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Public Event

Ann Arbor Synth Expo

Saturday November 10, 2018: 12:00pm to 4:00pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

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Public Event

Introduction to Theremini

Monday January 29, 2018: 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Blog Post

A Portrait of Bowie

by howarde

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It’s mid-2017 and I still find myself missing David Bowie. After his death in January of last year, we read a lot about him in my household—a lot. Several books on Bowie were published in 2016 alone, in addition to lengthy tributes in magazines and online. One book escaped my notice until recently—A Portrait of Bowie: A Tribute to Bowie by his Artistic Collaborators & Contemporaries. This collection of interviews, art, and photographs was edited by Brian Hiatt, a senior writer for Rolling Stone. Honestly, my hopes for this book weren’t too high. I figured it would contain some slap-dash Bowie-themed art and a bunch of sentimental sound bites from famous people. But I put myself on the hold list for it anyway.

A Portrait actually surprised me by how good it is. The unexpected strength of the book is that Hiatt shifts the focus away from Bowie’s more famous collaborators like Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and Tony Visconti—who have already said a lot about working with Bowie. Instead, he interviews people you may not have heard of, but who have been key to Bowie’s sound and success in the studio and on tour: Mike Garson, Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, and Gail Ann Dorsey, for instance. Hiatt also interviews photographers other artists who have worked with Bowie over the years. There are a few appearances by artists who never worked with Bowie but were influenced by him, and these are fun to read but didn't add much to my knowledge about Bowie.

And, as promised, A Portrait contains a lot of visual art too, most of which was done in collaboration with Bowie himself. For me, most of the art is hit or miss. But I especially enjoyed Hiatt’s choice of photographs, which cover Bowie’s career from the mid-1960s to the 2000s, many of which I had never seen before.

The truism about Bowie is that he was a shape-shifter, that he was constantly re-inventing himself as an artist. But these interviews give us insight into why and how Bowie performed his transformations. A Portrait of Bowie shows us David Bowie as a person, but goes further in revealing his creative process and how he managed his public image.

If you’re a Bowie fan, don’t pass this one up. The artist Derek Boshier, who painted Bowie and worked on his album covers, says, "I always tell people that we think we know what we look like, and we know each other by looking in the mirror and photographs and films, but David knew what he looked like from every angle, from the back of his head even. He knew every part."

A Portrait helps us know Bowie in that way, too.

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Performers

EVENT POSTPONED: Mini-Moog Fest

Saturday July 8, 2017: 11:00am to 5:00pm
Downtown Library Lobby and Garden
All Ages

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Performers

DATE CHANGE: Tonks & The Aurors: Wizard & Nerd Rock Concert!

Tuesday June 27, 2017: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Downtown Library: 4th Floor Meeting Room
Grade K–Adult

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Crafts

Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire

Saturday June 3, 2017: 10:00am to 4:00pm
Downtown Library: 1st Floor Lobby
All Ages.

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Blog Post

The Summer of Love Turns 50!

by amy

The Summer of Love’s foggy origins lay in the Bay area’s 1950s Beat culture, the merry pranksters’ 1964-66 acid tests, and politically disaffected Berkeley students. In January 1967, The Doors release their eponymous album in Los Angeles and the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park promotes cultural decentralization, communal living, radical politics, and higher consciousness fueled by drug use. In February, Jefferson Airplane takes off with their breakout album, Surrealistic Pillow, and by May the Mamas and the Papas’ John Phillips writes “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” whose Scott McKenzie cover will hit #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 by July 1. As if all this wasn’t enough, the Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band on June 1 and two weeks later The Jimi Hendrix Experience performs at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, the Detroit race riots at the end of July bring John Sinclair’s Trans-Love Energies commune (and future White Panthers) to Ann Arbor, and in August they stage a free concert by the Grateful Dead in Ann Arbor's West Park.

And this is how the summer of 1967 gave birth to the hippie!

Here are a few videos to help you make sense of all this hippie love:

Beatles Anthology
Berkeley in the Sixties
Complete Monterey Pop Festival
The Jimi Hendrix Experience live at Monterey

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Public Event

CANCELLED: Concert: Michael Ibrahim Trio

Wednesday May 24, 2017: 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

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Blog Post

Dig if you will the picture : funk, sex, God and genius in the music of Prince

by potterbee

Today marks one year since the passing of Prince., a beloved artist for many. Recently released is a biography of his life, work, and the artistry of Prince, entitled, Dig if you will the picture : funk, sex, God and genius in the music of Prince.

Ben Greenman (New York Times bestselling author, contributing writer to the New Yorker) presents a unique and kaleidoscopic look into the life, legacy, and electricity of the pop legend Prince and his wide ranging impact on our culture. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet who shattered traditional ideas of race and gender, rewrote the rules of identity, and redefined the role of sex in pop music.

Greenman has been listening to and writing about Prince since the mid-eighties. Here, with the passion of an obsessive fan and the skills of a critic, journalist, and novelist, he mines his encyclopedic knowledge of Prince's music to present a biography and the story of the paradigm-shifting ideas that he communicated to his millions of fans around the world.

Greenman's other published work includes collaborations with George Clinton and Questlove on their celebrated memoirs.