Culture

After a surfeit of sad, pretty, reflective, brainy, wordy, sarcastic, traditional, way-out, and heartfelt folk songs, the Holmes Brothers simply took their places onstage at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival, opened their mouths, and...

When vocalist Joan Morris and pianist Bill Bolcom take the stage in the Kerrytown Concert House on Friday, April 21, they won't be performing excerpts from Bolcom's award-winning setting of Blake's Songs of Innocence...

There have been Collage Concerts in Ann Arbor as long as I can remember, and, as best I can remember, they’ve never had any repertoire in common except by accident. The Collage Concert is a study in reckless juxtaposition....

Don White strode to the center of Hill Auditorium's massive stage, stared out at the crowd, and announced, "I'm going to sing a song that will bring you so far into the life of my family that you, too, will need...

The Left Behind series of Christian Apocalypse novels opens with the Rapture, the supposedly promised day when all good people will be taken bodily to heaven before the world faces its last terrible tribulations. The books...

John Latini prefaces each song with a story — who he wrote it with, where they were, etc. It's the same way American Indians introduce themselves, by identifying their clan. It keeps you connected, solidifies your...

World dance, ethnic dance, classical dance — such cookie-cutter categories are often thrown around without careful thought. Isn't ballet an ethnic art form? Can't much of what we call "world dance" also...

Here's a good old word for all you crossword puzzle fanatics: swither. My Oxford English Dictionary says it's a verb that means "to be or to become uncertain or undecided." In Scots, apparently, the...

Last month, when my kids and I dropped in for Sciencepalooza — the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum's monthly smorgasbord of hands-on science activities — the first table we hit was Be a Nurse. My kids weren't...

My dad loved male choruses. One of my earliest memories as a small child in Cleveland is of him performing on television with his barbershop group. Years later I married into a family with serious singers on both sides....

Zoe Speaks is the duo of Mitch Barrett and Carla Gover, who are married and were inspired in naming their musical partnership by their older daughter’s first words. Both grew up in rural eastern Kentucky, left, and came...