By Dave Cantor Delving into a Ryley Walker album might offer up some tuneful, ’70s-style folk and rock songs, dispatched in a relatively traditional way. Or you could hear a batch of improvised psychedelia. He’s also got a full-length re-interpretation of a Dave Matthews Band record. The singer-songwriter’s latest—Course in Fable, released in spring 2021—is […]
By Dave Cantor Delving into a Ryley Walker album might offer up some tuneful, ’70s-style folk and rock songs, dispatched in a relatively traditional way. Or you could hear a batch of improvised psychedelia. He’s also got a full-length re-interpretation of a Dave Matthews Band record. The singer-songwriter’s latest—Course in Fable, released in spring 2021—is […]
There might be a few local residents who haven’t yet heard of Victory Hall Opera. But rest assured that opera aficionados nationwide—from the Deep South to the Pacific Northwest—have begun to take notice of the Charlottesville-based company. Victory Hall is turning heads thanks to its embrace of cutting-edge productions, like its latest, a world premiere […]
In the early 1960s, African American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks walked past seven boys at a pool hall, an experience she commemorated in the poem “We Real Cool”: We real cool. We / Left school. We / Lurk late. We / Strike straight. We / Sing sin. We / Thin gin. We / Jazz […]
Susan Evans knows nothing is permanent in the theater. Nor should it be—theaters must evolve to stay relevant, says Live Arts’ artistic director. “A successful theater is a theater that never stops examining itself,” Evans says. “I think that many theaters get stuck. And it’s easy to get stuck because of money.” Evans got her […]
Blues breakers: Indie blues-rock artists Jocelyn & Chris are inciting a new rock revival with their high-energy live performances, dominating guitar, and commanding vocals. The sibling act writes all their music together, and even graduated from Harvard a year apart. The duo’s new single “Sugar and Spice” charted on the Billboard Adult Album Alternative Top […]
Stickered past: For author Henry Hoke, stickers do more than just stick—they have the power to recall a variety of emotions and memories. In his memoir, Sticker, Hoke uses several styles (including pink, glittery Lisa Frank, Mr. Yuk, and the bumper favorite “coexist”) to explore queer boyhood, parental disability, ancestral violence, and Charlottesville’s history with […]
Twenty-five cents, oh my!: There’s no place like…the Paramount! The historic theater is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a special offer—viewings of classic films for the price of a movie ticket in 1931. Up next: the beloved musical The Wizard of Oz. Featuring the award-winning “Over the Rainbow” and the cheerful “We’re Off to See […]
With the current glut of superheroes, franchises, and remakes at movie theaters, a film like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza stands out by default simply for being low-key, unpredictable, and featuring normal- looking people. It’s also low on narrative cohesion and depth, and still sticks out. In short, Licorice Pizza is enjoyable with a strong […]
Film writer Justin Humphreys remembers Peter Bogdanovich, who passed away on Thursday, January 6, at age 82. His tribute is followed by a re-posting of his 2018 interview with Bogdanovich in preview of that year’s Virginia Film Festival. Peter Bogdanovich: He was the cinema Peter Bogdanovich was the cinema—both a brilliant director, and a historian […]
Shifting shape “By studying art and making art, we place ourselves into a centuries-long continuum of observers and visual speakers,” says art educator and painter Susan Patrick. “We begin to understand previous and current cultures through drawn, painted, and sculpted images.” Patrick, who is on staff at Village School, has decades of experience teaching art […]