Tracy K. Smith
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I came to Tracy Smith’s Life on Mars only after she won the Pulitzer Prize for it. I had seen the title, and I immediately remembered the wonderful David Bowie song, and I felt just a...
Read MoreSep 26, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I came to Tracy Smith’s Life on Mars only after she won the Pulitzer Prize for it. I had seen the title, and I immediately remembered the wonderful David Bowie song, and I felt just a...
Read MoreSep 20, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The roaring twenties and thirties of the last century were a golden age of popular dance and dance bands. The new record industry was working overtime, but canned music did not permeate all public spaces as it does today, and...
Read MoreSep 13, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
I’ve heard the Ann Arbor Symphony play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony twice, and both times I was blown away.The first was in September 1988, under music director Carl St. Clair, and it was truly hair-raising. This was...
Read MoreSep 6, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Every fall during college, after all our books were purchased and fees paid, the last thing on the shopping list was always posters or art. With whatever money we had left, my girlfriends and I would scour the poster bins for...
Read MoreSep 2, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The Queen of Versailles is a documentary about David Siegel, a seventy-four-year-old time-share tycoon, and his forty-three-year-old wife, Jackie, who set out to build America’s biggest home, in Orlando, Florida. Named for...
Read MoreSep 1, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
My respect for playwright Lanford Wilson (best known for his wonderfully titled Hot L Baltimore) shot through the roof with this production of Burn This. High five for the Performance Network Theatre, too.Twenty-five-year-old...
Read MoreAug 16, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The Ben Miller Band is a versatile blues-rock Americana trio that hails from Joplin, Missouri, and has built a cultlike following in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area ever since performing at the 2010 Michigan Roots Jamboree. Led by...
Read MoreAug 8, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Forest, Farm, Field, the current exhibit at Chelsea’s River Gallery, presents the natural world as we would like it to be: shimmery green and mild, a generous offering of benign plants, pretty wildflowers, and ripe...
Read MoreAug 4, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Despite the slightly ridiculous-looking title character, Jaws is a great movie. It’s got great pacing, great acting, great editing, great cinematography, and particularly, great directing, uniting Hitchcock’s...
Read MoreAug 2, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Dog days. Summer Festival is over, the fall season is weeks away, and everyone who can make it out of town has done so. August isn’t the top month on anybody’s concert-going list, but that just means it offers a...
Read MoreAug 1, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
When residents and politicians sing the praises of life in Ann Arbor they usually leave out one important factor: the marvelous jazz educators in our public schools. I think of Mike Grace at Community High, Louis Smith at...
Read MoreJul 26, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Local singer-songwriter Matt Jones grew up in Adrian and has been involved in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti music scene for the past decade. He’s played, often on drums, with a plethora of local bands and performers and is...
Read MoreJul 20, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Don’t have the funds to experience a magnificent Baroque-style fountain in Rome? Want to check out a towering artistic interpretation of Cthulhu (generally pronounced “Ka-THOO-loo”), the malevolent high priest...
Read MoreJul 14, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Scott Lasser’s new novel, Say Nice Things About Detroit, starts with a double homicide and dementia. That makes it sound like an Elmore Leonard novel, and Lasser’s fast-paced narrative and ear for the speech of the...
Read MoreJul 11, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Perhaps you have somewhere in your past an aunt, grandmother, or fifth-grade teacher who would sniff, “That’s a sign of a very limited vocabulary!” whenever they heard a four-letter word. I heard this...
Read MoreJul 8, 2012 | Uncategorized |
The son of an English crime reporter living in Johannesburg, Johnny Clegg traveled into the city’s black townships as a teen and absorbed Zulu music firsthand. Later he studied anthropology and began to think about the...
Read MoreJul 6, 2012 | Uncategorized |
I just watched The Beatles’ 1968 cartoon movie Yellow Submarine again for the first time in forty-four years, and I’m glad I did. Whether or not you’ll feel the same after watching it at the Michigan Theater on...
Read MoreJul 5, 2012 | Uncategorized |
For many, the highlight of this year’s musical season in Ann Arbor was the University Musical Society’s presentation of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, the last century’s most radical rethinking of...
Read MoreJun 21, 2012 | Uncategorized |
“Robert Hayden,” Fran Wright announced jubilantly, bending down to clear grass cuttings off a grave marker at Fairview Cemetery. “Success!””Robert Hayden 1913-1980 / Poet,” the marker read....
Read MoreJun 20, 2012 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Orpheum Bell has been kicking around Ann Arbor since 2005, playing its distinctly Eastern European folk, yet genre-challenging, sound. Founded by Aaron Klein and Serge van der Voo, the only remaining members of the original...
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