On Wednesday, March 13 at 8 PM, a handful of Iowa City residents entered The Englert Theatre. Instead of filing into the usual theatre seats, listeners were invited on stage. A group of approximately fifty chairs was nestled around a piano, a music stand, and a Mac computer. The stage was otherwise rather bare and decorated sparsely: bricks, pipes, blue lights, and dulled yellow lights created a calm, relaxed environment. Everyone comfortably chatted, visited the bar, and eagerly awaited the start of the concert. Eventually, Valgeir Sigurdsson himself came out on stage followed by Nadia Sirota, a violist with whom he … Continued
Places called Babylon don’t usually meet excellent ends: Tom Lin on Babylon, South Dakota
In the midst of his small office on the fourth floor of the EPB, looking out onto the Stanley Museum of Art, surrounded by two well-populated book shelves and a Kym Day painting of a cowboy feeding a horse Lo Mein, Tom Lin reclines in his swivelback chair and invites me to take a seat.
