It’s got a mouthful of a title: Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. But we can be thankful that Dave Malloy, the musical’s original composer, lyricist, playwright, and orchestrator confined himself to adapting only a sliver of War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy’s monumental tome. Self-aware of its complexities, the production reveals what audiences […]
Jazz is a big genre. So big, in fact, that many subgenres have emerged throughout its more than 100-year history. From the provocative connotations of its New Orleans origins to the ever-present smooth variety unobtrusively filling places such as the corridors of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, there’s no question that jazz has morphed into a […]
Roll over, Beethoven—the spring 2026 portion of the UVA Chamber Music Series is not built on composer names that a novice would recognize, or pieces played on standard instrumentation configurations. They’ve already done a bassoon-focused event, so try this on for size: percussion and viola. The Piedmont Duo highlights two music professors, I-Jen Fang and […]
A lot of indie singer-songwriters stop in Charlottesville on their tours, and many of them are not to my taste. So when I discovered that Rory Scovel was coming to town, I was reasonably certain I was in for another acoustic guitar-picking, overly emotive turnip. To my delight, I was completely wrong. You may be […]
Tanael Joachim holds the kind of enviable, disarming charm that allows him to shift from insights on religion, immigration, and communication, to explicitly disgusting one-liners. But that’s not his bread and butter. Rather, like most great standups, his jokes keep audiences off-kilter by navigating topics of intellectual interest. Of course, when we all least expect […]
It’s a little unfair to call Jackson and the Janks’ music old-fashioned. Though, honestly, that’s exactly what it is. But that’s too vague. It doesn’t feel as prudish as that catch-all people born after the year 2000 sometimes throw around. The twangy guitar and slightly overdriven, whiskey-soaked vocals brighten the ’50s blues-based rock ‘n’ roll […]
You’ve likely seen the classic Disney cartoon—and maybe even the Magic Kingdom’s live action $270 million stinker from earlier this year. Now you can witness the beauty of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in ballet form when this family-friendly version arrives in town for a Sunday afternoon show. The Grand Kyiv Ballet, which features […]
An Austin, Texas, musician and actor with a history that runs through Los Angeles, Shakey Graves (Alejandro Rose-Garcia) does an admirable job writing dynamic Americana that avoids cliché. He’s amassed a discography of four full-lengths, a fistful of EPs, and a pair of compilations since gaining attention that netted him the unusual position of official […]
When I asked my special lady if she wanted to go see the Vienna Boys Choir (actual name: Wiener Sängerknaben), she didn’t hesitate to tell me it couldn’t be lower on the list of things she’d like to do. I wanted to be sure, since we could catch them here in Charlottesville and in the […]
The Heavy Heavy isn’t the first outfit from the U.K. to present as American. In fact, 61 years since the British Invasion, it’s not shocking to hear lead singers who sound like they’re straight out of Nashville or the Hollywood Hills introduce their next song with a Cockney accent, mirroring a character from your favo(u)rite […]