Wire lead singer-guitarist-songwriter Colin Newman has said in recent interviews that "Wire equals change." His band's latest album, Change Becomes Us, upholds this statement, featuring an eclectic and challenging mix of...

 Sayyid Qutb is the mid-century Egyptian reviled as the intellectual father of militant Jihad. In his groundbreaking biography, anthropologist James Toth comes “neither to belittle nor applaud,” but to understand. He examines Qutb in the context of population shifts from country to city and the...

In contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, traditional witch doctors remain feared and powerful members of many communities, and Botswana, the site of a new book by Michael Stanley, is no different. In Deadly Harvest...

 Too-smart-for-his-own-good Jay Davidovich is the centerpiece of Hillary Bell Locke’s new novel Jail Coach. Davidovich is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a loss prevention specialist whose job is to protect company...

 Moses Gates has been around the world. To be more exact: around, above and below. But that doesn't make him a high-flying airline pilot or a down-and-dirty West Virginia coal miner. The title bestowed upon him and his ilk...

 John le Carré was the supreme Cold War novelist, but history didn’t end with the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and he hasn’t had to beg for new plots. A...

 After reading Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen (University Press of Kentucky), David Luhrssen's comprehensive, illuminating biography of the pioneering director, I'm tempted to call its subject “the Kevin Bacon...

 In 897 C.E. the corpse of the recently deceased Pope Formosus was unearthed, propped on a throne and tried for heresy in Rome. The motives had less to do with theology than naked secular politics, writes Paul Collins as he...

 The Florentine Opera’s season finale, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, was an unqualified delight. Not only was it a tribute to this gentlest of the great composers, but a reminder that the tendency to “reinvent” operatic...

 In rehearsal for Milwaukee Ballet's Swan Lake, Luz San Miguel dances the delicate curved arabesques of the White Swan with more than grace and perfect technique; she seems endlessly apologetic. The mournful girl knows that...

A lot is new this year in the UWM Peck School of the Arts Dance Department under chair Simone Ferro. It is easy to see it as a new lease on life following the period of mourning precipitated by the loss last year of several faculty...

 The young Italian-German violinist Augustin Hadelich is the rare artist who can make Mozart sizzle. Many musicians find the refined style of Mozart by containing expression. Hadelich seemed released by it. At Milwaukee...

 While the lives of Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) were not closely intertwined, they did intersect in more than just a casual manner. Of immediate interest is the upcoming...

 Sadly, Façade: An Entertainment, a collaborative production of Danceworks Performance Company, Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra and Milwaukee Opera Theatre, was ruined for me by the unworkable acoustics of the...

A new music conservatory has positioned itself to become a cultural hub for the Washington Heights neighborhood on Milwaukee's West Side. That's what West End Conservatory founders Neil Davis and Isaiah Joshua hope for the...

 In Mozart Requiem, the first of three wildly contrasting works presented by Milwaukee Ballet in its immensely enjoyable “Spring Series” last weekend, Amy Seiwert's choreography mirrors the structure of Mozart's work for...

I knew violinist Ilana Setapen was good. I had heard her in recital and in chamber music. But I didn’t realize how wonderfully and exceptionally good she is until hearing her play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Milwaukee Symphony last Saturday night. Setapen is associate concertmaster of the orchestra. I would guess that there are few......

Margaret Leng Tan, the world’s first toy piano virtuoso, was the star of Present Music’s concert “Toys!” She was perfectly accompanied by the Present Music string ensemble......

“Shining Stars” was the appropriate title of the Wisconsin Philharmonic's May 2 concert. In addition to the orchestra's usual instrumentalists there appeared the winners of its youth concerto competition as well as a smattering of youth orchestra members. Another “shining star” was Joseph Schwantner, the American composer of the first work, Chasing Light. This four-movemen...

There was an exciting revelation at Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra last weekend: the bandoneon featured in a concerto by the Argentinian master of the tango, Astor Piazzolla (1921- 1992). Piazzolla's tangos show up regularly in diverse contexts....

Two seasons ago Vladimir Feltsman commented negatively about the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Steinway and urged its replacement on a live local public television broadcast. That concert was re-broadcast, and apparently eventually led to the donors' gift of a new piano. The old MSO Steinway has a resonant ring, but also a loose rattle and unevenness. It was time to move on....

The snowstorm last week forced a cancelled rehearsal of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and prevented the arrival of the guest soloist, pianist Andreas Haefliger. Conductor Andreas Delfs quickly revised the plans to something the orchestra could do with just one rehearsal. William Schuman’s Symphony No. 5, which the MSO has never before played, and a Mozart piano concerto were scrapped. In...

The ludicrous production of La Traviata that opened at Skylight Opera last weekend proved that a great Verdi melody is indestructible. This unbelievably misguided venture only works in the final scene, when all its incompetence, bad direction and quarter-baked ideas mercifully recede enough for focus on the bare . . ....

American composer John Adams (b. 1947) once stood under the same Minimalist umbrella as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but as the ’90s wore on, he developed into something of a “post-post-modernist,” as demonstrated by such works as The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) and the Violin Concerto (1993)....

It is to the lasting credit of founding choreographer Debra Loewen and the artists and community members who have worked with her or otherwise given their support that her Wild Space Dance Company has made it through 25 seasons......

Three was the straightforward title of the Milwaukee Ballet's spring program of three dances in three styles by three choreographers. More than anything, it demonstrated artistic director Michael Pink's devotion to his dancers, showcasing them individually......

All artists need the opportunity to fail. Risk-taking is indispensable. What serious opportunities for trial and error exist for artists in Milwaukee after they leave the relative safety of a college program? This is not an idle question. Danceworks recognizes that it is a community’s job to provide laboratories for artists and they have accepted their share of the responsibility. Liz Hilde...

One would be hard-pressed to conjure up a name more closely associated with the Milwaukee dance scene than Ed Burgess. Burgess, currently marking his 20th year on the UW-Milwaukee dance faculty, has directed, choreographed or performed with just about every arts group in town, including the Milwaukee Ballet, Milwaukee Shakespeare, Wild Space Dance......

We thought that was fun and decided to make these evenings combinations of environmental work and traditional theater work. The range of the work that our choreographers were bringing to the process demand ed that we present the performances in this way.” The theater’s lobby, courtyard and stage are of equal importance for performances created specifical ly for these spaces. A piece by...

 First Stage’s adaptation of Lois Lowry’s dystopian children's novel Gathering Blue is set in a world where the weak and disabled are left to die in the wilderness. A girl named Kira is afflicted with a twisted leg, but her gift for...

The story of Aphra Behn is one that could have easily been fabricated for the sake of a good story. In the 17th century, she was briefly married, traveled abroad and reputedly met an African slave leader. She returned to...

The Skylight Studio Theatre Series final production this season, Sing Me a Story, fits well into their concept of engaging audiences in closer interactions with the cast—a cabaret experience without food and drink...

 The theater's nature as a highly social art form can mean delightful things for plays focusing on social relations between characters. British playwright Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water is a compelling look at the...

 Boulevard Theatre ends its season with a thought-provoking look at class differences, “the price” of status and the sacrifices made in trying to balance work and family in Living Out. Lisa Loomer’s play centering on a nanny...

 The 1976 novel Kiss of the Spider Woman isn't exactly the sort of story many would have expected to get a stage musical treatment. The story of imprisoned people in Argentina isn't the type of thing that cries out for song and...

 Marked with sparklingly witty dialogue, Jeff Daniels' Apartment 3A is an enjoyable interpersonal comedy about the nature of meaningful human connection. In Tandem Theatre rounds out its season with a well-rendered version...

 Musical revues can be kind of repetitive. They add a nice contrast to the rest of what inhabits local stages, but the format can feel forced no matter how it's dressed up. The Harmonettes has some unique angles, however. The...