When the Emerson String Quartet was in Ann Arbor early last December, it played Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich. When it returns to town on Sunday, September 26, it will play Tower, Beethoven, and Shostakovich. From the...
Read MoreThe semi-underground world of free improvisation has its own heroes, its own publications, and its own network of dedicated supporters and performance venues. But even in this small world there are hierarchies and conformities...
Read MoreI've seen and heard Ralph Stanley any number of times, once in a high school multipurpose room with the acoustics of a seashell. He's the greatest living exponent of bluegrass music, and just a few years ago, you'd...
Read MoreAward-winning short story writer Nancy Reisman, U-M visiting professor for the past several years, has written one of those novels that alter your perception of the world before you even realize they've done so. At the very...
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Agreed, Wiard's is a wee bit hokey. But it's a mistake to get all snooty instead of enjoying what for me turned out to be a silly, interesting, and even mystic afternoon. After jolting down a washboard road and shelling...
Read MoreAttention Ann Arbor academics, information technology professionals, environmental activists, vegans, proteomics researchers, silversmiths, and art historians: you don't have to pretend anymore. Your secret love of...
Read MoreAlthough her new songs are written with a band in mind, Oh Susanna is a single individual, Suzie Ungerleider. Born in California and raised in Vancouver, she's now based in Toronto. Her music falls under the generously broad...
Read MoreA sentence like "Duck hunter shoots angel" could signify only two things: a tabloid headline, or a meditation on the meaning of life by Mitch Albom. In the case of the current play at the Purple Rose Theater, it is...
Read MoreSeeing a show by Jo Serrapere and the Willie Dunns is like a languid Sunday drive through the country. Serrapere’s stage presence is so reassuring, so soothing, that before she even starts to sing I’ve snuggled under...
Read MoreA tiny blotch of blood stains the wide green lawn backed by a distant line of trees and a speeding car’s rising dust cloud. The photograph shows the modern-day appearance of the Virginia Civil War battlefield where Ann...
Read MoreChina has more than 2 million soldiers in its army. North Korea has more than 1 million. Both Russia and the United States have fewer than half a million each. But no other army in the world — not the Chinese, the North Koreans,...
Read MoreOn the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man later known as D. B. Cooper hijacked a plane in Seattle, collected a ransom of $200,000 in used twenties, and parachuted into the forest of Washington or Oregon. He was never heard...
Read More"Isn't that the film with that great wave scene on the beach?" asked my inquisitive friend. Yep, that's the one. If you think the "wave" is just a fan phenomenon at sporting events, you've...
Read MorePeppy exhibit curator Jan Longone opened the upper door of the elegant old-timey wooden icebox, the size of a large stereo speaker, standing on the Clements Library carpet. Inside: a gleaming block of ice. Closer inspection...
Read MoreOnce upon a time, a very long time ago, in a desperate attempt to make her cantankerous children happy, a young mother loaded them in the car for a "mystery trip" to a motel on Lake Michigan. It was raining and cold...
Read MoreThere are no six degrees of separation between the Siegel-Schwall Band and the Chicago bluesmen who so powerfully influenced rock 'n' roll. Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall, white college students in the early 1960s, honed...
Read MoreNature's ability to restore and transform is a long-standing theme in Western life and culture. In the eighteenth century, Queen Marie Antoinette often found it amusing to escape the perfumed protocol at Versailles by...
Read MoreSomething about Richard Buckner's music makes people want to drink and break things. After one Buckner show, friends of mine split a whiskey bottle with him and took him to the nearby public radio station to surprise the...
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