Pick: Jake Blount

Future awakening Jake Blount makes music rooted in care and confrontation. A multi-instrumentalist and scholar of Black American music, Blount draws on the past and imagines the future on his latest record, The New Faith. Described as a work of dystopian Afrofuturism, the 2022 release draws connections between the climate crisis and the disproportionate burden […]

Pick: Latin Ballet of Virginia

Gonna get hot Feel the passionate fury of flamenco and the smoldering heat of tango at the Latin Ballet of Virginia’s Alma Latina. The production uses rhythm, music, and dance to celebrate the history of Latin America by weaving together tradition, culture, and politics. The company is joined by internationally known flamenco dancer Francisco “El […]

Life and death in Italy

From the opening lines of The Marriage Portrait, author Maggie O’Farrell does not hedge: The Duchess of Ferrara will die. As historical fiction based on the real life and death of the 16-year-old Lucrezia di Cosimo de’Medici—the details were set in stone more than 460 years ago—this new novel probes the who and the how […]

Not Chevy’s Fletch

If you say “Fletch” to people 40 and up, Chevy Chase immediately comes to mind. Chase’s portrayal of Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher, a former investigative-reporter-turned-detective in the ’80s comedies Fletch and Fletch Lives, linked him forever with the title character. But Jon Hamm has wanted to revive the wisecracking investigator for years, and his long-gestating pet […]

October Galleries

October Exhibitions Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 170 McCormick Rd., UVA Grounds. “No Unity Without Justice” centers around the work of UVA students and Charlottesville community racial justice activists who organized demonstrations and events in response to Charlottesville’s 2017 Summer of Hate. Through October 29. “Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and […]

We have the (non)meats

By Carrie Meslar As I’m putting the finishing touches on this article in the San Diego airport, I’m also having a breakfast sandwich … when it hits me. This thing tastes like bacon. An uneasy feeling creeps in as I peel the sandwich apart to reveal a strip of the pig stuff. It tastes like […]

Sound choices

Kingdom of Mustang Into Beautiful BlueKool Kat Musik Kingdom of Mustang delivers its fourth album, Into Beautiful Blue, as a power pop slice of nostalgia. The band is a musical collaboration between members of the popular ’80’s-era UVA group The Deal—Mark Roebuck  and Michael Clarke—along with Tim Ryan, and Rusty Speidel. Stacked with decades of […]

Pick: Sierra Hull

Heart of the matter On her fourth record, American bluegrass singer-songwriter Sierra Hull sheds light on the beauty, chaos, and sorrow of growing up. And after spending over half her life in the music industry, Hull has plenty of stories to tell—she played the Grand Ole Opry at age 10, Carnegie Hall at 12, signed […]

Pick: The Glass Menagerie

Memory lane Keep your wits about you during Four County Players’ production of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ famous memory play. Cole Edwards stars as the narrator Tom Wingfield, a merchant marine reminiscing about the Depression years he spent with his overbearing mother and shy sister. The lyrically potent and intensely personal play examines the […]

Pick: Alexander Malofeev

Classical act Russian piano virtuoso Alexander Malofeev performs a program of classical compositions for the opening concert of the 2022-23 Tuesday Evening Concert Series. The 20-year-old will open the show with two works by Beethoven—the ethereal Moonlight and the dark and stormy Tempest—before the evening crescendos with Medtner’s rhapsodic Sonata in G Minor, and closes […]