Arts & More

If some producer had approached you in the early 1980s and asked you to invest in a lavish stage musical based on a Victor Hugo novel full of death and despair, persecution and prostitution, there's probably an excellent chance you might have given them a very cold shoulder. But how could you have had any way of knowing that Les Misérables would turn into one of theater's most astonishing success stories? It is estimated that over 60 million people have seen the show in one form or another. 

Saugatuck Township resident Suzanne Jenkins has just released the first book in her series called The Greeks of Beaubien Street. The book is part murder mystery, part drama.The main character, Jill Zannos, is a homicide detective whose family owns a grocery store in Greektown in Detroit. Jenkins says Jill is always walking a fine line between her rough, modern job and her old-fashioned family. But Jill soon finds out that her family has a few secrets that makes her realize they are not as perfect as they seem.

Local jazz pianist and composer Ron Di Salvio is a renaissance man. He teaches jazz at Kalamazoo College, runs his own heat treating business out of Homer, Michigan, and even made up his own shorthand called Deltadiatonics. Di Salvio taught himself piano, but before that he played accordion.