Marc Chagall created his stained glass America Windows for the Chicago Art Institute to commemorate the American bicentennial. The piece was installed in 1977, the same year Hubbard Street Dance Chicago was founded, and the two...
Read MoreFor three years, while she was earning a master’s degree in sustainable enterprise at the U-M business school, Vienna Teng lived in Ann Arbor. Which meant that, besides the occasional formal concert, such as her 2011 show...
Read MoreHelen Killer, Sock-It Wench, Michelle O’Bomb Ya, Skim MILF 0%. In roller derby, a skater’s pseudonym can be as lurid as the bruises that result from this all-female, full-contact sport. The mock-violent names play up...
Read MoreThe Battlefield Band, named for the members’ hometown of Battlefield, Scotland, proclaims the motto “Forward with Scotland’s past.” That can be read two ways: as a defiant assertion of Scots musical...
Read MoreA song about a former lover, loneliness. A song about a two-timing lover. A song about lovers who cling to each other while autumn heaves around them. Love as sin, love as loss of self, love as waiting. These heartaches and...
Read More
Walt Steadman, the protagonist of Douglas Trevor’s first novel, Girls I Know, is a character many in Ann Arbor will recognize: an “all but dissertation” PhD candidate at Harvard who has given up on ever...
Read MoreIn the last few seasons at the Performance Network Theatre, artistic director David Wolber has invited audiences to peek behind the canvas at artists in society. There was A Picasso, in which Nazis want to burn one of the...
Read MoreThe Appleseed Collective emerged in late 2010, and since the first clack of its trademark washboard the band has moved to a quick and steady tempo: it’s played countless local shows; released an acclaimed debut album, Baby...
Read MoreIt’s not true that only love can break your heart. The right song, the right singer, can make you despondent with longing for understanding and connection. Rickie Lee Jones does that.Jones started out singing jazz...
Read MoreThe Slomovitses are Ann Arbor’s enduring yet youthful musical family, best known to local kids and their parents as Gemini, the children’s musical duo of twin brothers Laszlo and Sandor Slomovits, who have been...
Read MoreWe all know that summer entertainment is traditionally light and fluffy rather than dense and chewy. In theaters, that usually means it’s romantic comedy time, but this summer, most of our locals seem to have gone slightly...
Read MoreHe called it a moving sale, but it was more like a pop-up T-shirt museum, with Ann Arbor’s history for the last thirty-nine years played out on cotton jerseys. Throughout most of July, you could buy them from the person...
Read MoreMartha Redbone’s ancestors include Native Americans (Cherokee, Choctaw, and others) and African Americans. She also, writes her website biographer Kandia Crazy Horse, has “deep roots in Appalachian folk and Piedmont...
Read MoreThe performers’ jewelry is big, their hair is bigger, their evening gowns are over-the-top, their nails are long and their heels are high on the Millennium Stage at the Cavern Club on a Saturday night. An elderly couple...
Read MorePokey LaFarge grew up (as Andrew Heissler) in downstate Illinois. His grandfather was a member of the St. Louis Banjo Society, and he discovered the remnants of the classic blues and jazz styles that survived along the...
Read MoreNext to the “on the road” theme, the immigrant’s story may have provided the most telling and poignant moments in American literature. There have been so many of them it’s hard to imagine that anyone can...
Read MoreAround here, everyone who has even a passing interest in jazz has heard pianist Tad Weed in more than one context. A native of Jackson, he fell in love with jazz at a young age, studied piano, and eventually went to Central...
Read More“You really are sick!”It’s the line that begins one of the most stomach-churning scenes in Eraserhead, and it’s also how many folks who saw the movie in 1977 regarded then-unknown writer-director David...
Read MoreI’m a jazzhead. Nah, not really–I’m not even sure if that’s a real term. I had some stuff in my library, Dizzy and Miles, but no real listening background to refer to; I’m an R&B girl,...
Read More