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Articles by CM Gorey
Fred Armisen at The Jefferson 10/7
If you’ve followed his career, you understand how difficult it is to say which of Fred Armisen’s characters qualifies as his signature role. Between his tenure on “Saturday Night Live” and the skit show “Portlandia” alone, he’s created so many ridiculous personas who have come to life with idiosyncratic twitching and easily identifiable shtikelach that it overshadows Armisen, the person.
American Shakespeare Center’s The Tempest plays with convention
Is it okay to laugh about colonialism and oppression? If you’ve ever seen “The Inquisition” musical number or the French Revolution scenes from Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I (1981), you know that recasting the darkest periods of mankind as palatable can still fall within the realm of possibility—depending on the threshold of your sensitivities, that is.
Sierra Ferrell at Ting Pavilion 9/8
Executed well, songwriting is a skill that stands up to just about any style. That is to say, even if the dressing up of a track is not to your liking, if you’re discerning, you won’t be able to deny the reassuring solidity of what’s buried under scrunched-up bundles of tulle and organza. Such is my experience taking in the discography of Sierra Ferrell.
Dominic Fike at The Ting Pavilion 8/19
It’s difficult to say if Dominic Fike’s output is the inevitable result of our multicultural musical monoculture (an oxymoronic irony for sure) or if he and his team’s creative choices are attempting to contribute to its continued dominance. While he could very well be from Los Angeles, New York, or maybe even Atlanta, Fike, a product of a fractured childhood and drug addiction, is from Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The Barber of Seville at The Paramount 7/17 & 7/19
For all of the negative-energy detritus that Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) left smeared across popular culture, no one rioted upon its release—including the people camped out by movie theaters to see it first. But as the origin tale for a beloved sci-fi trilogy, there was no way it was going to meet such high expectations. Prequels can be tough. Gioachino Rossini’s masterpiece, The Barber of Seville (1868), is a prequel, too.
Babe Haven at The Southern 6/24
When I was in college in the early 1990s, I got swept up in the Riot Grrrl music movement despite the fact that I wasn’t female, Queer, or even female-presenting. Sure, I wore a skirt and a shit-ton of makeup to go out—but this was New York City and I was at my gothiest with nothing to lose outside of an occasional beat down after drunkenly mouthing off.
Pablo Cruise at the Jefferson Theater 6/1
Has there ever been a musical group more committed to the conceptual panacea known as yacht rock than Pablo Cruise? That hindsight-made genre can be found in the name. You can see it in the Pablo Cruise logo: the cheesiest sunset and palm tree art this side of a “My Parents Went to Florida and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” design. And the sound?
Fonville x Fribush at Rivanna River Company 5/16
A B3 model Hammond organ from 1962, like the type Sam Fribush sets himself up behind, weighs upwards of 310 pounds—and that’s just the console unit alone. Throw the bench and a Leslie speaker in, and you’re easily crossing the 400-pound threshold. When your instrument of choice rivals the usual transportation concerns drummers contend with—their whole painful lives—you’ve really committed yourself.
Art history, ballet, and musical theater coalesce in Little Dancer
Little Dancer: A New Musical, an original play written and produced by local daughter-father duo Olivia and Chris Colvin, is set for its stage debut. Inspired by the life of Marie van Goethem, the young ballerina who modeled for Edgar Degas’ famous sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1878–81), the performance imagines how van Goethem’s years beyond the spotlight may have played out—in the absence of a clear historical record.
Arts Fishing Club at The Southern 4/28
What is it about music as an art form that pushes some people to demand authenticity from those they listen to? Honesty of vision is often expected of musicians in a way that visual or dramatic artists are generally free to ignore—at the very least, there’s supposedly a virtue in musical earnestness that audiences are supposed to laud. I have a problem with that because it’s irrelevant to the end result.
Digitalis Electronic Music Festival 2026 at Old Cabell Hall 4/14
For a few years now, the UVA music department has taken to highlighting the works of its most progressive and conceptually minded students at the Digitalis Electronic Music Festival each spring. As a loose genre name, electronic music can be confounding to wrap your head around—the classification is broad, and never really reveals what you’re in for. A 12-hour rave of hardcore techno by dueling DJs? An older musician hunched over metal boxes employing a theremin in search of a melodic line?
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 at Ruth Caplin Theatre 3/26-28 and 4/1-3
It’s got a mouthful of a title: Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. But we can be thankful that Dave Malloy, the musical’s original composer, lyricist, playwright, and orchestrator confined himself to adapting only a sliver of War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy’s monumental tome.
ASC’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is a jolly good time
I’ve seen a few one-man or one-woman plays over the years and they’ve all had one thing in common: monotony. Being exposed to that kind of sameness adds up when you’re facing a lone actor strutting and fretting their ass off for 90 minutes or more—tasked with embodying the same persona for the entirety of the work. Exhausting.
Diana Krall at The Paramount 3/22
Jazz is a big genre. So big, in fact, that many subgenres have emerged throughout its more than 100-year history. From the provocative connotations of its New Orleans origins to the ever-present smooth variety unobtrusively filling places such as the corridors of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, there’s no question that jazz has morphed into a safe music catch-all.
I-Jen Fang and Ayn Balija at Old Cabell Hall 3/15
The Piedmont Duo Roll over, Beethoven—the spring 2026 portion of the UVA Chamber Music Series is not built on composer names that a novice would recognize, or pieces played on standard instrumentation configurations. They’ve already done a bassoon-focused event, so try this on for size: percussion and viola. The Piedmont Duo highlights two music professors, I-Jen Fang and Ayn Balija, performing percussion- and string-related interpretations of pieces written in the last 40 years or so.
Rory Scovel at The Jefferson 3/4
A lot of indie singer-songwriters stop in Charlottesville on their tours, and many of them are not to my taste. So when I discovered that Rory Scovel was coming to town, I was reasonably certain I was in for another acoustic guitar-picking, overly emotive turnip. To my delight, I was completely wrong. You may be smarter and more with it than I am (not difficult, really), so you know that Scovel is a standup comedian, writer, and actor.
Jackson and the Janks at Dürty Nelly's 2/24
It’s a little unfair to call Jackson and the Janks’ music old-fashioned. Though, honestly, that’s exactly what it is. But that’s too vague. It doesn’t feel as prudish as that catch-all people born after the year 2000 sometimes throw around. The twangy guitar and slightly overdriven, whiskey-soaked vocals brighten the ’50s blues-based rock ‘n’ roll spotlighting Jackson Lynch’s voice and songwriting. Bereft of a bass player, the low end is held down with massive honking, deep rumbling sax work.
Tanael Joachim at The Southern 2/22
Tanael Joachim holds the kind of enviable, disarming charm that allows him to shift from insights on religion, immigration, and communication, to explicitly disgusting one-liners. But that’s not his bread and butter. Rather, like most great standups, his jokes keep audiences off-kilter by navigating topics of intellectual interest. Of course, when we all least expect it, he’ll drop a filthy zinger about having sex with someone’s grandmother.
Schuyler Jackson at UVA’s Old Cabell Hall on 1/30
I don’t know about you, but when I think of chamber music, the bassoon is not the first—nor the second or third—instrument that comes to mind. A standard string quartet, or some seven-piece collaboration among instrumentalists seated around a piano, captures what I imagine most of us would anticipate for a highbrow Friday evening. Maybe it’s just less common to hear the big bastards (bassoons are usually upwards of 4 and a half feet fully assembled) absent of their orchestral brethren.
Jon Spencer with Space Saver at The Southern Cafe & Music Hall 1/22
Since the mid-’80s, Jon Spencer has been fronting bands and serving as a notable supporting character in what the world used to call alternative music. Despite using the word blues in everything from his group names to song titles to lyrics, he’s been steadily pumping out rock ’n’ roll in the traditionally dirty sense of the term, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the original formula.
The Grand Kyiv Ballet Presents: Snow White at The Paramount Theater 1/4 - C-VILLE Weekly
You’ve likely seen the classic Disney cartoon—and maybe even the Magic Kingdom’s live action $270 million stinker from earlier this year. Now you can witness the beauty of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in ballet form when this family-friendly version arrives in town for a Sunday afternoon show. The Grand Kyiv Ballet, which features some of the leading dancers from the National Opera and Ballet of Ukraine, stages a performance that V. Borkovsky and S.
Shakey Graves with Clover County at The Jefferson Theater 12/20
An Austin, Texas, musician and actor with a history that runs through Los Angeles, Shakey Graves (Alejandro Rose-Garcia) does an admirable job writing dynamic Americana that avoids cliché. He’s amassed a discography of four full-lengths, a fistful of EPs, and a pair of compilations since gaining attention that netted him the unusual position of official busker for a Mumford & Sons tour 14 years ago.
The Vienna Boys Choir at The Paramount Theater 12/13
When I asked my special lady if she wanted to go see the Vienna Boys Choir (actual name: Wiener Sängerknaben), she didn’t hesitate to tell me it couldn’t be lower on the list of things she’d like to do. I wanted to be sure, since we could catch them here in Charlottesville and in the Austrian capital where we’ll be on vacation in a few weeks. As much as I enjoy most forms of classical music, I have to admit choral isn’t my favorite either.
The Heavy Heavy with Laney Jones and the Spirits at The Southern Café & Music Hall 12/6
Photo: Nicholas O'Donnell The Heavy Heavy isn’t the first outfit from the U.K. to present as American. In fact, 61 years since the British Invasion, it’s not shocking to hear lead singers who sound like they’re straight out of Nashville or the Hollywood Hills introduce their next song with a Cockney accent, mirroring a character from your favo(u)rite BBC comedy.
Vitaly at The Paramount Theater 11/28
In our technology-driven time when we can fabricate A.I. videos of the most fantastic, improbable scenarios on demand, and when news sources are challenged for their veracity, I feel compelled to ask: Do we still have the capacity for the age-old excitement generated by magic?
Iraqi amateurs take the cake in 'The President's Cake' at Violet Crown 10/26
Photo: Virginia Film Festival The decision to use untrained actors can yield uncertain results. One possible outcome is the kind of ham-fisted, melodramatic overacting that renders a movie unwatchable. Another is cinematic gold. Such is the case with The President’s Cake. The sometimes humorous drama is a moving story set and shot in Iraq, during the 1990s under the authoritarian rule of Saddam Hussein in the country’s southern wetland region.
Monster mania - C-VILLE Weekly
Photo: Virginia Film Festival As a Halloween warm-up, the Virginia Film Festival’s After Hours collection offers four monster movies, even though none are being screened particularly late at night. Curated by Igor Shteyrenberg of the Miami Jewish Film Festival and horror fest Popcorn Frights, this thematic group of what the VFF calls “films that walk on the wild side” deals in various strengths of scare-inducing cinema.
Madi Diaz at The Southern Café & Music Hall 10/13 - C-VILLE Weekly
Madi Diaz is overcome with emotion. And she certainly lets her heart rule her hands and her voice. Diaz’s kind of heartfelt music either works for you or it doesn’t; that is to say that someone baring her soul with soft determination either resonates with you and your own life experiences, or you shudder at the prospect of having to deal with an emoting woman with an acoustic guitar headed in your direction.
Castle Rat at The Southern Café & Music Hall 10/3
Have you ever seen Stunt Rock? You’d remember if you did. The 1978 trash cinema is some kind of musical/action/mockumentary about an Aussie stuntman who arrives in L.A., meeting up with a relative who performs in a terribly confused band called Sorcery. It’s the band I want to talk about: theatrically adventurous though musically inept, it incorporates a King of the Wizard character who fights the Prince of Darkness during what’s to be considered the highlight of its show.
The Castellows at The Jefferson Theater 10/4
Three blonde sisters from Nashville by way of small-town Georgia perform neotraditional country music as The Castellows. Though they’re related, Castellows isn’t their last name; it’s Balkcom. The Instagrammable young ladies carry three-part harmonies through the voices of two of three triplets Eleanor (guitars) and Powell (banjo), while their younger sister—not one of the triplets—Lily sings lead. I don’t know why the other triplet sister isn’t in the band.
The Vivaldi Project at Old Cabell Hall 10/3 - C-VILLE Weekly
Since 2006, The Vivaldi Project has been stringing audiences along with a host of engaging programs focused on Baroque and classical works. Co-directors Elizabeth Field (violin) and Allison Nyquist (viola) have created an impactful trio with the help of Stephanie Vial (cello); for their performance at UVA’s cozy but stately Old Cabell Hall on Friday, they’ll welcome faculty violinist David Sariti.
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory at The Jefferson Theater 9/25 - C-VILLE Weekly
Photo: Devin Oktar Yalkin When you’re ambitious, you do what you can to chisel out your chunk of fame. So what has Sharon Van Etten been doing?
Bob Mould at The Southern Café & Music Hall 9/26
According to the internet, Bob Mould performed at the Marquee in New York City on March 8, 1991, touring his second solo album, Black Sheets of Rain. As an 18-year-old, I won two tickets to the show by calling into the local Long Island alternative radio station around 2am.
Black Violin at The Paramount Theater 9/30
For a classical strings-meets-hip-hop beats duo, there’s something very unexpected about what Black Violin has become: easy to listen to. That’s both good and bad. Violist/vocalist Wil Baptiste and violinist Kev Marcus have made a choice to evolve over 21 years of fusing disparate styles. But as is often the case, time and repeated exposure can limit the impact of singularity with music and art.
MICO with Vaultboy at The Jefferson Theater 9/18
Here’s a failed movie pitch: A 1980s-era top 40 solo artist of some success finds his way into a time machine and emerges in 2025 with the songwriting and production knowledge of all the years he missed in between. Yet in spite of that new understanding, he stays comforted by the tastes that defined his native time. No, you probably wouldn’t see that stupid movie, and I wouldn’t either. Though the premise is a decent roundabout explanation for what’s going on with MICO.
Deafheaven with Harm’s Way and I Promised The World at The Jefferson Theater 9/17 - C-VILLE Weekly
Reverberating walls of guitars, manic drumming, screeching vocals, and ponderous lyrics with obfuscated motives give a sense of Bay Area-bred Deafheaven’s typical touchstones. Beyond those descriptors, the band has expanded its repertoire of sounds and arrangements to provide a freshness that demonstrates growth without abandoning its roots. The latest release, Lonely People with Power (2025), develops in strains similar to previous works while yielding unexpected moments.
Mannequin Pussy with Gouge Away at The Jefferson Theater 9/16 - C-VILLE Weekly
I am impressed by Mannequin Pussy. The band makes contemporary indie rock that excels without posturing or abducting the riffs of pre-internet college radio’s heyday. MP writes melodies that sound as if no other option would make as much sense or satisfy the notes. This forgone conclusion of artistry is especially true on the choruses. The group packs the punch of the Pixies, and knows how to jangle along in those reverby, clean, jazzy chords that often disintegrate into warming fuzz layers.
Adam Sandler at John Paul Jones Arena 9/12
Adam Sandler still makes jokes. You may be Gen X or a Boomer and think of him as the doofus next to Chris Farley on “Saturday Night Live,” but aside from being an extremely well-paid Hollywood movie star, writer, and media producer, he’s also a musician who plays for laughs. It may surprise you to learn that, dating back to 1993, Sandler has released nine albums, four of which are soundtracks from his films and specials—the latest being last year’s Adam Sandler: Love You.
Soul Meets Body with Shagwüf and Ladada at The Southern Café and Music Hall 8/21
If you don’t have anything nice to say, word on the street is you’re not supposed to say anything. This Soul Meets Body / Shagwüf / Ladada show is an event worth looking into. Soul Meets Body’s record release party comes with a caveat, though. While I have no idea what SMB cooked up for its soon-to-be released record, I sincerely hope that it has made a concerted effort to choose a side; the band’s slew of singles and its singular EP did not fully commit to a stylistic direction.
Emmylou Harris at Ting Pavilion 8/1
Legendary singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris brings her talents to the Ting Pavilion in support of a benefit show for Charlottesville’s Free Clinic. Not many other top-of-list names excelling in her chosen genres can outshine Harris—neither for the soft power of her inimitable voice or her laundry list of records and recognition as a Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, Billboard Century Award recipient, and Grammy Award winner ad nauseam.
Hot Water Music at The Jefferson Theater 7/28
If veteran Gainesville, Florida, band Hot Water Music is considered punk, then perhaps nothing is punk. In this stage of late capitalism and post-post-post-modern 21st-century rock, it may be pointless to even ask. We old people all realize our musical tribes have basically been absorbed by the monoculture of social media and the blurred boundaries of genre-mushing that pop stars mine like the worst kind of plundering colonists—or selfie-seeking tourists.
Üga Büga with Greenhead and Diseased Earth at the Southern 7/26
The best thing about Charlottesville’s Üga Büga is that it’s hard to describe. I’ve seen it called “Southern sludge beard metal” and “hog rock” (likely in reference to its debut, 2024’s Year of the Hog), but neither seems entirely fair. It’s sludge-ish, but not like those who plunder the slo-mo riffery of early Black Sabbath with a detuned, lowest-note goal. Going by the photo, every member of the band’s got some kind of beard, but they’re not into over-the-top ’80s-era, ZZ Top-length territory.
Nickelodeon’s 'The SpongeBob Musical' at Four County Players through 8/10
For families—that is, people with kids—there may be no better local entertainment this summer than driving out to Barboursville for The SpongeBob Musical by Four County Players. Sure, you could go see the latest Pixar-y mega-movie, but films aren’t able to offer one critical element: real live humans performing with the thrill of theatrical danger. That perilous condition can only come from a live performance when anything and everything has the potential to go terribly wrong at any moment.
A jazzed up 'Winter’s Tale' works wonders
American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse, Through August 2 As far as Shakespeare plays go, The Winter’s Tale is stuffed full of the tropes audiences are familiar with from the Bard’s more well-tread works: jealous rage aimed at assumed infidelity, disguised identities, forbidden love, and misuse of power. But in the reliably capable hands of the cast at Staunton’s Blackfriars Playhouse, The Winter’s Tale takes on a life of its own in a manner that sets it apart.
Fantastic Cat - C-VILLE Weekly
As a cynical 50-something who is more likely to win the Mega Millions than be impressed by a folk rock supergroup that he’s never listened to before, I have to admit I was quickly won over by Fantastic Cat. I was predisposed to poo-poo whatever the band was serving up.
Ken Burns - C-VILLE Weekly
Monticello Friday 7/4 In these tense times, you have to wonder what the Fourth of July means to us in 2025. Independence from the English crown, sure, but with No Kings protests and a growing lack of faith in major political parties, the democratic intentions of the founding fathers may reverberate with added gravity—at least for those who are paying attention.
Aimee Mann - C-VILLE Weekly
The Jefferson Theater Thursday 6/19 You really have to hand it to someone who hit rock bottom multiple times across a career, yet consistently managed to dust off and get back to business. Aimee Mann weathered an early success comedown with ’80s outfit ‘Til Tuesday, stepped out on her own, and got the proverbial shaft from her record label after not meeting sales expectations.
The Paramount Theater 6/21–6/22 Man meets woman. Woman seduces man. Man leaves wife. Woman leaves man for a bullfighter. All hell breaks loose. It’s a story as old as—well, as old as 1845, when Prosper Mérimée wrote a novella about it. Thirty years later, French composer Georges Bizet enlisted librettists Henri Meilhac and Lodovic Halévy to shape it into his most famous work, the four-act opera Carmen.
Friday 5/23, Ace Biscuit & Barbecue Headlining a night of uncompromising sonics, self-described “minced-out billy gore” three-piece Septic Vomit unleashes its gross outtake on extreme metal-core at—where else?—a barbecue joint.
The Fab Four—The Ultimate Tribute - C-VILLE Weekly
Thursday 5/16, The Paramount Theater For many rock musicians, the idea of being in a cover band is about as low as you can sink: You’re running through someone else’s songs over and over, impersonating their look while aping their playing style, and, worst of all, there’s the potential for disappointing audiences so familiar with the music, they’ll immediately recognize if anything is amiss. So you can only imagine how much higher the stakes are for people performing as The Beatles.
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