Just yesterday, as I was biking through downtown on a perfect summer day, I had the pleasure of stumbling on a noontime jazz performance at Lafayette Greens, a gorgeous urban garden in the heart of Detroit. The garden is a recent and marvelous addition to the urban landscape, and well worth taking the time to [...]
The musical heritage most closely associated with Detroit is pop music; namely the breathtaking success of the young acts emerging from the Motown Records scene. How exciting it must have been in the heyday of Motown to wonder what new talent would be discovered and go on to represent the sound of Detroit in the [...]
Although our lives rely completely on a hyper-industrial global economy, a belief in the promise of industrialization itself — which is the promise of less burdensome living for all — is on the wane, especially in a city like Detroit, where it is all too apparent that a total reliance on massive and industrial economic [...]
If you have some time between 1-6 p.m. on any Saturday this June, it would be well spent on a stop by Public Pool in Hamtramck to experience “Reckoning A Peripheral Wilderness” — an installation by Detroit artist and CCS graduate Michael McGillis. In the front window, ghostly coyotes cast in milky molded plastic peer [...]
In a 2010 interview with the author Jonathan Lethem, legendary performing artist Patti Smith boldly declared that New York’s creative dominance was finished, and even went so far as to suggest that Detroit could be the next New York. What she meant by that statement is that the Detroit of today—with its struggling economy and [...]
Despite some rainy moments, Memorial Day Weekend in Detroit afforded numerous opportunities for everyone to rest, relax and enjoy the holiday in the manner of their choosing. For my part, it was inconceivable to spend more time than necessary indoors, so I joined an upbeat cross-section of Detroiters enjoying the riverfront walkway against the audible [...]
No need for out-of-town plans this holiday weekend; Memorial Day Weekend in Detroit is chock-full of action! The Detroit Film Theater has an exciting Friday night line-up: Friday Night Live & Detroit Film Theatre present “Friction: Moon Pool and Dead Band” in concert, as well as “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye” onscreen. The [...]
By guest blogger Rosie Sharp It was quite the banner weekend for the arts in Detroit, and this blogger had the opportunity to attend two different performances, each of which informed the other in the most unexpected ways. The pinnacle of the weekend was Saturday night’s “Bollywood in the D” at the Music Hall Center [...]
This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of taking in a performance of Blair Thomas & Company’s “A Kite’s Tale,” at the Detroit Institute of Arts (a Knight Arts grantee). It was a puppet show unlike any I had ever seen, involving a live performance by pianist Kathryn Goodson of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an [...]
Anyone with a background in community service can attest that simple ideas are often the most powerful. It is the rare organization that can resist the allure of overdevelopment and stick to basic principles. Arts & Scraps, a nonprofit based out of Detroit, was founded in 1989 on the simple concept that industrial waste materials [...]
