Ben Arthur is so taken by the creative process that it informs his art in a literal sense. Whether he’s responding to Kurt Andersen’s story of Puritan settler Anne Hutchinson with a modern answer in song, or co-writing with notable author George Saunders, Arthur stays busy crafting his own subgenre through collaborations. He hosts the Emmy-nominated […]
The United Nations of Comedy Tour returns with a fresh new lineup of gut-busting comedians, including Funnyman Skiba, Irene Morales, Brendan Sagalow and headliner Mike Cannon. From television to radio and podcasts, comedy is a way of life for Cannon, who riffs on smoking pot with cats, fear of marriage and life in New York […]
In order to work around ownership issues, Carbon Leaf has been rerecording its past albums, the most recent being Nothing Rhymes With Woman. With the new recordings, band members took the opportunity to address things they didn’t like and squeeze some perfection out of the older material, all to the delight of fans who supported […]
I’ll be honest: I’m not really an opera person. Until this weekend, I assumed opera consisted of people in fancy outfits belting overwrought, angst-ridden songs in foreign languages before dying on stage. And while I’m terribly impressed by the skill and talent required to fine-tune the operatic “instrument,” I am not the most qualified person […]
First Fridays: November 3 Ann Robertson made her first art quilt more than 20 years ago, as a way of working through her experience in the Great Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan, in the wee hours of January 17, 1995. With no prior quilting experience and only one American quilting book and some Japanese quilting […]
Artists, educators and innovators take the stage on Friday at the Paramount’s TEDxCharlottesville event. Among them are blues musician Daryl Davis whose friendship with members of the Ku Klux Klan has caused many of them to question their membership, National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale, who finds connections between cultures, and entrepreneur and cartoonist Chic Thompson, […]
When Scott DeVeaux was growing up in New York in the 1950s, he encountered “a lot” of Civil War specters. Several relatives were named after Confederate generals, displayed Confederate figurines throughout their homes and celebrated memorabilia like trading cards commemorating the centennial of the War Between the States. Though he didn’t know what to make […]
Smart and talented people who are aware of the fact that they are smart and talented sometimes have difficulty separating good ideas from the really, really bad ones. In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte, one of history’s greatest military minds, assembled the largest army to date to invade Russia, partially to ensure strategic dominance of Europe but […]
It might come as a surprise to learn that alt-J members conceive of themselves as a folk band. After all, the U.K. trio’s synths, patterns and rhythms don’t conjure the same aesthetic as an acoustic guitar-wielding troubadour. The experimental art-rock does, however, evoke its own brand of folklore. Take “Adeline,” a track from the group’s […]
Shakespeare may have formalized the tale of star-crossed lovers on stage, but the heart of tragic romance stretches back to antiquity. Directors Boomie Pederson and Brad Stoller take the Bard’s script and push it forward with Romeo and Juliet—Reconstruction of Love, a modern retelling that pulls from a range of dance styles, accompanied by an […]