It’s a nice, bright blue day for First Fridays; pick up a copy of this week’s C-VILLE on your walk as a guide to what’s happening where and when. Exciting new shows tonight include one year anniversary shows at both Warm Springs Gallery (with excellent art by the noted African-American painter and etcher Joseph Holston) and Chroma (with "Anthology: One Thousand Words x Four," which attempts to translate the written word into visuals, and an exhibit of vintage magazine ads rendered in 3-D by New City Arts’ Maureen Lovett).
Here’s a show as interesting for the music as it is for reasons related to the recent debates over where music can be played: Ix building restaurant Al Hamraa gets christened as a rock’n’roll venue on Saturday night, with a killer lineup featuring The Super Vacations, Hermit Thrushes and the dormant-of-late slop-pop revue D.B.B. Plays Cups.
And at a true-blue venue, The Southern also hosts a solid "Richmond-meets-Charlottesville" show tonight with local thrashy mindbenders Heavy Burner, plus Richmond/Charlottesville based Channel 43, and Richmond based Kid Is Qual.
In this week’s Feedback column, I wrote about the Virginia Consort‘s upcoming performance of Verdi’s Requiem. On Sunday at Old Cabell Hall the local chamber chorus revives not the context of its creation (Italy in the 18th century) but its remarkable performances that took place in the Terezin concentration camp during the Nazi occupation of Czeckoslovakia. Read all about it here.
You want more? Thomas Gunn‘s quiet new disc Conversations With the Wishing Well has been on heavy rotation here, and he releases it Saturday at C’ville Coffee’s Stage Café. His tunes are homey tales sure to tickle the Nick Drake-bone; plus, you won’t find a better guitarist ’round these parts.
What are you up to this weekend?
