rakemag

You’d think the power of Dickens’ holiday workhorse would have been diluted by the ceaseless adaptations, knock-offs, and rip-offs it has inspired over the 163 years since it was published. Yet the irony of the Christmas Carol cottage industry is that despite so many crass, overblown, exploitative (or just plain lazy) versions that risk sabotaging … Read more

Globalsecurity.org lists forty conflicts—uprisings and insurgencies, civil wars, and occupations—currently playing out around the world. Lori Grinker has spent the past fifteen years portraying their human costs, traveling among some thirty countries to document both the physical carnage and the psychological damage. The result is a kind of perverse twist on the legendary Family of … Read more

Two-person shows are too often arbitrarily conceived, but Huie’s photographs and Bielak’s monotypes play well off each other. In his newest series, Huie remains in familiar geographic territory (the streets of South Minneapolis) but homes in on the titular theme with images that are full of nuance. A homeless woman in one image is positioned … Read more

Which is hotter—fashion or architecture? It’s probably a toss-up. Celebrities jam the front rows as designers reveal their new collections; cities clamor to enlist globe-trotting starchitects to devise their spectacular new landmarks. (For that matter, so do fashion labels, Prada’s commissions for Rem Koolhaas being but one example.) Organized by British curator Bradley Quinn and … Read more

If the Highpoint Center for Printmaking is one of best-kept secrets in the Twin Cities art world, then its predecessor, Vermillion Editions, is—or was, until this exhibition—all but lost in the mists of time. Printer Steven M. Andersen set up shop in the Minneapolis warehouse district in 1977, and over the following fifteen years, Vermillion … Read more

Alternative jazz trio Medeski Martin and Wood improvises with such stamina, endurance, and brilliance that adding a fourth member to the band might seem to put at risk the geniality that marks its live shows. But guitarist John Scofield—who worked with Miles Davis in the eighties and whose work MMW interpreted on A Go Go, … Read more

Just eight months after selling out the Varsity, the electro-pop ingénue returns—her sights on First Avenue’s big room this time. The quirky Brit can largely credit her increased draw to the soundtracks she has abetted—notably, solo for The O.C. and for Garden State as Frou Frou (her collaboration with Madonna producer Guy Sigsworth). On her … Read more

This program of Middle Eastern music is inspired by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, which celebrates the cultural contributions of countries along the legendary trading route that stretched from Japan to Rome. This is music seldom heard on the classical stage, so a few sleepy season-ticket holders may be startled by the arabesque sounds of … Read more

Despite his intensely scrutinized (and intensely wealthy) parentage, Sean Lennon managed to reach his thirties with grace and without scandal, and to find his place in popular music based on his own merits. But that doesn’t mean his life is all cake: The poor fellow can’t find true love, and the songs on his new … Read more

A little bit of Elvis and a whole generation of GIs ignited the worldwide fascination with Hawaii back in the mid-twentieth century, soundtracked by the sometimes corny-sounding ukulele. In more recent years—as the loss of native customs, flora, and fauna forever alter the islands—the echoes of a more authentic Hawaii have crossed the Pacific through … Read more