This month, he’ll join about 100 farflung relatives for a reunion on the Lake Michigan dunes, following a 56-year tradition. He grew up in tiny St. Ignace, at the north end of the Mackinac Bridge, where many of his fellow Finns still dwell among the pines and pasties.

The Lansing Concert Band got an unexpected bonanza when Sullivan, band director at Charlotte High School since 1983, decided to take advantage of Michigan’s earlyretirement incentive for veteran school workers and step down July 1. Sullivan had planned to stay five more years, but Charlotte’s loss is Lansing’s gain.

Last month, when the Allen Neighborhood Center’s young volunteers put the JAM grant together, Whitaker was a supporter and behindthe-scenes adviser. The Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs agreed to fund the project through its New Leaders Arts Council program.

Lansing never saw the Mark Twain bleached by myth ' the white-haired, white-suited icon in the postage stamp and the Disneyland riverboat ride. Instead, Michigan’s 24-year-old capital got a 35-year-old vagabond, a red-haired rough boy, a shotgun satirist setting out for big game.

By filling a rare hole in multi-reedman Joe Lovano’s crusher schedule, the Wharton Center popped one of the world’s greatest jazz players on top of East Lansing’s Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, like a great, big, goateed cherry. They also added another festival to the festival.

One of the most well-received new works of the year, Pamela Madsen’s “Sea Change,” is on the docket for next week’s concert. “It’s beautiful,” Verdehr said. “It has spoken poetry in it and it sounds like sea waves.” The Verdehrs premiered it in Washington and Houston last year.

At first peep, everything seems settled in Lansing jazzman Neil Gordon’s world. His percolating chamber-style trio (with bassist Ed Fedewa and drummer Larry Ochiltree) has fully jelled, and is celebrating the release of "It Takes Three," its first CD on Thursday, June 10, at Moriarty’s Pub.

Brass bolts of electricity converge on your head as you walk under the transom ' a support beam above a door or window ' over the north entrance to the Ottawa Power Station. Each door has an elegant stainless steel silhouette of the power plant’s ziggurat design, studded with dozens of bright brass bosses.

Absurd stories ' unless you run them in reverse. Several times a year, understaffed arts groups have to lay down their trumpets, chisels and scripts to work on spreadsheets, cost-revenue charts and other hoops their major funders put in front of them..

8 p.m. Saturday, May 22 MI.Funk Grand River Avenue Turner Street, Lansing Also performing Saturday: Sun Messengers 2 p.m.; Global Village 4 p,m.; Valerie Barrymore Foundation of Funk 6 p.m.; Soul Xpress 10 p.m. $20 in advance; $25 at gate www.MiFunk.com.