From the moment Alexis J Roston opens her mouth to sing her first note as Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” at Farmers Alley Theatre, you can’t help but feel as if you’re in the presence of Lady Day herself, a lucky audience member at one of her last performances.

The final offering in Grand Rapids Ballet’s 50th anniversary season has been a long time coming.

Held biennially, the 2022 Gilmore International Piano Festival spans several weeks in April through mid-May and showcases the diversity of the piano, as well as the talent of renowned pianists from across the globe. 

Art for the people, by the people – that’s what The 49507 Project is all about. Lead by Black, Brown and queer artists and youth, this public art initiative seeks to shift power dynamics in under-resourced areas, specifically in Southeast Grand Rapid’s 49507 zip code.

What is the role of art and artists amid times of violent political upheaval? And how might women play a part in writing history, thus changing the ways it’s told, and in turn, how they are remembered?

For the Farmers Alley Theatre of Kalamazoo, their new production of The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson hits in all the right places; Heart, mind and soul.

I have never heard a live performance of pop composer Sara Bareilles’s “She Used to Be Mine” without being moved to tears.

During my brief stint as a fact checker for Mother Jones Magazine, I was told by an editor that if I didn’t wake up at night sick with panic over inaccuracies I may have overlooked, then I wasn’t doing my job.

Christian McBride, bassist, arranger, and composer, prides himself on making jazz you can feel.

“Shall I compare thee to a… something?” We don’t usually think of the immortal bard as wracked with writer’s block. And we don’t think of him as young and handsome, either; in the famous Chandos portrait, he’s all receding hairline and sad eyes: a middle-aged icon.