Just in from Towson University: My Favorite Things: Song Cycles by Great Composers, the voice recital of local soprano Theresa Bickham, who was interviewed in this week's issue, has been rescheduled for Feb. 21 at 3 p.m. due to the upcoming snow forecast. ... [MORE]

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Funny Business Make your way to the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatree (817 St. Paul St., [410] 752-1225) on Feb. 7 for Drop Three Comedy & Improv's monthly show. The February edition features comic Will Carey. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Haitian Earthquake Relief.Move It The Baltimore Dance Project brings choreography that explores issues like personal space and virtual reality to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (1000 Hilltop Circle, [410] 455- 2476) Feb. 4-6. ... [MORE]

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All Photos by Frank Hamilton

"Last year at this time I was attending a lot of balls," Spike Lee wryly offered when he first took the low-rise stage on the campus of Loyola University. It was a casual yet smart way to set the tone for his entire chat. In Baltimore Jan. 20 to deliver the Loyola University MLK Convocation 2010, Lee greeted the audience by unpeeling the everyday onion of obviousness to get at something a bit more poignant: one year ago today the first African-American man was inaugurated as the President of the ... [MORE]

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Carmen is a bitch—but, oh, what a voice. The opera named for the dancing, flirtatious gypsy songstress who seduces a soldier until he loves her back, leaves, and returns, moves from the streets of 1830s Spain in Georges Bizet's tragedy Carmen to a 1920s Parisian nightclub in American Opera Theater's version, Le Cabaret de Carmen. The Theatre Project's little black box is the perfect space for a stripped-down opera set in smokey Cafe Pastia: small enough to feel intimate, large enough to ho ... [MORE]

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Last week Flo McGarrell—MICA grad, multidisciplinary artist, and son to James and Ann McGarrell of Newbury, Vt.—passed away Jan. 12 during the earthquake that devastated Haiti. At the time, McGarrell was inside the Peace of Mind Hotel, which collapsed. McGarrell was the director of the Fanal Otantik Sant d'a Jakmel, a nonprofit arts center in Jacmel, Haiti. An ongoing, online memorial can be at Going With the Flo. A local celebration of McGarrell's life takes place this evening, Jan ... [MORE]

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Baltimore's artist-run collective multipurpose space the Hexagon is seeking a new logo, and is sponsoring a design contest to come up with a visual brand for the space and its community. The deadline is Feb. 20. Details from the open call below: The Hexagon, Baltimore's darlin' multi-use art and performance space, is hosting a logo design competition and we want you to enter! What we're looking for: A dynamic graphic that captures the fun spirit of our growing DIY space and community. Color log ... [MORE]

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Interested in displaying your art/performance or selling your wares at this summer's Artscape? Applications for prospective participants of all kinds, from artists to vendors, are now online. Some applications aren't up yet, while the deadline for the prestigious (and lucrative—$25,000) Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize passed back in December, but there's plenty of paperwork for everyone. This summer's festival takes place July 16-18. ... [MORE]

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Wire nerds all over the internet have been abuzz the past 24 hours or so thanks to the release of the first teaser trailer for Treme, David Simon's new series for HBO. The series focuses on musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans, and "New Orleans" and "music" is about all you get from the very Wire-esque teaser, but it does what it was surely intended to do: whet the appetite to see what Simon came up with when the series debuts in April. ... [MORE]

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If you missed Where the Wild Things Are in theaters and are looking forward to watching it on DVD in a few months, don't count on it showing up in a Netflix envelope the week it's released. The Los Angeles Times reports that Netflix and Warner Bros., which distributes Wild Things and other hot titles ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Ninja Assassin, have announced a deal entailing that the online rental juggernaut will delay renting Warner Bros. new releases for 28 days. The deal would be minor b ... [MORE]

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COOL TEXTS Maryland Art Place's Instant Messages ends its run Jan. 9, and if you haven't checked out this show—featuring MFA students from MICA's Graphic Design program directed by Ellen Lupton—just do yourself a favor and check it out. The show features the sort of innovative approaches to visual communication and typefaces that Lupton and MICA's graphic design department have turned out in recent years, and features Lauren Adams, Christina Beard, Chris Clark, Elizabeth Herrmann, An ... [MORE]

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By the end of January 2010, the Lof/t—the mixed-use performance and gallery space located on the first floor of the Load of Fun Studios on West North Avenue—will no longer exist. At least, it won't be operating, as it has for the past 12 months, under the organizational watch of Ric Royer, whose programming acumen—along with programming from Los Solos' Bonnie Jones and Jackie Milad, Magic Eye film series maven Mary Helena Clark, i.e. reading series host Michael Ball, Paco Fish, ... [MORE]

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Pop-up retail—the practice of opening temporary stores, often in unusual locations—is not a new phenomenon. For years, artists and indie artisans have reclaimed vacant spaces for short-term uses, such as craft fairs or art markets, and in 2004 the Trendwatching blog observed the practice as it took hold in London, Berlin, New York, and other major metropolitan areas. Major retailer Target has embraced the concept, and this holiday season it operated small "Target To Go" locations, op ... [MORE]

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Renowned writer and critic Terry Teachout has some fairly serious Maryland ties. Not only did he attend St. John's College, but he wrote 2002's The Skeptic: The Life of H.L. Mencken, an esteemed biography of the Sage of Baltimore. (This is in addition to his influential arts writing for the Wall Street Journal and others, as well as sundry other biographies, memoirs, and collections to his credit.) Now Teachout has finished another biography of an American icon who had even more influence over t ... [MORE]

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Olga Mukhina, whose play Tanya Tanya runs at Towson University Dec. 4-12, isn't your average Russian playwright. That is in part because, at least until the early 1990s, there were relatively few practicing Russian playwrights to begin with in a theater culture dominated by adaptations and classics. It's also because, as a single working mother in her late 30s, she doesn't quite fit into the template of the Russian writer. For both those reasons, Mukhina's Tanya Tanya went largely ignored by Rus ... [MORE]

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Our fellow alt-weekly Washington City Paper just put up an online Q&A with Baltimore's own John Waters to coincide with his (now sold out) Dec. 17 spoken-word performance at the Birchmere in suburban Virgina. Questioner Mike Riggs leads with the question du jour and asks Waters about freshly convicted Mayor Sheila Dixon. He answers, in part: I feel bad for her. I think she was doing a good job as mayor. I guess she probably did it, I wasn't there for the trial every day. I saw the jurors be ... [MORE]

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Jeremy Saulnier

Writing on his New Yorker blog, editor/critic Richard Brody recently named his picks for the best films of the past decade. Among the honorable mentions sits a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) title: Hamilton, the 2006 independent feature debut of Baltimore filmmaker Matthew Porterfield, which was filmed in the local neighborhood of the same name. "Beside [Jean-Luc Godard's] Eloge de l'amour, this is the movie I've watched the most times this decade," Brody writes. Considering that Brody ... [MORE]

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Maryland Public Television is replaying a short documentary by local filmmaker Bill Whiteford Nov. 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. You might recognize Whiteford's name: He won an Oscar in 2000 for the documentary King Gimp which he co-directed with fellow Marylander Susan Hannah Hadary. The 30-minute program airing tonight, Foster Care Stories: A Place to Be, isn't ground-breaking television—it feels like an infomercial for becoming a foster parent, which isn't surprising as the Maryland Department o ... [MORE]

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This past July, Las Vegas tight-pants rock quartet the Killers sold out two nights at London's Royal Albert Hall, evenings recorded for the upcoming The Killers Live from the Royal Albert Hall CD/DVD/Blu-ray, due out Nov. 10. Tonight through Nov. 11, the Senator Theatre offers a sneak peak of that concert film (this limited-engagement release was confirmed too late to make yesterday's edition of the paper). ... [MORE]

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When Will-e Robo took the stage Oct. 22 at the Baltimore Comedy Factory, he had a lot working against him. The joint was less than half full and the audience was lethargic. To warm himself up, Robo drew inspiration from the crowd in front of him. No one was safe from his blunt opinions and twisted imagination, as he systematically dismantled the audience's comfort zone. First, he belittled a "premature laugher" in the front row, and sarcastically asked a man in a wheel chair if he "needed a seat ... [MORE]

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normals.com

The Greenmount Avenue building that houses both Normals Books and Records and the Red Room performance space was sold at auction earlier today, but it looks like business as usual for both establishments. Details on the deal are still sketchy; Steph Campfield, the sale agent for former owner Property Homes LLC, has yet to return a message left on his cell phone. But Normals co-proprietor (and occasional City Paper contributor) Rupert Wondolowski says he's met the as-yet-unidentified new owner a ... [MORE]

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