Fifteen years ago, Katie Smythe was perplexed about what what The Nutcraker was really about. She went on to recreate the classic holiday ballet, giving it a Memphis twist.

The production, The Nut Remix, features songs from Duke Ellington's jazz remix to Tchaikovsky's Nuckcraker Suite, including authenic Spanish, Chinese and African dances, as well as performances by Charles "Lil Buck" Riley, who stars in the live-action Disney film, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

On this Checking on the Arts, Smythe explains what makes this 2018 weekend performance so speical, compared to years' past. 

A veteran of Memphis bands such as Snowglobe and Jeffrey James and the Haul, Jeff Hulett is no newcomer to the Memphis music scene. Hulett's latest album, Around These Parts, features a variety of Memphis musicians, such as Luke White and Jonathan Kirkscey.

Hulett's album release party is Saturday (Dec. 15) at Memphis Made Brewing from 4-6 p.m.

Under the cover of darkness, the cranes came for Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest a year ago this month. They plucked him -- and the horse he rode in on -- right off the pedestal he'd been standing on for more than a century.

The holidays are the time for entertaining. 

While it’s hard to admit, I love sappy holiday movies.

The way to a person's heart is most definitely through their stomach.

It may not have been a surprise that Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith was elected to the U.S. Senate in Mississippi in this week's runoff. The red state hasn't elected a Democrat to that position since the 1980s. But Hyde-Smith's off-the-cuff remarks about attending a public hanging (which she called an "exaggerated expression of regard") inflamed the state's liberal voters, who decried her lack of apology, and galvanized Republicans, who felt the national media gave it too much attention.