Mushrooms are bizarre little beings. They inhabit a weird twilight realm somewhere in between animal, vegetable, and mineral. My dad used to tell me about searching for mushrooms with his great-grandfather in Ceylon after a...
Read MoreThe Underpants, playing at the Purple Rose through June 5, is based on an early-twentieth-century farce by an obscure German playwright, Carl Sternheim, resurrected and adapted by Steve Martin. Forget Sternheim, whoever he was....
Read More"We are here," proclaims the title to the debut CD from Whit Hill and the Postcards. They have every right to call your attention to the fact. This musical communiqué is everything you'd hope for from a band...
Read MoreBefore the Terminator, Hannibal Lecter, and Norman Bates, there was Cesare, the somnambulist of one of the deepest psychological films of all time, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Filmed in Berlin in 1919, Caligari blew a strong...
Read MoreThe jazz life is as unpredictable as good improvisation. Ellery Eskelin began his musical career in a relatively standard manner: his mother was a musician, and he studied the saxophone as a youngster, eventually playing in a...
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The cello has never been a major jazz instrument. In the 1950s and 1960s a number of important bass players used it on occasion, even if they sometimes cheated, tuning it like its bigger cousin. Chico Hamilton used the cello to...
Read MoreKarita Mattila, the forty-three-year-old Finnish soprano, just sang the title role in Salome at the Met. By the end of Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils," in the words of the New York Times, Mattila stood...
Read MoreArguably Ann Arbor’s most unsung fine-art gallery, Washtenaw Community College’s GalleryOne outdoes certain downtown galleries on several points: scads of free parking; a refreshing absence of self-important hype; an...
Read MoreJohn McCutcheon seems never to have met an instrument he didn't like. He is highly skilled on Autoharp, banjo, fiddle, guitar, piano, and mountain dulcimer, plus a handful of other folk instruments. He is an acknowledged...
Read More"I am a hopeless romantic / And I'm full of pretty lines," Melissa Ferrick sings on her 2001 album Valentine Heartache. That tells you a lot about Ferrick as a performer, but not the best news: though her albums...
Read MoreShannon Lawson has a blazing tenor voice, a truly compelling instrument that climbs with startling ease into its upper register. In country music, that makes him an anomaly. The country tradition prizes the idea of Everyman and...
Read MoreFirst of all, trousers really are involved, and they are orange. But whether their shade is particularly tangerine or more of a bright burnt sienna is a question that can be answered only while drinking in the juicy, complex...
Read MoreA couple of decades ago Gemini, the popular local acoustic duo, set several poems by William Stafford to music. Stafford's poems are quiet and plainspoken and at first glance might not seem to be likely candidates for...
Read MoreThough you might call the Holmes Brothers blues or soul revivalists, there’s a quietness about their music that Wilson Pickett in his prime would never have tried to get away with. The blues original “I’m So...
Read MoreFrank Bidart has always startled his readers. His first book of poems began with a long dramatic monologue in the voice of a homicidal pedophile. His second book ended with another monologue, at least partially in the voice of a...
Read MoreHow much brass quintet music can anybody stand? After all, a couple of trumpets, a horn, a trombone, and a tuba don't have the widest tonal range, the subtlest instrumental colors, or the most interesting repertoire. Of...
Read MoreIf you've ever wondered what it would be like to see your own video in a real movie theater, Cinema Slam is the answer. Started by Amelia Martin and now run by Keith Jefferies, the event is held every other month or so at...
Read MoreThe dull gray facade of a big warehouse on Michigan Avenue just east of downtown Ypsilanti hides a thriving, vibrant art colony. Through sheer willpower, the seven members of Gallery 555's managing collective have...
Read MoreGypsy Spirit is a musical voyage through the history and the vast geographies traveled by the Roma, the Gypsies of Europe. Migrating from northern India about 1,000 years ago, eventually making their way into nearly every part...
Read MoreJust when you thought that Rice Krispies Treats had finally collapsed under all the baby-boomer freight attached to them, along comes Leaving Iowa. Watching Tom Clue and Spike Manton's play, which continues its...
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