2003 December

There are basically only two kinds of Christmas music: sacred and profane. The profane includes everything from “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to “Jingle Bell Rock,” and most of it is sentimental at...

Nicholas Delbanco's 2000 novel What Remains takes its title from lines by Ezra Pound: "What thou lovest well remains, / the rest is dross." The phrase becomes the standard by which memories are measured, and the...

There may be some people around who wouldn't like The Good Doctor at the Purple Rose, but I don't know who they would be. If you find Chekhov depressing, this is Chekhov on Prozac. If you like Chekhov, you'll enjoy...

A forgotten spark plug who helped fire up the surrealist movement, German fin de sicle artist Max Klinger offers images that combine lush beauty and a screw-loose creepiness so unsettling that I found myself flipping over one...

Mike Marshall and Chris Thile, when they come to the Ark on Monday, December 15, will likely deliver the most virtuosically spectacular concert you'll hear this year. If this weren't music for the arcane combination of...

Jane Siberry is the perfect singer to create new ways to hear Christmas. Sometimes sweet carols turn saccharine, all the old jingles are jingled out, and we need songs that are spiritual and surprising. That's what Siberry...

If other bands have frustrated me recently by being too cool or too serious of purpose to fully experience their own artistic possibilities, I'm relieved to find Gregory Stovetop bursting onto the Ann Arbor scene. Affable,...