BmoreArt’s Picks: September 16-22
This Week: Ira Glass and David Simon in conversation at MICA, High Zero Festival at the Theatre Project, Deborah Brown English book launch at The Ivy, Maryland Opera performs at Peabody Library, Jen White-Johnson artist talk + reception at Julio Fine Arts, curatorial talk + reception for Picturing Mobility at UMBC, Baltimore Jewelry Center’s farewell to Shane Prada, Disability Pride Art Market, artist talks + receptions for two new Joy Davis curated exhibitions at Gormley Gallery, Jamal Moore performs at the BMA, and The Great Detour performance at Bogus Gallery — PLUS apply for a culinary artist residency at Ox-Bow and more featured opportunities!
BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.
To submit your calendar event, email us at events@bmoreart.com!
The Art of the Story: A Conversation With Ira Glass and David Simon
Tuesday, September 16 :: 6:30-8pm
@ MICA Brown Center
Join us on Tuesday, September 16, at the Brown Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art for The Art of the Story: A Conversation with Ira Glass and David Simon. This special evening will feature a live, unscripted conversation between Ira Glass, the legendary creator of This American Life, and David Simon, journalist and creator of The Wire.
Together, Ira and David will talk shop, story, and Baltimore. The conversation will be followed by an open audience Q&A, offering guests the chance to engage directly with two of the most influential voices in modern media.
This event is hosted by The Baltimore Banner in partnership with WYPR. Advance registration is required.
Please note that the event will be on the record, and may be photographed or recorded for future use.
High Zero Festival
Thursday, September 18 | Ongoing through September 21
@ Baltimore Theatre Project
High Zero is the premier festival of Improvised, Experimental music on the East Coast, being fully devoted to new collaborations between the most inspired improvisors from around the world.
Lasting two weeks in total, the festival brings together 22 core musicians, but also involves a much larger subculture of musicians in Baltimore and on the East Coast. Unlike many related festivals, High Zero is not narrow in terms of sensibility or subculture, but rather widely inclusive of all the different types of experimental music-making in the moment. The fact that half of the festival’s core participants are from Baltimore speaks to the depth of Baltimore’s experimental music subculture, which in recent years has grown to be one of the richest cities in the country for experimental art.
The festival has a unique structure. HIGH ZERO is focused solely on new collaborations in freely improvised experimental music. Internationally famous musicians play side by side with younger “unknowns,” united by their commitment to the musical imagination. Each year, Baltimore becomes a fertile meeting-ground for a large group of inspired players, drawn from a fascinating international subculture.
The festival exposes large audiences to this radical music in its pure form. Large-scale public concerts, recording sessions, workshops, and guerilla street performances are all part of the heady mix. The players are carefully selected by the festival’s organizers for their intense, unique music, whether it is based around dramatic intensity, humor, specially designed instruments, original approach, raw sound, or nearly superhuman instrumental technique. The resulting collaborations challenge the limits of music and delight by their audacity, expressiveness, immediacy, and innovation. It isn’t about stars or established projects; it is about the most uncompromising and stimulating new improvised music we can bring together.
To say the High Zero Festival is an unusual event is an understatement. Not only does the festival intend to provide the audience with extremely varied, inspired and ingenious experiences, it is also a major challenge for the improvisors, who are put in contexts where their stock personal musical languages may not work, pushing them into terra incognita.
This year’s festival again promises to be the best yet, with new performers and unpredictable music. We hope to see you at the High Zero Festival, and hope that you will spread the word to anyone you think might be interested!
Book Launch for Deborah Brown English: TIME’S BREATH (with Martha Anne Toll)
Thursday, September 18 :: 6-8pm
@ The Ivy Bookshop
The Ivy invites you to a book launch for a one-of-a-kind debut novel: Time’s Breath by Deborah Brown English! The novel includes the author’s own paintings and illustrations in oil and graphite, and this form itself participates in the story, which opens with the discovery of a book within the remains of a small Norwegian boat. She will be joined in conversation with accomplished author Martha Anne Toll.
Over the course of Time’s Breath, the story emerges in both words and pictures to create a storytelling style at the intersection of the timeless and the contemporary.
We look forward to hearing the author’s perspective on her unique creation, and hope you will join us to hear more.
TIME’S BREATH will be available for purchase at the event.
Deborah Brown English grew up on Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore, and originally intended to be a fiction writer, studying English and creative writing at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She graduated from MICA with honors in 1985, and her work has been exhibited in Maryland at Steven Scott Gallery, Paper Rock Scissors, the Annual Gala Show of the Choral Arts Society of Baltimore, the Academy Museum, and at the former Sales and Rental Gallery at the Baltimore Museum of Art; as well as in galleries in Pennsylvania and Nebraska. She and her husband, Philip, live in Baltimore and are known together for their joint collecting and support of the arts.
Martha Anne Toll is a novelist and literary and cultural critic. Her debut novel, Three Muses, was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize, with New York’s Vulture noting, “by the time you finish this, you’ll realize you’re in the hands of a maestro.” Her new novel, Duet for One, another love story set in the high-pressure performing arts world, takes place in the classical music scene around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. Toll is a recipient of Fellowships from the Vashon Artist Residency, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Virginia and France, Monson Arts, and Dairy Hollow. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and serves on the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. A graduate of Yale, Toll holds a B.A. Degree in Music, and her classical music training informs her artistic practice. She holds a J.D. Degree from Boston University School of Law, and comes to writing professionally after a career dedicated to social justice. Toll grew up in Philadelphia, and lives in Washington, D.C.
Read more of this week’s picks at BmoreArt.
