The centennial celebration of Woody Guthrie’s birth is more than the remembrance of a great man’s life. It is a testament that his music endures, that the art has outlasted the artist. A wide range of musicians have paid homage to Woody Guthrie over the years, indicating the breadth of his legacy and the extent […]
The setting is 1960s rural North Carolina and two little girls have come to stay with their batty Aunt Patty in the wake of a younger sibling’s death. Y. York’s play adaptation of Getting Near to Baby offers a poignant look at grief through the eyes of children and adults, as Willa Jo and Little […]
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings Give the People What They Want/Daptone Records Give the People What They Want is an apt title because this 11-piece outfit knows its audience through and through. Once again, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings deliver the goods by skillfully combining ’60s-era Motown, soul with the verve of ’70s-era funk, and R&B […]
It’s too early in the year to be making predictions about next year’s Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature, but let’s go ahead and put The Lego Movie at the top of the list. In a time of lackluster animated films (see—or don’t: The Nut Job) it’s refreshing to watch animation that works on […]
First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many Downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Listings are compiled in collaboration with Piedmont Council for the Arts. To list an exhibit, please send information two weeks before opening to arts@c-ville.com. First Fridays: February 7, 2014. BozArt Gallery 211 […]
Robbie Fulks broke through in the sweeping alt-country movement of the ’90s, but the stage was set earlier for Fulks, who learned traditional playing in a musical family that moved around the Appalachian South (and even called Charlottesville home for a short time). His penchant for glibness and dexterity explains the inclusion of Michael Jackson, […]
Have you ever driven through the desert? Flown across dry, red earth while mammoth spires of stone and humps of rock pin back the wide blue horizon? Maybe you stopped in the shadow of a peak and began to climb through wiry brush and sandy succulents, picking a forgotten trail up the monolith’s face. Dust […]
For one weekend, Four County Players transforms its intimate 50-seat Black Box Theater into an upscale cabaret for Songs in the Cellar, a broad musical revue featuring an all-star local cast in gender-swapped roles. Imagine Little Orphan Annie as a boy with a hard knock life, or picture the infamous barber Sweeney Todd as a […]
It seems like an absurd plan to grow a city’s art scene: take the cultural community, run it through two years of focus groups and surveys, and publish six long-range goals (diversity and inclusion, arts education, cultural destination, creative workers, creative placemaking, and cultural infrastructure). It’s a wonky, almost anti-artistic approach. Doesn’t such an effort […]
Columbus, Ohio native Philip Cogley plays innovative art rock via his one-man project The Saturday Giant by using live looping and intricate multi-instrumental layers of indie pop-rock to craft hundreds of unique performances each year. Cogley’s strong belief in the relationship between freedom and imperfection steers his music clear of pre-recorded samples and results in […]