The creative process requires commitment to an idea, openness to feedback, repeated attempts (a failure or two) and adaptation. When approached thoughtfully, it offers space for new ways of understanding the world, engaging in a community and expressing the emotions that otherwise go unsaid. Just ask Paul Beyer, founder and director of Charlottesville’s Tom Tom […]
The redemption of The Fast and The Furious series, from critical punching bag to national treasure so late in the game, is something of a minor miracle with few equivalents in movie history. Think back to the mid-2000s when each new release was met with disbelief and jokes about its increasingly contrived titles that awkwardly […]
Three years ago, no one knew what to expect when homebuilder and former City Council candidate Paul Beyer laid plans for a festival celebrating the birth of Thomas “Tom Tom” Jefferson. Now in its fourth year, the Tom Tom Founders Festival makes sense. It’s a week-long mash-up of local art, innovation and music designed to […]
After spending several years reviving the time-tested tradition of the African-American string band with the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, vocalist, violinist and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens is breathing new life into early ’60s folk with her first solo effort. Her debut album, Tomorrow is My Turn, dropped this past February and showcases Giddens’ R&B-influenced interpretations of classics […]
Grant Kwiecinski aka GRiZ is only going to get bigger. At age 23, the multi-talented artist has carved out a unique musical niche that’s a little bit of funk, a little bit of rap, a little bit of soulful sax, and it’s all GRiZ’s eclectic sound. His rising popularity landed him on festival stages from Coachella to Red […]
Was prison rape even funny to begin with? The team behind Get Hard seems to think it’s the funniest thing in the world, maybe the only thing that’s ever been funny. A few jokes here and there are to be expected—though it’ll be nice, not to mention not gross, when we no longer delight at […]
Traditional folk duo Eamon O’Leary and Jefferson Hamer (above) sing and play the guitar, bouzouki and mandolin as The Murphy Beds. They draw on experience from Irish and American traditions (O’Leary grew up in Dublin and Hamer has roots in the New York music scene) on numbers like “Rise Up, My Darling,” a folk song […]
Like most artists, Malena Magnolia has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember. But unlike the galleries and fine art materials most dream about in childhood, she now creates assemblages of mud and dirt on concrete sidewalks and the sides of buildings. “I want to make art that is accessible to […]
Contemporary artist Susan Northington specializes in capturing her Central Virginia surroundings in exaltations of personal expression. Her abstract interpretations of the Blue Ridge Mountains and flat horizon lines aim to evoke the emotion of a place, rather than the physical reality of location. Northington’s works are currently included in the McGuffey Art Center’s collaborative exhibit […]
Although acclaimed singer-songwriter Danny Schmidt is currently based out of Austin, Texas, his musical career began in Charlottesville. A contemporary of Devon Sproule and Paul Curreri, Schmidt got his start playing The Prism Coffeehouse and The Gravity Lounge, and was named oneof “the 50 most significant songwriters of folk in the last 50 years” by “The Midnight […]