ARTS Pick: Thanksgiving jams

Whether you are thankful, guided by a dark star or happy pickin’ over leftovers, a live gig awaits that’ll shake off the holiday gravy and leave you grateful for the blues. November 23: Thankful Dead featuring Bigfoot County and Mama Tried at The Jefferson Theater. November 24: DJ Sir RJ’s Thanksgiving After-party at The Ante […]

ARTS Pick: Organized Delirium

In tribute to Pierre Boulez, Organized Delirium honors the French conductor, who may not be a household name, but joins a too-long list of musical pioneers who died in 2016. The 26-time Grammy Award-winner is respected for his role in the “electronic transformation of instrumental music,” as well as leading some of the world’s renowned […]

Album Reviews: Sting, David Crosby, The Pretenders

Sting 57th & 9th (Interscope) Listening to 57th & 9th is like joining your pretentious, albeit charismatic, uncle in his drawing room for a dram of some unfamiliar cordial. Uncle Gordon’s in a yearning mood: for belief; for artistic potency and the burn of adulation; for fallen geniuses and lost lovers. He was, indisputably, a […]

American jazz great Bill Cole reveals new work

Composed in 1936, Peter and the Wolf is a musical fable that introduces children to the orchestra. The story is constructed such that each character has a musical theme played by different instruments: The bird’s theme is played by the flute while the cat’s theme is played by the clarinet, and so on. Throughout the […]

ARTS Pick: Little Women

The classic tale of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March returns to the stage this weekend when the Albemarle High School Players present an adaptation of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel about a saintly Civil War-era New England mother and her four well-adjusted, independent-minded daughters whose father is serving in the Union Army. […]

Flutist-guitarist Maxx Katz explores doom with a view

Before Maxx Katz plays a single note of a FLOOM set, she looks out at the audience in front of her and thinks: “We’re all going to die.” That thought in mind, she rings out one heavy chord on her silver sparkle Epiphone Les Paul and lets it tumble out of her bitchin’ amps and […]

ARTS Pick: Water or Glass

In 1943, Charlotte Salomon died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. Leading up to her capture and unimaginable death, the artist produced 769 expressionist paintings while in hiding from the Nazis. The works came together as an autobiographical play through images called Life? or Theater?. Local playwright Bridget Mitchell opens a new era for the […]

Moonlight traces a powerful journey

Socially important and stylistically flawless, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is a beautiful film inside and out. Far more than a worthwhile message about LGBT visibility wrapped in a pretty package, Moonlight is a fully realized three-dimensional look at the evolution of a person from child to adult —changes that seem gradual are often direct threads visible […]

ARTS Pick: Locals Play Locals

The event name says it all. Locals Play Locals is a big ol’ Charlottesville music cover show. More than a dozen bands and solo artists—Tequila Mockingbird, Gina Sobel’s Choose Your Own Adventure, Genna Matthew, Phil West, Marchenko and others—will swap songs and even genres in this benefit concert for Charlottesville’s Music Resource Center. Friday 11/18. $8, […]

ARTS Pick: Willie DE

When guitarist Willie DE walks onstage to unveil his sophomore album, Thunder Train, he will be taking another big step on a musical journey that cuts straight through Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. As a young aspiring musician, DE made his first bucks while busking on local streets, and credits his membership at the Music Resource Center […]