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A Bigger Art Center?

The Art Center has been making, displaying, and teaching art for 106 years and owns its double storefront on W. Liberty downtown. From the mid-1990s to 2009, it also ran classes off-site at an “Art Factory” on Felch....

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Abdullah Ibrahim

Soon after World War II, jazz became truly international, with homegrown flavors developing all over the world. In Africa the most potent center of such musical development was the port city of Cape Town, South Africa. One of...

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Brad Phillips

If all the musicians that Brad Phillips has accompanied on stage, recorded with in the studio, or produced albums for in the past decade show up for his show at the Ark on September 29, there won’t be any room for the rest...

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Right & Left

On an otherwise barren stage, the willowy limbs of Li Nan and Gu Jiani roll weightless through space, pausing in weary contemplation as various complexities of their partnership arise. Right & Left, choreographed by Gu, is...

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Community theater

When Forrest Hejkal started the Carriage House Theatre four years ago, he searched for a venue that would be “interesting and a draw in its own right.” With hammer, nails, and imagination, the recent Rudolf Steiner...

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The Kapralova Festival

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Vitka who lived in Brno, Moravia, in what is now called the Czech Republic. Vitka’s mother, Viktorie, was a very pretty classically trained vocalist. Vitka’s papa,...

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Piano Sonatas

For the past three years, EMU professor Joel Schoenhals has been trekking his way through Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas, performing them free of charge at EMU’s historic Pease Auditorium, where the biannual...

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Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is now eighty-five years old. Most poets appear to slow down rather dramatically as they age, but not Snyder. In recent years he has published his correspondence and/or interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Wendell Berry,...

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Mary Doria Russell

Epitaph, Mary Doria Russell’s new book about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, might almost be a called a nonfiction novel, like In Cold Blood. The gunfight story is as overlaid with myth as anything that ever came out of...

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The Creature Conservancy

Animal rescues, pictures, information, and videos make up 90 percent of my sister-in-law Jennifer’s Facebook posts. Volunteering at the Huron Valley Humane Society, she wanted to bring every animal home, but her three cats...

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Musical Marathon

Playing all thirty-two of Beethoven’s piano sonatas–the greatest piano works by one of the greatest composers of all time–is a heroic feat, last done locally under the UMS’s auspices by Hungarian pianist...

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Ann Arbor Poetry Slam

In 1987, less than a year after the first-ever poetry slams were born in Chicago, Ann Arbor became just the second city in the world to host them. They’ve continued here, almost without interruption, ever since.Poetry...

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Sara Adlerstein

“As a scientist, I’m not supposed to advocate,” says Sara Adlerstein, whose love-letter paintings of water are on exhibit in the WSG Gallery at 306 S. Main.”As a journalist, I’m not supposed to...

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Thunderwude

I’m thoroughly enjoying a set by the Chelsea-based bluegrass trio Thunderwüde when I discover that the trio is actually supposed to be a quartet. Mandolin player and vocalist Jason Dennie is out of town, leaving guitarist...

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Kelly Fordon

Many people in this part of the world know the border that separates Detroit from the Grosse Pointes. The drive down East Jefferson past the empty lots and boarded buildings–past all the people who live there–until...

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Dena DeRose

During the second half of the last century, musical success most often required full dedication to life on the road. This was particularly true of jazz players who traversed the country moving from club to club and the...

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Whit Hill

Whit Hill lived and worked in Ann Arbor as a singer-songwriter, dancer, choreographer and writer–including for the Observer–for decades before moving to Nashville a few years ago. She still maintains her ties here,...

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The Big Flush Toilet Race

Wearing a maize-and-blue helmet adorned with toilet bowl brushes, and with cans of beer chilling in his toilet tank, Dain Vettese is raring to race his Kohler toilet-on-wheels in the premiere Big Flush Toilet Race. His teammates...

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Chris Collins

One evening some years ago I was at dinner in an Italian restaurant in Port Townsend, Washington. The food was lovely, the conversation lively, and recorded jazz was playing in the background. I thought I recognized the...

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