Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features music from singer-songwriters Kylee Phillips, Bekka Madeleine, and Mike Vial, video-game hyperpop by Dapper Ain't Delirious, and drum 'n' bass from the AGN7 label.

For more than a decade, Justin Lawnchair has been the sole member of progressive death metal band The Biscuit Merchant.

Across 10 albums, the Ann Arbor artist charts a cacophonous course through dark waters that touches on numerous extreme metal styles: Biscuit Merchant songs feature the technological precision of thrash, the blackened passions of death metal, and the Viking majesty of European power metal.

Lawnchair recently completed the latest chapter in a conceptual multiple-album project called ALPHA. Each title in the series begins with a different letter of the alphabet, eventually numbering 26 when complete. The new album, Tempora, is number 10, and like the others, opens with riffs and themes that connect it to its predecessor, 2024’s Visible Scars.

The difference with this record is that it has a more defined narrative than the other episodes. Tempora tells the tale of humankind’s reaction to the threat of domination by an alien intelligence—to build and deploy a weapon that might destroy the entire universe if it works, and will definitely destroy humanity if it doesn’t. Either way, mankind chooses to leave nothing for their enemies to conquer. Rings true, right?

“Victorious," the first single on Tempora, is a gargantuan slab of rolling riff, demonic verse, and heroic chorus that manages to be punishing and hooky in equal measure, and it depicts the turning point of the story.

Ever heard a pre-show “turn off your cell phones” speech delivered by a whistling bird and her human translator before? No?

Well, that’s just the first of many surreal elements in Carla Milarch’s play Jorge Luis Borges Gives a Lecture on Anatomy, now having its world premiere at Theatre Nova, in a production directed by Kat Walsh.

I will confess up front that while I studied literature for years, I never read Borges’ work, so this review comes from a place of ... ignorance? Curiosity? Both?

Yet given the boisterous, life-embracing version of Borges that appears on Theatre Nova’s stage, courtesy of actor Phil Powers, I think it likely that the author himself would approve of me tiptoeing into his literary imagination by way of Milarch’s play.

And make no mistake. Lecture is a trippy vibe of a ride, which shouldn’t surprise those who have read Borges.

“How is our consciousness changing?” is the question Maddy Ringo grapples with throughout her record People of the Earth and Sea, released March 28. The Toronto-born singer-songwriter has established herself as a beacon of Ann Arbor’s music scene, adding her voice to the cultural howl for another folk-music revival, but one that reflects the current reality.

“I think you also have a lot of people who can’t really relate to folk and country songs about plowing the fields or working on the railroad," Ringo said. "That’s not our lives, and I think a lot of people in my space are taking that folk tradition and those things that feel really grounded and familiar and then writing about our modern life.

“I think people are very hungry right now in the aftermath of the pandemic and also in the face of AI. People really want live music, and they’re responding to things that feel real.”

When Encore Musical Theatre Company co-founder Dan Cooney, in a pre-show speech, emphatically warned the crowd at West Side Story’s opening night to keep the aisles clear (“They’re 20,” he joked, referring to the cast’s youth), it was for good reason.

Indeed, the production’s performers often bounded onto the stage, swung (or hung, or twirled) from the set’s poles and bars, and prowled the theater’s aisles as if they were the streets of Manhattan.

That’s where this classic American musical theater riff on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet takes place, of course, in the summer of 1957. Instead of feuding families, West Side Story focuses on two territorial teen gangs (the white working-class Jets and the Puerto Rican immigrant Sharks) who regularly fight to “own” the local territory. But when a former Jet named Tony (Conor Jordan) locks eyes with young, Puerto Rican Maria (Daniela Rodriguez Del Bosque) at a dance, the two fall passionately, impetuously in love, despite their differences, and set a series of events into motion that will alter not just the path of their own lives, but those of everyone around them.

Despite its iconic, instantly recognizable music (Leonard Bernstein) and lyrics (Stephen Sondheim), book (Arthur Laurents), and choreography (Jerome Robbins, re-created in Encore’s production by Deanna Aguinaga-Whyte), West Side Story (directed here by Michael Berry) is not a show we have lots of opportunities to see performed live—in part, because this classic American musical demands a lot from the many, many young artists it takes to stage a production.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features indie rock by Idle Ray, hyperpop by Dapper Ain't Delirious and Splingus, hip-hop by Gusmão, and punk by Reckless Manner.

Jeff Dunn didn't mean to become a go-to photographer for the Southeast Michigan jazz scene. He was just a guy who started taking his camera to jam sessions around 2014 after being a fan of the "sound of surprise" since the early 1970s.

"The first time I went to [Detroit's] Baker's Keyboard Lounge in 1973, I was hooked," Dunn told Pulp in a 2018 interview. "I've been addicted to live jazz performances ever since."

Now he's the house photographer for the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation, a regular presence at concerts from the Motor City to Tree Town, and the focus of a new exhibit at Argus Museum in Ann Arbor.

Jeff Dunn - Jazz Photography runs June 2-27, offering 38 shots by the St. Clair Shores resident and retired Wayne State computer programmer/web developer.

The exhibit is tucked into a narrow hallway with a slight zig-zag, but there's enough room to step back from each photo and imagine the 71-year-old Dunn's placement for each shot. The description plates for each image feature enthusiastic prose from the photographer about his subjects, revealing Dunn's fan-first appreciation of jazz.

It’s starting to sound like summer in Washtenaw County, thanks to the start of several local music festivals and events taking place this month. Whether inside or outside, on the street or in a barn, during the day or at night, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of summer music festivals and events to satisfy your ears.

Third Place Music Fest 
June 4-June 7, Ann Arbor 
This four-day festival of experimental music, from classical and jazz to electronic and world, includes multiple concerts in spaces around Ann Arbor. Third Place Music Fest brings together artists, community members, and businesses to celebrate the power of the third place—public spots that can foster a sense of community. The festival kicks off June 4 with performances from Magnolia Rohrer and Dr. Prof. Leonard King’s Proportioned Orchestra at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. It wraps up June 7 with sets from Leith and Dave Sharp Worlds Quartet at Canterbury House. For details, visit the festival’s website.

Sounds & Sights 
June 5-July 31, Chelsea 
This festival features free live performances every Thursday night on 10 different stages in downtown Chelsea. Artists include Hullabaloo, The Town Band, Bowdish Brothers, Seventh, Corndaddy, The Band Mint, the Kate Hinote Trio, Annie and Rod Capps, Wilson and Brenner, Luna Pier, and more. There’s also a weekend edition July 25-26 with live music from Magic Bus, The Square Pegz, Bret Maynard, Blaine Luis, Scotty Karate, Ben Daniels Band, and The Crasherz. For details, visit the festival’s website.

A2 Summer Streets 
June 5-August 31, Ann Arbor 
Downtown Ann Arbor’s streets transform into a bustling hub of music and art every weekend this summer, thanks to Main Street Ann Arbor. Beginning June 5 and continuing every weekend through August 31, Main Street, Liberty Street, and Washington Street will close to vehicle traffic. Live music starts June 5 with the Depot Town Big Band on Main Street by Conor O’Neill’s. Additional performers include The Huron Valley Harmonizers, Four Roses Band, The Vicissitones, II-V-I Orchestra, The Glen Leven Band, and more. For details, visit A2 Summer Streets’ website.

Earlier this year, Andy Jones began the process of launching a new sketch comedy troupe in Ann Arbor. He started writing sketches, reaching out to friends and fellow actors, and hosting rehearsals in his home. All of this led to the founding of The Imposters, who will make their debut June 12-14 at the hear.say brewing in Ann Arbor.

While The Imposters are a new group the names of the six members—Jones, Kara Williams, Elizabeth Wagner, Will Myers, Ken Wood, and David Widmayer—should be well known to those in the Ann Arbor theater community. The troupe has also enlisted some veteran help from stage manager Alexa Duscay.

“A lot of us have done improv comedy before, but none of us really have done sketch before, hence The Imposters,” says Jones. 

“I think everybody in the group has some interest in [sketch]. All of us have been wanting to do something new, challenge ourselves, wanting to write a bit. A way to just kind of have some fun with friends.”

Many of us, when asked to remember our middle school experience, shudder. It’s almost always a challenging era, full of braces, puberty, social dramas, and the diametric pulls of childhood and young adulthood.

But Greenhills School teacher and theater director Caroline Huntoon, who grew up in Ann Arbor, spends a good deal of her time imagining and remembering being that age again, as evidenced by the release of her third (and newest) middle grade novel, Going Overboard.

“It’s this moment when young people are figuring out their independence, while also negotiating, like, ‘I want to be independent, I want to be in charge of my own self, but I don’t always make the best choices,’” Huntoon said.

In addition, when Huntoon was a young reader themself, they were drawn most to middle grade books.

“I loved reading Matilda [by Roald Dahl] and Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine,” said Huntoon. “I feel like those books just opened up a world to me—not ‘the’ world, but ‘a’ world. My mom got sick when I was in fifth grade, so books were a very important … reprieve from that time.”