Concerts & Events in Ann Arbor

Perfect for ringing in autumn with the calming clack of lobster shells, the Back East Feast offers a taste of Atlantic seafare in the heart of Michigan. The feast itself starts at 5:30 p.m., so before getting in line to load up on corn on the cob, guests can stretch their hunger muscles while listening to the live tunes of Hidden Agenda Band and drinking one of the house wines or a Miller Lite.

The energetic hosts at My Girly Party plan lavish birthday parties and events chock full of entertainment and interactive fun. Their roster of parties—which range in theme from princess to pajama party and can be held in their private party space or on location—incorporate high-energy karaoke, tea parties, and fashion shows. The hosts also pamper their pint-sized guests with mini facials and manicures. My Girly Party also hosts soirees designed specifically for Girl Scouts, enriching their scout experience with activities like dance parties, photo shoots, and tying up stuffed animals with complex square knots.

Part dance party, part costume bash, and all spectacle, The Haunted Kingdom sprawls across 65,000 square feet. DJs, fortunetellers, and local celebrities shamble about an eye-defying dance floor flush with thousands of revelers dressed in their best getups. Lights pulse to body-shaking bass as silk dancers twist like spiders from the ceiling above dramatically lit skeletons. For this year’s spectacular, the organizers aim hard to break the Guinness world record for largest Halloween event.

Each year at the onset of summer, the costumed bards, knights, and royalty at Mayfaire Renaissance Festival welcome visitors to enjoy rollicking entertainment and peruse handcrafted wares throughout the wooded festival grounds. Attendees step into a world of jousters and jesters, replete with Renaissance-era songs and dances and smartphones fashioned from mutton. All-ages-appropriate comedians regale families with zany antics, and visitors can ask mystical tarot-card readers questions about the future.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s gifted tunesmiths squeeze euphonious notes through their woodwind, brass, string, and percussion instruments, building upon a 125-year history of symphonic sounds in the Motor City. The orchestra's performance of Franck's Symphony in D Minor pollinates the air with soaring French classics, swaying back and forth to the baton semaphoring of guest conductor Hélène Bouchez and the piano mastery of 17-year old prodigy Conrad Tao. A pair of Debussy compositions inaugurates the evening with ear-swooning melodies that bounce of the antique theater's ornate, golden structure, which was built in 1919. During the evening’s main and final piece, Franck's Symphony in D Minor, Chinese-American Conrad Tao showcases his full repertoire, which has earned him ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer award for eight consecutive years, just two notches shy of earning him a free carrying case for a grand piano.

The 17th-annual festival boasts an impressive lineup of esteemed musicians and emerging artists performing work from the classical chamber repertoire as well as contemporary compositions. The festival’s theme this year is “The Poet Speaks,” and the June 12 performance features the music and poetry of Lera Auerbach in a piano, cello, and soprano trio, as well as the Haydn Piano Trio in C Major and Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major. Forty-five minutes prior to the concert, which begins at 8 p.m., Auerbach will present an educational prelude about her music and writing.