ARTS Pick: Emma, the beloved misguided matchmaker

Though Jane Austen originally wrote Emma as a novel, the story feels like it was made for the stage. This famously witty comedy of manners focuses on the title character and her frustrating but hilarious attempts to play matchmaker in her friends’ lives, while romance for the hard-to-love Emma herself shows up in unexpected ways. Zoe […]

Les Yeux du Monde steers away from traditional media

On the second floor of Les Yeux du Monde, artist Russ Warren takes stock of his latest project. It’s a series of bulls drawn using livestock markers—paint sticks used to label cattle and farm animals. Gallery director Lyn Warren points out two piles of discarded chunks of the oil-based markers, fluorescent and accumulating on the […]

Movie review: Badassery undermines Sicario: Day of the Soldado

The U.S. government’s current definition of terrorism, according to Sicario: Day of the Soldado’s Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine), is the use of violence to achieve political ends. Riley says this to mercenary Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who has just come back from Somalia where he killed a man’s brother as an interrogation […]

First Fridays: July 6

About a decade ago, Rich Tarbell sold a guitar to pay for his first camera. Frustrated with his own music, Tarbell decided instead to document local music on film. And while live concert photography is fun, it all starts to look the same after a while, says Tarbell, who likes the behind-the-scenes stuff that most […]

Charlottesville Opera tells modern stories

Most of the time, when we talk about characters in books, in movies and plays, we talk about their arc—who the character is when the action begins and when it ends, and the curve followed in between. But opera singer Trevor Scheunemann knows it’s not always that simple. It’s especially not that simple for Count […]

ARTS Pick: The Sea The Sea puts us at ease

The Sea The Sea. Saying its name out loud has the effect of an incantation or a lullaby, similar to the experience of listening to the group’s music. Vocalists Chuck E. Costa and Mira Stanley croon in unison on tracks of love, faith and common threads, while soft chords loop in the background forming peacefully […]

ARTS Pick: Soggy Po’ Boys bring the NOLA sound

The Soggy Po’ Boys are a lot more appetizing than they sound. The six-man band formed in New Hampshire, but its members are firmly rooted in the ways of NOLA jazz, from vintage outfits to the instruments themselves—among them a piano, two saxophones and a stand-up bass that looks straight out of a 1960s club. […]

ARTS Pick: Disco Risqué defies categories

Disco Risqué’s mission? “To take over the world one sweaty, borderline-psychotic-music lover at a time.” Their method? Creating and performing some of the most high-energy, hard-to-categorize music in Charlottesville. Imagine George Clinton on his angriest day, combined with Santana-esque riffs at triple their normal speed, and you can start to appreciate what the group does […]

ARTS Pick: Charlottesville Municipal Band gives summer concert

While strolling the Downtown Mall this summer, you may encounter an enormous bass drum with “FREE CONCERT TONIGHT” emblazoned across the head. This refers to the Charlottesville Municipal Band, a group whose performances are as impressive and larger-than-life as its advertisement. Now in its 96th season, the band offers widely appealing events, such as the […]

Fast forward: Punk band The Landlords’ first album gets a slick reissue

In his early teens John Beers was “certain that punk rock sucked.” He’d seen the Ramones on television and thought all their songs sounded the same; and he thought Patti Smith singing, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” was “kind of scary.” Heavy metal was Beers’ thing. But a few years later, he […]