9th Wonder’s fingerprints are all over hip-hop music. Not only has he released a series of acclaimed albums with trio Little Brother, he’s produced tracks for some of the biggest names in the game—Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Jay Z, Destiny’s Child, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jill Scott, Ludacris, Big Boi and Anderson .Paak, to name […]
9th Wonder’s fingerprints are all over hip-hop music. Not only has he released a series of acclaimed albums with trio Little Brother, he’s produced tracks for some of the biggest names in the game—Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Jay Z, Destiny’s Child, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jill Scott, Ludacris, Big Boi and Anderson .Paak, to name […]
Producer-choreographer Brad Stoller and his team put a neo-Victorian steampunk costume on the classic musical Cabaret, while using the original themes and context to explore the effect of politics on everyday lives, and the parallels in the current political climate. Set in 1930s Berlin, Germany, the plot unfolds in song around the Kit Kat Club, […]
Guitarist Jeff Miller is loopy in the best way. His new release is titled Loops, he created a YouTube series “Loop of the Week,” and he operates as a one-man band with the help of a looping pedal that brings together his fingerpicking guitar style, astute vocals and creative rhythm, layering it into a live […]
Photographer Clay Bolt is drawn to species he calls the oddballs and little guys. Working internationally with organizations such as National Geographic and BBC Wildlife, Bolt is a natural history and conservation photographer. “What sets me apart from a ‘nature photographer’ is that a lot of my work records life cycles and tells stories of […]
Space. A previously unknown life form that is both beautiful and completely unknowable. Man’s double-edged quest to understand and dominate over all existence. Life really, really should have worked, and the extent to which it fails makes it the biggest waste of potential so far of 2017, if not the single worst film overall. Life […]
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc caused quite a commotion when it was released in 1928. French nationalists were wary of a non-Catholic Danish director’s interpretation of a revered French icon; the Archbishop of Paris ordered Dreyer’s final version censored and cut. The film was banned in Britain for its unfavorable […]
Artist Sharon Shapiro has a unique history with the Welcome Gallery, where her exhibition “Above Ground” opens this week. Now operated by New City Arts Initiative, the space served as her art studio from 1996—when she first moved to Charlottesville from Atlanta—until 2001. Fittingly, her exhibition is themed on nostalgia—or the disruption of it—in an […]
Sixty years ago, on February 15, 1957, Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner arrived at the University of Virginia to assume his role as the first Balch Writer In Residence. Strolling through the Academical Village in his patent overcoat and collegiate tweed suit, the Mississippi gentleman smiled quietly at the throng of officials, cameramen and students, […]
Thursday 3/23 & Friday 3/24 George Eliot’s novel arrives on stage as Middlemarch in Spring, a chamber opera that premiered in 2015. The musical treatment (part of the Virginia Festival of the Book) offers humor, passion and political upheaval, while serving to commemorate Ash Lawn Opera’s 40th anniversary as it relaunches as Charlottesville Opera. “We’re […]
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s Stevie Nicks reigned as a musical goddess. Her mystical words, gypsy attire and bewitching voice made an indelible mark on rock history, and her trail of hits with Fleetwood Mac are rivaled only by the legacy of her solo material. Pair Nicks on tour with Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders, […]