BPR Arts and Performance

Jackson's autobiographical one-woman show, "Rising of the Necessary Diva," is a mix of music and storytelling.

Erin Hallagan Clare opened Story Parlor last spring as a handful of other venues closed, fulfilling a longtime dream--opening a dependable co-op space dedicated to storytelling.

"Where is Our Prague Spring?" is a sensory tour of Runyon's lived experiences in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Fairview writer Lee Stockdale recounts several decades of memories in his new collection of poetry, titled "Gorilla."

On and around the former Vance Monument's pedestal are sculpture, video projection, and fragments of audio interviews with people who are or have been without housing.

One of the most lauded performers at the past two LEAF Festivals, Jordan Scheffer is leaning into the music and inspiration of Black artists.

"Moonshine" is the fourth album Hartley has released as Nightlands.

Callan White and Jennifer Gatti co-star in "Roommate" at NC Stage through Oct. 30

Performances and workshops for the upcoming festival run October 20-23 at Lake Eden in Black Mountain.

The solo exhibition "Journey Home" is on view through Oct. 9 at Continuum Art in Hendersonville.

The drummer of Ween is also the co-founder of SoundSpace, a former motel converted into a band rehearsal studio.

The museum removed culturally sensitive artifacts and replaced them with a range of media from contemporary Cherokee artists.

Two hip replacements haven't kept the matriarch of ballet in Western North Carolina off the dance floor.

The Asheville guitarist has earned acclaim for his progressive musicianship and songcraft

The women's trio performs their entire debut album, "Solid 8," at a record-release show Friday at Fleetwood's in West Asheville.

Stephanie Hickling Beckman wants to develop work from Black playwrights writing roles specifically for Black actors.

Abby Bryant and her band are opening for Lucinda Williams Aug. 20 at Pisgah Brewing in Black Mountain

Tashi Dorji is a solo artist and experimental collaborator who has won a following with his improvisational music.

Ashten McKinney is the owner and, currently, primary exhibiting artist of Curatory Gallery, which they launched to promote underrepresented and marginalized creatives.

The pandemic cut the sisters off from their people, but not their muse. They formed a songwriting group with three other women, each of them sharing new music with one another every week for the past two years and counting. They said they're excited by what's come from it--a collaborative album of new a capella music.

Revolve hosts visual arts exhibitions, performance art installations and esoteric music performances--a programming mix unseen anywhere else in this region--but revenue has always been a challenge.

Mindi Meltz has just published the final part of her "After Ever After" trilogy. The inspiration and larger question behind the series is right there in the title. Meltz wanted to explore what happens after the happily ever after.

Zines are the shortened name for fan magazines. The format came of age in the 1930s and hasn't changed much since. Writing or drawing on paper, hand-stapling or twine-binding and short-run copies are still at the heart of the practice. Some here blur the lines with art books, which can take on a boundless variety of content and physical form.

Sound artist Laura Steenberge is performing Thursday night as part of a program at Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center.

The couple spent much of the pandemic collaborating on a new guidebook titled "Discovering the Appalachian Trail."

While Kenn Kotara's work lives in abstraction, the artist said social-political exploration is always at play. It's right there in the title of his new show--"Order in an Unruly Zoo." It's on view through June 10 at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts.

The invitation to perform at the (Re)Happening is a testament and homage to Susan Collard that her company, more than four decades after she founded it, still produces experimental work.

As COVID numbers drop and protocols loosen, theater and concert venue policies are all over the map. Some require vaccinations and masks. Others require neither. Some are strict enforcers of whatever policies they put in place, others not so much.

In the recording studio with Lena Machina of the Asheville goth rock band Secret Shame

The word anxiety comes up often as Zander Stefani describes his life. He said he channels some of it into his abstract artwork.

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.

Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are rehearsing with two other dancers inside a studio at the Wortham Center for Performing Arts. Everyone is masked.

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.'" Cinnamon said. "We started out as, like, terrible-terrible-terrible, and then we got increasingly less terrible, and by the time we were done, we were alright."

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.

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 of animals that are very much alive. You can find Kafka's work locally in a couple small boutique galleries. But Kafka is among about 120 people renting space at the massive new art market called Marquee. He said the potential exposure and sales are too promising to pass up. "I didn't want to miss out on being part of this market, which I think is really cool," he said. "I think it's a great fit for the scene here."

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 exhibition on view through April 22, 2022, at the Center for Craft in downtown Asheville. It examines the line between craft and art, showing off traditional forms and practices in a contemporary context.

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 focus, and to spend the 15 minutes to half-hour setting that shot up and get it really precise," Stauffer said. "And as someone who is learning at a much later stage shooting 4-by-5, it was a high learning curve." For her latest series , Stauffer took long drives to the homes and hometowns of some of the South's most legendary novelists. Writers long-deceased inspired the series, titled "Southern Fiction," so Stauffer's images there are devoid of people. That context and subtext is necessary to fully appreciate the blend of beauty and neglect captured in her images. The exhibition is on view through Dec. 23 at Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville.

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 with a laugh. Arcos sold intricately carved and painted wooden figurines, naming and endowing each with traits and powers. "But yes, it's kind of a big deal for all artists to show their stuff for the first time, and here I am," she said. If you're an artist or craftsperson in Western North Carolina, the winter Big Crafty is typically one of the year's pivotal events. It's positioned for Christmas sales, drawing several thousand people over two days to the Harrah 's Cherokee Center. Its cancellation in 2020 cut deep into artists' potential revenue, but on Saturday, artists said they also missed the sense of community during a year marked by isolation.

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 recalls before rattling off a strand of the lyrics by memory. Darkness at the break of noon Shadows even the silver spoon The handmade blade, the child's balloon Eclipses both the sun and moon To understand you know too soon There is no sense in trying. "It just codified my fascination and passion for music," he said. It's a Monday afternoon, some five decades later, and Edelman is sitting inside a recording studio just off the main highway going into Marshall. He did some construction work here to offset recording costs of his last two records, the newest titled "Telecoaster."

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 arts community in setting city and county budgets and the shaping of public policies and priorities. "What's happened with our arts sector is it's become extremely siloed, and so a lot of people have had to fend for themselves," said Katie Cornell, the arts council's executive director and architect of the coalition. "There's no way for us to support the entire sector without building a network, so this arts coalition was the way that we're building this network."

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 decade to ophthalmologists. "An ophthalmologist some years ago, I guess he skipped the semester on diplomacy, but he said 'What do you do for a living?' I said I'm an artist, and he said 'Oh that's a shame.'" Davis recalled. "I said 'What do you mean?' and he said 'Just down the road, it might be a problem with your eyes.' So that kind of inspired me to focus on the writing, sort of as a backup career." Davis has earned his living and public profile over nearly 30 years in Asheville as a painter. His first published novel is titled "A History of Saints." Davis is reading from his book Dec. 1 at Blue Spiral Gallery in Asheville, where he has presented his paintings for many years.

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 and a string of tiny footlights along the cement floor. Three years ago, Scott Gorski and Lindsey Miller struggled to get gigs. Today, the bass and cello duo might be Asheville's busiest touring outfit.

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 some photos of Cash's wife and the birth of their first child. But toward the middle of the decade, Cash began sprinkling in posts of a more political nature. "I am no journalist, but somebody who engages publicly with ideas and doesn't only launch my ideas out in a book every three to four years or whenever I can get around to publishing them," Cash said. "I saw whatever tiny mouthpiece I have in my corner of the Internet or book tour as a valuable place to share the ideas that I have."

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 say, I failed, let's put it that way." But since that regrettable premiere, Northup never gave up on remounting what he titled "David: The Faces of Love." He resurrected and revised the play in fits and starts over the past decade and caught a second wind during the pandemic. He found a young music director to freshen the score and raised about $25,000 from a couple of investors to restage "David." "I just think it was pride that I'd failed and I was gonna succeed," he said. A single performance can be seen in person or online Nov. 13 at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. The live production will feature six main characters and a 16-voice chorus supported by a 14-piece orchestra. Northup is paying to record the performance as a multi-camera concert production. He plans on sending the

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 for that.'" There was the time Russell wanted partners to go in on a bowling alley or perhaps an abandoned Kmart and turn it into an "art experience." For years, he hit up friends to join him in buying a warehouse and renting studios to other artists. "Jeremy comes in hot and I'm used to it because I've known him for a long time," Armstrong said. "And he does get disgruntled that I am not as exuberant about his ideas." Russell nodded in agreement. "Alicia's not. My wife's not. Nobody is," he said. But earlier this year, as Russell put it, he caught Armstrong on a "weird day" with the idea of moving both their studios and showrooms into a vacant gallery in the heart of downtown Asheville.

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 only in this time of coming into my own voice within my work, but coming to my own very gentle identifying as queer, identifying as a queer female, even Latina," Cornejo said. "I'm very much coming to terms with all these identifiers. I just want to keep it open and available."

"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 2005, Hallberg learned that Page and Brian May of Queen were to judge a guitar competition in London. Hallberg flew there and worked her way backstage at the Hammersmith Palais, armed with an envelope that included a personal letter, a photo she hoped he would autograph and part of the book she had started as her Master's Degree writing thesis. "All I could do was chase him and I stopped him at the top of the stairway and just screamed the only thing that came to mind: 'Jimmy, I came all the way from America just to meet you,'" she recalled. "It's not my most dignified moment, but there you go." Over the subsequent years, Hallberg crafted that quest into the spine of what became her book. Her central character takes the same flight to the same competition in "Searching For Jimmy Page."

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 top of local requirements and those required by the artists, affecting audiences, backstage crew and event staff. Still, behind the scenes, venue managers are sweating it out. "Our biggest lesson learned here is being mask police with 2,000 people in a big, open crowd is really, really hard," said Chris Corl, general manager of Harrah's Cherokee Center. He was among a half-dozen venue managers and directors in a recent online town hall hosted by the Asheville Area Arts Council. Forum speakers reported a range of concerning realities. Among them, many touring artists are postponing or canceling appearances. About a quarter of people who purchased tickets in advance are asking for refunds and another 25 to 30 percent simply aren't showing up, further cutting into food and drink sales.

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 of reeds for optimal outdoor performance. "There is a pilot light, a flame that's inside when I play music," Chapman said. "I was a little afraid, 'oh my gosh, it's dimming,' but when you have a chance to actually, like today, be around your colleagues and your loved friends and make music together, that pilot light just flames up again and you realize 'ahh, there I am.'"

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 lounge behind the front seats. "I got that with 25,000 miles on it, it's got 155,000, I got it in 2017 and I didn't tour last year," he said. "You kinda use vehicles like Kleenex." On this day, he's pulled the van into the parking lot of Summit Coffee in the River Arts District and walked to a nearby picnic table to talk about the path to his newest record, "Forgiving it All." Stelling launches the album Sept. 25 at the Grey Eagle in Asheville.