At 7:30 we start off, about two dozen of us, wearing blinkers on our backs to help us keep track of one another and to warn traffic in the dark. It’s the Himalayan Bazaar’s annual New Year’s Eve Gourmet Dinner...
Read MoreBaritone Christopher Gabbitas, senior member of the King’s Singers, says that they are each deeply immersed in the art of listening: “It’s a good lesson for everyone to learn, for how much better would the...
Read MoreYes, I admit it. I went all wide-eyed and weak-kneed when the U-M Museum of Art used lures like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt in the previews for its current exhibit, Europe on Paper. I wasn’t this excited or rubbery in...
Read MoreThere exist magnificent concertos for classical guitar and full orchestra, and players who are up to the task of projecting–without amplification–to the back of Hill Auditorium. (I still vividly recall the stunning...
Read MoreDo people really wake up from drunken one-night stands wrapped in sheets?Or was this trope conjured up in some long-ago decade to slip a bedroom scene past the censor, or to get a classier brand of actress to sign on? When a...
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Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly rejected all distinctions based on class and social status. “Music is for everyone,” he said. “It is spiritual food, a prime necessity of life.”Kodaly’s progressive,...
Read MoreIn 1947 the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie recorded his big band playing “Cubana Bop,” which featured the Cuban conga player Chano Pozo. On this tune, widely considered one of the landmarks in the complex musical...
Read MoreJo Serrapere has a real talent for attracting good musicians to her bands–or maybe good musicians are attracted to her bands by her talent. She was one of the co-founders of the old-time country group Uncle Earl, then went...
Read MoreThe next time you find yourself on the corner of State and Liberty, walk into the Potbelly Sandwich Shop and take a deep breath. Maybe even see if you can order something with peanut butter on it. Because that’s where, in...
Read MoreThe social and artistic revolutions in the mid-twentieth century created completely new spaces for individual and collective expression outside of mainstream American culture. One such center of creativity was the Association...
Read MoreLike Laith Al-Saadi, Joshua Davis was a Michigan artist thrust suddenly into the national spotlight on NBC’s singing competition The Voice. Although Davis didn’t quite make it to the show’s top prize–a...
Read MoreMark Lavengood, born in Grand Rapids, is an ebullient man who dispenses hugs freely–his bandmates call him Huggy Bear. The exclamation point that accompanies his band’s name seems essential once you’ve heard...
Read MoreLord Byron once called Layla and Majnun the “Romeo and Juliet of the East.” Based on a real-life Arabic poet who was said to have lost his mind over his cousin, the story has had as many lives as a cat. Most famous...
Read MoreWhen did the small stones with the wide, acrylic-painted eyes first start appearing around the Kerrytown district? No one is quite sure–locals we talked to guessed anywhere from the summer of 2015 to this past summer. But...
Read MoreBesides Rubik’s Cubes, Michael Jackson, and Max Headroom, few elements of pop culture are more stereotypically ’80s than the movies of John Hughes. From the hairstyles to the wardrobes to the pumping synth-driven...
Read MoreThat was in the early 1980s, and at the time, the Fab Four weren’t considered worthy subjects for scholarship. So Everett did a more traditional dissertation on Franz Schubert. Sticking to the academic canon paid...
Read MoreEast of the River was founded by recorder virtuosi Nina Stern and Daphna Mor, who met while performing J.S. Bach’s delicately scored Fourth Brandenburg Concerto. They soon discovered a mutual interest in Middle Eastern...
Read More“Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be,” wrote Andre Breton, the surrealist who tried to impose some kind of system on the movement that wanted to liberate our dreams and our demons. China Mieville has been...
Read MoreLos Angeles occupies a singular place in jazz history. Though many accomplished musicians have moved there, beginning with prominent New Orleans jazz pioneers early in the twentieth century, in many ways it has remained...
Read MoreDocumentary filmmaker Jeffrey Wengrofsky had always wanted to visit Detroit. Like his hometown, New York City, he envisioned Detroit as having a creative spirit forged out of the economic hardships of the 1970s. “Detroit...
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