Amadou & Mariam
The story is compelling enough by itself. Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia were both born sighted in the Malian capital of Bamako in the 1950s. Both went blind as young people–Mariam because of untreated measles and...
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The Canoe Art Project
Locked like a bicycle against the back fence at the Argo Livery is half of an aluminum canoe–bow up, severed middle down, painted cheerfully inside and out. It’s a sign of things to come for the livery’s...
Read MoreA Day on Sesame Street
Few can claim to have shared the same hour of television with Mad Men’s Jon Hamm and the Muppet Elmo, but such are Matt Shlian’s bragging rights. “I’ve lectured and presented work at top schools across...
Read MoreMoonrise Kingdom
In Moonrise Kingdom, the 2012 film by Wes Anderson, two wayward and love-struck twelve-year-olds run away together to the wilderness. Suzy (Kara Hayward) is the oldest child of two lawyers; Sam (Jared Gilman) is an orphan...
Read MoreHolly Williams
Editor’s note: This event has been canceled. A notice in the Ark’s weekly email reads, “[Williams’] doctor has prescribed vocal rest and she has had to cancel a number of shows. We wish her a speedy...
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Mardi Jo Link
There might be something rural or at least Midwestern in my reaction to memoirs. I enjoy reading them, but unless they are leavened by a self-deprecating wit I get bored very quickly. If the authors can’t laugh at...
Read MoreAlicia Doudna
Knowing an artist’s biography is not essential to enjoying his or her work. Nor is it necessary to be familiar with the history of a work of art to appreciate it. It’s not our knowledge of Schubert’s tragic...
Read MoreSproton Layer
High school rock bands aren’t generally known for their clarity of musical vision and certainly not for having a lasting legacy. But the members of Ann Arbor’s Sproton Layer mustered the former while they were still...
Read MoreA More Thoughtful Web?
In an Internet where conversation means cheap jokes, trashy entertainment, and serial rants, what in the web is hubski.com?”It’s a safe place on the Internet to have thoughtful conversations with civil people,”...
Read MoreDIA Inside|Out Art Walk
The Detroit Institute of Arts’ Inside|Out Exhibition brings nearly eighty reproductions of masterpieces from the DIA’s collection to the streets and parks of metro Detroit. Six of those reproductions have landed in...
Read MoreKatori Hall’s “Mountaintop”
Not many ingenue playwrights get profiled in the New Yorker before their plays go up on Broadway. That’s so true it sounds insane; few young playwrights get their stuff anywhere near Broadway, period. Katori Hall, a few...
Read MoreJack Ridl & Chris Dombrowski
I’m not sure what other people expect when they read a writer and his or her teacher. Maybe they think the influence will be so great that it is overwhelming. I, on the other hand, usually think that the student will try...
Read MoreStravinsky Meets Schoenberg
Pairing Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat and Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire for a chamber music evening at the Kerrytown Concert House on May 18 seems an obvious decision, given that they were...
Read MoreGrant-Lee Phillips Evolves
Singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips came on the scene in the early 1990s in Los Angeles, performing rural-gothic, sometimes political rock in a band called Grant Lee Buffalo. Many rockers of that era have tried to make the...
Read MoreShinyribs (Kev Russell)
Shinyribs is Kev Russell, front man of the rootsy and durable Austin party band the Gourds. He got the nickname from a homeless woman whom he treated to some barbecue, and he began to develop a side band project under the...
Read MoreVariations on a Death Waltz
33 Variations, at the Purple Rose, is about the beauty of intellectual engagement. Its two central characters feel their value to the human race is so crucial, and their time so short, that they bumble and crash through their...
Read MoreCobblestone Farm Spring Fling
The rain was just letting up as we pulled into Cobblestone Farm for its annual Spring Fling (to be held this year on May 5). At first, it looked as if the event had been rained out–there were only us and the animals. My...
Read MoreGhost City Searchlight
Ann Arbor is fortunate to have local bands playing music across a wide range of genres, and in Ghost City Searchlight it’s got the classic Celtic pub band fully covered. The six-piece band led by singer-guitarist Tommy...
Read MoreCircus at Gallery Project
In the pursuit of thrills, circuses have ranged from the breathtaking heights of aerial acrobats and human cannonballs to the sordid depths of overworked, abused animals and sideshow ignominy. This colorful and complex spectacle...
Read MoreWisdom of Solomon
Best-selling writer Andrew Solomon has back-to-back Ann Arbor book signings this month: at a Michigan League fundraiser (for the U-M Depression Center) on April 12, and at Crazy Wisdom Bookstore & Tea Room on April 13 (see...
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