Susan Sorensen, Author at C-VILLE Weekly

2021 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks

Rock-a-bye parents

Once you’ve settled your kids in the children’s section at the Crozet Library, park yourself a few feet away in one of the rocking chairs with a view. You know the ones (and if you don’t, hotfoot it over there ASAP): beautiful, comfy wooden wonders that face a wall of windows and mountain scenery in […]

Susan Sorensen | August 25, 2021

2021 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks Best of C-VILLE

Music to our ears

What if you took the VIP experience of a music festival and turned it into the entire event? That’s the question Festy founder Michael Allenby asked himself last fall, when circumstances made hosting even a small-scale outdoor festival seem impossible. Fortunately, the word “impossible” isn’t part of Allenby’s vocabulary. Which is why he relocated the […]

Susan Sorensen | August 25, 2021

2021 Best of C-VILLE Staff Picks

Fine-tuned

When Laura Mulligan Thomas arrived at Charlottesville High School in 1982, she had her work cut out for her. The recent James Madison University grad and newly hired orchestra director was greeted by just eight young musicians. “We had a serious identity problem,” Mulligan Thomas recalled during a TEDx talk she gave a few years […]

Susan Sorensen | August 25, 2021

Unbound

Game plan: At play on the fields (and courts) of the University of Virginia

Ralph Sampson, Dawn Staley. Malcolm Brogdon, Tiki Barber. Leah Smith. It’s no secret that many storied athletes have graduated from the University of Virginia. What may not be as well-known, though, is that athletes (of both the varsity and casual variety) don’t spend all their time at venues like Scott Stadium, the John Paul Jones […]

Susan Sorensen | April 24, 2018

Unbound

For all to see: Robert Llewellyn brings the natural world into view

The photographer Robert Llewellyn looks at things differently than you and I. While we might point out the colorful crocuses that dot the snow-covered front lawn of his Earlysville home, Llewellyn really sees them. And he wants to be certain a visitor does too, bending down to point out the particulars of yellow stamens and […]

Susan Sorensen | April 24, 2018

Arts

Area musicians get jazzed for Albemarle High School benefit

Vocalist Veronica Swift has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center several times. She’s got a regular gig at New York’s legendary Birdland, and she tours with trumpeter Chris Botti. She’s also shared the stage with Michael Feinstein, Esperanza Spalding and Paquito D’Rivera. But the 23-year-old Albemarle County native says the place she’s most happy is […]

Susan Sorensen | March 7, 2018

Magazines Village

Clothes call: Local teen spearheads free laundry service

Cutter Huston has never had to worry about clean clothes. But it wasn’t until he became involved with The Laundry Project that he realized not everyone takes something so basic for granted. The son of an Army brigadier general, Huston was living in Tampa, Florida, when his mother, Michelle, saw a news story about people […]

Susan Sorensen | November 16, 2017

Knife & Fork Magazines

Fowl play: Order your farm-raised Thanksgiving turkey before it’s too late

We’re not fans of the candy corn and skeletons that appear on store shelves in July. And don’t get us started on Christmas merchandise that shows up before the leaves begin to fall. But there’s one holiday-related item we do suggest you think about now: a pasture-raised Thanksgiving turkey from a local farm, which probably […]

Susan Sorensen | September 20, 2017

Magazines Village

Summer VILLAGE: Teenager Julian Waters makes bid for school board seat

On a recent Thursday, Julian Waters was giving blood while answering a magazine reporter’s questions—a typical morning of multitasking for a busy politician. But Waters isn’t your typical politician. The Western Albemarle High School senior is running for the Samuel Miller District seat on the Albemarle County School Board. The youngest person ever to do […]

Susan Sorensen | May 23, 2017

Arts

UVA’s Kate Tamarkin takes her final curtain call

When Kate Tamarkin was an undergraduate at Southern California’s Chapman University, orchestra conductor was not on her list of career choices. “As a female back then, it never occurred to me to even want to [do that],” the music director and conductor of the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia says. But she was […]

Susan Sorensen | April 19, 2017