Mariana Bell Still Not Sleeping (self-released) In the 19 years since her debut album, Mariana Bell has matured. On her eighth studio LP, Still Not Sleeping, Bell’s voice, production, and songwriting talent shine as she blurs the lines of vintage pop and country rock in songs that celebrate life. Bell’s new songs evolved as she […]
Celebrate the beauty and wonder of the natural world at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival. With Representation Matters as a theme, this year’s lineup features films that spotlight underrepresented voices in the environmental and wilderness communities. Learn about the importance of the ancestral lands surrounding the general Nch’i-Wàna area from the short film Land […]
SOL scores drop Four Albemarle County elementary schools—Greer, Mountain View, Red Hill, and Woodbrook—have been accredited with conditions for the 2022-23 school year, meaning their Standards of Learning exam pass rates in one or more student demographic groups did not meet state standards, according to a statement issued by the school district on September 22. […]
By Maeve Hayden, Tami Keaveny, Eshaan Sarup, and Courteney Stuart Power is defined as “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.” Keeping that in mind, we put together our annual list of the people and organizations that are leading the charge in our community. From […]
Montpelier gets new leadership With more than half its members now representing the descendants of enslaved workers at Montpelier, the Montpelier Foundation Board is moving quickly to undo actions taken by previous leadership during a months-long dispute over control of the board. First on that to-do list: rehiring high-level staffers who’d been fired for speaking […]
By Maryann Xue and Brielle Entzminger In the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Marcus-David Peters Act. Named in honor of a 24-year-old Black high school biology teacher killed by a Richmond police officer during a severe mental health crisis in 2018, the 2020 law required localities to […]
A farce for the force: Italian playwright Dario Fo’s political satire Accidental Death of an Anarchist pokes fun at the Italian police force by imagining a fictionalized aftermath of 1969’s real-life Piazza Fontana bombing. Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist wrongly accused of the bombing, plummets to his death from a fourth-floor window while in a police […]
Preservation haul: New Orleans jazz ensemble Tuba Skinny fulfilled a lifelong dream this year with the release of Magnolia Stroll, its first album of original music. The group formed in 2009 as a loose collection of street musicians that combines cornet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, tenor banjo, guitar, frottoir, and vocals. Influenced by a wide range […]
Sad, mad love: A grumbling Cupid, lovesick Venus, and dishy Adonis star in Venus & Adonis, a modern operatic take on the classical Greek myth, produced by the Early Access Music Project, a rotating group of musicians that brings early music to the community through accessible programming. Originally composed by John Blow in the 1680s, […]
Refuge for refugees Twelve years after moving from Charlottesville to Prague, Kim Bianchini had built a real estate business with her husband when war in Ukraine broke out and refugees began flowing through Poland and into the Czech Republic. “The families that were arriving were having a very hard time signing leases and finding places […]