In the middle of a Sunday night snowstorm, tenors, altos, and sopranos trickle into the Northside Community Church. The singers introduce themselves enthusiastically, unwrap their scarved throats, and file into the first few...
Read More“You feel like you’re at a campfire!” says Ann Arbor rec supervisor Pam Simmons of the recently launched Ann Arbor Community Sing. The monthly sing-alongs at the Ann Arbor Senior Center attract grandparents,...
Read MoreWhen Camille Brown choreographed Black Girl: Linguistic Play, she had both personal and political motivations: to “remind myself of the beauty of who I was before the world defined me,” she explained at the...
Read MoreThere’s a good chance that if our era is remembered for any of its literature, it will be as the moment that opened up to new influences on writing done in English. Despite recent nativist screaming on cable news networks,...
Read MoreThere’s no prettier performance venue in the area than the repurposed Chelsea Depot. The ornate nineteenth-century former railroad stop with curlicue moldings, wooden floor, high ceilings, and many tall windows is the kind...
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Back in December, pianist Igor Levit took on J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory for a run of seven concerts presented in collaboration with performance artist Marina Abramovic. In...
Read MoreWhile American comic-book superheroes have only recently become a dominant cinematic genre, Japanese comics (manga) have inspired decades’ worth of animated film and TV adaptations (anime). While many live-action manga...
Read MoreThe first time I heard John Gorka was at the Michigan Theater sometime in the early Nineties, when he was the opening act for someone I don’t remember. That says something about my memory but probably more about Gorka. (My...
Read MoreThe act of communing with ancestral musical traditions inside of a structure designed for spiritual reflection can have a positive effect on anyone who sits to listen. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, or which...
Read MoreSinger-songwriter Chris Bathgate’s recent records have deserved their widespread acclaim. But to fully understand him, you’ve got to see him live. Born in Illinois, Bathgate cut his teeth in the Ann Arbor music scene...
Read MoreWhen I moved to Chicago in the early 1980s, it was in part the blues that drew me there. The first generation of Southern migrants who created urban blues were still at it, and I got to hear titanic, wrenching solos from Muddy...
Read MoreJohn Manfredi and Suzi Regan reopened the Network in August 2014, three months after the board of directors closed the deeply indebted theater for the first time. With Manfredi as executive director and Regan as artistic...
Read MoreC.S. Giscombe is a poet fascinated by railroads and what they teach us–about landscapes, about our relationships to the places where we live, and about history. Now a professor at UC Berkeley, he once worked as a railroad...
Read MoreStephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company lacks the wild genre content of his better-known works like Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd, but the lyricist and composer’s dark wit is no less provocative in this more...
Read MoreTyree Guyton’s art is overwhelming. Called assemblage, it’s monumental, environmental, and unmistakable–and is best grokked in one of two ways: You can stand in the middle of his Heidelberg Project and gape at...
Read More“We had a short period where we were stagnant,” recalls Dan Cooney. So last year, the New York-based actor sat down with his Encore Musical Theatre Company co-founder, Dexter resident Anne Koch, to consider the...
Read MoreOver the years, longtime residents of Ann Arbor have probably heard Andy Adamson performing in some capacity as soloist, sideman, or bandleader. He was a member of the Caribbean jazz troupe Melodioso in the 1970s and 1980s, Dick...
Read MorePeter Mulvey is a pretty good guitar player, and that’s a wild understatement. Here’s another: Peter Mulvey has a way with words. He’s also not a half-bad bicyclist.In early September, Mulvey rode his bike,...
Read MoreOver the years Detroit has contributed mightily to the development of jazz. And although people from the city and surrounding areas have created original approaches to just about every instrument, from the polyrhythmic drumming...
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