ARTS Pick: Carl Broeml

When you are the lead guitarist for a beloved indie-rock band, you get appearances from cool musician friends on your solo record, as is the case for Carl Broemel on his 2016 release, 4th of July, featuring Neko Case, Laura Veirs and some bandmates from My Morning Jacket. While Broemel is known for his guitar […]

Liv Ullman discusses artistic relationship with Ingmar Bergman

Fifty years after their first collaboration and twelve since their last, the personal and professional relationship between Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman stands as perhaps the most towering and productive in all of film history. Ullmann is often described as Bergman’s “muse,” a term that somewhat applies given her appearance in twelve of his films, […]

ARTS Pick: BASK

Tagged on Sonicbids as Americana, rock, country, doom post-metal and psychedelic stoner rock, Asheville’s BASK shrugs off classification with a note to fans: “Most of all we want you to listen without concern for what you are hearing. To listen only for the sake of hearing.” Judging by the slew of rave reviews for its […]

Big Blue Door’s Joel Jones is making it up as he goes

  Less than two weeks before their final showcase, members of Joel Jones’ Improv III class warms up by standing in a circle, eyes closed, counting to 20 as a group. Only one voice can speak at a time and if someone interrupts another, they have to start again. It’s a practice in awareness, a […]

ARTS Pick: Kontakte

By the time Karlheinz Stockhausen’s mug appeared on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 (top row, fifth from the left) with dozens of other adventurous artists, the German musician had established himself as a bold composer and an electronic music pioneer known for being among the first to […]

Six films that break through at the Virginia Film Festival

Always Shine Writer-director Sophia Takal’s psychological thriller Always Shine is a thoughtful exploration of the performative nature of all social interactions, whether between actor and director, business and customer, individual and society and even between supposed best friends. Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) and Anna (Mackenzie Davis) are both actresses living in Los Angeles who have had […]

ARTS Picks: ‘Dappled Things’

The multimedia, multi-artist show “Dappled Things” is named for the opening line in “Pied Beauty,” a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that speaks to the natural magic of pattern and rhythm. Local artists, including Dean Dass, Cate West Zahl and Stephanie Fishwick, source the written word for inspiration by transforming text such as love letters, […]

The Packard Campus’ careful care of audio-visual heritage

Fred Ott, a magnificently mustachioed employee at Thomas Edison’s lab in Menlo Park, was known among his colleagues for his comedic sneezes. On January 7, 1894, Ott sneezed in Edison’s Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey, in front of a camera operated by William Heise. Two days later, on January 9, film director […]

Connections abound at this year’s film festival

The lead-off film at this year’s Virginia Film Festival (Nov. 3-6) is remarkable in its story and its timing. As we look out from our fledgling blue state to the country’s contentious societal landscape, the nasty presidential campaign to be decided on Tuesday and the glaring Supreme Court vacancy, director Jeff Nichols syncs up history […]

ARTS Pick: STS9

Since the late ’90s, instrumental group STS9 has blazed a unique path through musical genres by not defining itself as EDM, jam band or prog rock, but borrowing from those labels to offset the funk, jazz and psychedelia woven into its hip-hop grooves. With The Universe Inside, the group’s first recording in seven years, STS9 […]