For much of the last century, Detroit has been fertile ground for poetry, which has grown out of the industries, the struggles, the tragedies, and the resilience of the city. None has been more successful on the national poetry...
Read MoreThat’s what the Performance Network Theatre needs to raise to complete its seven-play season.The theater was more than $450,000 in debt when it reopened under new management in August 2014. Executive director John Manfredi...
Read MoreFor approximately thirty years in the second half of the nineteenth century the famous American statesman Benjamin Franklin was a fixture on the University of Michigan campus–albeit a sculptural fixture. He was a gift of...
Read MoreThe shadow of Terry Gilliam’s darkly humorous sci-fi hangs almost as heavily over the 2014 Brazilian film White Out, Black In (Branco Sai, Preto Fica) as the specter of real racial violence. The film, which shows November...
Read MoreJay Stielstra is one of the most humble, self-effacing guys you’ll ever meet. Which just goes to show that it is possible for ego and talent to co-exist in an inverse ratio. Once you hear a Stielstra song, you quickly...
Read More
Tom Paxton is returning to the Ark on Friday, November 6, for what will likely be the last time. He’s not ill, but after touring for more than fifty years he is finally hanging up his traveling shoes.mazingly prolific,...
Read MoreFrom the moment Laura Rain and the Caesars take the stage, they give the impression of a distinctly old-fashioned kind of band. For one thing, the show begins with only the Caesars onstage and Rain nowhere in sight. The...
Read MoreLouise Glueck is one of the few serious poets who have gained a following beyond the usual and circumscribed audience for contemporary poetry. That fact might appear even more surprising in light of her dark and demanding...
Read MoreDon’t be misled by the words “Romantic Tchaikovsky” in connection with the Ann Arbor Symphony’s concert at the Michigan Theater on October 24. Even with two dazzling works by Russia’s best-known...
Read MoreWhen I think about Sankai Juku, the Japanese dance troupe that has visited Ann Arbor regularly for over two decades, I think first about the bodies. The dancers–originally five, now eight–are all men. But powdered...
Read MoreIn a university town, does this play ever get old? Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha are nearly as famous as George and Martha Washington. The name-twinning invites ironic smirks as playwright Edward Albee overlays the...
Read MoreAccording to many histories, jazz was not doing very well around 1970. Recession at home, war abroad, and the dominance of rock music led to the closing of many clubs and bars that employed jazz musicians. But despite, and...
Read MoreThe Whiskey Charmers are either a guitar-driven duo or, if you catch them at the right show, that same duo with a drummer. I saw them at Wolverine State Brewing Co., minus the drummer, for a very entertaining evening of...
Read MoreThe work of Korean writer and director Kim Ki-duk is a sometimes shocking, consistently fascinating study in extremes. Kim, whose work will be spotlighted in the Ann Arbor Korean Independent Film Festival October 15-18 at the...
Read MoreRhiannon Giddens clearly didn’t have fame and fortune as her primary goals when she began her musical training studying opera at Oberlin, or after she graduated, when she helped found the Carolina Chocolate Drops: even if...
Read MoreThe 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....
Read MoreSoon 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...
Read MoreIf 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...
Read MoreOn 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...
Read MoreWhen 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...
Read More