Jam it all: It’s tough to summarize Brennan Gilmore’s versatile musicianship. His current group Wild Common blends rootsy, folky, power soul that’s shaped by the varied styles of its seven-plus members. Then you have descriptors such as Arab-Appalachian, raw mountain music, and alt-country-soul winding their way through a music career that Gilmore began on local […]
The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection is checking in with its artists to see how they are faring through the pandemic, what they’re working on, and how their artistic and cultural perspectives shape their experiences in this strange new time. Next in the Meet the Artist series is Julie Gough, a Trawlwoolway artist from Tebrikunna in Northeastern […]
Beastie bests: In 1986, the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill became the first rap record to top the Billboard chart, and the trio from New York City went on to sell over 20 million albums. Filmmaker Spike Jonze shot the Beasties to new heights with his video for Ill Communication’s “Sabotage,” an homage to 1970s […]
Reposted from 2015. Larry Kramer died from pneumonia on May 27, 2020. Larry Kramer has had his finger on the pulse of what it is to be a gay man for the past 50 years. His 1978 novel, Faggots, and its depiction of the partying, promiscuous ’70s made him a pariah on Fire Island. His […]
Acting out: No theater? No audience? No problem. Live Arts turns crisis into creativity with 30in30. Every evening in May, members of the theater’s vast volunteer staff will participate in livestreams of plays from the organization’s last three decades for a retrospective that interim artistic director Jeremy Duncan Pape calls “our gift to the community.” […]
Can’t hold it back anymore: Is there a young Stephen Sondheim or Bruce Springsteen at home who’s aching to flex some creative muscle? Or maybe your child is still singing Frozen’s “Let It Go” on repeat. Kid Pan Alley can nurture that love of music through its online songwriting workshops, which are aimed at spurring […]
Beach bound: When uber-popular mystery writer Tana French calls your debut novel “a subtle but relentlessly unsettling book,” you know you’ve got what it takes to thrill readers. Tara Laskowski appears in the Virginia Festival of the Book’s streaming series Shelf Life to discuss One Night Gone, a suspense story set in an off-season beach […]
Ongoing Pursuing a poetry prize Good news For those who’ve already finished You’ll be able to cruise Right to April 30 A new deadline for entries So quick, write a poem And submit it with no fee For a gift card, worth $200 Or a single Benjamin For the runner-up prize Even this […]
Working the web: Documentary filmmaker Ricardo Preve is a former Crozet resident who’s stayed connected to the local community through his work. Now based in Genoa, Italy, Preve has screened several movies at the Virginia Film Festival, including his most recent, Coming Home, about the first Italian sub to sink in World War II. And […]
MC Yallah X Debmaster Kubali (Hakuna Kulala) The most frenetic moment of Kubali comes right at the top, like an intimidating bouncer. Once you get past the brief jabbery pattern of vocables, percussion, synthesizers, and unidentified sonic objects, Kubali just swaggers and bumps. Uganda’s MC Yallah spits in Kiswahili and Luganda, reveling in the stinkface […]
Best short-timers: The Indie Short Film Series includes highly regarded festival selections as well as local productions such as The Devil’s Harmony, Best International Short Film award winner at Sundance. A disquieting tale of a bullied teenage girl enacting revenge on her enemies and abusers, the movie promises to stick with you long after its […]
When I reach politically enraged comedian Lewis Black by phone on an early February morning following the Iowa caucus, I expect he’ll be ready with one of his signature rants, and after a polite exchange of salutations, he does not disappoint. Black immediately unleashes a torrent of frustrations. Clearly he wants me to listen—which is […]
Most musicians will tell you that Craigslist isn’t the best place to find bandmates. Sure, it’s worked for some groups (The Killers), but in a small town like Charlottesville, the odds of finding a copacetic match on the internet are especially slim. You’re more likely to meet like-minded musicians at a show. But Films on […]
![Amber Zion (top), seen here in Deaf West Theatre’s production of My Sister in This House, is in town to push the boundaries of opera during a VHO workshop. She has performed music since she was a child, but this will be her first opera performance. Opera singers “have so much more emotions in their voice,” she says, and “[as deaf actors], I think we will be able to bring that out through our beautiful ASL.” courtesy of VHO.](https://www.c-ville.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Amber-Zion-My-Sister-in-the-House-320x170.jpg)
Amber Zion started analyzing acting techniques when she was 5 years old. The only deaf child in her family, she grew up watching movies without captions, and she made up her own stories based on what she saw in the actors’ expressions and gestures. When she watched MTV, she’d ask her mother to act out […]
Since childhood, Nathan Colberg has nurtured the same, secret dream. It’s one shared by many born-and-bred Charlottesville musicians, but few ever see it realized. On February 28, Colberg, along with fellow local acts Grant Frazier and Spudnik, will take the stage at The Jefferson Theater. “It’s going to be new territory for everyone on the […]
Punk from here: When her family relocated from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in the early ’80s, Cynthia Connolly brought her camera and her passion for punk rock to the nation’s fledgling scene. Her documentation resulted in Banned in DC: Photos and Anecdotes from the DC Punk Underground (79-85), one of the first books on punk […]
The greatest horrors of the movie world are creatures pulled straight from our nightmares, abominations that mutate from our most irrational fears. It is cathartic and emotionally healthy to confront the monsters that scare us, in order to realize that they have no power over us. The monsters of the real world are far more […]
New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett has published 12 books across three genres, won a long list of awards and fellowships—including the Orange Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Guggenheim—appeared on “The Colbert Report” and Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, opened a thriving bookstore in Nashville, and been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most […]
How wonderful it is to see a film about art that treats the creative process as an essential part of the human experience, free of the fetishization of suffering, or the detachment of genius worship. The narrative of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire centers on the relationship between a painter and her […]
Adventurous Strumming: Ross Martin knows guitar, and his deep knowledge of the instrument has led him on explorations of jazz, bluegrass, country, folk, experimental, and classical music. Over the course of his many tours and projects, he’s perfected both the entrancing acoustic duet and the invigorating electric duel, and taught guitar workshops all over the […]
Breakdown lane: The Drive-By Truckers are unapologetically political on The Unraveling, their first album in three and a half years. “I’ve always said that all of our records are political but I’ve also said that politics is personal. With that in mind, this album is especially personal,” says band co-founder Patterson Hood. “… Watching so […]
Heartening beats: With over a thousand years of cultural tradition, 400-year-old instruments, and 25 years of performing globally, the 12-member drumming group Yamato brings a dazzling exhibition of showmanship to the stage. Japan’s traditional Wadaiko drums serve as the foundation for tamashy—translated as soul, spirit, and psyche—which channels the basic elements of life into a […]
Despite obstacles: Morgan McCoy, author and actor recently seen in the Oscar-nominated film Harriet, comes to town with a one-woman show, Evolution of a Black Girl: From the Slave House to the White House. Depicting the struggles and triumphs of fictional and real African American women across numerous generations, the play combines comedy and drama […]