New trails: Tracy Howe’s social gospel soul album Things That Grow honors marginalized communities while celebrating beauty and resilience. Tracks like “Frack Me” and “Our Strength” are rallying cries against misogyny and predatory capitalism, and “Bury Me,” a protest song about white supremacy, has gained traction around the country. Howe is co-headlining with Rev. Sekou […]
New trails: Tracy Howe’s social gospel soul album Things That Grow honors marginalized communities while celebrating beauty and resilience. Tracks like “Frack Me” and “Our Strength” are rallying cries against misogyny and predatory capitalism, and “Bury Me,” a protest song about white supremacy, has gained traction around the country. Howe is co-headlining with Rev. Sekou […]
Amped up: With his acoustic duo Parker & Gray, Staunton-based vocalist and guitarist Daniel Parker took home a first-place award for Best Solo/Duo in the River City Blues Society of Richmond’s Blues Challenge in 2017, and made the semifinals at the 2016 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. When Parker wants to plug in, he uses […]
The first unit Francesca Grazioli’s American studies class tackled was one on the history of Confederate statues “and how they affect surrounding communities,” says the St. Anne’s-Belfield junior. Impressed by how her classmates engaged in these difficult conversations, “especially in the context of August 11 and 12 [2017]…I thought that their voices, along with all […]
Cross examination: In Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly, tension builds over the course of a weekend family getaway to Martha’s Vineyard, where debates about race and privilege cause destructive secrets to be revealed. Director Jennifer L. Nelson says she appreciates the play’s focus on a segment of African American society not frequently seen onstage. “You […]
When playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov arrived on the Russian literary scene in the late 1800s, he changed the course of modern drama. According to Boomie Pedersen, artistic director of the Hamner Theater in Nelson County, Chekhov’s work meant that “theater went from being larger-than-life declamatory screaming to the back rows, to much […]
Photojournalist Jodi Cobb is one of those rare people who walks toward danger. And when she meets it, she usually introduces herself. “I’ve never disguised myself or misrepresented what I was doing,” says Cobb. “I even introduced myself as a National Geographic photographer to the most notorious human trafficker in Bosnia.” Cobb has spent the […]
Deborah Willis has never been far from a camera. Her father was a photographer, and he documented many things, including frequent visits the family made from their home in Philadelphia to Virginia. Willis’ father grew up in Orange County, and they made trips to Charlottesville, Louisa, Fredericksburg, and Luray Caverns—many of them documented on film, […]
Fourteen years ago, Hari Kondabolu thought a career in stand-up comedy was impossible. “In 2004, 2005… South Asian stand-up didn’t seem realistic,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine anyone wanted me to do that.” Though Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling were rising stars, there were few popular South Asian comics in America at the time. Jump […]
Cass McCombs Tip of the Sphere (ANTI-) The opener of Tip of the Sphere is an interesting mongrel—half Irish folk mantra, half space rock, and ending with three minutes of Jerry-Garcia-circa-1972 wah guitar. All of which sort of sets the tone for Cass McCombs’ latest. There’s easy loping folk on “Absentee” and tabla and David […]
Vanessa German grew up in Los Angeles in a creative household, wearing clothes her artist mother made, writing stories, and crafting creations from the scrap materials her mom laid out on the dining room table for her and her siblings. “We were makers as a way of life,” says German, the 2018 recipient of the […]