Charles Lloyd is a jazz musician who revels in spirituality and in sound. When he first came to public attention in 1960 as a member of the popular Chico Hamilton Quintet, like many saxophonists of the time he was heavily...
Read MoreLindsay Lou & the Flatbellys have been playing all over the state during the last year or so, and they’re coming in April for three Ann Arbor shows in one week: at the Circus on April 11 and April 18, and at Wolverine...
Read MoreFans of the Western might have noticed that it’s not so easy to mount one on a live stage, where the big sky will always look fake and cheesy. Fights and stunts, even if they look OK, are dangerous, and how can you do a...
Read MoreMany years ago, when my brother and I were teenagers, my mom occasionally drove us to New York City, to the Metropolitan Opera House. It was always special and memorable. Two years ago, I got to go back to the Met, albeit only...
Read More“I like to think / (right now, please!) / of a cybernetic forest / filled with pines and electronics,” wrote the late American poet and writer Richard Brautigan, imagining a utopian future “where deer stroll...
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Missouri native David Wax attended Deep Springs College, a school in the California high desert where the twenty-six students spend part of their time helping operate a cattle ranch. He went to Mexico as part of an American...
Read MoreNIGHT ONE: March 22None of the pieces performed in the first of Michael Tilson Thomas & the San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks concerts were much good, though the Copland was certainly the best and the Bates...
Read MoreThe Muehlig Funeral Chapel on the corner of William and Fourth Avenue is a serious building, with thick corbels under the deep eaves, tall narrow windows with ornate arches, and a hipped, low-peaked gray roof. Which makes it...
Read MoreThis may hurt some. Heck, it’ll likely hurt … a lot. What it’s called is American Mavericks, a series of four San Francisco Symphony concerts, March 22-25, featuring some of the hardest of hardcore repertoire...
Read MoreBob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Patti Smith–all of these important popular musicians have worshipped the example of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the young nineteenth-century French poet and iconic poete maudit who confronted the...
Read MoreI grew up listening to The Band, since my father is something of a fanatic. I still listen to them often, but in the last few years my dad has directed my attention to Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble recordings. I’ve...
Read More“Are you calling me fat?” the rotund prisoner asks the inmate in the next cell. It’s dirty and dark in the North Dakota jail, and soon Jean-Phillipe DeLaRoux Baptiste, better known as Froggy, will have problems...
Read MoreAfter a long string of homegrown scripts, the Purple Rose is presenting A Stone Carver by East Coast playwright William Mastrosimone. Best known for his 1980s Extremities, and more recently for Bang Bang You’re Dead,...
Read More“This ornate facade is hidden away on Kingsley,” writes Joel Batterman–“809 E. Kingsley,” adds Michael Ferguson, identifying February’s photo of what Kristen Schleick further decscribes as...
Read MoreMatch By Match’s soft, hypnotically intricate sound grabs me from the first song. Gray Bouchard stands center stage with his acoustic guitar and curious tuft of dyed blond hair hanging awkwardly above his forehead....
Read MoreFor a good many of us, the American Dream is a house. It’s the very real house that we own, or once lived in, or imagine moving into someday. Thus, it’s fitting that several pieces in Gallery Project’s current...
Read MoreWhen Russ Schwartz, an apprentice at the Performance Network Theatre, helped build faux bricks for the set of the theater’s 2009 production of Fences, he found the sheer size of the task daunting. “You cut a board of...
Read MoreThe nearest comparison for folksinger-songwriter David Francey would be to Gordon Lightfoot, who shares Francey’s Scottish-Canadian background. If you enjoy the mix of Canadiana and contemporary love songs in...
Read MoreI was wrong. Folks who’ve read my reviews for the last twenty-eight years may be surprised to hear that. Not surprised that I was wrong: given my emphatic opinions, by now my being wrong is likely a given, and considering...
Read More“A life is more than a moment.” Hazel Bryan Massery has spent half a century repeating a curiously poignant truism—to family, to reporters, to curious audiences around the country. But the person whose affirmation...
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