I saw Lac La Belle in 2009 at the fabulous Dally in the Alley in Detroit, just a little while after the trio adopted that name. Before then, they were Jennie and the Sure Shots; that made you think they played cowgirl music,...
Read MoreWhen it comes to classical music in the twentieth century, some countries had the mojo, and some didn’t. After ruling classical music for nearly three centuries, Germany and Austria lost their mojo with the rise of Fascism...
Read MoreEarlier this year Thomas Lynch came through town to celebrate the publication of Apparition & Late Fictions, his first collection of stories. And now, at the end of the year, the ever prolific Lynch comes back to introduce...
Read MoreThe Carolina Chocolate Drops, young African American musicians from North Carolina, renew a fairly arcane tradition, the old-time black stringband music of the Carolina Piedmont that they learned from its handful of surviving...
Read MoreCurious thing about the word “playwright”—it has nothing to do with writing. “Wright” is a word from the manufacturing arts (wheelwright, shipwright), not the arty arts, and Jeff Daniels is a skilled...
Read More
As rock ‘n’ roll becomes part of the American musical canon, its various flavors have been showing up more and more often in the programming of the Ark, Ann Arbor’s venerable redoubt of folk and acoustic music....
Read MoreYusef Komunyakaa won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for Neon Vernacular, a collection of “new and selected poems” that included the work that had established his reputation as a master of several themes. Perhaps he was...
Read MoreMany Ann Arborites say the best Mexican restaurant in town is one town east, at La Fiesta Mexicana in Ypsilanti. If you haven’t been there, don’t conjure up images of towering piles of the cheesiest, meatiest...
Read MoreIn 2002, when U-M music composition instructor Erik Santos traveled to Japan for a three-week band tour, a friend joked he was going there to fall in love. During the final week of the tour he met Toko Shiiki, a stage actress...
Read MoreScores of arrows come flying out of the woods, propelled by unseen men, and pierce again and again the samurai warrior’s bare chest. When I first saw Throne of Blood I was no big fan of Shakespeare, Akira Kurosawa, or...
Read MoreIt wasn’t until a third visit to Tomukun, the new noodle bar on Liberty, that I appreciated the brilliance bouncing around this dark-wooded den of refreshed Asian standards. Contrasting impressions had been amassing up to...
Read MoreWith fifty-three separate productions scheduled around the world over the next year, Sweeney Todd is currently the most often performed of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals.The second most often performed isn’t West Side...
Read MoreEvery so often an art show comes along that perfectly encapsulates the contemporary moment. Politics of Fear, at the Gallery Project downtown until October 17, is just such a show. Speaking directly to an age of prolonged global...
Read MoreThe jazz and popular music drum set is deceptively difficult to play; you can quickly learn to bash it, but to do it justice and create music requires as much practice and creativity as any other instrument. The great jazz...
Read MoreJordi Savall will probably not play “La Bamba” when he performs at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church on Thursday, September 30–though it’s not entirely out of the question.Acknowledged as the...
Read MoreThe close bluegrass harmonies wafting through the trees cheerfully set the tone for the day as we park and get out of the car. As my four children and I walk through the old cemetery to get to the Webster Fall Festival, the kids...
Read MoreCollage is one of the defining aspects of twentieth century art, and its influence pervades our contemporary culture, from the popularity of sampled beats to the increasing use of computer-generated characters in movies. The...
Read MoreThere may be hope for this generation of young people. That’s the thought that kept going through my head last fall when I first saw the White Ravens. Though still (barely) in my 20s, I was one of the oldest members of the...
Read MoreIn her first novel, Rich Boy, Sharon Pomerantz has gone after a large American theme, one many recent writers have been reluctant to address. In this big book, Pomerantz writes about class–that often unspoken division in...
Read MoreWith its hypermodern skyscrapers, robots, swarms of extras–almost 38,000 of them–and lumbering political ideas, Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction film Metropolis is the original blockbuster. The film shows...
Read More