Arts & Performance

By many measures, including his own, David Hopes is a successful poet and playwright. He’s certainly an influential one, at least to those who have studied with him over the years at UNC-Asheville.

But by other measures, including his own, Hopes hasn’t achieved the notoriety one might expect of someone with so many works published and produced.

In “Rapture, Blister, Burn” at NC Stage, Rebecca Morris stars as a strong, independent woman quick to stand her ground. In many respects, she’s the woman Morris wishes to be.

“So in the rehearsal process, there was a lot of drawing that out (of me),” Morris said. “Your personal power or potency, standing on my own two feet and speaking my mind, whether I think people are going to agree with me or not, is very difficult for me to do.”

The Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre is rehearsing a piece that depends on props and costuming that aren’t quite holding together.

At this point, performances are two weeks away, and Susan Collard doesn’t appear too worried. After 38 years of ups and down and dips and turns she could never have choreographed, Collard responds to these malfunctions with a smile.

“You have these visions of what you want to create,” Collard said. “And then (you have) the bill, and then ‘how do you raise your money?’”

NOTE: This is the second in a two-part series on the Asheville Symphony Orchestra's search for its next music director.

Here’s an interesting situation that becomes a piece of obscure trivia:

Daniel Meyer was among six finalists this past season to become the next music director of the Fresno Philharmonic, in California. The person who won the position is Rei Hotoda. Now, Hotoda is one of six finalists to succeed Meyer on the podium of the Asheville Symphony.

NOTE: This is the first in a two-part series about the search for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra’s next music director.

The Asheville Symphony is a part-time orchestra. Everyone responsible for the music has another job, or two jobs. So it’s a little stunning to learn how many people applied to become the orchestra’s next music director.

437.

Wiley Cash grew up in a solid, supportive family, attended great schools and is quick to say he is the product of a sheltered, all-American privilege.

So even though he sets his stories in his native North Carolina, Cash is writing as an outsider.

“I had to go to graduate school in Louisiana, however many decades removed from the event itself, to learn about the defining moment in my hometown’s history,” Cash said.

Female readers of young adult fiction have lifted Stephanie Perkins onto the list of New York Times Bestsellers, an appearance on “The Today Show” and other notoriety most young authors would covet. For Perkins, that meteoric success triggered a crippling bout of depression.

Some might wonder why there’s an annual conference dedicated to a tiny college that shut down 60 years ago. That conference, “ReViewing,” going into its ninth year, until now has been the sole domain of arts professors with particular interests in multidisciplinary practice and the groundbreaking history of Black Mountain College.

Murphy Funkhouser Capps begins writing her plays by living her life.

That’s why it’s impossible to separate the writer and performer from the teenage runaway, the former solo parent, the woman whose husband is battling bone cancer.

Nearly all counties in Western Carolina are now home to self-serve kiosks where people can learn more about mental illness – and determine whether they might be suffering from one.  The kiosks are really just a computer screen, with no keyboard and a phone is attached to the screen.  With just a few touches on the screen, users can learn the symptoms of several common mental health conditions says Jessie Smathers of Vaya Health, which helped place the kiosks around the region.

Ann Dunn has spent her entire life in motion -- by necessity, force of will, restlessness and, through it all, a curiosity that refuses to sit still.

At age 71, Dunn has so many active elements in her life: She has a fulltime teaching schedule at UNC-Asheville. She’s working on her fourth book of poetry. Every summer, she dives into culturally immersive travels the world over, and she’s eager to share what she sees and learns both in her classroom, with her 11 grandchildren and anyone she has time to sit with.

 If you want people to hear some new songs you’ve written, there’s an open-mike around Asheville almost any night of the week. But for songwriters who want to put a little more on the line, the One Stop hosts a songwriting competition every Wednesday night throughout the fall.

Music directors and orchestras often stick together about as long as coaches last with professional football teams. But on Saturday, the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra launches its 20th season under the baton of Thomas Joiner. This is the story of a marriage that works.

Different Strokes is an Asheville theater company with a mission to "change the world one play at a time." Still, Stephanie Hickling-Beckman, the founding director of Different Strokes, couldn't have known the company's production of "Best of Enemies" would come on the vapors of the racially charged events of Charlottesville, Virginia.

It's a bittersweet day here at Blue Ridge Public Radio.  Thirty one years ago this month, music director Dick Kowal hit the airwaves.   Today, he hosted his last show.   While it's  impossible to capture all of the amazing accomplishments of his talented career, we do have some highlights, and a few good stories.  BPR's Helen Chickering reports.

(Dick Kowal on the air)

“It’s about 6 minutes after 9, good morning.”

If you live in Western North Carolina, chances are, you know this voice.

(Dick Kowal on the air)

Asheville Community Theatre and Drama UNC-A will co-produce the swashbuckling prequel to Peter Pan, Peter and the Starcatcher, opening Thursday evening at the Carol Belk Theatre on the UNC-Asheville campus.  Cast members Chloe Zeitounian and Alex Daly spoke with Dick Kowal about the 2012 Broadway show.

The Asheville Symphony performs the finale to this week's Asheville Amadeus Festival in a Sunday afternoon concert at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. The featured soloist is violinist Midori, who will perform Mendelssohn's e minor Violin Concerto. Also on the program, Mozart's Symphony No. 35,  Stravinsky's  "Dumbarton Oaks" concerto, and Faure's Pavanne featuring the Asheville Symphony Chamber Chorus.

Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center (our neighbors on Broadway in downtown Asheville,) presents the 7th annual {Re}Happening Saturday, March 25th at Lake Eden in Black Mountain (the site of Black Mountain College and Camp Rockmont.) The event will feature an immersive experience created by many area artists, as well as a guest appearance by Chicago based Third Coast Percussion, an ensemble steeped in the music and aesthetic of John Cage, BMC College artist.

The Asheville Choral Society celebrates the Asheville Amadeus Festival and its own 40th anniversary with a concert Friday night, March 17th, at Asheville's Central United Methodist Church. The program will feature excerpts from Mozart's Mass in C minor as well as works from the 18th to the 21st century by Vivaldi, Stephen Paulus, Jake Runestad and Dolly Parton.

Asheville Baroque Concerts presents the finale program of this year's season on Sunday afternoon, March 19th, and 3pm at Oakley United Methodist Church. Titled "Oltremontano, from beyond the mountains," music for recorder, viola da gamba and harpsichord. Artistic director and viola da gamba player Gail Ann Schroeder talked with Dick Kowal about the music and the musicians.

NC Stage Company presents Souvenir: A Fantasia on theLife of Florence Foster Jenkins, opening Wednesday, March 15th and running through April 2nd. Part of this week's Asheville Amadeus Festival, the play looks at the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, an eccentric socialite who lives under the delusion that she is an enchanting coloratura soprano when she is actually incapable of holding pitch.

The Asheville Amadeus Festival officially kicks off Friday evening with a beer release and open house at Highland Brewing. Beginning at 7pm, the event celebrates the release of Highland's "Wolfgang 1756 Symphony Lager," music by Matt Townsend and The Wonder of the World, food trucks, and more. Leah Wong Ashburn, president of Highland Brewing, and David Whitehill, executive director of the Asheville Symphony, joined Dick Kowal to talk about the event and give an overview of the 10 day Asheville Amadeus Festival.

This week, BPR gardening expert Alison Arnold talks about how to do composting with earthworms.

The first concert in the Asheville Amadeus Festival, the Blue Ridge Orchestra performs in UNC-A's Lipinsky Auditorium Saturday morning at 11 and that afternoon at 3 in a concert titled "A Wedding with Wolfgang." In a family-oriented program, the orchestra will play "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Blue." Director Dr. Milton Crotts talked with Dick Kowal about the program.