A long time ago, jazz big bands traveled throughout the land; many of their sidemen were as notorious as movie stars, and the leaders were treated as nobility. The days of peripatetic musical Dukes and Counts are over, and...
Read MoreIf they're the Takács Quartet, where's Takács? It's like this. When violinists Gabor Takács-Nagy and Károly Schranz, violist Gabor Ormai, and cellist András Fejér were...
Read MoreFirst of all, my wife did not want to go. We were new in town, still unpacking, wondering what life in a "small town" was going to be like after we'd spent eleven years in Chicago. "I've never heard of any...
Read MoreWhen I told Whit Hill I was writing an event review about her band, she started yelling into the phone, “Charmie, you can’t do that! You’re one of my closest friends. That is not appropriate.” She calmed...
Read More"I like to watch." This is the prophetic mantra uttered by a man named Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers). When Gardiner is befriended by socialite Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine) after a minor traffic accident, he becomes...
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Kitty Donohoe has been making songs in Michigan for decades now, and the state's a better place for it. She's a folk-style road warrior princess, crisscrossing both peninsulas, playing for big fat festivals and for tiny...
Read MoreIn the 1980s Mary Gaitskill exploded into the reading world with Bad Behavior, a collection of short stories that shocked and challenged what was left of complacent baby-boomer assumptions about our generation's social...
Read MoreBig things are happening in the little, lightly trafficked UMMA refuge at South U and Forest. After the mesmerizing Barsamian exhibit of whirling modern zoetrope contraptions and the enchanting and mournful Plains of Sweet...
Read MoreThere's a certain mode of between-song folk-music patter that Small Potatoes, the Illinois duo of Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso, exemplifies to the hilt. Call it midwestern, or Keilloresque — if you go out to hear...
Read MoreWhat’s the real meaning of Christmas? It’s Luke 2:10-14: “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born...
Read MoreTye Tribbett and G.A., an African American gospel choir from Camden, New Jersey, with a young and extremely energetic leader, is coming to Hill Auditorium on Saturday, December 9. Gospel music tends to fly under the media radar,...
Read MoreYou gotta love Marcia Ball. I defy anyone to resist this willowy Gulf Coast piano pounder and her blend of roots rock and soulful R&B. Her Royal Tallness presides upright, sidesaddle on the bench, crossed-leg bouncing time,...
Read MoreThe leaves have turned. The skies are cloudy. The wind is from the north. The first frost is on the ground, and winter is in the air. It's what the old-timers called Brahms weather. Some composers know no season —...
Read MoreSome songs by Broken Social Scene are mood music, edgy yet soothing, atmospheric postrock. Then the Canadian indie-rock collective hits you with cacophonies that are so packed with dueling sounds, so boisterous and brash,...
Read MoreWhat has 100-plus arms and 100-plus legs and sings in three-part harmony? Stumped? Need another clue? What bows and blows and bangs seventy-two instruments simultaneously and also sings silly, and not so silly, songs? Give up?...
Read MoreSome admire Jeff Daniels for his rich and protean work as an actor. Others praise the vision and hard work he's lavished on the Purple Rose Theater, creating an arts network of national stature almost literally in the middle...
Read MoreAdversity has its rewards, and the unexpected is the essence of art. Jane Bunnett was studying classical piano in Toronto when tendinitis put an end to her concert hall dreams. Rather than abandon music, she took up the flute at...
Read MoreIf you haven't been to one of the bluegrass concerts mounted periodically at Saline High School, the show on Saturday, November 4, featuring singer, fiddler, and songwriter Laurie Lewis, offers the perfect chance. The...
Read MoreThe U-M Museum of Art Off/Site’s current video installation offers an eighteen-minute meditation on the social patterns that have swept the Great Plains clean of immigrant small farmers. The exhibit begins with a...
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