With Bruce Springsteen playing the Arena tomorrow night, I've been thinking about when I met the Boss a few years ago. My wife Anne and I were going to Ireland to celebrate our anniversary, and Marc Anthony Thompson—a friend of ours, who happened to be a member of Springsteen's Seeger Sessions band—caught wind of it [...]

The parade of Baltimore bands signing with Chicago's Thrill Jockey Records continues. According to the label, Future Islands will release a full-length CD, In Evening Air, next spring. If you're not familiar with the band's New Wave bounce, check out the above video for "The Happiness of Being Twice."
See if you can spot Dan Deacon [...]

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Gabriela Lena Frank's "Inca Dances," commissioned by the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, snagged a Latin Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. The premiere recording of the piece appears on Manuel Barrueco and Cuarteto Latinoamericano's excellent Sounds of the Americas CD, which came out last year on Barrueco's Tonar label. Barrueco is on quite a [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Ben E. King's recording of the R&B classic "Stand By Me" captured me as a high school freshman in 1961. The song was a haunting interracial partnership of artists that rose above the segregation of culture and politics in that era. It inspired me [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
I went to high school in Springfield, Illinois. It’s kind of the center of the U.S. with very Midwestern values. My friends were getting into punk rock and new wave at a time when I felt pretty alone at my school. I felt especially [...]

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein performed at Jessup's Maryland Correctional Institute for Women  today. In town for a Mozart concerto with the BSO, Dinnerstein played Schubert and Bach for about 40 inmates and a dozen guards in the prison library. The women gave her a standing ovation.
Afterwards, Dinnerstein said she's previously taken time from her whirlwind touring [...]

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What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
As the child of a painter, the visual arts were part of my consciousness even before music.  And the work of art which molded me was my father’s own Fulbright Triptych, a work in three panels measuring 14 feet by 8 feet, showing his [...]

Jason Urick, the guy behind Floristree and the experimental band WZT Hearts, has released a solo 12", Husbands, on Thrill Jockey. I know, I know... how many more Baltimore artists can Thrill Jockey sign? At present, its roster includes Double Dagger, Thank You, Dan Higgs, Arbouretum, Pontiak, and Human Bell. The Chicago-based indie label likes [...]

Tuesday night, Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson teamed up for an excellent show at Goucher. I was amazed how strong their voices were—in fact, they've never sounded better. The highlight of Wainwright's set was the handful of songs he played off his new disc, High, Wide & Handsome, a tribute to Charlie Poole, the old-time [...]

Buster Keaton's classic silent, Steamboat Bill, Jr., will screen this Saturday at Chesapeake Arts Center with an original score composed by Anne Watts and performed "live" by Boister. You might have caught Watts (who's married to this blogger) talking about the show with Tom Hall on WYPR's Maryland Morning earlier this week. It also got [...]