FUBAR
On a visit to Ireland's remote Dingle Peninsula years ago, my wife and I got wind of a music session at a local pub. In a back room, local musicians — mostly farmers — gathered with townsfolk, friends, and...
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Wet-N-Wild Wednesdays
There was a time, say about ten or eleven years ago, when any utterance of the word "pool" was met with riotous, schnauzerlike hysteria on the part of my male child. And it was with this in mind that I suggested to my...
Read MoreJerry Douglas
The Dobro is the instrument that put the twang in country music, but it is much more besides. It was the 1928 creation (and contracted namesake) of the Czech American Dopyera brothers, who placed a steel disc over the sound hole...
Read MoreA Midsummer Night’s Dream
The U-M Residential College production of A Midsummer Night's Dream last June in the Arb was an enormous pleasure, and Ann Arborites will be delighted to know that the college will produce the play again June 13-16 and...
Read MoreSummer chamber music
Isn’t it grand that somebody still performs hard-core classical music in Ann Arbor in the summer? Sure, there’s Marilyn Mason’s organ recital series during the Summer Festival, and this year there are a couple...
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Weddings of Yore
Since Victorian-era ladies could not in all decency approach men, they used their fans to broadcast coded messages. According to the Museum on Main Street's Weddings of Yore exhibit, frenzied fanning meant that one was...
Read MoreScott Weidensaul
Scott Weidensaul is a nature writer, but beyond that, he defies categorization. His books are informed by a personal voice, yet they also offer explanations for lay audiences of scientific — particularly ornithological...
Read MoreTamim Ansary
On September 12, 2001, Tamim Ansary, a freelance writer and editor from San Francisco, sent an e-mail message to the people in his electronic address book. An Afghan American, Ansary felt the need to separate his people from the...
Read MoreThe Fullerenes
They describe their style as "geek rock." And one look at the five members of the Fullerenes confirms their geek status. At a recent show in Eastpointe, three wore glasses, all wore ties, and everyone looked too smart...
Read MoreShahida Nurullah
Jazz singers are normally not my beat. When it comes to singers, I prefer classical, blues, and folk warblers. I do have some favorites, however, and among them is Detroit's magnificent Shahida Nurullah. I first heard her...
Read MoreBorn Yesterday
Born Yesterday is one of the Purple Rose's rare forays into producing plays by dead guys. Though the program notes call it a "classic," unless you're a real buff you've probably never heard of it. It opened...
Read MorePeter Sparling Dance Company
Far from the continuing and contentious legal battle over the rights to Martha Graham's choreographic legacy in New York City, Ann Arbor boasts its own Graham descendant, Peter Sparling (a former Graham principal), and his...
Read MoreIan Bostridge 2002
He does have a pretty face: imagine a young Oberon from A Midsummer’s Night Dream played as an ethereal elf with a boyish glint in his eye. But this elf can sing. Ian Bostridge lacks the sheer power of an operatic tenor,...
Read MoreThe Civil War Muster
A team of horses pulling a cannon thundered through Ypsilanti's Riverside Park as their driver tried to rein them away from a microphone and two speakers near crowded bleachers. WHAM! BOOM! BAM! One speaker rolled under the...
Read MoreCrowbar Hotel
With timeless rhythms, accessible tunes, and words you can (usually) make out, Crowbar Hotel’s debut CD, Other Lives, eschews alt-rock tangents in favor of the deep roots of southern rock and urban blues-rock, with a...
Read MoreGreen Wood Coffee House
The Green Wood Coffee House of the First United Methodist Church is on the elevated main floor, above a co-op preschool, of a small Green Road building that serves as FUMC's North Campus branch. On two Friday nights each...
Read MoreChristine Lavin
The problem with growing up — well, one of them — is that no one tells you stories anymore. That's why singer-songwriter Christine Lavin regularly packs them into concert halls from Andover to Anchorage. Adults...
Read MoreAlistair MacLeod
A large island in the middle of nowhere off the northeastern edge of mainland Nova Scotia, populated by the descendants of Scottish Highlanders fleeing the invading English and of British Loyalists fleeing the American...
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