Two years ago, we cited the Maryland Traditions Folklife Festival as "Best Arts Showcase" in our Best Of Baltimore issue. The Zionaires, a local gospel group (pictured), stole the show in 2011. Today, you can head down to the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown and see what all the fuss is about. This year's fest features a legendary doo-wop group (The Swalllows), the city's best jazz band (Lafayette Gilchrist and the New Volvanoes), a cameo by a jazz master (saxophonist Carl Grubbs), a bluegrass band (The Carroll County Ramblers), Cambodian musicians and dancers, a Guatemalan marimba group, and a Native American dance troupe. There will also be workshops for egg decorating, yarn painting, pinata making, blacksmithing, and letterpress printing. And you can grab a slice of Smith Island cake! Did I mention that's it's free? What else do you need to know? Get down there—it starts at 11 am, and goes until 7 pm. 

David Byrne makes something of a homecoming tomorrow when he returns to Baltimore for a show with St. Vincent at the Meyerhoff. Byrne grew up in Arbutus and graduated from Landsdowne High School before going global with Talking Heads. Since that band combusted, he’s launched a record label, made a bunch of cool artwork, written an excellent book, continued to make good music, and rebuffed offers for a hits heavy/cash grab tour with his old band mates. The man exudes integrity and can still bring the heat, as this clip with St. Vincent (see below) makes clear. Although the pair’s Love This Giant album felt tentative, they seem to have hit their stride on this tour. For more evidence of that, download the free Brass Tactics EP. 

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I called Rebecca Hoffberger after hearing that visionary artist Vollis Simpson, creator of AVAM’s signature whirligig, had passed away at the age of 94. Hoffberger had just returned from the funeral, driving all day to North Carolina and back, but she was definitely in the mood to talk about Simpson, a longtime friend.

“After seeing his whirligigs, I couldn’t imagine anything else as the centerpiece of our campus,” said Hoffberger, who puts Simpson’s Whirligig Farm in North Carolina on a par with Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers and Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain. “He’s one of the three greats in America, when it comes to scale and original production.”

Hoffberger said Simpson was beloved in his home state, and people lined up to get into the funeral. Many in attendance talked about being profoundly moved by Simpson’s work, and they also spoke of his integrity and keen sense of humor. “He seemed to get happier and happier as he got older,” said Hoffberger. “He was a great artist and a great man.”

Next time you're in Federal Hill, stop by AVAM and pay your respects. And if you're heading south later this year,...

Arts lovers on their way to the beach this weekend have a few reasons to pull off Route 50. That’s because, as noted in our April issue, the Eastern Shore continues to shed its rep as a cultural backwater—Mencken called it a “forlorn corner” of Maryland that “succumbed to its poor white trash, who determine its ideas and run its affairs”—and emerge as a viable, and vital, spot for art and culture. Here are a few suggestions…

Don’t miss the James Turrell exhibit—yes, that James Turrell—at Easton's Academy Art Museum. Turrell, a 1984 MacArthur genius grant recipient, is considered one of our greatest living artists. He’s known primarily for a decades-long effort to transform Roden Crater into a monumental work of art near his Arizona home. Turrell also lives, part-time, in Oxford, about a 20-minute drive from the Easton gallery, where he’s installed one of...