Literary: Jeffery Deaver
Lincoln Rhyme is the best forensic detective in the United States. He’s also the creation of best-selling author Jeffery Deaver, whose first Rhyme novel, The Bone Collector, had the crafty detective investigating a serial killer who terrorized New York City. Deaver’s sequel, The Skin Collector, finds Rhyme investigating a killer inspired by the nefarious collector…
Art: North By Northside
On Sunday from 2-5 p.m., the Cincinnati Arts Association is sponsoring a self-guided walking tour and celebration of artist studios along Hamilton Avenue in Northside. It’s called North by Northside and it’s the eagerly awaited sequel to the 2008 tour of Brighton artist spaces. There will also be several gallery and pop-up exhibitions and activities…
Art: Art Museum Day 2014
For the fifth year in a row, the Association of Art Museum Directors unites to celebrate Art Museum Day on Sunday. This year, three area art institutions will contribute opportunities for audiences to get involved. The Taft Museum of Art (316 Pike St., Downtown) will offer free admission and guided tours of the gardens, the…
Music: of Montreal
Founded in the ’90s in Athens, Ga., and guided by the mad-genius Avant Pop songwriting instincts of Kevin Barnes, of Montreal is one of the more compelling Indie acts going. From its early Beatles-esque offerings and its slanted, kaleidoscopic Disco Pop to the band’s most recent effort, the more “live band” Rock of Lousy with…
Event: OTR 5K
The eighth annual OTR 5K is the annual kick-off to summer in Over-the-Rhine. This year’s 5K starts and ends in Washington Park, with a huge celebration to follow. Everyone is invited to the family-friendly race — dogs and strollers welcome. The after-party is free and open to the public with live music on two stages…
Dance: Mannequin
Exhale Dance Tribe, with its contemporary Jazz and Modern flavor, continues to carve a unique and ever-stylish niche in the Cincinnati area dance scene with its latest work, Mannequin. A trio of nontraditional performances — or perhaps we should say movement installations — takes place Saturday inside the Aronoff Center’s Fifth Third Theater, where the…
Event: MainStrasse Village Maifest
The 35th annual MainStrasse Village Maifest is based on the German tradition of welcoming the first spring wines. More than 75 local arts and crafts vendors, German and international food stands and the Main Street BierGarten take over six blocks of MainStrasse’s Sixth Street Promenade. Children will enjoy Kinderplatz, an amusement midway with rides and…
Event: Free Family Fun at Smale Riverfront Park
What’s better than curing your kids’ summer boredom with a day of fun at the park? When it’s free for the entire family all summer long. Thanks to the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Smale Riverfront Park is hosting an entire summer’s worth of free family fun, from movie nights to concerts and theater performances. This week,…
Event: CincItalia Festival
The fifth annual CincItalia Festival celebrates Italian heritage right here in Cincinnati. And since most Italian families’ gatherings revolve around food, there will be plenty at the festival: gelato, pizza, lasagna, pasta, tiramisu, chicken parmigiana and more. The rest of the fest will be rounded out with Italian cooking demos, an Italian market, live music…
Event: Newport Jazz, Arts and Wine Festival
Music, art and wine lovers are invited down to Newport on the Levee for a weekend of local wine paired perfectly with the best Jazz in town. Stroll the Levee or relax while enjoying the third annual Newport Jazz, Arts and Wine Festival, featuring local wineries, artist booths and dynamic musical performances. Entry is free all…
Event: An Evening with Groucho
Groucho Marx — with his rolling eyes, greasepaint mustache and waggling cigar — is one of the most recognizable comedians in American popular culture. More than three decades after his death, Marx has countless impersonators, but Frank Ferrante is tops. The award-winning actor, director and playwright will recreate his PBS/New York/London acclaimed portrayal of Marx…
Comedy: Tom Segura
“I want to be 80,” says comedian Tom Segura. “I think I’m perfect for that. Staying home, wearing sweaters and being anti-social.” The comedian, who grew up in Cincinnati, has been busy pitching projects in Hollywood, touring the country with his stand-up and doing a weekly podcast called Your Mom’s House with his wife and…
Onstage: Peter Pan
As a kid in the 1950s, I watched a memorable TV broadcast of a Broadway musical, Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin as the spritely leader of the Lost Boys — flying high above the stage, singing “I’ve Gotta Crow” and doing battle with Captain Hook. Martin was the first of many women to play the…
‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ Captures the Intimacy of Life Lived Well
Adam (Tom Hiddleston) has a death wish, or so it seems. But it is not a consideration borne of hasty impracticality, a sign of immediate depression. Adam has been living with this feeling for some time now, and by some time, let’s just say the time frame is best measured in decades or, more likely,…
Size Matters (Review)
Cincinnati theatergoers have seen Raymond McAnally before. In 2009, he played dimwitted Ellard Sims in The Foreigner at the Cincinnati Playhouse. A year ago at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati he was in Mrs. Mannerly, a two-actor show about a starchy etiquette teacher. His Playhouse role was typical of parts available to an actor weighing more than…
The North Pool (Review)
Critic's Pick You might not think an encounter between a high school vice principal and a student would hold much promise for a riveting drama, but you’d be very wrong in the case of The North Pool, a 2011 play by Rajiv Joseph currently onstage at the Cincinnati Playhouse. For no explained reason Khadim (Eli…
REVIEW: Ellie Goulding at Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati
Ellie Goulding killed it Wednesday night at Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati’s outdoor venue The Shoe. By noon the next day, I was still recovering. I’d feel old, but it’s a sentiment I heard echoed from others who have seen Goulding live. She sucks all the energy out of you in the absolute best way possible. If…
Benefit Concert Tonight for Ailing Local Musician
A diverse collection of local bands will be performing at the Southgate House Revival in Newport tonight, all to help out one of their own. Tonight’s “full house” Southgate show (with music on all three stages) was designed to raise money for Ed Ackerson, a veteran local musician who has played with numerous bands over…
Stage Door: Thoughtful Performances
There are quite a few good options for theatergoing this weekend. First and foremost, I'd point to The North Pool at the Cincinnati Playhouse. It's a newish script from Rajiv Joseph (his play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a runner up for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize), and it's a very timely piece, set…
Founding Fathers Offer Album Preview Saturday
Cincinnati Alt Funk/Dance Rock quartet Founding Fathers have built a buzz locally over the past few years with their energized live shows and infectious, slanted grooves. The band has been hard at work lately in the studio, recording those grooves for a forthcoming full-length. Earlier this year, Founding Fathers gave the public its first taste…
Fort Wright Izzy’s Hosts Beer Dinner
Atlanta-based SweetWater Brewing Company is heading North to the Fort Wright, Ky., location of Izzy's (1965 Highland Park., izzys.com) for an evening of brews paired with the restaurant's famous corned beef at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 8. The paired three-course beer dinner will include an appetizer (grilled bacon-wrapped onion rings with Sriracha dipping sauce),…
Hitting High Notes
HOT: Hitting High Notes While some predicted the legalization of marijuana in Colorado would result in the general destruction of society as we know it, the state itself seems to be enjoying the increased tax revenue and others are financially capitalizing on opportunities the new laws have created. That includes the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, which…
Going Off-Road
M ayor John Cranley’s sudden steering of Cincinnati’s bike plan off-street has forced cycling advocates and administrators to regroup and refocus their attempts to move the city in a more bike-friendly direction. City Council last week passed modified ordinances altering the Central Parkway Bikeway Plan and refocusing $1.9 million for other projects, leaving local cyclists…
Bringing Saxy Back
Dave McDonnell has found Cincinnati to his liking during the nearly five years since he relocated here from his native Chicago. He graduated from University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music program with a degree in Jazz Composition and has taken teaching posts at both CCM and the University of Dayton. McDonnell and his wife settled…
State of the Cycling Union
Cincinnati’s quest to become a bike-friendly city has long been riddled with social and political realities progressive cities moved past decades ago. Drivers here generally believe bikes don’t belong on the road, business owners often view the removal of parking spaces for bike lanes as akin to overturning the Second Amendment and the current City…
Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas with The Yugos
Last fall, Detroit ensemble Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas issued their latest collection of compelling, dynamic songs with the EP Demons. The near-perfect five-track release is perhaps the group’s most impactful effort yet, seamlessly blending classic Soul, slanted AltRock and dark and shadowy gypsy/cabaret sounds into an aural mélange that suggests a supergroup starring Janelle…
The Two Noble Kinsmen (Review)
Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s presentation of the rarely produced The Two Noble Kinsmen is a noble feat, as it put CSC in the company of only six modern theater companies who have also “completed the canon” by performing all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays. Kinsmen, a tragicomedy, is credited to both Shakespeare and John Fletcher, who followed…
Q&A With a Guy Who Doesn’t Have a Car
Back in 2011, CityBeat spoke with downtown resident Jeff Beyer, a guy whose primary mode of transportation is his bicycle, to find out what life in Cincinnati is like for people who don’t have cars. Beyer described the psychological and logistical freedom bicycles allow, along with an aversion to paying for gas and the fun of riding…
Holy Ghost Tent Revival with Wonky Tonk & The Holiday Ramblers
Seven years ago, six like-minded residents of Greensboro, N.C., assembled around the concept of wanting to channel their classic Rock & Roll influences into an acoustic Folk/Jazz/Soul stompathon. The sextet christened its newly minted aggregation with a name that appropriately referenced the members’ similarly slanted musical passions, adrenalized performance style and Saturday-night-meets-Sunday-morning synergy with the…
Tegan and Sara with The Courtneys and Lucius
Tegan and Sara’s seventh full-length, last year’s Heartthrob, is a sleek, synth-driven affair rife with the twins’ interweaving vocals and enough hooks to power a dozen less-accomplished albums. It represents the culmination of an evolution that has seen the raven-haired Canadians move from Lilith Fair-nurtured, Indie Folk upstarts to masters of perpetually heartsick Pop Rock.…
Ellie Goulding
Goodness gracious, I can’t seem to stop listening to Ellie Goulding. The day-glow princess released her second album, Halcyon, more than a year ago. It quickly became an obsession for tons of Synth Pop and Dance music fans — and plenty of less synth-obsessed music lovers, too. Her first album, Lights, was gorgeous. It peaked…
Historic Oratorio Takes the Stage Locally and in New York
On May 7, 1937 — exactly 77 years ago this week — the Cincinnati May Festival presented the American premiere of The Ordering of Moses, an oratorio by Robert Nathaniel Dett, an African American composer, conductor and professor. It was broadcast nationally by NBC radio, received ecstatic ovations as well as glowing local and national…
Girls Guns and Glory
Girls Guns and Glory is an unusual entity in this day and age, a fairly normal band that rides the rail of the early Country music influences found in Rock & Roll. Still, they are modern in their sensibilities and are not a part of the current retro trend in roots music. The group is…
Alice Aycock’s ‘Super Twister’ Brings Chaos to UC Med School
For Alice Aycock, whose public sculpture can be found in cities and parks worldwide, “Super Twister” — her new aluminum-and-steel piece at the CARE/Crawley Building on the UC Medical Center campus — represents ideas about chaos she has spent a lifetime pursuing. The piece’s silver strips, like a twister, build up and widen out from…
Harvesting Local Art
Forward-looking organizers have turned to thinking inside the box for a new way to promote visual artists. Some of the artists, meanwhile, are thinking outside the box to produce 50 small works each. Modeled after community-supported agriculture programs in which participants buy shares in a farm and later receive boxes of produce, community-supported arts initiatives…
$2,676
The reportedly 223 schoolgirls missing from Chibok, northern Nigeria, for three weeks now and snatched by Islamist extremists Boko Haram (meaning “Western education is forbidden” or “sinful”) are just beginning to make an international blip, to gain traction. I first learned of their mass kidnapping from an early Instagram post by Yagazieemezi, a woman from…
