For most of his career, August Wilson focused his plays on Pittsburgh's Hill District, a predominantly black neighborhood that saw its once-good prospects fade into poverty and blight. Wilson sees the community as a microcosm of America, where many African-Americans ...

To writers, scholars and aficionados of mordant wit, Oscar Wilde bequeathed a quotation for nearly every occasion. For instance: On dating: "The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and ...

In his apartment in New York's famed Chelsea Hotel, pianist Bruce Levingston surrounds himself with mementos of his Southern upbringing.

The challenge for the musical "next to normal" is to wring some beauty out of the story of a family devastated by mental illness.

In 1902, the home gadget maker Hamilton Beach (now known for its commercial ice shavers and fruit juicers) patented what was then only the world's fifth electrical appliance. Behind the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle and toaster, this new electromechanical ...

Billie Holiday had one foot in the grave in early 1959 when her doctor told her she had to give up alcohol or die.

"Do you believe in clubs for women?" asks one old chap of another. "Sure! If every other form of persuasion fails," comes the reply. Thus goes the sporting persiflage in Eve Merriam's satire, "The Club," set in a posh gentlemen's ...

When Heidi Grant Murphy starts singing, you marvel at how a human voice can do what it does. Murphy's sweet, subtle, crystalline vocals elevated the luminously performed works in Saturday night's IRIS Orchestra concert at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre.

Novelty in the performing arts is rare in Memphis, mostly because it's risky. Nearly every artist yearns to put on the Never-Before-Seen Spectacle that will leave people in rapture for years to come. They want to tell their stories in ...

Has the term "classical music" outlived its usefulness?

Playhouse on the Square has announced its 2012-13 season, which starts next August.

On Christmas Eve, two days after he's scheduled to wrap up his current tour with the acclaimed Irish Tenors, Finbar Wright will be on a jet plane headed across the Atlantic, racing back to spend the holiday in his native ...

Saturday night's IRIS Orchestra concert was an all-strings triumph of programming and performance, again showing the deft touch maestro Michael Stern has in creating a presentation that is both familiar and adventurous.

Better than any writer of his era, Charles Dickens knew how to draw tears from the most arid of eyeballs. It's a testament to his 168-year-old novella, "A Christmas Carol," that we still celebrate the holiday season by remembering Ebenezer ...

Every few years, whenever Cathy Rigby hits the road with another national tour of "Peter Pan," Playhouse on the Square has to drum up a different December musical to entertain the thousands of schoolchildren bused in for their holiday field ...