Breakin’ Curfew
Breakin’ Curfew is marketed partly by way of flyers that flower on utility poles all over town with the coming of spring. It’s a teen talent show, and those with experiences of dutifully attending such things may...
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Jeni Lee Richey
Jeni Lee Richey and lead guitarist Fred Beldin first met and became friends in the mid-1990s, while working together in East Lansing. Beldin tried to convince Richey to sing in one of his bands, but she was too shy to do it, and...
Read MoreUnhooked from Time
Whatever you do, don’t let the rather hokey title Unhooked from Time dissuade you from visiting the new show at Gallery Project. There are some real gems here.Nicole Gordon’s Asylum is one. A large...
Read MoreTime and technique
The climax of the Ann Arbor Symphony season will unquestionably be its performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony in the Michigan Theater on April 30. That mighty work not only calls for a huge orchestra, plus women’s...
Read MoreRachel DeWoskin’s Big Girl Small
Rachel DeWoskin grew up in Ann Arbor, and her new novel, Big Girl Small, makes it clear that she remembers it well. Here her smart and witty protagonist, Judy, tries to imagine what the city might have been like before she was...
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Theater Repotted
Last year, the New Theatre Project found a home at Pot & Box, a tiny garden store at 220 Felch. TNTP, which stages classic texts as contemporary performance pieces, ran three shows there–but also discovered its limits...
Read MoreForgiving John Lennon
A well-acted play where a major character declares that his chief goal is . . . tenure is a good bet for Ann Arbor theater lovers. Here’s hoping many locals will set their GPS systems east to catch the premiere of...
Read MoreOff and Running
A few mainstream movies lately have focused on kids searching for birth parents (The Kids Are All Right, Mother and Child). If you’d like to see a decidedly non-Hollywoodized treatment of that issue, it’s worth a...
Read MoreArts Funding Cuts
They’re already been battered by drastically lower corporate support–Pfizer’s departure and Borders’ financial struggles eliminated two huge sponsors, and the economy reduced most of the rest–and...
Read MoreBreathe Owl Breathe
A Breathe Owl Breathe concert is musical performance art at its most fun. The members of the band, however, might actually enjoy themselves more than the audience. Comprised of guitar-playing singer-songwriter Micah Middaugh,...
Read MoreAdrian Legg
With testimony from rock and jazz guitar gods, the publicity materials for the British finger-style guitarist Adrian Legg makes him out to be a dazzling virtuoso–which, to be sure, he is. But he’s more about...
Read MoreGebhard Ullmann & Steve Swell
During the first decades of its existence, jazz was uniquely American. From London, where Louis Armstrong performed before King George V, to Bangkok, where King Bhumibol Adulyadej became an accomplished improviser, American jazz...
Read MoreClayton Eshleman
Since his move, a few years ago, into emeritus status at EMU, Clayton Eshleman has been publishing important books that solidify his contribution to literature. Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction...
Read MoreEllen Rowe 2011
“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” With all due respect to George Bernard Shaw, that’s a sound-bite maxim–sounds good, until you think about it. Then, it’s easy to come up with many more...
Read MoreU-M Baseball
I feel sorry for the U-M baseball team. By the time winter’s really, finally over, the Wolverines’ season is finished. A decade or so ago, I went to Ray Fisher Stadium on Mother’s Day to see the final home game...
Read MoreDexter Art Center Opens
It’s no coincidence that the Dexter Art Center opened last fall upstairs from Artistica fine gift and art gallery at 3205 Broad Street. The nonprofit center was born through the efforts of Artistica’s owners, Pam...
Read MoreStranded in Lebanon
When you’re stuck in a town longer than you had expected, food can turn a hardship into a pleasure. In January, my husband and I were traveling in Lebanon when the government collapsed. A new coalition formed, but...
Read MoreLove Flows
The annual concerts of Indonesian music and dance mounted by the U-M Center for Southeast Asian Studies are a local resource of rare value, and townies are starting to catch on: offered for free in Hill Auditorium, the concerts...
Read MoreAnn Arbor Film Festival
At the start of Marie Losier’s film The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, there’s a black-and-white image of a blonde with big eyes wearing a white nightgown, flapping her arms and making chicken gestures. I think she...
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