Feb 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
European improvised music is becoming well known in this country. German, Swedish, British, and Dutch jazz artists have found different routes to original styles, having long ago abandoned the imitation of American models, and...
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I hate to do it, but I can't talk about Laura Kasischke's new novel, The Life before Her Eyes, without giving something important away — the beginning. Two young women, inseparable best friends, juniors in high...
Read MoreFeb 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The Bird of Paradise has been serving jazz seven nights a week for more than fifteen years, and throughout that time a trio led by bassist Ron Brooks, who owns the club, has been a featured attraction. But the band antedates the...
Read MoreFeb 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Scene: A guy's apartment; couch, table, a couple of chairs — and in the corner a barrel of monkeys. Enter the guy and a girl, after a first date. He: "Can I get you something to drink?" She: "I'd...
Read MoreFeb 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
I've never quite understood why Valentine's Day, being in February, is such a big thing. May, June — now those would be prime months for the coy deliverance of cards, chocolates, flowers, and protestations of...
Read MoreJan 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The high-quality exhibit Contemporary Artists of Ann Arbor at the Art Oasis on Main Street tempted me to take one of the classes held in the studio space behind the gallery. If I did, I realized, some of my fellow students would...
Read MoreJan 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
"Oh, I have seen the David," sings Guy Clark. "Seen the Mona Lisa, too. And I have heard Doc Watson sing 'Columbus Stockade Blues.' " My own favorite Doc Watson moment is more modest. It came the last...
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What do you get when you cross a metaphysically inclined German tough guy with a liberté et égalité French orchestra? Beautiful music? Maybe. Maybe not. Christoph Eschenbach is the metaphysically inclined German tough guy....
Read MoreJan 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Early in Burnt Offerings, his second collection of poetry, Timothy Liu writes: “All my life / the sound I’ve been trying to hear is the sound / of my own voice.” It is perhaps too easy to put that as a kind of...
Read MoreJan 1, 2002 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
A few days after George Harrison’s funeral I saw the Starlight Drifters at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti, and it was, believe me, very easy to imagine a world in which the Beatles had never existed, despite being told...
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