Arts and Culture : Buzz

Musicians from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra kicked off a six-day festival, Spring for Music, at Carnegie Hall last week. 

BSO Music Director Marin Alsop "began her bracing program with John Adams’s 'Shaker Loops,' the 1983 string-orchestra version of an earlier chamber piece for strings," the New York Times writes.

"The music is alive with oscillating melodic bits and rippling rhythmic figures, and this performance captured the bustling musical patterns and undulant waves of sound."

You can read the entire story here. 

The New York Times chats with Centerstage Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah just before his new play begins its run at the Mount Vernon theater. 

Over a meal at an Afghan restaurant in Mount Vernon (gee, could it be the Helmand?), Kwei-Armah talks about "Beneatha's Place." Written by Kwei-Armah, the play is part of the theater company's so-called "Raisin Cycle," which included productions of Kwei-Armah's "Beneatha's Place" and Bruce Norris's "Clybourne Park." 

Both "Clybourne Park" and Kwei-Armah's plays are contemporary reactions to Lorraine Hansberry's seminal 1959 work, "A Raisin in the Sun."

"Clybourne" is currently running at Centerstage now through June 16 while "Beneatha's Place" runs May 8-June 16. 

"Mr. Kwei-Armah has put his reputation on the line with an ambitious new work that, although it doesn’t take on “Clybourne” directly, will invite inevitable comparisons," the Times writes. 

Kwei-Armah also says in the interview that Norris's play, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011, unwittingly gives the message that " 'whites build and blacks destroy.'"

Read the entire story here. And see Kwei-Armah's interview with BmoreMedia. 

Crabs, scenic roads and Artscape are among the reasons travelers should visit Maryland this summer, according to Fodor's. The travel guide recently posted 5 Reasons to Go to Maryland this Summer. Visiting the Eastern Shore and celebrating American history on the Civil War Trail were the other two reasons. 

"Warmer weather means getting outside and enjoying the more than 3,100 miles of coastline along the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean, taking in the various outdoor street festivals, and cracking into some blue crabs," Fodor's writes. 

In addition to Artscape, Fodor's highlights two other festivals: the Maryland Renaissance Festival and the Maryland Craft Beer Festival in Frederick. Read the entire story here. 

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presented an abridged symphonic version of Wagner's famous "The Ring of the Nibelung", reviewed by the Washington Post.

"That the experience — a grouping of greatest hits, arranged into a single piece by Henk de Vlieger — felt like Wagner Lite is also unfair to both Alsop and the orchestra, who did some heavy lifting in some significant music," the Post writes of the performance led by BSO Music Director Marin Alsop. "It was a nice idea for a program."

Read the rest here. 

Baltimore's Lost City Diner has reopened after having been closed for over a year. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District diner opened in August 2011 and closed six months later, shortly after BmoreMedia ran this story on the neighborhood.

It has retained its 1930s sci-fi decor, but now has a new owner, Baltimore City Paper writes. John Rutoskey has steered the menu toward classic diner fare, with plenty of vegan options, the paper writes.

And Baltimore Fishbowl writes that the vibe is "classy yet easy, eventful yet low key."

"Most likely, all the hype and anticipation about Lost City opening (or opening again) comes from its high visibility location. It’s right next door to the Club Charles and the Depot, and across from the Charles movie theater and the former home of Everyman Theater. That’s a lot of drinkers/movie patrons/theater-goers who could use a shake, some fries, and a place to decompress after their other evening activities." 

Read more here. 

"I grew up on stories about the glory days of Jewish Baltimore, when, in my father’s telling, Jews were really Jews," writes Jennifer Moses in the New York Times. 

Moses says Jewish Baltimore is on the rebound, in both the city and the suburbs. She points to the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Attman's Deli and Eutaw Place Synagogue. 

"Happily, Jewish Baltimore is on the rebound, and not just in the suburbs. On a cold day in February when I went in search of the settings of my father’s stories, I landed in a place where perseverance, preservation and memory have conspired to keep that vanished world available," Moses writes. 

You can read the entire story here. 

Zelda Fitzgerald is the subject of four new novels that are coming out this year, one of which focuses on her time in a Baltimore mental institution.

Erika Robuck's "Call Me Zelda", which comes out in May, is narrated by a nurse who cares for F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife.

"The novel tackles one of the most contentious issues in the Fitzgeralds' marriage —their fight over who had the right to fictionalize their relationship," the Wall Street Journal writes.

The Journal also writes that Zelda wrote her own novel on her troubled marriage to the Jazz Age "Great Gatsby" writer while hospitalized for schizophrenia.

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Museums and tourism officials are honoring abolitionist Harriet Tubman, 100 years after her death. 

USA Today features some of these homages, including a contemporary art exhibit "Homage to Harriet" at Baltimore's Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History & Culture. It starts March 23 and runs through June 23.

The USA Today also features three other Maryland honors to Harriet Tubman. Earlier this month, officials celebrated the groundbreaking of the 17-acre Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park, just south of Cambridge. 

"The same day, the state designated a 125-mile driving tour, dubbed the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, that cuts through her home turf on Maryland's Eastern Shore," USA Today writes.

Maryland also passed a bill to establish the 5,700-acre Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park on  Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Cubist painter was taught by Henri Matisse and friends with Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau.

And he is now the focus of a new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is featuring drawings, prints and paintings from the 20th century artist.

The Wall Street Journal highlights the exhibit, along with two others in Seattle and Miami.  

" 'Max Weber: Bringing Paris to New York,' chronicles in 40 works from 1908 through 1928 how he moved from a classical to a cubist style," the Journal writes. 

The exhibit started March 1 and runs through June 23. It features several Weber paintings from 1909 to 1915 that are part of the  BMA's collection along with many pieces on loan from the Estate of Max Weber. 

Baltimore's Centerstage is one of four performing arts organizations that are producing several theatrical works commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, writes the New York Times. 

The National Civil War Project partners the theater troupes with the arts department of an academic institution. In the case of Centerstage, the Mount Vernon theater is teaming up with the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.  The duo has commissioned “At War With Ourselves,” by the Kronos Quartet that promises to feature a "legendary composer."

Theaters and universities in Atlanta, Boston and Washington, D.C., are also taking part. 

We know that Baltimore is quirky and offbeat. Apparently travel guru Peter Greenberg has gotten this memo because he's named Baltimore the No. 1 Wacky & Weird Road-Trip Spot. 

"From the creepy brilliance of Edgar Allan Poe to the dark, irreverent humor of John Waters, a sci-fi nut, horror junkie, or simply a fan of good, old American kitsch, Baltimore is the number one quintessential capital of weird, cool and quirky sites in our country," Peter Greenberg writes on his travel website. 

The CBS News Travel Editor recommends visits to Port Discovery, the American Visionary Art Museum, the National Pinball Museum, National Museum of Dentistry and Geppi's Entertainment Museum. 

Santa Claus, Indiana and Albuquerque, New Mexico got the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. 

Who knew McNulty and Omar had so much to teach us.

University of Michigan professor David Harding is using storylines from "The Wire" to teach his students about public policy, USA Today writes. The HBO crime drama is set in Baltimore. 

Titled "Urban Public Policy Through the Lens of HBO's The Wire," the class connects storylines in the HBO with real-life city challenges, such as housing, labor, health care, substance abuse and urban decay.

"It's a growing trend across the nation -- take some piece of pop culture, tie it to an academic subject and hope it grabs students' attention more than a standard academic class," USA Today writes. 

You can read the entire story here. 

If you were watching the Oscars Feb. 24, you know that "Searching for Sugarman" won Craig Strydom the Oscar for best documentary.

If you were searching for the movie's writer Craig Strydom, look no further than Charm City, the Baltimore Sun writes. Strydom lived in Baltimore for 13 years and worked for marketing firm IMRE.  

The movie tells the story of a music fan searching for the enigmatic 1970s singer Sixto Rodriguez whose music was used in South Africa's struggle against apartheid.

Johns Hopkins University has won accolades for its world renowned academic studies in medicine, public policy and engineering.

The Baltimore school's writing program is also among the best, according to CollegeDegree.com. The site, in conjunction with USA Today College, placed Johns Hopkins No. 3 in its ranking of the ten best writing programs for college students. 

"Their English department boasts a long history of producing well-received and distinguished writers," CollegeDegree.com writes about the Charles Village school. "While they do offer courses in creative writing, Johns Hopkins focuses much more on literary writing, critical analysis, and literature education to improve writing skills."

Hopkins came behind Emory University in Atlanta and Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.

You can see the entire list here. 

Netflix is releasing its Baltimore-filmed political thriller "House of Cards" on Friday, Feb 8.

The Maryland Film Office says the $100 million production starring Kevin Spacey is the largest filmed in the Free State, writes the Washington Post.

The 13-part series will be available all at once via Netflix streaming. 

Much of the movie is filmed in Baltimore, which stands in for D.C.