The Renaissance, a vibrant period of European cultural, artistic, political and scientific “rebirth” after the Middle Ages, was led by...

CONTINUING EDUCATION MONTH AT THE DIRTY DOG June is here. It is time to safely put the snow shovels away in Michigan. We already are...

When my father graduated from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech University the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. He needed a...

VERNA HART 1961 -2019 Verna Hart died last week. Verna’s life and art mirrored the freedom of jazz. Her subject was mostly jazz and her...

Sometimes we have to look beneath the veneer to see the health of something. How do we best diagnose someone’s health? A doctor friend of...

“MARCH TO THE BEAT OF YOUR OWN DRUMMER” Henry David Thoreau Last week I was in the Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was...

Times change and things we have loved get neglected. They get set aside for something new. Mold and rust replace bright original...

On April 15 fire ravished Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Images of Our Lady of Paris burning filled our screens last week.  We often see...

FAMILY A group of people who genuinely love, trust, care about, and look out for each other. FELLOWSHIP Fellowship is a friendly feeling...

COMING HOME This week jazz pianist Johnny O’Neil will be back in Detroit and there will be a homecoming party for him at the Dirty dog...

FEAR CAN BE A SCARY THING Fear can be debilitating. We can be frozen with fear. We can sometimes let fear get the better of us and cloud...

Life is generally pretty good. I spend most of my life enjoying lolling about and sometimes doing the things that allow me to happily...

Just over a week ago Willie Jones passed a note to a visiting pianist from New York, Emmet Cohen. Emmet then informed a sold out audience...

Global warming has become a sexy subject There is a lot of talk about rising temperatures and the effect that this will have on our...

MARCHING INTO SPRING This week New Orleans will come alive with music and parades and along with much of the world folks will go outdoors...

Photo from The Japan Times JAZZ  JOURNALIST KYOSHI KOYAMA This week I read of the passing of Kiyoshi Koyama. Kiyoshi Koyama isn’t a name...

DAVE BENNETT WILL BE FEATURED THIS WEEK AT THE DIRTY DOG JAZZ CAFÉ Expect the unexpected along with the expected when Dave Bennett brings...

The jazz club on the hill in Grosse Pointe will be one year older this week. Eleven years ago it was nudged into being by Gretchen Valade...

RANDY NAPOLEON VERSUS THE POLAR VORTEX Something called the polar vortex sent dangerously cold weather into the north central states last...

ON KNOWING SOMEONE LIKE RANDY NAPOLEON Most days, I am besieged by noise and constant announcements of “breaking news”. I hear music and...