On a recent afternoon, Baltimore School for the Arts [BSA] director Chris Ford walks the halls pointing out student work related to this week’s Appalachian Spring Festival. The BSA is the first high school given permission by the Martha Graham Center to produce the classic ballet, and they’ve used the opportunity to foster a variety of cross-disciplinary collaborations. There’s evocative and sculptural artwork, storyboards for an animation project, stereo equipment playing a remix of Aaron Copland’s score, and panels of text about American multiculturalism. Ford also notes that a group of students has been researching Appalachian Spring at the Library of Congress, where Graham debuted the piece in 1944. 

“This is the first project to engage so many students from across the school,” says Ford, who’s led BSA for the past two years. “It was a goal of mine to have a piece that involves everybody and crosses disciplines, because, nowadays, artists work across disciplines. And the important aspect of all this is the collaborative nature of it. It pushes us forward using the people who should be pushing us forward—the kids.”

It isn't easy to upstage Billie Joe Armstrong, but a kid plucked from the audience did exactly that at the Patriot Center last night. Green Day was playing "Longview" about two-thirds of the way through the set, when Armstrong asked if anybody wanted to come up and sing the third verse. He spotted a kid in the crowd, asked him repeatedly if he really knew the lyrics, and told him to "get your ass up here." The kid took the mic and proceeded to belt out the rest of the song, much to be band's delight. The crowd went nuts. And when it was over, Armstrong gave the kid a guitar and thanked him for "what was pretty much the most memorable moment in my entire life."

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

The pivotal moment for me musically was an all-night concert just outside of
Bangalore in 1994.  I was in India performing at the Jazz Yatra Festival
with a student band assembled by Berklee College of Music.  At the time (at
the age of 22), I was very confused about my hybrid identity as an
Indian-American and even more confused as to how to address and engage my
ancestry through music.  This single concert changed my life.  I felt an
unparalleled connection with the music and a bond of cultural ownership.  I
realized that I could truly connect with this music and incorporate its
concepts into my larger perspective of jazz as a global art form, an
expression of contemporary multicultural landscapes.  I later learned that
the artists I saw that night were some of the true greats of Hindustani and
Carnatic music including Parween Sultana, Chitti Babu, and Vikku Vinayakram....

President Obama will officially designate a national monument dedicated to Harriet Tubman on the Eastern Shore. Obama, according to a Sun report, will sign a proclamation on Monday that, after years of false starts and political wrangling, will finally make the Tubman monument official. You might recall that Rep. Andy Harris submitted legislation for a Tubman monument last year, legislation that did not include any funding for the project. Hmm. Instead of dwelling on that, the legions of Tubman admirers can now look forward to a park and monument adjacent to Blackwater Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County. The timing is right, considering that Tubman passed away 100 years ago this month. You can read about art and music she's inspired ("Muse of Her People") in our current issue.