2005 April

What sort of "resurrection" is Mahler's Second Symphony? Well, the agony of its opening Funeral March, the charm of its Lndler, the irony of its Scherzo, and the simple faith of its Folk Song all lead to the...

It's impossible to love, or even keep up with, everything Elvis Costello has done lately. He's collaborated on albums with Brill Building pop songwriter Burt Bacharach and opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter. He's...

Is Fiamma Fumana the first folk group to specify beats per minute in the track listing on its album? Or the first electronic outfit to feature bagpipes? You can decide for yourself when these young Italians — three women...

Listen to Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion’s new CD, Exploration, for any number of reasons, if not just to hear the word lieu used in a song. For the average folkie, this collection of twelve distinctly American songs...

Two things lured me to the music of the Ypsilanti country music duo the Hummingbirds before I heard a note. One was the stark black-and-white picture on the cover of their debut CD, Depot Town. The photo of singer and rhythm...

Cloves. The sharp brown smell lingers in the dainty silver spice box, resembling a cross between a pagoda and a chalice, and is released when event coordinator Harriet Teller unlatches the tiny door for a sniff. Like this vessel...

Chapbooks are a small but interesting phenomenon of the publishing world. Most people would look at one and simply call it a "pamphlet," but poets prefer their own vocabularies. Chapbooks allow poets to put their work...

I watch from a distance as the young man in neatly pressed khakis and a polo shirt approaches a young woman at a table. They shake hands in mock formality. They chat and laugh for a moment. Then he motions toward the dance...

In Schlepping through the Alps, Sam Apple invites us to accompany him on journeys into the Austrian mountains, the world of a wandering shepherd, and his own confused psyche as he searches for love, roots, and anti-Semites. His...

Meet the O'Shays — four sisters of varying age, height, and hair color, with distinctive personalities to match. Joseph Zettelmaier's The Stillness between Breaths, which ends its six-week world premiere run at the...

Unforgiven opens with a wide shot of a barren landscape, a solitary farmhouse, and a man working an ax. Over this serene though stark sunset, director Clint Eastwood uses plain rolling text as an introduction to the main...