2007 February

A bumper sticker on a humongous truck in the parking lot reads "Gun control means using both hands." Inside the Washtenaw Farm Council building, long rows of tables are filling up with families — old men laughing...

The cool, clear Sunday afternoon in November I heard the Ann Arbor Cantata Singers performing in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, there were twenty-six people in the chancel and about 260 people in the pews. Although I could...

Danny Barnes writes and sings blissfully weird banjo-based songs about prisoners, spurned folks, bad guys, and other assorted strangers who seem to rattle around in his brain. He does this in a manner that is singularly Danny...

Two years ago, many in Chicago and throughout the world celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). This organization has promoted musical creativity though...

Just completing several years as director of the U-M graduate program in creative writing, Peter Ho Davies has shown his exquisite style and restless imagination in two very successful collections of short stories. In his debut...

Charles Ives is unique among major composers. Composing was his avocation, albeit an all-consuming one. His day job was selling life insurance — which he did very successfully: his agency grew to be the largest in America....

"We invented this style called disco-bebop," one of the Macpodz tells the crowd during a Blind Pig show not long ago. There's a lot more to it than that, but if you have to sum up the Macpodz, you could do worse...

At fifty, Stephen Petronio has a postmodern dance sensibility that remains a force of nature. Though he came to dance late, as a college student, his self-assured technique — developed in part through his experience in...