Anything goes in the world of synth experimentation

The bleeps and bloops of modular synthesizers can be heard all over music these days, says Travis Thatcher, the technical director for the composition and computer technologies program in UVA’s music department. It’s audible in pop music, techno, house, trap, even indie rock and hip-hop, and that’s precisely what makes it interesting. Plus, he says, […]

ARTS Pick: WinterSongs

Music is in the air when the third annual WinterSongs concert brings together women’s choirs from nine area schools to raise their voices to benefit the Shelter for Help in Emergency. The event, created as a response to violence against women in our community, includes students from Charlottesville, Albemarle and Monticello high schools, Burley, Sutherland […]

ARTS Pick: Blood Wedding

UVA Drama’s David Dalton approaches Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding with a modern hand, as he connects themes in the early- to mid-20th century script that resonate in a contemporary treatment. The entangled love story (translated poetically by Langston Hughes and adapted by Melia Bensussen) descends into tragedy as bloodlines clash and difficult choices must […]

ARTS Pick: Miranda Lambert

Coming up as a teenage country singer, Miranda Lambert was disenchanted by the pop music style that Nashville starmakers tried to push on her. Instead, Lambert blazed her own groove down the well-worn path of traditional country music and defined herself with hits such as “Gunpowder and Lead,” “The House That Built Me” and “Little […]

Chinese filmmakers eye the long game with The Great Wall

Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall doesn’t really need to be “reviewed” in the traditional sense. It’s a dumb movie about monsters invading medieval China and the brazenly anachronistic army tasked with staving it off, like someone fell asleep during The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and attempted to recreate the Battle of Helm’s […]

The Last Bison forges a new sound

Ben Hardesty is roaming Charlottesville. The frontman of indie folk- pop act The Last Bison moved to C’ville last August. Since then, the musicians that once comprised the band in its former home base of Chesapeake have scattered. Only six months on the new terrain, Hardesty is still trying to discover where he can get […]

PWR BTTM flip the switch on vibrant punk rock

The 2013 documentary The Punk Singer chronicles the rise of the riot grrrl movement in the ’90s and focuses on the revolution’s central figure, Kathleen Hanna. During a highlight of the film, Hanna discusses how she and her bandmates decided to form Bikini Kill even though none of them could really play an instrument. For […]

ARTS Pick: Houston Person

Tenor sax legend Houston Person counts Charles Brown, Lena Horne and Lou Rawls among his long list of collaborators, but for a large part of his career he was best known for his partnership with vocalist Etta Jones. Their musical pairing lasted for more than 30 years, included extensive touring and accounted for many of […]

Multimedia show at the Bridge provides voice and vision

Using photography, film, oil, acrylics and embroidery, “Empowering Women of Color” showcases women both as creators of, and prominent subjects in, art. “It came together in a natural, organic way,” says artist and organizer Emma Brodeur who graduated from UVA in 2015. Six months ago she was embroidering a portrait on a friend’s jacket and […]

ARTS Pick: ‘Roots Down’ redux

In September, WVTF ’s “Roots Down” host Luke Church gathered four area songwriters—David Tewksbury and Willie DE of Charlottesville met Roanoke’s Phil Norman and Corey Hunley in a live show that united the performers through instant chemistry. In a musical equivalent of finishing each other’s sentences, the session found the musicians harmonizing, swapping verses and […]