Culture

When the spotlight shone on the 8-year-old boy, it gave him a new life. The spotlight was part of the show of Lance Burton, a former Las Vegas stage magician who retired in 2010 after 31 years of performing. The 8-year-old boy was Tom Novelly, whom the light beckoned to the stage to place his hands on an empty bird-cage,...

This weekend will be a busy one for the Hillsdale College Music department, with three performances involving a number of styles and groups scheduled to take place in Howard Music Building’s McNamara Rehearsal Hall. No tickets are required for any of the three events, which are free to any who wish to attend. The Hillcats Faculty Jazz Ensemble will perform...

Sufjan Stevens supposedly recorded “Carrie & Lowell” in the living room of his Brooklyn apartment. Such is the closeness of the album that you, the listener, could be sitting on an adjacent couch, humming along with the apartment’s air conditioning unit. In past albums, Stevens presented his emotionally damaged myths with bombastic kitsch orchestras, either analog or digital. Even “Seven...

If there’s one thing I’ll take away from the Great Books sequence here at Hillsdale, it’s that in great literature every sentence, every phrase, and every word has a purpose. The same principle can be applied to any form of art, whether painting, music, theater, or film. A great artist is a purposeful artist. Nothing he produces lacks meaning. For...