Podcasts by BPR Arts and Performance
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Asheville artist Zander Stefani wrangles his anxiety one brush stroke at a time from 2022-02-10T12:45
The word anxiety comes up often as Zander Stefani describes his life. He said he channels some of it into his abstract artwork. "It's like I'm painting this peaceful, serene world that I can create...
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Asheville playwright Jamie Knox has collaborators, some of whom speak from within from 2022-02-03T12:41
A lot of artists will tell you an inner voice propels them to create. The Asheville playwright Jamie Knox says, for her, it's often a voice that isn't her own. "I connect on a different level to pe...
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Stewart and Owen adapt, dance and roll with the pandemic from 2022-01-25T11:29
Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are rehearsing with two other dancers inside a studio at the Wortham Center for Performing Arts . Everyone is masked. "OK Janice, so can you lift your eyes when you d...
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'Terrible' musicians John and Cinnamon Kennedy are driven to save peers from overdoses from 2022-01-12T09:45
John and Cinnamon Kennedy formed their first band before they knew how to play their instruments. "One day, John and our neighbor were like 'We're making a band you're going to be our drummer.'" Ci...
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Two new books are the fruit after many years of labor for Asheville author Heather Newton from 2022-01-05T11:10:47
Heather Newton 's mother has written nine novels for young adults. She's also the first to read and critique whatever Newton thinks is ready to go out into the world. "More importantly than that, s...
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In scale and vision, Asheville hasn't seen anything like the new art market Marquee from 2021-12-21T11:43
Evan Kafka spent this past Friday night mounting animal heads on a wall as people strolled by sipping cups of wine. To be clear, Kafka's "trophy series," as he calls it, are photographic portraits ...
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Cherokee basketmakers weave the line between craft and art from 2021-12-15T13:59
With a soft-spoken prayer, a few dozen members of the Eastern Band Cherokee welcomed others to view what they have held sacred for centuries: handcrafted baskets. "Weaving Across Time" is a new exh...
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Tema Stauffer provides the photos and leaves the narrative to her viewers from 2021-12-09T14:53
When something catches Tema Stauffer's eye , it's through the lens of a camera using expandable bellows and 4-by-5-inch film. "I can spend quite a bit of time getting every corner of that image in ...
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The Big Crafty returned as a boost to bank accounts and community from 2021-12-06T10:23:04
It was only a few minutes after noon on Saturday when Tricia Arcos made her first sale at her first Big Crafty . "Excitement comes up in lots of forms, which sometimes looks like anxiety," she said...
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As Jangling Sparrows, Paul Edelman makes music to his own all-American beat from 2021-12-03T06:00
Paul Edelman remembers being four or five years old and hearing Bob Dylan on the family stereo. "I'm sitting on the couch by myself and "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" is on," Edelman recall...
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Asheville-area artists seek a collective voice on local issues through new coalition from 2021-11-29T11:50
If the arts in Asheville were a representative democracy, it might look a lot like a new coalition built by the Asheville Area Arts Council . The coalition is designed as a collective voice for the...
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With his eyesight worsening, painter Julyan Davis broadens his creative focus to literature from 2021-11-23T09:24
Julyan Davis has evolved into a novelist in part through stubbornness but, as he sees it, also by necessity. Davis is far from blind, but degenerating eyesight has prompted visits over the past dec...
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Music duo Okapi channels anger into heady music for higher consciousness from 2021-11-18T10:57:15
On a recent Friday night, the avant garde musical duo Okapi performed for a handful of people at Revolve in Asheville. The only illumination came from two table lamps and a few candles behind them ...
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Bestselling author Wiley Cash reserves some of his most pointed writing for his Facebook page from 2021-11-09T12:23
In the early 2010s, anyone following the author Wiley Cash on Facebook would find what they'd likely expect. There were posts about Cash's upcoming books and readings, raves about other authors and...
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Through faith and determination, retired Asheville native Fred Northup resurrects his biblical music from 2021-11-04T12:34
Decades before he retired from the ministry, Fred Northup devoted himself to a more creative calling. "I wrote this play, actually, 40 years ago," Northup recalled. "And we did it, but I'll just sa...
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Painters Alicia Armstrong and Jeremy Russell bet on themselves in downtown's crowded gallery scene from 2021-10-28T07:00
Alicia Armstrong can't count how many times she has turned down Jeremy Russell . "When he would come to me with the ideas, I would say 'Dude, that is f***d up," Armstrong said. "'I don't have time ...
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Storyteller Gina Cornejo strives to draw sweat, from herself and her audience from 2021-10-19T09:56
Whether on stage or on the page, Gina Cornejo has always brought a focus and fluidity to her identity. For now, she uses the pronouns she/her and they/them. "This is me in my own transition of, not...
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While 'Searching for Jimmy Page,' on foot and on paper, Christy Hallberg grew into an author from 2021-10-14T09:45
"Searching For Jimmy Page" isn't merely the title of Christy Hallberg's debut novel. It was an obsession that once compelled Hallberg to hatch a wild plan to meet the Led Zeppelin guitarist. In 200...
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As live music heats up, local venues are chilled by Covid-related challenges from 2021-10-06T16:06:44
Live music venues in and around Asheville are back to hosting shows, but it's anything but business as usual. Amid evolving Covid-19 restrictions, venues have adopted their own safety protocols on ...
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Asheville Symphony Ignores Clouds Overhead, And Ahead, For Celebratory Comeback Concert from 2021-09-20T12:41:39
A little after noon Sunday in Asheville's Pack Square, the first sounds indicating a turning point for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra came from Alicia Chapman, an oboe player testing out a series...
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Christopher Paul Stelling turns to the quiet of isolation to make his introspective new album from 2021-09-15T09:44:07
In one sense, Christopher Paul Stelling is always ready to tour. He drives a Ford Transit van with a lofted bed in the back, and bins of albums, shirts and buttons beneath, along with a makeshift l...
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Buncombe Turnpike's Tom Godleski, As Playwright, Learns To Write For Theater from 2021-09-07T09:40:52
Tom Godleski's newest play sounds far different than when he first brought it to Asheville's Magnetic Theatre . "He presented me with a very rough script. It was not written in a play format at all...
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Under Stage Name Suruat, Asheville Rapper Taurus Lenoir Hopes To Flip Cultural Script from 2021-09-02T06:00
Taurus Lenoir remembers journaling as a 10-year-old. As an adult rapper, she rarely writes anything down before she hears a beat. Lenoir said the music inspires her words. "My sister encouraged fre...
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With New Work, Asheville Playwright Motivated To Counter Tropes Of Bipolar Disorder from 2021-09-01T08:13:09
Oxalis is a weed-like ground cover that can quickly take over a lawn. Travis Lowe saw "Oxalis" as an apt metaphor and appropriate title for his latest stage play, about one woman's experience with ...
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Asheville's Cat Fly Film Fest Caters To Short Works On Small Budgets from 2021-08-24T16:21:34
Brittany Jackson and two friends launched a film festival five years ago to showcase work they made, along with short films and music videos from friends. Today, the Cat Fly Film Festival largely s...
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Seeing World Through Child's Eyes Inspired Skidoo To Make Music For All Ears from 2021-08-23T10:49:12
Even when he dropped out of high school at 16, hopped trains and hitchhiked his way out of Southern Indiana, the man known to friends and fans today as Cactus believed he was on a mission. " I didn...
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'Duality Of My Brain' Guides Asheville's Indigo De Souza To Coat Downbeat Lyrics With Upbeat Music from 2021-08-16T12:46:42
Indigo De Souza could be a spokeswoman for the DIY ethos. Of the more than dozen tattoos along her legs, arms and hands, several came from her own hand. "I stick and poke a lot of them, just with a...
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Poet Glenis Redmond Fights Through Pain, Both Personal And Historical from 2021-08-11T06:00
Twenty-eight years ago, Glenis Redmond was a clinical counselor for the state of South Carolina and the mother of twin toddler girls when she learned her excruciating condition had a name, Fibromya...
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Through Historical Fiction, Author Terry Roberts Strives To 'Keep A Sense Of This Place Alive' from 2021-08-05T11:42:06
Terry Roberts is like many who are certain they have a novel somewhere inside them. He'd go to work every day and carve time in the early mornings or quiet of twilight to writing he now regards as ...
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Calliope Stage, Premiering In Sylva, Built To Disrupt Norm For Rural Theater from 2021-08-03T06:00
The loading dock behind the former post office in downtown Sylva was never intended as a theatrical stage. But beyond the location, Ashlee Wasmund has created something rarely seen in rural Western...
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Artist Tarah Singh Looks For Hidden Truths Beneath The Masks Of Her Self-Portraits from 2021-07-29T11:40:50
Tarah Singh grew up in Hendersonville, attended private school and had a supportive family of artists and entertainers with a lineage of achievement. Her mother's stepfather was Ronald Isley , the ...
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New Asheville Sound Code Limits Volume As Council Leaves Room For Adjustments from 2021-07-29T11:14:13
A new noise ordinance in Asheville goes into effect in mid-September. For the first time in 20 years, City Council on Tuesday approved ceilings and specific hours for sound levels, with separate li...
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Three Asheville Women, Busy In Other Bands, Answer Call Of The Smoky Mountain Sirens from 2021-07-22T06:00
The three women of the Smoky Mountain Sirens all had other things happening in music when they came together in 2019. They started like a lot of bands, covering other artists' songs in local bars. ...
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Two Established Bands Behind Her, Anya Hinkle Claims Her Own 'Borderlands' from 2021-07-20T13:15:25
Anya Hinkle is known largely for her time in the Americana bands Tellico and Dehlia Low. She made moves about two years ago to leave the safety of a band and embark on her own. With the pandemic, t...
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Wanna Get Away? Residency Retreats Cater To Creatives Craving Time To Think, Commune, Create from 2021-07-12T14:24:47
When Marjorie Dial first walked the rustic 30 acres north of Marshall that once housed East Fork Pottery, she noticed what almost everyone would--the natural beauty. But Dial is a ceramic artist wh...
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While Serving Visitors, New Director Wants Cherokee Indian Museum To Focus On Own Community from 2021-07-06T09:07:10
People associate the sound of a lone wooden flute as traditionally Native American. And while this sound accompanies the centerpiece video on the Visit Cherokee website promoting the Museum of the ...
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Asheville Standup Comedy Scene Built Behind The Scenes from 2021-06-24T12:16:55
It's a Saturday night at the Asheville Beauty Academy--that's a nightclub, not a salon--and host Marlene Thompson has warmed up a full house as a standup comedy duo from Chattanooga called Good Cop...
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Sights And Sounds From Friday's Opening Of GRINDfest from 2021-06-21T09:01:47
Asheville's River Arts District commemorated Juneteenth through the first weekend of Black art and culture called GrindFest. Here's an audio glimpse from opening night.
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Everything On Hold. Wait, The Pandemic Is Over? Let's Perform from 2021-06-17T10:38:39
Asheville's Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance is a small, professional company that only operates in the summer. So in losing 2020 to the pandemic, founding director Heather Maloy hadn't rehearsed her d...
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Traditional Chinese Music In Her DNA, Min Xiao-Fen Brings Western Daring To Her Asheville Move from 2021-06-15T06:00
When you think of musicians made for Asheville, Min Xiao-Fen doesn't quite fit the stereotype. Min grew up in a musical family in Nanjing, China, became a virtuoso of the pipa and performed as a so...
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From Stage To Page, Gavin Larsen Devoted To 'Beautiful Life' Of Ballet from 2021-06-03T10:59:51
Ten years ago, Natalie Portman won the Academy and Golden Globe best actress awards for her starring turn in "Black Swan." There was, however, at least one critic of the film. "It's just a horror f...
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Guided By Faith, Single-Mom Stylist, Author, Entrepreneur Finds Higher Calling For Voice from 2021-06-01T09:08:11
Here's how tight Nikki Lee's family is: She convinced her mother and three adult children to move last fall from a lifetime in Cincinnati to the unknown of Asheville. "One of my clients years ago h...
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Through Visual Art Exhibitions, YMI Center and UCC Become 'Sisters In Reciprocity' from 2021-05-19T12:02:22
A 10-minute walk and a half-century of histories separate Asheville's YMI Cultural Center from the First Congregational UCC Church . "This church is very white," said Mandy Kjellstrom, a church mem...
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Asheville Native Struggled To Find Artistic Voice. He Found It After Serving Time In Prison from 2021-05-05T08:40:01
Sherrill Roland's convictions in a courtroom, on four misdemeanors, were later overturned at a retrial. But they focused Roland's personal conviction --to use art that both helps him process and he...
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The Porch: What Is Our Collective Responsibility To Fund The Arts? from 2021-04-29T09:51:41
Artists color our communities, bring creative thinking to challenges and issues and expand our understanding of the world. But quantifying that impact--showing the value artists contribute--is ofte...
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With NC Relaxing Restrictions, Live Music Slowly Returning Inside Asheville Clubs from 2021-04-12T06:00
Even through their masks, you could sense the smiles across the faces of John and Judy Nelson, of Asheville, as they waited to get into Friday night's concert at Isis Music Hall. "I am ready to sit...
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Black Mountain Photographer Documents Gender Stereotypes While Living Them from 2021-03-29T09:59:31
When she gave birth 2? years ago, Rose Wind Jerome didn't know she was having twins. The first child is her daughter, Evie. The second is the photography project for her master's degree thesis. "I ...
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Momentum's Move And Renovation Adds Fifth Major Destination To Visual Arts Corridor from 2021-03-22T12:33:52
Even before opening Momentum Gallery , on Asheville's Lexington Avenue, Jordan Ahlers had his sights elsewhere--a larger space on a familiar street. More than two years after beginning a complete r...
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The Porch: Artists Coping With Their Mental Health Through A Year Of Turmoil from 2021-03-17T06:00
One year into our shutdown, the impact on our region's artists stretches beyond economics. Some artists say the psychological effects have been as devastating as the financial ones. On our March ep...
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They Co-Created Epic Musical Theater During Pandemic. The Real Story Is Their Friendship from 2021-03-15T13:55:10
The people who call themselves Nye and Terran met two years ago at a goth picnic in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery. "We decided we should have a meeting to see whether or not we were psychopaths," ...
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UNC-Asheville Students Express Trauma Over Past Year In 'Hindsight' from 2021-03-01T11:25:12
Every college student has experienced academic and social turmoil over the past year. Few have had the encouragement, as Tristan Rice has, to put it into song. Rice and a couple dozen other UNC-Ash...
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COVID-19NC: Bars, Variants & Vaccines from 2021-02-28T14:56:19
Bars in North Carolina welcomed back customers indoors over the weekend after almost a year of outdoor only cocktail service. On Friday, the Governor Roy Cooper's new executive order took effect , ...
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Carved From Civil Rights Movement, Joseph Pearson Still Wields Paintbrush As Weapon from 2021-02-24T12:25:35
Even in his early days making paintings, Joseph Pearson understood there was no place in and around Gulfport, Miss., for Black artists. "There were no artists that I knew in the neighborhood who we...
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Based Indoors, Magnetic Pivots Into Outdoor Theater Company During Pandemic from 2021-02-22T10:01:54
It's a sunny Sunday afternoon along the Reed Creek Greenway in north Asheville. As joggers and people walking dogs pass by, actors are running through a new play, performed in vignettes over a mile...
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Claire Elizabeth Barratt's Performances Defy Bounds Of Time, Space, Audience from 2021-02-17T11:41:01
Claire Elizabeth Barratt once drove alone from Asheville to Albuquerque, N.M.--26 straight hours--without stopping except for gas. "I'm actually thinking of maybe doing a cross-country trip as a du...
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New Tax Laws To Ease Burdens On Independent Artists, Other Freelance Workers from 2021-02-15T09:14:19
Coming off a devastating year for the creative sector, new federal tax laws could help self-employed people, including independent artists and other freelance creatives. Hannah Cole, an Asheville p...
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Through Worsening Cancer, Artist And Teacher Lara Nguyen Compelled To Create from 2021-02-09T14:54:24
When Lara Nguyen first learned of her rare cancer--uterine leiomyosarcoma--she had just come home from teaching in Prague and was just starting work on a major mural in Grand Rapids, Mich. She had ...
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From Stage To Screen, Asheville Couple Investing To Keep Local Theater Alive from 2021-02-04T13:18:55
Virtual theater is commonplace during the pandemic--that is, if there's any theater at all, people are watching it streamed on screen. Mike and Brenda Lilly are a married couple in Asheville taking...
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Painter Luke Whitlatch Redefines Artistic Success After Move From L.A. To Asheville from 2021-01-26T15:17:29
These things usually work in reverse. Luke Whitlatch already had some success as an artist in Los Angeles when he and his wife chose to move to Asheville. "I play bass for a band called Rocky Mount...
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What Does A Performance Festival Feel Like Online? Asheville Fringe To Find Out from 2021-01-18T14:43:46
Last March, when the public still grasped the reality of a pandemic, Katie Jones looked at the calendar and thought the Asheville Fringe Festival , which she directs, might have to do things differ...
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Mental Illness From Shadows To Light Through Asheville Photographer By Way Of London from 2021-01-13T12:28:57
While coming of age in London, Farhad Kanuga felt pulled in two directions: Taking part in the political and social protests pervading the city and documenting those protests with his camera. "I fe...
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In Hour Of Nation's Turmoil, Longtime Asheville Musician Sang Out Call For Unity from 2021-01-07T15:11
Ash Devine was giving an online ukulele lesson to a 10-year-old boy Wednesday afternoon when news about the turmoil at the nation's capitol scrolled on her Facebook newsfeed. Devine finished the le...
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One Of WNC's Most Collected Painters, Robert Johnson At Peace With Terminal Prognosis from 2021-01-05T06:00
Robert Johnson is one of the most exhibited and collected painters in Western North Carolina. At age 76, he says he's at peace with a grim health prognosis. He recently talked with BPR's Matt Peike...
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Carly Taich Prepared To Leave Music for Good. Then She Wrote Songs About Love from 2020-12-22T06:00
Carly Taich didn't post anything on social media, light a candle in mourning or plan a post-pandemic farewell tour. She had devoted her young adult life to her own fearless folk pop, as she calls i...
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Asheville Painter Julyan Davis Removes Mask From Surrealism With COVID Series from 2020-12-17T06:00
Like many artists, the Asheville painter Julyan Davis didn't feel much like painting this past spring, at the dawn of the pandemic. "I actually got quite depressed because I felt there was this ext...
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Proposed Sound Ordinance Strikes Bad Chord With Asheville's Music Community from 2020-12-14T09:48:15
Live concerts with live audiences seem so long ago--no masks, no social distancing and, also, no concern for volume. But for the first time in 20 years, Asheville officials want to update the city'...
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Waynesville Author Leah Hampton A Rural Activist, One Story At A Time from 2020-12-10T13:42
In her debut collection of short stories, Waynesville author Leah Hampton makes sure to grab readers from her first sentences. The story "Parkway" begins with, "We find bodies all the time. Lots of...
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Former Rabbit Motel Renovated Into SoundSpace Rehearsal Studios from 2020-12-07T12:58:46
In the 1950s and '60s, the Rabbit Motel in Asheville's South Slope drew touring black musicians to the four tiny rooms out back and the soul food restaurant facing McDowell Street. On Saturday, the...
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Two Holiday Productions Find Creative Ways To Work Around Pandemic from 2020-11-30T10:22:28
The holidays are traditionally box office bonanzas for theaters, musical artists and anyone who can stage a version of "The Nutcracker." But with the pandemic sidelining almost everyone's plans, tw...
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Jenny Pickens Paints To Remember The Mother She's Never Known from 2020-11-16T06:00
Artists often clean their studios before visitors arrive. But inside her Swannanoa home, Jenny Pickens ' painting studio is always immaculate. The first clue that this is so: Pickens' studio is car...
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Word On The Street Now More Than Words For Asheville Youth Of Color from 2020-11-09T10:29
It's a Saturday afternoon at Asheville's Arthur Edington Center, inside what was once an elementary school classroom converted into the well-lived-in home for the black and brown teens of Word on t...
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John Cram Saw Something In Asheville, Then Committed His Life to Showing Everybody Else from 2020-10-28T16:00:04
Deborah Lewis-Smith grew up in Asheville, and the first thought she had upon meeting John Cram, in 1971, was he wasn't going to stay in town very long. "John was bigger than Asheville," Lewis-Stein...
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Sculpture Honoring Downtown Buskers Provokes Critics--Chiefly, Downtown Buskers from 2020-10-20T13:43:21
Public art often invites public debate, but a new sculpture in downtown Asheville has drawn a surprising group of critics--the people the sculpture was created to honor. This past week, Hotel Arras...
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Once Home To Small Staff, Gallery And Studios, Arts Council Now Down To Director's Home Office from 2020-10-05T13:26:01
There were four full-time staff and one part-timer, when Katie Cornell took over just a year ago as executive director of the Asheville Area Arts Council . Today, Cornell is the entire staff. The c...
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With Citizen Vinyl, Asheville Drops The Needle On State's Only Large-Scale Record Pressing Plant from 2020-09-28T13:27
Eighty-one years ago, when Asheville had two daily newspapers, the new art deco building that housed them across from the Grove Arcade featured tall ceilings, glass block windows, frosted light sco...
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Protest Murals Marked History. What Happens Once They Come Down Isn't Black Or White from 2020-09-23T09:36:55
Lexi DeYeso remembers the pride and passion she felt early this summer as Black Lives Matter protests unfolded in downtown Asheville. "I do stand with the movement and peaceful protesting," DeYeso ...
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A Member Of Two Successful Groups, Eleanor Underhill Devotes Solo Music To 'Darker' Self from 2020-09-01T13:05:33
Eleanor Underhill's new record is called "Land of the Living," and listening straight through can be a little dizzying. Her songs skip from '90s alt-rock ("Strange Chemistry") and synth pop ("Run w...
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He Studied Music At Brevard. Now In Machine Head, Jared MacEachern Is Bassist In Premier Metal Band from 2020-08-27T11:12:11
Earlier this year, just as Covid-19 shut down the nation, Jared MacEachern moved with his girlfriend into the home he just bought in the mountains of Santa Cruz, Calif. As the wildfires there force...
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First Published Eastern Band Novelist Hopes To Raise The Bar For Rural Writers from 2020-08-19T13:03:54
In the late 1990s, so few students from Smoky Mountain High School in Sylva moved on to Ivy League colleges that even the school's secretary seemed baffled to learn Annette Clapsaddle earned accept...
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Young Asheville Artists Create Indelible Statements of Protest That Come And Go from 2020-06-29T14:19:26
Around 9:30 this past Friday night, Asheville's Pack Square sounded eerily familiar. There were no protestors or counter-protesters surrounding the Vance Monument, no police on bikes or in riot gea...
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Choral Groups Struggle To Harmonize In Coronavirus Era from 2020-06-22T16:22:08
Everything we think about high-risk activities has shifted in the time of the Coronavirus. If you heed the warnings of leading epidemiologists, just about the last artform to emerge from the pandem...
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Mothlight Closes, Becoming Music Scene's First Coronavirus Victim from 2020-06-18T13:51:25
You could consider 12:32pm Thursday as an official time of death for The Mothlight , an anchor of Asheville's live music scene since it opened seven years ago. Within minutes of the announced closu...
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Fast Pass To Stardom? Locals Hoping For Lift From NPR's Tiny Desk Contest from 2020-06-08T11:08:52
Musical artists looking for some magic catapult out of obscurity can hardly find a more alluring vehicle than NPR's Tiny Desk Contest . Judges in 2018 spotlighted the Asheville band Natural Born Le...
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Muralists Immortalize Protests, Unrest On Canvas Of Downtown's Boarded Storefronts from 2020-06-03T16:13:42
On Tuesday night, officers in full riot gear were video recorded destroying a makeshift medic station for protestors along Asheville's Patton Avenue. About a hundred yards away, the following after...
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Can Live Music Make Financial Sense With Social-Distance Limits? Club Owners Weigh In from 2020-05-28T10:09:38
Asheville Music Hall has seen four times the number of people turn out for its weekly virtual trivia nights than those who actually came to the club to play trivia before the pandemic. Still, it's ...
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Malaprop's Reopened, Harvest Records Strategizing, Both Looking At New Normals from 2020-05-21T10:02:50
Malaprop's Books reopened Tuesday under North Carolina's social-distancing guidelines, but any enthusiasm to return to business life as normal was muted. Only two customers had registered in advanc...
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Asheville Sees Its First Post-Shutdown Art Show--Sort Of from 2020-05-18T16:16:10
Like every other gallery and arts center, Revolve in Asheville has been closed to the public throughout the quarantine. And like many artists in these times, Molly Sawyer has holed up in her River ...
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Orchestra Looks At Modifying Music, Instrumentation For Post-Pandemic Concerts from 2020-05-13T13:59:39
NOTE: This is the second in our two-part look at the outlook of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra during and after the Coronavirus pandemic. Since the order to shelter in place, Darko Butorac has st...
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Without Concerts At Least Until February 2021, Asheville Symphony Strives For Current Relevance from 2020-05-11T13:42:05
NOTE: This is the first in our two-part look at the outlook of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra during and after the Coronavirus pandemic. Darko Butorac is known as a musician and conductor. People...
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Despite Canceling Entire Season, Brevard Music Center Positioned To Weather Pandemic Without Scars from 2020-05-06T13:06:35
While the Coronavirus has infected every artist and arts organization, none appeared more potentially devastated--at least on the calendar--than the Brevard Music Center . Its entire existence is g...
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Asheville Symphony Keeping Executive Director, Looking To Next Concert in February 2021 from 2020-05-05T15:15:04
The Asheville Symphony Orchestra is holding onto its executive director, after all. David Whitehill, who held his role with the orchestra since 2012, had announced in March that he would leave this...
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Wortham Prepared For Months Of Darkness, Uncertain Consequences If Closure Stretches Into Fall from 2020-04-28T17:42:20
It was March 14 at Asheville's Wortham Center for the Performing Arts . The Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre of Miami was in the middle of a weeklong residency and three-show run when the Coronavirus pa...
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Asheville Live Music Clubs Join National Effort To Lobby Congress For Help from 2020-04-23T13:02:46
Four live music venues in Asheville have joined a new national effort to lobby Congress for more financial help while they remain closed because of the Coronavirus. The National Independent Venue A...
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Quarantine Proving Creative Period For Some Artists from 2020-04-15T16:39:37
Kira Bursky certainly didn't ask for a disruption like the Coronavirus. But as she talks about her latest video project , she sounds almost giddy about the effect of self-isolation. Bursky said she...
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Angel Olsen Rarely Performs In Asheville. Now She's Home With No Shows To Play from 2020-04-13T07:00
Before the Coronavirus sent everyone home, Angel Olsen estimates spending about nine months every year on the road, away from Asheville, performing her music all over the world. It makes the Corona...
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Mandolin In Hand, Cynthia McDermott Flexing Stylistic Mashup All Her Own from 2020-03-26T15:12:46
Cynthia McDermott is tall, tattooed and muscular, and that visual is all the more more striking when you see her on stage with a tiny mandolin, singing her custom mashup of early jazz, hip-hop and ...
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Theater Producers Facing Unique, Daunting Challenges In Time Of Coronavirus from 2020-03-23T16:18:17
Two weekends ago, when music and theatrical performances everywhere began to topple like dominoes, Katie Jones, the artistic director of Asheville's Magnetic Theatre , spoke with the cast and crew ...
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Through Dark Clouds Of Cancelations, One Couple's Online Success Paints Ray Of Hopeful Sunshine from 2020-03-19T12:42:21
Melissa Hyman is a cellist and Ryan Furstenberg a guitarist, who write and record music as The Moon and You from their home in West Asheville. For the married couple and countless musicians here an...
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In Rubble Of Canceled Gigs, Local Musicians Creating Virtual Opportunities from 2020-03-18T14:04:21
Blake Ellege is a musician and vocalist in Brevard who counts nine bands he performs in. He remembers getting a call last Thursday warning the Coronavirus could threaten some upcoming shows. "I kid...
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Regional Arts and Music Events: A Roundup Of Cancellations And Continuations from 2020-03-13T13:48:47
UPDATED: 4pm March 16 While the Coronavirus outbreak has compelled many artists, venues and arts organizations to postpone and cancel events, a handful are continuing--for now--with events as plann...
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WCU Band Director West Going Out The Way He Came In, Same Baton In Hand, After 35 Years from 2020-03-11T10:15:38
It's a Monday afternoon, and John West is rehearsing a wind and brass ensemble at Western Carolina University . West had already been teaching here about 15 years when most of these students were b...
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After Conquering Heroin, Moving To Asheville, George Terry Found New Voice For His Art, Music from 2020-03-03T10:59:25
If you're not a fan of the current U.S. president and are looking for a little cathartic relief, you might want to stop by George Terry's studio in Asheville's Ramp building. There, hanging or lean...
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Musician-Activist Andrew Fletcher Raised To Stand Up For His Values On And Off Stage from 2020-02-27T09:30:43
Andrew Fletcher earned his credibility as a musician by doubling as a piano mover. "I've never claimed to be the best piano player in town, but I will claim to be the hardest working," he said. "An...
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Spotlight Cast On Musicians In Poverty from 2020-02-20T13:00:29
Ten local musicians are performing at the Grey Eagle in a talent competition called Hidden Voices, organized by the nonprofit Asheville Poverty Initiative . Their common thread: All live below the ...
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New Co-Directors For Asheville Fringe Festival from 2020-02-19T09:36:37
Leadership is changing with the annual Asheville Fringe Festival . Longtime Asheville theater artists and married couple Jim Julien and Jocelyn Reese say they're moving this summer to Philadelphia,...
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Chance Observation And Comment Lead To Creative Rebirth For Zirconia Novelist from 2020-02-13T12:57
As you roll up to the five acres Leanna Sain and her husband, Randy, have in Zirconia, you pass a sign at the foot of the long gravel driveway up to the house reading Miracle Hill Farm. "Because I ...
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Many Ask Artists To Supply Creative Work For Exposure. So Did The Asheville Art Museum from 2020-01-29T12:30:50
Ask any of the 50 artists invited into Asheville Art Museum's "Appalachia Now!" exhibition and, to a person, they'll tell you they were honored and elated. Many were motivated to stretch themselves...
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Fringe Festival: Glimpses At Four Performers And Shows Far From The Beaten Path from 2020-01-17T09:34:19
If you're a proud multitasker, you might want to make plans for the night of Jan. 22 to go to LT Laundry in West Asheville. "We'll be doing laundry. People can bring their laundry if they like," sa...
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Shane Parish Makes And Teaches Music From The Same Vantage: Inner Exploration from 2020-01-16T10:07:08
Shane Parish says he's a self-taught musician, which isn't a typical credential for someone earning a living as a guitar instructor. "I'm not coming at it from this woo-woo perspective," he said of...
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No Longer Concerned About Gallery Sales, Molly Sawyer Thriving In Museums, Art Centers from 2020-01-13T11:13:04
Molly Sawyer used to sculpt stylized horses and human figures from clay. That changed after her battle with breast cancer. "The work became a response to my own direct experience with life, death,"...
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Tongues Of Fire's Music Has Already Saved The Life Of One Fan--Its Bandleader from 2020-01-09T09:42:53
Asheville's Tongues of Fire are still a young band, but vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Lowell Hobbs has already absorbed some time-worn lessons. For instance, twice now, the band has invested m...
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Candler Poet Andrew Clark Draws Roadmap Of Southern Turmoil, Hurt, Hope from 2020-01-07T06:00
In his debut collection, titled "Jesus in the Trailer," Andrew Clark's poetry reads like connected but fragmented short stories. Clark, who lives in Candler, sees this work as a sort of roadmap of ...
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Satellite Gallery, A Beacon Of Street Art, Closing After 13 Years In Downtown Asheville from 2019-12-30T12:30
It's just before noon on a Wednesday, and Bill Thompson is behind his desk inside an otherwise empty Satellite Gallery. He had just scrolled through the hundreds of comments and likes on his Facebo...
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2019 In The Arts: Re-Openings, Cultural Spotlights, Social Issues, Personal Explorations from 2019-12-30T11:36:46
This isn't another top-10 list. But in the spirit of looking back on 2019, we've cobbled together this sampler platter from among more than 60 stories Blue Ridge Public Radio produced in 2019 about...
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An Award For Hardest-Working Local Musician? Ashley Heath Could Claim Trophy from 2019-12-23T09:55:10
When Ashley Heath sings of trying her best, in her new song "I Remember," she might as well be crooning about her career. Certainly nobody in the local music scene works harder than Heath at living...
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Meg Mulhearn Takes Unconventional Route, And Sounds, With Violin from 2019-12-11T06:00
There are violinists who make music, and then there are artists such as Meg Mulhearn , who use the violin as sort of a paintbrush . "A lot of times when people find out I'm a violinist or a fiddler...
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Asheville Filmmaker On The Rise Has Turned Her Apartment Into Intimate Public Installation from 2019-12-05T15:59:30
There are 18 short films on Kira Bursky's YouTube channel , and after each title are short descriptions such as: "psychologically creepy short film," "artistic teen depression short film" and "surr...
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Varied Traumas Stoked Fire To Write For Emerging Hendersonville Author from 2019-12-02T10:42:48
Meagan Lucas came to writing just four years ago through her postpartum depression and the ready outlet of personal blogging. But when people actually began reading her writing, Lucas experienced a...
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Mission Health Opens North Tower With Unprecedented Investment In Regional Art from 2019-11-25T12:40:17
Mission Health is a hospital, not a contemporary art center. But you wouldn't know that from browsing the public areas--and, if circumstances bring you there, to the patient and waiting rooms--of M...
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Center For Craft Hopes To Continue Feel Of A Festival After Reopening from 2019-11-18T08:54:02
Saturday's reopening of the Center for Craft felt far more like a festival than a ribbon-cutting. There were performances by the UNC-Asheville Afro Music and Dance Ensemble, a DJ, hands-on artmakin...
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First Public Impressions Of Renewed Art Museum: 'This Is Quite A Big Deal' from 2019-11-14T15:57:54
"Come on in, welcome to the museum." And with that, at 11am Thursday morning, the Asheville Art Museum reopened to the general public. David and Olivia Franklin, in town from Atlanta on their honey...
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Art Museum & Center For Craft Reopenings Make For Monumental Week In Asheville Arts Scene from 2019-11-11T15:32:21
This is a monumental week for Asheville's arts scene. The Asheville Art Museum reopens this Thursday and, two days later, the Center for Craft reopens. Both are emerging from major renovations.
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Cherokee Chamber Singers Both Ambassadors And Students Of Their Culture from 2019-11-05T10:30:11
Michael Yannette took over six years ago as director of choir and musical theater at Cherokee Central Schools . From the beginning, he faced a challenge he never encountered in his previous 25 year...
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Flutist Kate Steinbeck Brings Rocker's Spirit To Chamber Music And Pan Harmonia from 2019-10-31T10:54:21
Kate Steinbeck's eyes light up when she talks about the music that inspired her to play the flute. "I'm raised on rock 'n' roll. You remember Heart? I saw them at the Asheville Civic Center in 1979...
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As Musashi Xero, Tyler Jackson Raps His Grief, Anger Over Friend's Death By Overdose from 2019-10-24T11:15:06
Tyler Jackson shares a West Asheville home where, on a sunny and warm midday afternoon, every window is open and so is the front door, all without screens. Jackson tends to about eight houseplants ...
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World-Renowned WNC Banjo Picker Dies At 80 from 2019-10-14T13:30:19
Noted banjo picker and Western North Carolina native Raymond Fairchild has died, following a heart attack. He was 80. Fairchild performed at the Grand Ole' Opry on numerous occasions and was induct...
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Asheville Writer-Actress Judy Calabrese Needed 40 Years To Say 'Yes' To Her Own Story from 2019-10-10T11:09:49
Judy Calabrese's upbringing would make for a riveting memoir. There's a cheating father and a mother who disowned her, fundamentalist Catholicism and the wherewithal as an 18-year-old to pay for an...
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A Full Plate For Talented Asheville Singer: New Music, A Band Breakup And Anger Management from 2019-10-07T21:15:28
The rock singer and Hendersonville native Raphael Morales only recently changed his name to Beaui Roca. He said never identified with his birth name or easily navigated what he called the minefield...
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Against Backdrop Of War On Terror, Author Katey Schultz Probes Personal Ethics And Universal Truths from 2019-10-01T13:07:56
Katey Schultz went to college to study philosophy and become a memoirist. Then one day, out of nowhere, one short sentence popped into her mind. Jet was bull tired, hound dog tired. And that sent h...
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His Life Path Is Music But, For 16-Year-Old Aaron Lipsky, The Trails Lead Everywhere from 2019-09-24T07:00
Aaron Lipsky is a 16-year-old junior at Asheville's A.C. Reynolds High School. But by many measures, Lipsky is far beyond his years. Lipsky is a clarinetist, rehearsing here with another clarinetis...
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In His 'Murder Ballad' Series, Painter Julyan Davis Evokes Plaintive Music Of The South from 2019-09-18T11:16:15
Julyan Davis is a British native who moved to the American southeast 30 years ago on a hunch, that he would find the paintings he wanted to make in the people of these hills and hollers. "Where I g...
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With Wortham's Embrace, Asheville's Different Strokes Fulfilling Its Own And Theater's Missions from 2019-09-16T11:09:21
Until now, renting the 500-seat Diana Wortham Theater was impractical and unaffordable for smaller-budgeted arts organizations. But a renovation and rebranding has opened two smaller, black box spa...
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Asheville Wooden Chairmaker Part of NC Contingent Looking For Gold In Dubai from 2019-09-11T10:57:20
From his warehouse in West Asheville, Brian Boggs designs and builds wooden chairs with tools and machines you just can't find at a Home Depot. Every carving tool that fits in your hand and every m...
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After NYTimes Mention, Asheville Band Secret Shame Releasing Debut, Along With Demons That Shaped It from 2019-09-09T07:00
The members of the Asheville band Secret Shame never really address the roots of their name. But when guitarist Nikki Gish talks about the music on the band's new album, "Dark Synthetics," Gish rev...
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As Promised Summer Re-Opening Passes, Art Museum Won't Welcome Visitors At Least Until October from 2019-09-03T16:03:31
The Asheville Art Museum 's long-awaited reopening is awaiting longer than anyone hoped or anticipated. Just a few months ago, museum officials gave area media a first look from inside the renovate...
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In New Exhibition, Two Nonbinary Artists Further Mission Of Campaign For Southern Equality from 2019-08-27T08:40:16
Al Murray and Liz Williams met less than a year ago, but their pairing as artists in a new exhibition is two lifetimes in the making. The exhibition "Up/Rooted" is at Revolve Gallery , in Asheville...
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From Dual Tragedies Of His Youth, Edwin Salas Says 'I Make Performance From My Trauma' from 2019-08-22T14:01:02
It's difficult to tell which is more unsettling, the memory Edwin Salas carries of his rape 30 years ago inside a Costa Rican museum or that the rape shaped him as an artist. "The man closed the do...
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Pointing Way To Downtown's Arts Destinations More Complicated Than Mere Signage from 2019-08-20T06:00
Every day, more than 17,000 cars pass through the intersection of Broadway and Woodfin, on the northern edge of downtown Asheville. T here's a new effort to steer them south and to steer motorists'...
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Climate Change Activism Inspires WNC Concerts By Former Asheville Symphony Cellist from 2019-08-14T11:08:16
Three decades ago, as the principal cellist of the Asheville Symphony , Judith Glixon performed pieces from Bach, Benjamin Britten and other composers for the sheer love of the music. But over the ...
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Animals Are Gateway To Human Exploration, Fantasy Included, For Etowah Author from 2019-08-13T06:00
Author Megan Shepherd and her family live on an old farm on six acres in the town of Etowah, near her native Brevard. They keep bees. Chickens roam the backyard. There's a wooden shack that once st...
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Asheville Author's Recipe: One Part Nature, One Part Nurture, Simmer For 30 Years from 2019-08-05T13:00:45
Here's the recipe behind Jamie Mason 's brand of storytelling: Mix one part nurture with one part nature, then simmer over a low flame for 30 years. Let's start with the nurture, if you can call it...
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While Their Friendship Goes Beyond Music, Stage Director Knew Who To Ask For The Perfect Soundtrack from 2019-07-29T11:10:25
At the time, five years ago, it seemed like another forgettable gig. Todd Weakley's band shared a bill at the The Odditorium in West Asheville with a duo -- Ryan Anderson and his brother. Weakley r...
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Rebranded And Expanded Wortham Center Promises Boon Of Opportunity For Local Performers from 2019-07-23T10:54:57
If you want to stage a dance or theater production in downtown Asheville, your options are limited. You could rent the 40-seat BeBe Theatre or the 35-Below space , operated by Asheville Community T...
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Arts Philanthropist, Collector Randy Shull Turns Spotlight On Own Art--Depression Included from 2019-07-15T10:58:40
Randy Shull is giving a personal tour of his recent artworks. They're displayed around an expansive Biltmore Village warehouse gallery most artists would covet. What's remarkable, at least for an a...
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17 Novels Into His Mystery Series, Asheville Writer Grumbles Past Mystery of Becoming Published from 2019-07-08T11:57:22
It's a Tuesday night at the Battery Park Book Exchange , and three authors have shown up to this meeting of the Western North Carolina Mysterians . It's a critique group for local mystery writers a...
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Brevard Native And Emerging Filmmaker James Suttles Focuses His Lens On The Business Of Horror from 2019-07-02T11:13:50
Pick your favorite artworks -- music, dance, painting -- and you think they're created from a place of impassioned inspiration. Then you meet James Suttles, a native of Brevard coming from a differ...
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Orange Peel's History Documented In New Exhibition from 2019-06-27T15:25:10
If you go back far enough in Asheville to remember Biltmore Lanes and the Skateland Rollerdome and local R&B bands such as Bite Chew Spit and the Innersouls, then walking into the front gallery...
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Asheville's Amanda Anne Platt Reveals Her Strong Voice Away From The Microphone from 2019-06-19T12:34:35
Amanda Anne Platt and her band produced their first two albums on their own and were preparing a third without drawing interest from a record label. "It was hard. I think every time you experience ...
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With An Album Of Lullabies, The Moon And You Now Have Fans From Infants To The Elderly from 2019-06-17T12:45:41
A couple Saturday afternoons ago, Melissa Hyman lugged two Hefty bags down Asheville's Lexington Avenue to the trunk of her car. They were filled with blankets. "I don't know if we're gonna put any...
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Asheville's Caleb Johnson Won 'American Idol.' Five Years Later, He's Found His Own Voice from 2019-06-10T12:09:26
"American Idol" introduced Caleb Johnson to the nation as a powerhouse rock n roll vocalist. He proved he could pull off Steven Tyler, Steve Perry, Robert Plant. Even if you graduated Asheville's I...
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Teens Of Color Helping To Document, Spotlight Asheville's Southside Stories from 2019-06-03T12:56:07
It's a Saturday afternoon at the Arthur Edington Center in Asheville's Southside. Two teenage girls are interviewing a woman named Charlotte, recording her observations and experiences growing up i...
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The Resonant Rogues: Itinerant Artists Whose Careers Depend On Never Settling Down from 2019-05-28T13:04:13
You can imagine the first conversation between the musicians Keith Smith and the singularly named Sparrow: "Oh, you were 18 when you started hitchhiking around the country? I was 18 when I started ...
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Part 1 of 2: Asheville Arts Leaders Unify For Greater Awareness And Funding from 2019-05-21T07:00
About 50 people have gathered at a gallery inside the Refinery Building in Asheville's South Slope. It's a whos-who among people in local dance, theater, music, the visual arts. They're here as a n...
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Part 2 of 2: Hurdles Stand Between Arts Leaders And County Support They Seek from 2019-05-21T06:59:50
Artists in Asheville aren't unique in this sense--artists everywhere apply and compete for funding from their state and regional arts councils. They're the custodians of the portion of your tax dol...
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