Ruin(s) your evening: Song, comedy, and theater make a magical midsummer evening at Shakespeare at the Ruins. Four County Players, central Virginia’s longest continuously operating community theater, returns to the historic Barboursville ruins to open its 50th anniversary season with As You Like It. Katie Rogers, Kate Johnson, Robert Wray, and Robert Eversberg star in […]
Ruin(s) your evening: Song, comedy, and theater make a magical midsummer evening at Shakespeare at the Ruins. Four County Players, central Virginia’s longest continuously operating community theater, returns to the historic Barboursville ruins to open its 50th anniversary season with As You Like It. Katie Rogers, Kate Johnson, Robert Wray, and Robert Eversberg star in […]
Secret session: After 18 years together as musical and life partners, Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz have unlocked the formula to making remarkable jazz. Influenced by Celtic, Brazilian, and Indian music, as well as the New York jazz scene, McGarry’s luminous, seductive voice and Ganz’s expansive arrangements have earned the pair three Grammy nominations. In […]
Solo and soulful: The one-man band Theocles is the project of local singer-songwriter Theo Herrin, who left a job at the Mayo Clinic in 2020 to work as a full-time musician and teaching artist at The Front Porch. Equipped with just a mic, guitar, and loop pedal, Herrin’s live shows feature soulful pop covers, from […]
In the winter of 2019, Dr. Caroline Worra was in Hong Kong playing the role of wealthy widow Hanna Glawari, opposite Richard Troxell as her ex-lover Count Danilo, in a performance of Franz Lehár’s 1905 operetta The Merry Widow. Three years and 8,000 miles later, Worra and Troxell are preparing to reprise their roles with […]
March on: An old classic is infused with modern sensibilities at the Virginia Theatre Festival. Acclaimed playwright Kate Hamill takes Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women in a contemporary direction that sees the March sisters grappling with traditional gender roles, political beliefs, family dynamics, and love, as they grow from children to adults in a […]
Break loose: Local singer-songwriter Silas Frayser formed a sound that rests between acoustic beach rock and folk rock. His 2021 EP, The Silas Frayser Band, features emotive vocals, catchy picking, and lyrics that deserve a second listen. The guitarist’s duo provides the smooth tunes needed for a stress-free night following Pandemonium Day—a day for letting […]
David Sickmen and The Hackensaw Boys have been a lot of things to a lot of people over their two-decade run. But they’ve never forgotten where they’re from. “When we go out in the world, I still say the band is from Charlottesville,” Sickmen says. “Charlottesville was a magical place in the mid-’90s and into […]
Pop-noir: New Jersey-bred singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins captured the romance and danger of the Jersey Shore’s sprawling boardwalk with psych-rock grooves, girl-group melodrama, and a bit of honky-tonk on her 2020 release Italian Ice. Not ready to let the sounds of summer go, a year later Atkins released Memphis Ice—a stripped-down, cabaret-style reimagining of the songs […]
Do-Re-Mi: The hills are alive with The Sound of Music. The Charlottesville Opera, directed by Cara Consilvio, brings to life the beloved true story of Maria and the von Trapp family with grand vocals and compelling emotion. Accompanied by a live orchestra directed by Michael Slon, the production stars Branch Fields as Captain von Trapp, […]
A wild calling: In quintessential Virginia fashion, Wild Common came together as a band in a country farmhouse. The crew of friends wanted to make music that let everyone “bring in our own traditions, our own styles, musical genres, and then see what came out of it,” says guitarist Brennan Gilmore. They came to rest […]