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Come the evening of April 1, a Penske rental truck will be parked in Kesey Square as a makeshift gallery. “There’s not many places in Eugene to show the work we want to show,” says Andrew Oslovar, one of 13 members of the “nomadic art collective” Tropical Contemporary. “Our goal as an art group is getting people to unlock their doors for us so we can put work in their unleased businesses. We can make an art gallery out of anything; we don’t care if it’s nice.” Continue reading
Xcape Dance Company presents The Freak Show! with a red carpet and pre-show at 7:30 pm and show at 8:30 pm Friday, April 1, at the Hi Fi Music Hall, featuring “Non Stop hip hop, street jazz, tap, music, side shows, tricks, treats, circus acts and show stoppers,” says the group’s artistic director Vanessa Fuller. Tickets xcapedance.com; $10-$13. Continue reading
It is a truth universally acknowledged that superhero movies must feature massive amounts of property damage. Rather hilariously, we are all spending a lot of time talking about this, not about cool fight scenes (harder and harder to come by) or daring ways our heroes have saved the day. Continue reading
"Bang," "quack" and "sizzle" are onomatopoeias. If a band name were ever onomatopoeic, it would be Mexico-via-L.A.’s Metalachi — the self-proclaimed first and only heavy metal mariachi band in the world. Lead singer Vega De La Rockha calls the band’s blend of traditional Mexican music with hard rock and metal a genre of its own. “El Cucuy [trumpet player] is very fond of the ranchera sound,” La Rockha tells EW. “Pancho [guitarron player] is a fan of both genres.” Continue reading
The Minneapolis-based Davina and the Vagabonds have swagger — circa 1920s swagger, the kind found in the midst of big-band jazz and the blues. It was 2011 when Davina Sowers (vocals, piano, ukulele) put out her first full-length album, Black Cloud, and she and the Vagabonds have been crashing to the top of the modern blues scene ever since, winning accolades like one of the 10 top releases of the year (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Continue reading
When the Eugene Symphony chose a young, little-known conductor named Marin Alsop as its music director in 1989, both she and the orchestra were at best marginal micro-planets orbiting the farthest reaches of the American classical music solar system. By the time Alsop left in 1996, the New York native was one of classical music’s rising stars, crashing through a series of glass ceilings in a seriously sexist classical music milieu to score a handful of increasingly prestigious gigs with orchestras around the world, from São Paulo to Scotland. Continue reading
Ah, Paradise: What an orchard of happiness. Endless green, endless time and endless innocence, unsullied by death and the knowledge of it. What’s not to like? But God, in his infinite wisdom, looked upon Eden’s immaculate expanse and thought unto himself: Needs something. Needs a beholder to appreciate my handiwork and artistry, my Godness. Needs people. And so there were people, and everything went to hell. Continue reading
Shot in lavish black-and-white, Embrace of the Serpent drops you immediately into the humid nightmare of colonial devastation. A lone shaman, Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), squats silently on the banks of the Amazon River in the Colombian jungle. A canoe approaches, carrying a Colombian guide, Manduca (Yauenkü Miguee), and Theo (Jan Bijvoet), a German anthropologist dying of an unspecified disease. Continue reading
On the night of March 30, Sam Bond’s Garage is going to be painted with some funkadelic jams, man. Lucy Arnell and Holly Bowling are bringing tunes laced with Phish-y influences and classic experimental sounds. Arnell, a self-described former New York City “concert bum,” moved to the West Coast in 2013. She then met and collaborated with guitarist Jason Abraham Roberts (Norah Jones, HYMNS) to produce her first EP, Side by Side, which later unfolded into a full-length album with a track featuring Jon Fishman (Phish) on drums. Continue reading
Young Florida rapper Denzel Curry — he turned 21 in February — is returning to WOW Hall as a headliner after his last stop in 2015 opening for Joey Bada$$ and Mick Jenkins. The evolution to headliner in one year makes sense: Before releasing his debut album Nostalgic 64 in 2013, Curry appeared on BBC Radio and performed at Coachella. His hard-hitting track “Threatz” has a phenomenal, psychedelic music video that has racked up 6.5 million views. Continue reading