Nigel Benson

Some acts are difficult to ignore.Like former-cosmonauts-turned-quartet Comrade Z.

Strong winds are forecast for Dunedin tomorrow.The Zephyr wind ensemble blows through town with a breathtaking concert which includes composer Gareth Farr's new Chamber Music New Zealand commission Mad Little Machine.

An exhibition of contemporary art acquired by the Hocken Library over the past five years is now on display.

Nobody got a better view of the recent All Blacks v Springboks test match in Dunedin than Tom Beauchamp.

Hey, hey it's the monkeys. The 2012 Otago Festival of the Arts starts today, but visiting performers have already got into the swing of things in Dunedin.

Live entertainment. It is as old as the first peal of laughter.

It is a tough way to urn a living. Three giant pots have been installed in the Standard Insurance building for the Otago Festival of the Arts performance Play.

A rural hall will be celebrated by its community this month. The Momona Hall was built in 1912 for 235.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

A Dunedin doctor is about to dock after an epic ship journey.

The Taieri Gorge Railway turned back the clock in Dunedin yesterday, by reviving a couple of long since phased out suburban train services.

Fact can be stranger than fiction, sometimes. Even in newspapers.

In Joan Holgate's Mosgiel home sits a picture of a young girl looking out from a souvenir photo frame commemorating the coronation of King George VI.

People are used to seeing double at Tahuna Normal Intermediate School. The Dunedin school has 14 sets of twins.

Manuaitu Haggie has learned to be brave before he has learned to read and write.

Otago Festival of the Arts staff had a celebratory beer on Thursday, two weeks before the festival starts.

"Is this sacred music which I have written or music of the devil?" Italian composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini mused after writing Petite Messe Solennelle in 1863.

His official title is chairman of the St Clair Surf Life Saving Club, although he prefers "general dogsbody".

Two little boys come of age in Dunedin today.