The Artist
Retro is all the rage these days. Quite a few bands now play some sort of Americana and use old-timey instruments. Even literary efforts harken back to old days. Instead of reading an e-book on an e-reader this summer, I’m...
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Shaun Manning
Nostalgia, as one of the characters in Shaun Manning’s new graphic novel, Interesting Drug, points out, can be addictive. But the “what if” of this science fiction book takes that idea further. What if there...
Read MoreTogether Again
The breakup was tumultuous, but the reunion has been sweet. Ten years after the Saline Fiddlers Philharmonic split in two, the high school ensembles will reassemble as a single private nonprofit August 1. Soon-to-be co-directors...
Read MoreAASO on the air
The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s final concert of last season, an all-Brahms program in April, was heard by far more people than can fit into the Michigan Theater. Michigan State’s public radio station, WKAR,...
Read MoreMay Erlewine
When May Erlewine returns to the Ark on June 20, she’ll be bringing along her two latest, and arguably finest, creations. However she may showcase only one of them on stage. For sure she’ll be featuring songs from...
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Spanish Harlem Orchestra
Note: Since going to press this event has been canceled.By the time the Spanish Harlem Orchestra lands in Ann Arbor on Friday June 20, a portion of the Power Center will have been temporarily modified to accommodate dancers in...
Read MoreCecile McLorin Salvant
Catching a star on the rise is one of the joys of concert-going. Among the many stellar acts on the docket of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, one show promises to be a lasting treat for fans of classic jazz, New Orleans blues,...
Read MoreThe Summer Festival at thirty
When the first Ann Arbor Summer Festival was held in 1984, new executive director Amy Nesbitt points out, “The Ark was still a house concert in Linda and Dave Siglin’s living room. The Michigan Theater was not a...
Read MoreCarolyn Wonderland
Carolyn Wonderland has been called the best-kept secret in Austin, a city with a lot of superb performers who rarely travel. She has appeared once before in Ann Arbor, at Top of the Park in 2008, but it will be good to see her...
Read MoreThe Howlin’ Brothers
The revival of old-time music, a heartening thing to all but the most purist of old folkies, has divided into several strands, one of which has picked up the rowdy side of the tradition. The band Old Crow Medicine Show added...
Read MoreBlues in the City
If we take the 1914 publication of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” as a starting point, this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the blues genre. The music has waxed and waned in popularity since then,...
Read MoreGrace in Ann Arbor
Sixty-three years ago this month, Grace Kelly appeared on stage at the U-M’s Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Kelly was twenty-one, and her first movie, Fourteen Hours, had come out just two months earlier; she was more than a...
Read MoreGuest of honor
The Heather Black Project’s weekly jazz show at the Ravens Club regularly attracts top-notch local guest musicians, but an international celebrity who recently joined the group may prove hard to top: legendary trumpeter...
Read MoreA Winter’s Journey
Calmly focused, Jesse Blumberg stands gazing into the audience, his eyes agleam with a warmly arresting intelligence. Songs composed in the 1820s have taken root within this man; he is dedicating part of his life to their...
Read MoreTechTwilight
My memories of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum begin in the old museum’s preschool room, with my toddlers crawling on and around the big red fire truck, trying on different firefighter coats, and cooking up strange...
Read MoreStyle Beyond Style
Modern jazz is a messy business. There are traditionalists who steadfastly reproduce the sounds of yesteryear, dedicated to preserving and strictly adhering to a narrowly perceived tradition. But there is another world of...
Read MoreLovers, Liars, and Lunatics
When Jeff Daniels founded the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, he was often quoted about his desire “to build an audience for live theater” where one had not existed previously and where some thought such an audience...
Read MoreNever a Bystander
Four years in the making, the documentary Never a Bystander premieres this month at the Michigan Theater as part of the Jewish Film Festival (see Films, p. 73). First-time filmmaker Evelyn Neuhaus (Ann Arborites, January 2012)...
Read MoreBruce Mills
In An Archaeology of Yearning, Kalamazoo College English professor Bruce Mills gives a completely loving but totally honest account of living with his autistic son, Jacob, now a young adult, and the ways Jacob’s needs and...
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