This is the first in hopefully many reviews I will write in the near future covering local, live musical performances. I hope that sharing my experience at these shows will give people some idea of what music in our own town sounds like and feels like. I am a lifelong musician in addition to being […]
Arts & Entertainment
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: ‘The Laramie Project’ is a legitimately brave production from the Des Moines Young Artists’ Theatre
By the time you read this, the Des Moines Young Artists’ Theatre’s (DMYAT) production of The Laramie Project at Stoner Theater will have come and gone. While this remains a review of the company’s latest production, consider this, additionally, an assessment of this youth-centered central Iowa program. DMYAT is a Des Moines nonprofit dedicated to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The 25th Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival featured stories local, global and out of this world, all with an Iowa connection
Collins Road Theatres was positively buzzing the weekend of April 4-6, and not just because A Minecraft Movie had premiered. The Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival (CRIFF) returned to screen a new slate of original, Midwest-made films inside an unpresuming Marion shopping center. As the lights dimmed for my first film of the fest, I […]
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Shall we dance? The Magnetic Fields will perform all ‘69 Love Songs’ (including their accidental wedding standard) over two nights at the Englert
Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs (1999) contains two of Stephin Merritt’s most beloved numbers, “The Book of Love” and “Papa Was a Rodeo.” Both have become standards a quarter century after their release, though they represent but a tiny fraction of equally brilliant earworms that appear in that industrial-sized collection of music. When Merritt started […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Abbie Sawyer — ‘Persimmon’
Persimmon by Abbie Sawyer Sitting and listening to Abbie Sawyer’s Persimmon was a blissful experience. It feels like frolicking on the first warm day of spring after a dreadful winter — fresh and bright, delightful despite the memory of the lingering cold. With 12 soul-stirring songs, the album blossoms with tenderness. It’s the kind of […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
This weekend in Iowa: bands battle, galleries open, Shrek fans rave and more.
Established 2001 | Always free! The events start coming and they don’t stop coming in today’s Weekender. In the mood to browse some art? Cedar Rapids and Waterloo have you covered, with gallery openings for Jayson Reid and Saw Naing Lin at CSPS Hall and a new exhibition by Ethan Edvenson at Waterloo Center for […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Void Church welcomes Italian horror composer Fabio Frizzi back to the Quad Cities with his masterful ‘Zombie’ score
Quad Cities arts collective Void Church has a taste for the goth, synthy and underground side of music. It’s no surprise, then, that they’re big fans of Italian horror films, specifically the influential works of director Lucio Fulci and composer Fabio Frizzi. The two maestros paid a visit to the Q.C. in the before times […]
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Review: The Beyond Fashion Fest made a dandy impression in downtown Iowa City, showcasing streetwear, grunge, indigenous and avant garde designs
Wright House of Fashion’s latest event was a two-day showcase of art, comedy, talks on fashion and diversity, and of course, fashion shows. The first fashion show of the inaugural Beyond Fashion Festival was Jamie Sauncoci’s JS Wear, sponsored by the Great Plains Action Society and hosted in the Graduate’s ballroom. The show opened with […]
Posted inStatewide
‘The arts are being systematically attacked’: Iowa arts orgs lose federal funding as Trump administration terminates NEA grants
After making massive cuts at the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and rescinding grants awarded by those agencies, the Trump administration brought its sweeping and arbitrary DOGE-style cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) last week. The NEA sent out emails on Friday to […]
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Stick-and-pokes, baseball ghosts and the top five movies you’ve gotta see on the big, big screen this May
Hey folks, welcome back to Little Big Screen: On the Big, Big Screen, where film columnist Benjamin McElroy recommends five screenings happening at Iowa’s independent movie theaters. This month, the rotten word from Washington D.C. can’t be ducked. FilmScene and Varsity Cinema were both notified on May 2 that their National Endowment for the Arts […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Green for Luck’ by Margaret Yapp
Margaret Yapp’s Green For Luck (Eastover Press) is a refreshing shock to the senses. Every page asks the reader to unlearn their expectations. I hear all the time that readers want to be surprised — I even tell my own students that — but it’s been a long time since I experienced it. In Green […]
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This weekend in Iowa: a fashion fest going above and beyond in Iowa City, an alluring night of burlesque in Cedar Rapids and more
Established 2001 | Always free! It’s another Weekender bursting with events. Deb Talan celebrates the release of her solo album at the Englert in Iowa City. (She discussed the highs and lows of her post-divorce life in an interview with Little Village this week). Tomorrow is the first Friday of the month, which means Mainframe Studios is […]
