The last time I heard John Cowan live was in 1988, at the last Ann Arbor concert of the New Grass Revival, of which he was the lead singer. It was just before the band broke up, and its supremely talented individual performers...
Read MorePlayers and admirers of jazz guitar tend to be a cliquish lot. Even more than saxophonists, they love the instrument as much as the music it produces. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that, contrary to popular opinion, the...
Read MorePreservation Hall’s iron gates open to a hallway that leads to a single room. Built in 1750, the building has been left to age, plaster cracks unrepaired, windows unwashed. There’s no air-conditioning and almost no...
Read MoreDo kids still dream about running away to join the circus? Is that still an option, at least in imagination? Forty years ago it still seemed to be one of my choices. The circus was going to be a real one, too, with clowns and...
Read MoreA Life in the Theater, an early (1977) play by David Mamet, is a funny, gentle, and too-quickly-passing ninety-minute tribute to the craft of acting and the bond between actors. In twenty-six short scenes, David Wolber and Loren...
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What exactly is early music, anyway? It depends on what you mean by “early.” Early Rolling Stones is one thing, but early Muddy Waters is something else again — something played with a different bat and ball but in...
Read MoreWhen I call to ask whether or not my six-year-old can do these dances, the woman on the other end of the phone laughs. “My daughter’s been doing them since she was about four,” she says. “They’ll...
Read MoreThis year the Purple Rose seems to be celebrating the misunderstood keepers of high culture. Purple Rose founder Jeff Daniels, playing way against type, delivered an ace performance in movie theaters this winter in The Squid and...
Read MoreJerry Harmon's great-great-great-grandfather Council Harmon, born in 1803 and deceased in 1896, brought the Jack Tales to the United States from England. "Jack and the Beanstalk" is the only one of these most of us...
Read MoreJazz musicians from the West Coast are often not given the appreciation they deserve. There are vibrant musical scenes in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and other Pacific Rim cities, but not enough players from these areas...
Read MoreBefore its June 24 move to temporary quarters during its renovation, the U-M Museum of Art is giving itself a blowout sendoff with a sweeping survey of the history of photography, opening April 22. The exhibition Rethinking the...
Read MoreThree years ago, the DJs on my favorite college radio station fell in love with a song that had a beautiful, obsessive chorus. "I wanted to be sweet/So you won't disappoint me," a woman sang with such pain and rage...
Read MoreAmong his many other qualities, Richard Russo is our contemporary master of the fictional small town, and particularly of the small-town diner. His novels, though set in small places, are big and sprawling, in the best sense....
Read MoreSeeing is believing. You can listen to the fast and fuzzy glam-rock sound of the Sirens on their 2004 self-titled CD, and the musical performance will probably sound more impressive than at a live show. But the key to this...
Read MoreAfter a surfeit of sad, pretty, reflective, brainy, wordy, sarcastic, traditional, way-out, and heartfelt folk songs, the Holmes Brothers simply took their places onstage at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival, opened their mouths, and...
Read MoreWhen vocalist Joan Morris and pianist Bill Bolcom take the stage in the Kerrytown Concert House on Friday, April 21, they won't be performing excerpts from Bolcom's award-winning setting of Blake's Songs of Innocence...
Read MoreThere have been Collage Concerts in Ann Arbor as long as I can remember, and, as best I can remember, they’ve never had any repertoire in common except by accident. The Collage Concert is a study in reckless juxtaposition....
Read MoreThe Left Behind series of Christian Apocalypse novels opens with the Rapture, the supposedly promised day when all good people will be taken bodily to heaven before the world faces its last terrible tribulations. The books...
Read MoreJohn Latini prefaces each song with a story — who he wrote it with, where they were, etc. It's the same way American Indians introduce themselves, by identifying their clan. It keeps you connected, solidifies your...
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