2004 November

If you listened to WEMU around 1997, you've heard Madeleine Peyroux, the jazz and blues singer who sounds unnervingly like Billie Holiday and was constantly on the air singing Bessie Smith's "Reckless Blues."...

The sheer cleverness of the Minneapolis hip-hop duo Eyedea & Abilities begins with their name, a punning reflection on the genre's fundamental duality of rapper and disc jockey, of conceptual and kinetic energies. But...

Trains, traveling, love, loss, violence, and the snapshot views from a highway you'll never go down again — Jeffrey Foucault takes these stalwarts of the Americana vernacular and has his own excellent way with them....

Tony Hoagland is one of the best of a new group of American poets who all share certain qualities: witty without being archly comic, accessible without being simple, political without being strident. Even the title of...

When it comes to a night dancing at the bar, I admit I've gotten older. Gone are those sweat-soaked, head-banging throw-downs on the dance floor until 2 a.m. But I miss them, and I still have the energy for at least one set...

It’s an anchored iridescent fish with spiky dragon fins. Or is it a scaly dinosaur in fatigues on a stick? Nearby, an enormous abstract canvas of burnt ochre and persimmon sizzles with life-affirming energy. Upon closer...

The soprano is a difficult and quirky saxophone to master. It was popular in classical music and jazz in the early decades of the last century but was eclipsed by its bigger and more reliable siblings, the alto and tenor. By the...

Mark Braun (aka Mr. B) returns to the Ark on Saturday, November 27, for his tenth annual Thanksgiving weekend show. He also has a new CD — and a new piano. He's clearly in love with this piano. The new recording, B at...

Steve Osburn definitely has a way with kids. He's kind and funny, yet he easily manages a potentially unruly group without being a girly man. He also gives each kid in his drumming class a big colorful drum, a clever trick...

For a musical experience that is full, rich, warm, and smooth, try a sax quartet. A string quartet may be the most human-sounding ensemble and a woodwind quartet may be the most diverse-sounding, but a sax quartet is...

From 1688 through 1697, the French waged war against the Spanish, the English, the Dutch, the Danes, the Swedes, the Germans, and the Holy Roman Empire in what was later called the War of the Grand Alliance. Louis XIV, the aging...

Last November I took my nine-year-old daughter to the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra's family concerts, Tchaikovsky Discovers America. After the show we ran into one of her schoolmates. The boy's dad told me that when the...