Wednesday Music Club keeps it classical for 95 years

Wednesdays usually mean two things—you’re one day closer to the weekend and, at the end of the day, you realize how much work stands between you and that weekend. In 1923, the founding members of the Wednesday Music Club deemed the midweek mark a cause for celebration. “They met Wednesday mornings because they had a […]

Melissa Cooke Benson explores life and body changes

Artist Melissa Cooke Benson’s explorations in portraiture, long inspired by her daily life, have aligned with geographical moves, new and different cityscapes and cultures and alterations in her interior life, too. “With each life transition,” she says, “I’ve had to digest what’s going on around me and think of a way of incorporating what I […]

The Alt unearths old songs and switches its lineup

Of the many roads that could be taken, The Alt—an Irish folk band comprised of John Doyle (guitar, bouzouki, vocals), Eamon O’Leary (guitar, bouzouki, vocals) and Nuala Kennedy (flutes, whistles, vocals)—chooses the beaten path on its music journey. The band’s self-titled debut is not, however, a collection of Irish tunes that are beloved by the […]

ARTS Pick: Bobby Bones is the face of country radio

One of the most popular syndicated radio shows in America is helmed by Bobby Bones, something that country music fans have known for years. The Arkansas native is funny, honest and unscripted—Bones once got Taylor Swift to offer dating advice to his show’s intern and do a reading from the Titanic movie script. Since 2013, […]

ARTS Pick: War & Treaty duo plays together nicely

Before War & Treaty’s Michael Trotter Jr. was a touring musician, he was a soldier in Iraq. There among the brutalities of war, in a dictator’s palace, Trotter taught himself to play on a piano believed to have belonged to Saddam Hussein. It was in this extraordinary setting that he wrote his first song, which […]

ARTS Pick: UVA Drama takes on Urinetown

UVA Drama takes on satire, politics, capitalism and social justice as man’s desire to pee in private leads to revolution in the Broadway smash Urinetown. When a water shortage occurs, a lockdown on toilet flushing requires citizens to use paid public facilities, but not everyone can afford the fee to pee. A hero emerges, and […]

ARTS Pick: Shenandoah Fringe Festival takes center stage

The force and fearlessness of art takes center stage with Shenandoah Fringe Festival’s diverse lineup of film, theater, music, puppetry and more. Local and national artists unite with the declaration, “We can be students and painters and refugees and baristas and mothers and mimes and waitresses and vaudevillians all in one without invalidating the others.” […]

First Fridays: April 6

“Nobody understands an artist like another artist,” says local portrait artist Frank Walker. And so Walker, who has drawn all his life—first imitating the figures in Sgt. Rock comic books and later working in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers graphics department, earning a BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and working […]

Art in Odd Places explores matter and historical interpretation

This week, New York-based artist Ed Woodham brings his Art in Odd Places festival to Charlottesville in a two-day, intensely collaborative event with the theme of “matter.” Sponsored by the UVA Studio Arts Board, the mission of AiOP, Woodham writes in the program guide, “is to engage and activate the everyday places in our lives. […]