our books were purchased and fees paid, the last thing on the shopping list was always posters or art. With whatever money we had left, my girlfriends and I would scour the poster bins for...
Read MoreThe Queen of Versailles
The Queen of Versailles is a documentary about David Siegel, a seventy-four-year-old time-share tycoon, and his forty-three-year-old wife, Jackie, who set out to build America’s biggest home, in Orlando, Florida. Named for...
Read MoreThe Ben Miller Band
The Ben Miller Band is a versatile blues-rock Americana trio that hails from Joplin, Missouri, and has built a cultlike following in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area ever since performing at the 2010 Michigan Roots Jamboree. Led by...
Read MoreForest, Farm, Field
Forest, Farm, Field, the current exhibit at Chelsea’s River Gallery, presents the natural world as we would like it to be: shimmery green and mild, a generous offering of benign plants, pretty wildflowers, and ripe...
Read MoreRiverfolk and NashBash
Dog days. Summer Festival is over, the fall season is weeks away, and everyone who can make it out of town has done so. August isn’t the top month on anybody’s concert-going list, but that just means it offers a...
Read MoreVincent York at the Gandy
When residents and politicians sing the praises of life in Ann Arbor they usually leave out one important factor: the marvelous jazz educators in our public schools. I think of Mike Grace at Community High, Louis Smith at...
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