On the Tracks
There’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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Igor Levit
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 MoreLone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
While 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 MoreJohn Gorka
The 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 MoreHandel, Scarlatti, & Bach
The 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...
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Chris Bathgate
Singer-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 MoreJohn Primer
When 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 MoreFinal Curtain
John 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
C.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 MoreAnn Arbor Civic Theatre’s Company
Stephen 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 MoreThe Art of Tyree Guyton
Tyree 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 MoreNew Act for the Encore
“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 MoreAndy Adamson
Over 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
Peter 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 MoreMichael Malis
Over 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...
Read MoreTakacs Quartet
Our bustling multicultural community abounds with opportunities to learn words and phrases from other languages. Hungarian words in particular can be pleasantly challenging for Westerners to enunciate properly....
Read MoreDiego Rivera
On a hot but lovely cloudless Saturday at this year’s Detroit Jazz Festival I sat with a friend on the front steps of a stage listening to Diego Rivera’s quintet working its way though a set of jazz standards and...
Read MoreGentle Resonance
Do you suffer from the frenetic pace of life in a perpetually imploding technocracy? You might consider seeking refuge in an intimate recital hall where chamber music can invoke the calming grace of a rising winter moon. On...
Read MoreCasting Session
We’ve heard it said that a little friendly competition never hurt anyone, but what if that competition extended over decades and found you continually vying against the same person for a chance at fame and fulfillment?In...
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