My family and I attended the Twenty-sixth Annual Australian Shepherd Dog Trials on a lark. At the Washtenaw Farm Council Grounds, the morning was breezy and sunny, perfect for watching dogs perform. The beautifully brushed...
Read MoreHer bio states that Iris DeMent started singing when she was three years old, but I bet she started earlier than that. I bet she sang the day, the minute she was born. And I bet she sang a gospel song. In the liner notes for her...
Read MoreWhen the annual Jewish Film Festival returns to the Michigan Theater Sunday through Thursday, May 6-10, it will bring movies from more than half a dozen countries. The range of subjects in the nineteen films featured is even...
Read MoreMore than most genres, the blues is replete with remarkable life stories, and that of Mississippi Heat frontman Pierre Lacocque is especially fascinating. The son of a Belgian Protestant minister and often penniless Old...
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Singer-songwriter and guitarist Dan Orcutt has been making music in this town for about fifteen years. Like his other bands, the Nick Strange Trio is professional and tight, and Orcutt's vocals are still rich. But in the few...
Read MoreThe layers of Norah Jones's voice shine softly in the illumination cast by a tune. The voice seems too ordinary to have fascinated listeners as it has, but its grain is unique. Born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar in 1979, she...
Read MoreOne highlight of the U-M Graduate Library’s absorbing transportation exhibition is a slender, pocket-size 1913 directory that lists all of the few owned cars in Michigan — “a combination social register and...
Read MoreThe African Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman is a sensation in every sense of the word. Start with the name: she grew up Measha (MEE-sha) Gosman in New Brunswick; married a Swiss, Markus Bruegger; and fused their surnames....
Read MoreLast fall I got a call to play an opening slot at a really nice music series in Royal Oak. I jumped at the chance for the usual reasons. But one reason outshone them all: I could maybe, just maybe, meet the featured act, folk...
Read MoreThe U-M Chopin Project has no need of boosterism. Though the first recital was on a cold and snowy Tuesday night, and though the program consisted solely of works written when the composer was between seven and eighteen years...
Read MoreLet's start by acknowledging the elephant — excuse me, the moose — in the room: the Cool Moose Orchestra is composed entirely of local high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors; they're mostly Community...
Read MoreEliza Gilkyson sings her songs in a wise alto that I like very much. I love that she's such a literate and subtle writer. I love that she's passionate without being didactic or moralizing. I love the sly sexiness of her...
Read MoreYour mother’s sauerbraten recipe on an index card. Nostalgia for nasi goring, a spicy Indonesian dish from an unspicy country with a colonialist past. A hankering for double-salt licorice. Given the cornerstone role of...
Read MoreIn a little over a century, jazz has traveled from the cathouses of Storyville to concert halls and universities, with some colorful episodes en route. The academic environment is safer, healthier, and more dignified, but...
Read MoreJonathan Lethem's cool. His novels and stories take on everything from detective fiction to comic book heroes. He is very willing to write about big themes — the possibilities or impossibilities of individualism in an...
Read MoreWhen I call for information, Anita, one of the founders of SpiritSisters Women's Circle, tells me why they started this monthly group that discusses spirituality, relationships, empowerment, metaphysics, and healing:...
Read MoreEvery Tuesday, area writers wedge themselves between the Money Management and Pop/Rock sections at Arborland Borders to review each other's work. The night I attended, ten folks were crowded around a table, intently studying...
Read MoreUncle Earl got himself born right here in Ann Arbor. He sprang fully formed and thoroughly functional from the fertile minds, nimble fingers, and soulful voices of singer-songwriters K. C. Groves and Jo Serrapere and fiddle...
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