Burn This
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...
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The Ben Miller Band
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 MoreForest, Farm, Field
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 MoreRiverfolk and NashBash
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...
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Vincent York at the Gandy
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 MoreMatt Jones
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 MoreMinerva and Cthulhu
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 MoreScott Lasser’s Detroit
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 MoreMike Stanley
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 MoreAnti-apartheid Legend
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 MoreYellow Submarine
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 MoreSteve Rush
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 MorePoetic postage
“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 MoreOrpheum Bell 2012
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...
Read MoreTheater Romance
“Historic theaters are kind of intrinsically romantic,” says Russ Collins, executive director of the Michigan Theater. Maybe that’s why eight to ten couples a year get married there.The tab can range from $750...
Read MoreShakespeare in the Arb Returns
This is the twelfth year Kate Mendeloff has produced Shakespeare in the Arb. She stages scenes in different parts of the park, moving the audience around several times during the evening with strolling musicians leading the way....
Read MoreGreat Lakes Chamber Music Fest
The first classical music concert I ever reviewed was a piano recital by James Tocco in Rackham Auditorium. That was 1983, and Tocco and I were the two youngest people in the hall by a good three decades.Twenty-eight years...
Read MoreOff-Broadway on Third
Scattered throughout the Old West Side is a surprising collection of antique barns, relics from horse-and-buggy days. Some are clearly derelict; some are updated, spiffy-looking garages or studios. But the most unconventional is...
Read MoreMichigan in 3-D
Of the more than fifty stereographs on display in the exhibit “Michigan in 3-D,” one appears to be a fake.The exhibit, presented by the U-M Bentley Historical Library, brings together new and old 3-D technologies....
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