Filmed during the 2015-2016 season, The Paris Opera captures the highs of acclaimed premieres and revivals, as well as the lows, including several labor strikes, the terrorist attack that killed 89 at the Bataclan and the departure of dancer-choreographer Benjamin Millepied, also known as Mr. Natalie Portman, whom he coached for Black Swan and later […]
Filmed during the 2015-2016 season, The Paris Opera captures the highs of acclaimed premieres and revivals, as well as the lows, including several labor strikes, the terrorist attack that killed 89 at the Bataclan and the departure of dancer-choreographer Benjamin Millepied, also known as Mr. Natalie Portman, whom he coached for Black Swan and later […]
Like its title character, Solo: A Star Wars Story often threatens to go wildly off track and ruin everything it has going for it, before it comes back with charm and skill, ready to save the day despite its rough edges. The second, after Rogue One, of the so-called Star Wars anthology films—stories that take […]
It’s fairly safe to assume that if you’ve watched movies, you have heard the work of legendary composer John Williams. To honor the soundtrack maestro, Music Director Benjamin Rous leads the Charlottesville Symphony, a blended ensemble of professional, student and community musicians, in some of Williams’ most successful scores. From distant planets in the Star […]
At a recent house show in Albemarle County, an audience member joined Bob Vasile and his friends, who were performing onstage. “He was 6’1″, 80 years old and looked like he could split wood all day,” Vasile says. “He got up and sang this song I’d never heard before, this cutesy Irish ballad.” Not long […]
Chip Wickham Shamal Wind (Lovemonk) Wickham, a flute-and-reeds player who has worked with artists from Badly Drawn Boy to Roy Ayers, relocated from Manchester to Qatar and emerged as a bandleader on 2017’s La Sombra—a fruitful hybrid of ’60s modal jazz and funk with Latin shadings. This follow-up is more of the same, and buoyed […]
Based in Richmond, folk singer-songwriter Graham Stone has been gaining traction as one of the region’s up-and-coming artists. His 2017 debut album, Until the Day, showcases Stone’s impressive scope of songwriting, and ranges from solo standards to full-band shredders—and while paying tribute to influences such as Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, it also traverses the […]
Last summer, Michael Coleman had a realization about the power of music. The night of August 12—after 24 hours of terror and chaos that included a torch-lit march led by white supremacists and the Unite the Right rally that left three people dead and dozens of community members and activists injured—Coleman took to Facebook Live […]
Master mandolinists Danny Knicely and Jack Dunlap (above) first connected when Knicely apprenticed Dunlap through the Virginia Folklife Program in 2015. A year later, the duo recorded its first album, Chop, Shred & Split, which received a Washington Area Music Award for best bluegrass recording. The two maestros have pushed the boundaries of their instruments in […]
Art Movie Night takes the form of a lawn party with desserts and a screening of the PBS Art21 series installment “Investigation,” a close look at the processes of Swiss modern artist Thomas Hirschhorn, whose public collaborations “resist exclusionary and elitist aesthetic criteria,” Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, who explores cultural environments through emotional portraiture and […]
With Deadpool 2, the deconstruction becomes the norm. That’s not necessarily a bad thing given how bloated and redundant the X-Men franchise has become, and how terrifically its predecessor broke every taboo while delivering a solid film with a real story of its own. But how do you skewer yourself when you’ve become the new […]