Booking a concert series is a lot like baking your favorite dish for a dinner party, but without a recipe. You have some idea of the ingredients and steps involved based on previous experience, but each time your measurements vary and you use a different brand of oil or flour. Sometimes you …

As young as Traverse City’s The Accidentals may be, their breadth of experience as road-tested touring veterans and willingness to showcase other Michigan artists has benefited numerous acts in recent years, from Olivia Mainville to Jake Allen.

The song “Nights That Won’t Happen,” from the first and only album by Purple Mountains, opens with and frequently returns to the line, “The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind.”

New releases

EMPIRE — There’s just something about experiencing live music without being surrounded by a giant crowd.

I woke up last week to the news that Harold Prince had died. For many I am certain this was nothing more than a news item of passing interest. However for me, it was so much more.

TRAVERSE CITY — Music has been a lifelong obsession for Chris Michels.

The new Netflix documentary “The Great Hack” begins with David Carroll, a digital media professor in the United Kingdom, asking a class of students whether they’d ever seen an ad on Facebook that convinced them their devices were spying on them, perhaps an eerie digital reference to a conver…

New releases

INTERLOCHEN — Americana legend Lyle Lovett, classical flutist James Galway and “sonic” string quartet Kittel & Co. top the 2019-20 Interlochen Presents lineup at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

TRAVERSE CITY — The Grand Traverse region is about to appear on hundreds of canvases, all of them filled over the course of just one week.

ACME — John Williams might not be a household name, but movie fans have heard his music in everything from “Jurassic Park” and “Indiana Jones” to “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter.”

The muted needle trumpet theme fades in to the darkened set of an alley bar as perhaps the most unique film host of all time appears. Impeccable suit, broad colorful tie, cigar and Four Roses bourbon are close at hand. It’s Eddie Muller in his TCM sanctuary of film noir.

For The Bootstrap Boys, it’s all about creating a vintage country sound that resonates with fans wherever they play — but especially in northern Michigan.

My friends and I loved “Pulp Fiction” so much that anytime we lacked social plans on a weekend night (almost always), we’d throw in a battered VHS copy of Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 breakthrough film and start watching until we got bored (almost never). I don’t know if it changed my life, but …

New releases

TRAVERSE CITY — The Traverse City Film Festival has six parties, but the one that has really captured the imagination of Events Director Kristen Messner is the Filmmaker Party.

Over the years, you may have heard of an event called the Outdoor Art Fair. The event has been occurring for almost 60 years — 59 to be precise — and it was started by a group called Northwestern Michigan Artists and Craftsmen, the pre-pre-cursor to Crooked Tree Arts Center in Traverse City.

As Ludington guitarist Eric Langejans puts it, Full Cord started 12 years ago as “a total fluke.”

It took a while, but I finally thanked my parents for the decision two decades ago that I thought was the greatest tragedy of my adolescence — forbidding me from attending Woodstock ‘99. A simpler time, for sure, when I had the capacity to be upset about not seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers …

New releases

TRAVERSE CITY — Michelle Mazzarella flies through the air, her ankles wrapped in lengths of silk, gracefully easing into the inverted splits.

How many of you find joy dancing in the house, snapping images for #instagram or singing in the car? Maybe you dig stop-motion animation or telling jokes.

BEAVER ISLAND — The Beaver Island Music Festival website proudly flaunts a quote from an attendee who proclaims it’s the “best place on planet earth.”

My existential fixation on tennis generally, and Roger Federer particularly, is so acute that whenever he suffers a bruising defeat, people text me to make sure I’m doing OK. After Sunday’s Wimbledon final — during which Federer lost an epic five-set match to his younger rival, Novak Djokovi…

New releases

TRAVERSE CITY — It’s “Traverse City Weekend” on C-SPAN.

EAST JORDAN — Some of the most extraordinary experiences are those brought to life by imagination — be it one’s own or that of another.

We have entered the month of July. The year 2019 is halfway in the past.

Summer is festival time in northern Michigan and one of my favorites is the Traverse City Film Festival. The event invites many filmmakers and actors to Traverse City. These guests are each assigned to a driver who helps them get to their screenings and events. The drivers become ambassadors…

Karl Marlantes knew the first draft of his novel was too long when he sent it to his editor, but he was surprised when he didn’t get a response. One week turned into two weeks, turned into three … turned into 10. Finally, his editor sent a six-word email: “Great stuff. Too much of it.”

Formed more than a decade ago, northern Michigan’s Galactic Sherpas have made Blissfest a summertime tradition.

New releases

BEULAH — Artist Janet Krueger was influenced early on by her late father’s passion for protecting Crystal Lake.

The Michael Scott GIF circulated quickly on social media: Dunder-Mifflin’s branch manager shouting, “No! God! Please! No!” in response to something incomprehensibly minor. But the news late in June that prompted its widespread sharing was anything but: “The Office” is leaving Netflix.

REED CITY — Rudy Grahek’s inner child is kindly, comical and, thankfully, ageless. And even if his pace has shifted to a gear between slow down and sit down, his life-long drive has remained true to course: live life in the fast lane of laughter.