While on a scouting excursion for Kenneth Lonergan’s film Manchester by the Sea, Ruth De Jong walked into a coastal Massachusetts shop selling GPS systems for boats. “I’ve been here for 45 years!” the shop owner exclaimed, showing De Jong his office. The room was packed from floor to ceiling with papers—stacks of receipts, notes, […]
Not only does Will Overman charm the crowd with his arsenal of lyrically enticing folk rockers, the lead singer can’t resist stepping off the stage and into the audience to groove among his fans. Following up on the album Will Overman Band, “a love letter to the Commonwealth of Virginia” that was released in June, the […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]