Albert Lee
You might be surprised to learn that Eric Clapton called his fellow English guitarist Albert Lee the greatest guitarist in the world. Lee is hardly a household name, has recorded just a few solo albums, and isn’t...
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Fix-It Friday
What if there were an enchanted place where you could meet magical people, the Wizard of Wood among them, who would expertly and enthusiastically repair your household goods, small appliances, and clothing for free? Fix-It...
Read MoreHenrik Karapetyan & Francis Yun
You expect a lot of strings at a violin and harpsichord concert–four on the violin and at least 120 on the harpsichord (harpsichords are not uniform, so the number of strings varies from instrument to instrument). But,...
Read MoreMendelssohn’s Elijah
Composer Felix Mendelssohn was also a skilled graphic artist who painted landscapes in watercolor and oils. In 1829, while touring with his sketchbook through Scotland’s Hebrides archipelago, he visited the isle of Staffa...
Read MoreSign Wizard
The Detroit-raised artist has spent more than thirty years living and making signs in the Ann Arbor area. His handiwork includes the red Zingerman’s logo on the roof of the Roadhouse, Aventura’s blocky TAPAS sign,...
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Deliciously Dark
In Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice, set in 1970, the bumbling private eye Doc Sportello laments the pop-cultural demise of his profession: “… [A]ll you see anymore is cops, the tube is saturated with...
Read MoreTomasz Stanko
Polish jazz has a fascinating history. The postwar government initially drove it underground, but during the cultural thaw that took place after 1956 the music came out of the shadows and thrived. One of the leaders of the...
Read MoreThe Understorey
Editor’s note: The Understorey’s February 4 performance has been cancelled.The Understorey truly is a marriage of music: the band’s history began when vocalist Jess McCumons and guitarist Matt McCumons sang...
Read MoreMozart Birthday Bash
In October 1902, after attending a performance of Mozart’s singspiel Zaide, aspiring composer Anton Webern confided to his diary that what he’d heard sounded “lovely and tender, so clear and simple, like a...
Read MoreFolk the Police
Most of the year, hip-hop is sorely underrepresented on the local music scene. But at the annual Folk the Police showcase, the genre takes center stage in the most Ann Arbor way possible: wrapped in folk’s...
Read MoreKickshaw Theater
As she headed from her home on Ann Arbor’s west side to the Williamston Theater, where she was appearing in a one-woman play, she thought about a theater in New York City she’d started and worked in when she was in...
Read MoreThe Hedron Project
Ann Arbor has a long tradition of what might be called “people’s art”: outdoor pieces that are often ephemeral and anonymous and sometimes literary or intellectual in nature. Aside from the predictable...
Read MoreDobet Gnahore
The Ivory Coast singer Dobet Gnahore is the daughter of a master drummer in Abidjan. She fled civil war in her native country in 1999 and landed in Marseille, where she acquired a French guitarist husband and musical partner,...
Read MoreRagtime Extravaganza
The dictionary defines ragtime as “a kind of American dance music, characterized by highly syncopated rhythm,” and extravaganza as “a lavish, spectacular theatrical production.” You won’t find the...
Read MoreEarly Jazz for Moderns
As musical forms go, jazz is not that old. In just a few years we will be celebrating the hundred-year anniversary of what is generally considered to be the first official jazz recording, made in New York on February 26, 1917,...
Read MoreSuspended Moments
There’s nothing like children to make us wish that life had a pause button. With their tendency to disappear in crowds or climb worryingly high trees or simply grow up, kids embody both the chaos we’d like to...
Read MoreStill crusading
Roger Rapoport, a 1968 U-M grad, wasn’t surprised this fall when angry and media-savvy undergrads helped to unseat athletic director Dave Brandon. As a Michigan Daily reporter, he himself helped unseat a regent, Eugene...
Read MoreLaith Al-Saadi
“Have Venue, Will Play” should be Laith Al-Saadi’s motto. If it’s a night of the week, he’s probably playing somewhere. I recently caught an Al-Saadi show at the Arena sports bar, where he plays a...
Read MoreDie Meistersinger von Nurnberg
If I say “Wagner,” some of you will say “very long operas with supersized sopranos sporting Viking helmets.” Plus, you’ll probably add “the world’s second-loudest anti-Semite, behind...
Read MoreAnn Arbor Community Messiah Sing
After braving the first big snowstorm of the season and slipping slowly across town to reach the Ann Arbor Community Messiah Sing, the children and I finally enter St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal Church (at Genesis of Ann Arbor)...
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