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The genius of Jonathan Richman is that he knows he does “Jonathan Richman” better than anyone else ever could. Normally describing a singer/songwriter as “wacky” seems to be a writer’s polite way of saying this guy is really a childish boob, not a real songwriter. Richman would be the exception. He is a goof, his … Read more

If you had to, you could call Bill Frisell a jazz guitarist, but he is really a master at seamlessly mixing a wide range of musical genres, having collaborated with everyone from Elvis Costello to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. One of Frisell’s best albums, 1997’s Nashville, was recorded with members of Allison Krauss’s Union Station … Read more

Just last month, Jamie Hook took over as executive director of Minnesota Film Arts, which is responsible for the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and the repertory movies shown at the Oak Street Cinema. In Seattle, where Hook spent much of his adult life, he was known as an unconventional and talented wild man … Read more

The Minnesota Opera vows to pump up the authentic Japanese flavor of Madame Butterfly this time around. Productions of Puccini’s masterpiece about a geisha who gets crossed by an American sailor rely too often on caricatures of Japanese culture—especially the geishas in their campy kimonos and sets festooned with rice paper. Up to now, the … Read more

Close your eyes and listen to the Jungle Theater’s reprise of Dylan Thomas’s dreamlike Under Milk Wood, which it’s staging for a fifth time to stretch through this year’s holiday season. While there’s little to see in this radio play, there’s plenty to hear—a beautiful, lyrical ramble of poetry, all spoken during a day in … Read more

Mixed Blood Theatre is tackling another heady subject; this time it’s the space allotted to African and African-American artists by the whitewashed institution of fine art museums. In Permanent Collection, a new-on-the-job African-American museum director squares off with a white curator concerning the space made available to nonwhite artists. This new play by Philly playwright … Read more

If you saw Jeune Lune’s Tartuffe a few years back, you won’t want to miss this second helping of farce à la Molière. The Miser was market-tested in Boston earlier this year, where Jeune Lune co-created the production alongside Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre. Now Jeune Lune is returning the Bostonians’ hospitality by inviting them to … Read more

Zenon Dance Company serves up another feast of new choreography that, as always, is precisely executed by this superior troupe. This year’s fall concert features a sampling of new work by two of our local favorites as well one New York import. Local choreographer Wynn Fricke—whose poetic, individualistic and often fantastical work was recently performed … Read more

Michael and Ann’s boy, Nathan, was robbed. Not that he cared, because he didn’t. But I saw the whole thing, and, of the twelve “Best Bagger” contestants, he was the class of the show. The way he studied the relative bulk, density, shape, and fragility of some twenty-five pounds of groceries. And the way his … Read more