Marcia Ball has been known for blues songs based on her sharp, precise piano playing — party music for those who enjoy watching the piano player as much as dancing. But her latest release, So Many Rivers, is something else...
Read MoreI must admit that I changed out of my jammies and drove to Leopold Bros. at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday because I was broke. Not because I knew anything about the cult groove band Deep Space Six. Not because I wanted to have a beer...
Read MoreCodirected by Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky, the 2002 documentary Horns and Halos focuses on the struggle of biographer Jim Hatfield and publisher Sander Hicks to republish and market the first unauthorized biography of...
Read MoreSolo jazz piano is a quirky art. The instrument is obviously self sufficient, and pianists playing alone have been at the heart of jazz, from Storyville cathouses and Harlem rent parties to Art Tatum and Cecil Taylor. Ray Bryant...
Read MoreA steady stream of vintage cars converged onto Main Street at William, the entrance to Rolling Sculpture. When you get a bunch of old cars idling in traffic, one thing almost always happens: engines overheat. One car burped out...
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It's the morning of the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run, and I wonder how I will do. Did I train enough? Will I run better than last year? How will I place in my new age group, women 60-64? At Dexter Middle School, hundreds of runners...
Read MoreBoth pickers and lovers of good harmony singing will be satisfied when the Gibson Brothers open for Phillips, Grier, & Flinner at the Ark on Saturday, June 7. Brother duets have a long tradition in country music, and these...
Read MoreI sometimes worry that the professionalization of creative writing is going to kill the writing of books, making them all safe and expected and easy to categorize as something called "good writing." Luckily, the...
Read MoreMaybe you know that seemingly middle-of-the-road Saline has been a fertile place for fiddle music lately. Maybe you've noticed that there are Celtic musicians in the bars downtown several nights a week, and that a lot of...
Read MoreIt was an executive producer of Nonesuch records who suggested that violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Sergio and Odair Assad form a trio. And if his idea of joining the fiery violinist who wails on her instrument with...
Read MoreThere's only one thing you need to know about G. W. Pabst's 1928 film Pandora's Box: Louise Brooks. Brooks, who snatched the title role of Lulu from Marlene Dietrich, is astounding. Her androgynous appearance,...
Read MoreP. D. Q. Bach, the unacknowledged last son of Johann Sebastian Bach, made his first appearance in 1965 in a concert by Peter Schickele — who billed himself as a professor from the University of Southern North Dakota at...
Read MoreThe nearly claustrophobic exhibit of sixty-three Auguste Rodin sculptures crammed into two second-floor galleries at the U-M Museum of Art, swarming with visitors on the weekday I visited, left me with mixed feelings: awe at the...
Read MorePopular histories of jazz inevitably concentrate on the great individualists, but some of the greatest contributions to the music have been group efforts. Economic realities have made it difficult to keep large bands together,...
Read MoreSatire that slashes and burns sometimes seems to be a dying art, so it's noteworthy when a song like "Right Wing Roundup" comes along. It's a collection of skewered conservative attitudes cast in the form of...
Read MoreViewed through the smoke rising from the Iraqi National Library, days after the loss of artifacts from the Iraqi National Museum, the U-M Special Collections Library's exhibit of bookbinding offers examples of...
Read MoreIn their annual Christmas program at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, the Boychoir of Ann Arbor sang with the voices of angels. In works taken mostly from the Anglican tradition of sacred choral music, the choir's...
Read MoreJerry Dennis is an essayist with a clear and direct style who writes as engagingly as anyone about the northern Michigan landscape. Canoeing Michigan Rivers, which Dennis wrote with Craig Date, has been the best guide to our...
Read MoreJust when you've decided to put away the tragic mantle of youth, along comes someone like Jesse Sykes to make you feel ashamed of being cheerful. This Seattle-based folksinger puts the "oo" in brooding, via...
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