How a lad from Seattle became a scholar and virtuoso of the shakuhachi–a five-holed, vertical bamboo flute with a haunting timbre intrinsic to Japanese classic music–is a story in itself, but suffice it to say that David Wheeler, who now lives in Tokyo, is happy to be one. “I planned…

A bottle tree in the sunshine is something to see, glittering like spotlit costume jewelry hanging off some giraffe-necked runway model. But a bottle tree has to be just so. When you hang the bottles on the branches, you have to make certain they don’t collect water, or they might…

Thursday February 18 The funny stuff in Real Women Have Curves, opening tonight at 8 at El Centro Su Teatro, 4725 High St., couldn’t be more proletarian, but the vein is super-rich: Josefina Lopez’s comedy about five Chicanas working in an L.A. garment factory who struggle to watch their weight…

One reason to attend this weekend’s Denver Jazz on Film Festival is for the rarities screened there–brilliant glimpses of musicians at work, caught for eternity on film or video. Many of those artists–Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae, Clifford Brown and Cannonball Adderly–are gone now, and clips such as these provide…

Thursday February 11 As hard as it is to imagine any jazz combo functioning without its bass player, one listen to the artistry of bassist Ray Drummond makes that prospect seem even more impossible: The tasteful veteran has provided the heart and soul of recordings and live performances by a…

Burnis McCloud was one of those unsung heroes who go about what they do, first, because they have to, and second, because they love to. But time and talent are a rich combination, and over the years, McCloud, a prolific Denver photographer whose lens rested primarily on members of the…

Thursday February 4 Another arm of the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center’s Red Scare/Black List: McCarthyism and the Arts series gets under way tonight, adding film to a winter-long cauldron already boiling with lectures and an art exhibit. Naming Names: HUAC and Hollywood kicks off at 7 with a…

Put all the world’s doll collectors in one place and they’d barely fill a cosmic thimble. But try narrowing the category down to collectors of black dolls, and you’d need a microscope to see them. Members of the local Touch of Color Doll Club think that’s just fine–it’s easier for…

Thursday January 28 Prepare to stretch your mind: When noted journalist David Barsamian drops by the Tattered Cover LoDo tonight at 7:30 to discuss his book The Common Good, it’s the ideas of brilliant thinker Noam Chomsky that will take center stage. Barsamian’s book, a cerebral Chomsky interview published as…

Canadian author Lilian Nattel grew up in the shadow of a lost culture. Her parents, Jewish Holocaust survivors, often spoke of their vanished lives in pre-WWII Poland, but there was no way for her to truly know what it was like. “It was almost a dream–like a fairy tale or…

Thursday January 21 The Colorado Symphony Orchestra honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tonight with a SuperClassics Concert that’s contemporary, stirring and all over the musical map–but as CSO maestra Marin Alsop points out, the selections are the work of African-American composers, pay tribute in some way to the African-American…

Like many old structures around Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhoods, the Temple Events Center Uptown–in its heyday the third home of Congregation Emanuel, Denver’s oldest Jewish congregation–has seen better days. But if director Roger Armstrong has his way, the building’s public centennial celebration on Sunday won’t be just a tribute to…

A 1992 Nobel laureate whose work is the extraordinary sum of disparate yet intertwining parts, black West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott grew up on a rare fusion of Shakespearean language and island patois that ultimately transcends all possible racial bonds. He’s always simply written as a man first,…

The word “wire” trips on itself right out of the gate: Fraught with imagery of fences and telephone poles, it’s all about boundaries–where one thing ends and another begins. But when it gets all twisted up, that’s when wire can become downright dangerous, as you’ll find when two different yet…

Thursday January 14 Things just cain’t be right in these parts in January without the Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Presented by the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, it’s the ultimate assemblage of all things folksy and philosophical that’s parallel to, if not quite in conjunction with, the National…

Michael Connelly always knew he wanted to write crime novels; once dipped in the noir Los Angeleno universe of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, he was hooked on the detective genre for life. But Connelly had to go to boot camp before carving his own smoky niche in the gumshoe chain:…

As any artist will tell you, cooperative galleries can be flighty endeavors, easily ravaged by lack of organization and/or funds, in no particular order. So it’s encouraging to note that Core New Art Space, one of Denver’s most enduring co-ops, has managed to remain intact since it debuted with four…

Thursday January 7 Okay, okay–maybe you don’t want to know. But just in case you do, an outfit calling itself Lean Weighs is conducting Body Fat Screenings at metro-area King Soopers locations throughout the month. For a $10 fee, they’ll break down your weight into fat, water and organ categories;…

Thursday December 31 It’s one year short of the millennium, but that’s no reason to stay home: This year, think of New Year’s Eve as a preview for next year’s blowout. There’s no shortage of ways to test the waters: Kids get into the act early at the Children’s Museum…

First Night Colorado’s been all over the place since its inception in 1988–the event migrated from the then-quiet 16th Street Mall to the old Elitch Gardens to the Colorado Convention Center. Over the years, there have been walkabouts, fireworks finales and kaleidoscopic festivities crammed together under one roof, but a…

Ed Ward’s been hosting open-microphone poetry readings in the Denver area for more than twenty years, and not without good reason. His regular Friday night readings at the Mercury Cafe adhere loosely to the Neal Cassady “GO!” school of anything’s allowed, and Ward says that’s what makes them special. Poets…

What are dreams made of? For Coloradans John Jancik and Ken Zerbst and fellow members of their Top of the World Expedition Team, they were made of little more than delicate tundra, sea water, ice and snow. The goal? First, the team hoped to plant an American flag on Oodaaq…