I was listening to a fairly random selection of classical CDs when suddenly I heard a disc that was anything but random–a collection of trios for clarinet, viola and piano by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bruch. Every performance...
Read MoreJazz has always been popular in Europe, but for decades all that the best Europeans musicians could do was to imitate, with only partial success, their heroes from across the ocean. Today, jazz is an international style, played...
Read MoreAkira Kurosawa once said, “A truly good movie is interesting and easy to understand.” His 1948 film Drunken Angel fits that description. Its plot is easy to understand: An old gangster gets out of jail and takes over...
Read MoreIn a recent interview, Dean Young said something to the effect that the only way to get past irony is to go through it. This quip certainly highlights Young’s ironic sense and the emotional distance he often creates by his...
Read MoreI am a little apprehensive when asked to show ID before being allowed in the door, but that hyper-paranoid-minority-mom response melts instantly once I walk inside the Jewish Community Center for its annual Apples and Honey...
Read More
The U-M Museum of Art’s glass-walled Project Gallery could pass these days for a trendy women’s clothing boutique. An array of flared-skirt sweater sets hang on headless human forms from fishing line hooked to the...
Read MoreAs our minivan makes its way north on Pontiac Trail for our annual trip to the German Park Picnic, we spot a man waving a red flag in the distance, and we know we’ve reached our destination. He’s one of more than a...
Read MoreJames “Largebeat” Gertz plays the Theremin, the instrument heard in the soundtrack to various science-fiction movies of the 1950s (most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still) and imitated by a vocalist in the theme...
Read MoreWake doesn’t live up to Michigan playwright Carey Crim’s first play, Growing Pretty, which made its debut last spring at the Purple Rose. Growing Pretty followed a misfit teenager as she bloomed into a successful...
Read MoreWe’re putting these Austinite sisters, whose name is pronounced with a hard “G”–like gutsy or girls, they say–under the Americana umbrella. iTunes calls them singer-songwriters. If you listen to a...
Read MoreEmma wants to study journalism at a secular college. Her parents, both pastors at their evangelical church, have saved to give her a Christian education that won’t expose her to heretical ideas, like the theory of...
Read MoreHoney & Clover (Masahiro Takada, 2006) is a romantic comedy about two unrequited-love triangles among students in a Japanese school of art. In the central love triangle, Takemoto (Sho Sakurai), the “least arty”...
Read MoreDavid Lindley has been one of popular music’s durable session musicians, associated for a long time with ambitious rock songwriters like Jackson Browne and the late Warren Zevon. Along the way he began acquiring stringed...
Read MoreA month before the stylish new mystery novel Bad Things Happen was published, there was Internet chatter about the first sentence: “The shovel has to meet certain requirements.” I feel the appropriate tingle there....
Read MoreThe Michigan Brewers Guild annual Summer Beer Festival is held just down the street from my house, in Depot Town’s Riverside Park. The place is packed with students, Ypsi Hippies, and well-groomed Ann Arbor poser types who...
Read More“We’re gonna get a little country on now,” warns Misty Lyn from the Blind Pig stage to a modest but engaged crowd. “It happens.”Country happens a lot with Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful. With...
Read MoreStand-up comedy is to improv what classical music is to jazz. Outstanding stand-up combines sidesplitting jokes with perfect timing, in the same way that a fabulous classical music performance is the blend of a great...
Read MoreSavion Glover is to tap dancing what Bobby McFerrin is to singing. Both have taken a craft and turned it into a high art. Bobby McFerrin can make his voice sound like any instrument in the orchestra or like an angel or laughter....
Read MoreOnce the word “regional” was used to dismiss writing that was firmly based in a particular place. There might have been good reason for condescension: some of the writing wasn’t of in-terest to anyone beyond a...
Read MoreA Scandal at the Symphony? How could a performance by the venerable Ann Arbor Symphony possibly be considered scandalous? While I was out of town for the March 21 concert, my plant in the audience filled me in.Towards the end of...
Read More