The Green Room

Tyehimba Jess is an African American poet from Detroit. He recently won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for his collection of poetry called, Olio. The poems are inspired by blackface minstrel shows.  

The 2017 Interlochen Arts Festival lineup was announced today, and it features the likes of ZZ Top, Michael McDonald, Trace Adkins, Diana Ross, OK Go, and more.

But in addition to Interlochen, northern Michigan is home to a wide variety of summer concerts and festivals.

If you lived in Manistee in the early 1900s, The Ramsdell Theatre was the place to be.

Women would put on elegant ballroom gowns, and men would get dressed up in fancy tuxedos for a night of arts and culture.

“That was like every weekend,” says Xavier Verna, the new executive director of the Ramsdell Regional Center for the Arts. “It was really fun and exciting to have a place that you just always had something to do.”

Most people who knew Jean Parsons, will tell you— she was tough and expected a lot from her students.

Jean never married, and didn’t have any children. So, she spent her days pouring into her art and investing in her students. 

Now, one of her students has created remembrance of her in the Benzie County village of Lake Ann.

Kyle Novy has been a singer-songwriter for a long time. But it had been about 10 years since he released any music. He was still writing songs, but the timing to record them wasn't right.

“I almost think of it like the whole pregnancy process," he explains. "I mean there’s a good nine months of development before this child is ready to be birthed, and like out in the world.”

A few weeks ago, parents and students filled about half the bleachers at the Kingsley Middle School gym. It wasn’t for a sporting event but for the 2017 Grand Traverse County Spelling Bee. Spellers who do well here, will have a shot to go to the national competition which airs on ESPN. 

Shanny Brooke moved from Florida to Traverse City about nine years ago. Soon, she noticed that her type of art, was missing. She sees a lot of what she calls “loons and dunes,” but little modern or contemporary art. 

Shanny says that’s because businesses cater to tourists and visitors.

For the past 16 years, actor Charles Ross has been performing his One Man Star Wars Trilogy.

“Every time I think that the show is going to dry up, Star Wars just keeps on putting new things out and making new generations of fans,” he says. 

If you’re using Oscar nominations as a reference, La La Land is one of the best films in history, with 14 nominations.

Only two other films— All About Eve and Titanic— have been nominated 14 times by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

Frank Pahl is a different kind of composer. What other people see as toys or junk, Frank sees as music-making potential.

“I didn’t grow to appreciate Tinker Toys until I was, wow, pushing 40,” he says.

Jetty Rae is a singer-songwriter who used to live in Charlevoix.

Lately she’s been traveling the country in an Airstream and working on a new sound. She recorded her new album in Nashville— it’s called Can’t Curse the Free. 

Anne and John Hoyt own Leelanau Cheese Company in Suttons Bay. Leelanau Cheese is famous for it’s raclette.

“When people ask what it tastes like, I often say it’s between a gouda and a gruyere,” says Anne.

Rebecca Reynolds and her husband, Jim Carpenter are filmmakers from Leland, Michigan.  About two years ago, Rebecca had a conversation with a friend in Los Angeles. Together, they came up with the concept for a true crime and Hollywood show.

Jack Kerkhoff grew up Traverse City. And he remembers walking past the state hospital as a kid.

“How many times I had scampered up that driveway with my gang, fearful yet curious. How many times we had wandered outside the bleak tower-topped buildings that had iron bars at the windows, and shouted at the men and women behind the bars and giggled over the obscenities they tossed back at us.”

Maybe you recognize Aaron Stander as the voice of Michigan Writers on the Air. The show airs on IPR about every three months, and features Michigan authors and their books.

Aaron, too, is an author himself, and he just released a new mystery in his Ray Elkins series. 

John Robert Williams has been a professional photographer in Northern Michigan for over 40 years.

Recently, he donated his film collection to the Traverse Area District Library. It includes portraits of people, scenic landscapes, fine art shots, architecture, and much more.

Red and green are the traditional Christmas colors. But why? How did those colors get that distinction? 

“Because Holly was red and green, we’ve accepted those as the two Christmas colors,” says Coggin Heeringa. 

Chris Sims doesn’t think that the Traverse City art scene is bad, it’s just that it can get a bit insulated.

“When you stick to just local only, you start to just sort of pull from each other,” he says. “That just sort of leads to the same outcome creatively.”

Chris is the founder of Prjct omni, an art project that features contemporary art from all around the world. Last Friday, Prjct omni’s second exhibit opened in the Warehouse MRKT in Traverse City. And while most of the response was very positive, some of the paintings got a few folks a little riled up. But Chris says even a negative reaction with art is better than no reaction at all.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in the mid-19th century. 

Since then, the Christmas tale has become engrained in our everyday culture. There’s been film adaptations, operas, and countless stage versions of the story.

The name "Scrooge" has even become a term in our language, as a description for someone who is miserly.

But popularity comes with it’s downsides. For one, audiences know the story so well, they can forget the greater meaning of it. And elaborate set designs and huge casts can be distracting.

And that’s why for Parallel 45 Theatre Company, less is more when it comes to this Christmas classic.

A version of this piece originally aired in November 2015

Nature photographers are a special breed.

To get the perfect shot, they’re willing to go out in all sorts of weather conditions— even gale-force rain storms.

Todd and Brad Reed are familiar with braving harsh weather conditions. The father-son team owns a photo gallery in Ludington, and have a reputation for capturing nature’s beauty in all it's different phases. Recently, their work was featured in the fall issue of Outdoor Photographer magazine. 

The Reeds say a lot of their success comes from having a game-plan in place, before they ever step foot outside. Brad calls it previsualization.

“Laying in bed the night before a storm when we can’t sleep, we’re thinking about where on the beach is going to be a good spot,” Brad says. “We’re building pictures in our head. That makes us much more efficient when we get out and we’re doing the actual shooting.”

Kyle Novy has been a singer-songwriter for a long time. But it had been about 10 years since he released any music. He was still writing songs, but the timing to record them wasn't right.

“I almost think of it like the whole pregnancy process," he explains. "I mean there’s a good nine months of development before this child is ready to be birthed, and like out in the world.”

Two years ago, Kyle says he had an idea pop into his head. Instead of releasing just one new album with 10 - 12 songs, what if he produced one big album— with 52 songs— and released it over the course of a year?

Frank Slaughter has been producing Repose for almost 30 years. It's a show that airs on Classical IPR and features new age music. 

Frank says during that time, the genre has evolved to the point where some people now call it zone music.

“I think they felt that new age was turning a lot of people off," he says. "Like a space cadet show or something.”

Regardless of what you call this kind of music, you have been able to hear it on Repose every Saturday night. But now, you can hear it every weeknight as well.

Kyle Mills is a best-selling author with over a dozen books to his name. But oftentimes, his name on those books is overshadowed by the names of other authors. 

Dead authors. 

“It’s kind of an interesting job, that I’ve accidentally fallen into,” says Mills. “I feel like sometimes I’m becoming the world’s foremost book forger.”

Mills has gotten a lot of attention for continuing the book series for authors Robert Ludlum and Vince Flynn, who both have passed away.

Ludlum penned many books, including the Jason Bourne trilogy. Vince Flynn was known for creating a similar thriller series, centered around the character Mitch Rapp.

C. S. Lewis was a Christian theologian who authored over 70 books, including The Space Trilogy, and The Chronicles of Narnia.

This weekend in Petoskey, the annual C. S. Lewis Festival will celebrate Lewis’ imagination. 

The authors of the book, The Surprising Imagination of C. S. Lewis say he had a nuanced understanding regarding imagination. They Identify over 30 different types of imagination that Lewis recognized and used in his writings.

Mark Neal is one of those authors, and a featured speaker at the festival in Petoskey. He says the nuanced approach to imagination helps us better understand reality. 

"It's this idea that it helps us to see things that, without it, would be unseeable," Neal says.

Michigan has a lot of festivals. There’s a tulip festival, a cherry festival, an apple festival, we even have an asparagus festival.

Recently, I came across a sort of garlic festival that happens in Elk Rapids.