From my Inbox to you:

The Vocal Arts and Music Festival returns for a fourth year in Blacksburg, bringing a mix of returning favorites and exciting new offerings, including master classes with some of the biggest names in opera, chamber music celebrations, and solo and group performances spotlighting the festival’s talented singers.

Rising stars and internationally recognized opera legends, coaches, and instrumentalists bring world-class performances to Blacksburg

BLACKSBURG  – On June 6-22, the Vocal Arts and Musical Festival (https://tickets.artscenter.vt.edu/Online/vocalarts) returns to the Virginia Tech campus for three weeks of performances and master classes featuring opera legends, up-and-coming opera stars, and a cadre of talented musicians from across the globe. Presented by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech  (http://www.artscenter.vt.edu/), in partnership with the International Vocal Arts Institute, the festival returns for a fourth year in Blacksburg, and is one of only three institute programs in the world.

With a mix of returning favorites and exciting new offerings, each day of the festival will feature special events, including master classes with some of the biggest names in opera, chamber music celebrations, solo and group performances spotlighting the festival’s talented singers, and new events that embrace community voices.

At the core of the festival is a group of young singers  handpicked by International Vocal Arts Institute  (http://www.ivai.org/) founders Joan Dornemann and Paul Nadler, both of the Metropolitan Opera. These professionals come to Virginia Tech for three weeks of unparalleled access to top opera teachers. They are immersed in rigorous training sessions and rehearsals with the festival faculty  from morning to afternoon, where they will work on vocalization, language, and staging, and perform with festival instrumentalists and pianists each evening.

Two special guest artists join this year’s schedule — renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw and preeminent American operatic composer Carlisle Floyd. Upshaw will lead a master class, where she will share her musical insights with selected singers and perform in an evening recital, where she will present a diverse repertoire of selections from Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen, Charles Ives, and William Bolcom. Upshaw has made nearly 300 appearances since her career began in 1984, performing opera and concert repertoire ranging from the sacred works of Bach to new works. Read more »

From my Inbox to you:

Documentation & Discovery Day to Record Virginia’s Quilting Heritage

Courtesy Ferrum College.

Quilt owners are encouraged to bring their pre-2000 quilts to Ferrum College’s Blue Ridge Institute & Museum for a Documentation & Discovery Day, June 1, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Volunteers for the Virginia Consortium of Quilters will be photographing and recording information about the quilts and their makers for a statewide database kept at the Virginia Quilt Museum and the Institute.

The quilts being documented are not limited to historical creations. “We’re also looking for 20th century quilts to see how quilters and quilt styles have changed over the past century,” observed Neva Hart, local quilt historian from Hardy, VA.  “The emphasis will be on quilts made by Virginians, but all quilts brought to the Documentation Day will be recorded.”

The Documentation & Discovery Day is part of an on-going effort to record Virginia’s quilt artistry and history.  “About 25 years ago a statewide program was begun to create a database of older quilts in the Commonwealth,” said Hart.  The original project took more than five years and documented more than 3,000 quilts.  The results were published in 2006.  “We learned a lot about quilts from that effort, but the book only covered quilts made before 1900. Now we hope to document quilts we may have missed the first time and to document quilts from new residents.” Read more »

From my inbox to you:

Ferrum Colleges Announces New Blue Ridge Performing Arts Series

The College continues the tradition of providing quality, family entertainment to the region.

 Ferrum, Va. – Ferrum College announced today that it will continue the tradition of providing quality, family entertainment to the region with the new Blue Ridge Performing Arts Series. The 2013 Series begins this summer in partnership with the Virginia Commission for the Arts. A variety of talented, professional performers are booked throughout the next year with the first event, a performance by Larnell Starkey and the Spiritual Seven, slated for June 15, 2013.

In the storied tradition of the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre (BRDT), food, fellowship, and education will be featured in the College’s new performing arts venture. The BRDT, which made its home at the College for more than 30 years, closed its doors at the end of the 2012 season when its founders Rex Stephenson and Jody Brown retired.

“We look forward to greeting our loyal Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre audience members this summer and to welcoming newcomers to the inaugural season of the Blue Ridge Performing Arts Series at Ferrum College,” said Ferrum College President Jennifer Braaten.

Former BRDT volunteers are also invited to return this year. “As a non-profit community outreach program, Blue Ridge Performing Arts Series will welcome community volunteers to help implement the performances. Volunteers were part of the heartbeat of the BRDT and we invite them to return to support the new Series,” said Series Coordinator Brooke Gill.  For volunteer information, call 540-230-6600 or email brpas@ferrum.edu. Read more »

From Sunday’s column:

Lindee Katdare

Roanoke artist Lindee Katdare, a recent transplant from Chicago, is holding a series of workshops titled “Wine and Art” at the Fincastle Vineyard and Winery.

The concept is as simple as the title. Katdare has created four simple paintings exclusively for the vineyard, and will show interested apprentice artists how to re-create them. The $55 fee covers instruction, supplies including a 16-by-20-inch canvas, a gourmet lunch box and wine tasting. Additional wine purchases are available.

“You don’t have to have any talent at all,” Katdare said. “It’s just something that’s fun to do.”

Linda Katdare has created “Love Birds” (detail above) for the “Wine and Art” workshop at Fincastle Vineyard.

The first “Wine and Art” that Katdare will hold at the winery takes place from 2 to 5 p.m. June 9, with additional workshops scheduled June 30, July 21, Aug. 11, Aug. 25, Sept. 15 and Sept. 29.

For more information and to register, visit thelindeetree.com.

Katdare may be a familiar face. She has made appearances on the noontime talk show “Daytime Blue Ridge” on WSLS (Channel 10.)

Photo by JOEL HAWKSLEY | The Roanoke Times. A monarch butterfly perches on a flower in the garden at the Science Museum of Western Virginia.

Don’t touch the butterflies.

Don’t pick them up. Don’t try to catch them. Don’t step on them. Don’t leave with any of them on your clothes.

Entering and leaving the new butterfly garden at the Science Museum of Western Virginia isn’t like a simple traipse into a field. There are rules you have to follow — many of them required by federal law.

The butterfly garden with its fragile resident monarchs and painted ladies will open its doors to the public Saturday during Center in the Square’s Family Day of Discovery that serves as its grand reopening. Enforcing the rules will keep volunteers fluttering.

Derek Kellogg, the museum’s lead animal care specialist, explained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has strict rules designed to prevent non-native butterfly species from escaping from the garden.

The no-escape rules apply to unregulated butterfly species as well, as the USDA sees potential for those butterflies to become carriers of germs and parasites contracted from more exotic tropical butterflies that will eventually join them.

To minimize chances of escape, there are two vestibules that function like air locks. One is for entering, one is for exiting. There will be volunteers stationed at each vestibule. A visitor will be escorted inside, then asked to remain in the vestibule while the volunteer explains the rules.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Have you seen the Star City Playhouse production of “The Glass Menagerie”? Do you agree with reviewer Jeff DeBell? Let us know in the comments.

Star City Playhouse does commendable ‘Menagerie’
by Jeff DeBell

A highlight of the current Star City Playhouse production of “The Glass Menagerie” takes place before the show even begins.

It’s the brief speech that director Marlow Ferguson delivers before turning the stage over to his actors.

Ferguson doesn’t use those few moments merely to hype future shows, point out the exits and admonish patrons to squelch their cellphones.

Instead, he speaks informatively about the life of the playwright, the play itself and the strong links between the two. As a result, the audience probably enjoys the play — and understands it — more than it might have otherwise.

Other directors might do well to follow Ferguson’s example, especially when the works they are presenting are more than usually challenging intellectually.

Now, on to Star City Playhouse’s creditable performance of Tennessee Williams’ 1944 drama. It is set in the shabby St. Louis household of the dysfunctional Wingfield family — a place where memory is strong but faulty, where one man’s escape is another’s abandonment, and where fantasy may be mistaken for reality.

There is Tom, a young shoe warehouse employee and aspiring poet. He yearns to escape his domestic ties for a life of adventures like those enjoyed by the stars of his beloved movies. Tom serves as both a character and the play’s present-time narrator. He is portrayed by Christopher Reidy in the production’s standout performance.

Click here to read the rest of the review.

“The Glass Menagerie”
Where: Presented by Star City Playhouse at Metropolitan Community Church, 806 Jamison Ave., S.E.
When: 7 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 7 p.m. May 24; 2 p.m. May 25-26
How much: $12 general; $8 seniors and students
Info: 366-1446; Star City Playhouse on Facebook

“TAKING FLIGHT”
What: W&L Repertory Dance Company in an outdoor aerial performance
When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday
Where: Wilson Hall, Washington and Lee University, Lexington
How much: Free
Info: daviesj@wlu.edu; www.wlu.edu/x58321.xml

Washington and Lee University dance students will be bouncing off the walls on Wednesday and Thursday. They’ll swing, spin and flip, too.

Those with memories long enough to recall when W&L Artistic Director and Dance Professor Jenefer Davies was director of Roanoke Ballet Theatre might experience some deja vu at these outdoor performances by W&L Repertory Dance Company, called “Taking Flight.” Music and props will augment the artistic acrobatics.

Davies first experimented with aerial ballet in 2002 while she was with RBT. Her dance classes at W&L sometimes look more like courses on rappelling.

Davies has written articles and traveled to Europe to give lectures on her methods of training college students to handle aerial dance.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

David Stewart Wiley is the artistic director of the Virginia’s Blue Ridge Music Festival, a part-time position he’ll hold in addition to his regular duties as music director and conductor for the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and the Long Island Philharmonic.

The Virginia’s Blue Ridge Musical Festival in Floyd starts May 30. It’s  a week-long program of classical music concerts and classes helmed by David Stewart Wiley of Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. The festival is selling passes for $99 until Wednesday, after which the price goes up to $110. For students the cost is half-price.

Read more about the festival here.

Check out the schedule here.

The festival’s orchestra will be comprised of master musicians and apprentices who are themselves accomplished players.

This isn’t the first event like this to be held in Floyd. The organizers of the National Music Festival came to Floyd in 2011, presided over a two-week festival that summer, but left that winter after determining the funding wasn’t available to support their salaries.

Photo courtesy Colleen Redman. Wiley and Akemi Takayama perform at a gala held at Floyd EcoVillage.

Wiley said the National Music Festival showed there’s enthusiasm in Floyd for classical music. The new festival, which shares some of the same board members, has a smaller budget and realistic financial goals, he said, with a year’s worth of fundraising undertaken beforehand. About $50,000 has been raised to support the festival’s $88,000 budget.

The programming will include a reprise of Jeff Midkiff’s “From the Blue Ridge,” debuted by RSO in 2011, and the debut of a composition by Steven Brown, “Fanfare for Floyd.”

Though concerts will happen in venues all over Floyd, the Floyd EcoVillage has served as the festival’s home, Wiley said.

Theater review Nona Nelson had a good time at Attic Productions’ “Too Soon for Daisies.” Did you you see it yourself? What did you think?

Theater review: ‘Too Soon for Daisies’ is a hoot
By Nona Nelson

A rehearsal photo from “Too Soon for Daisies,” with Trina Yancey, Nancy Lawrence, James Honaker, Joann Hoyt and Piper Gaul.

It’s a risky choice when a community theater stages a comedy that requires a glossary in the playbill to help the audience understand the jokes.

Yet Attic Productions takes that risk in its latest production, “Too Soon for Daisies,” a dark British comedy-thriller penned by William Dinner and William Morum, and pulls it off thanks to enthusiastic direction and a talented cast.

The setting is Trotley, a small seaside village in Suffolk, England, in the 1950s. Three elderly women — Freda Grey , Joy Philpotts and Edie Boggs — have liberated themselves from Even Tide, a retirement home for the impoverished where they feel like hopeless captives. After making their escape in a row boat, they stumble upon what appears to be an abandoned cottage and begin to make themselves at home.

Things get complicated when the house’s new owner, Paul Vanderbloom, comes to claim his property and tries to send the uninvited trio on their way. Things get even more complicated when Vanderbloom suffers a fatal heart attack.

Desperate to avoid returning to the dreadful old-age home, the ladies hatch a convoluted plot to take control of their lives and adopt the “orphaned” house.

Click here to read the rest of the review.

“Too Soon for Daisies”
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Attic Productions, D. Geraldine Lawson Performing Arts Center, 7490 Roanoke Road, Fincastle
Cost: $12; $10 for 18 and younger and for groups of 10 or more
Info: www.atticproductions.info; 473-1001

Composer Philip Glass and his orchestra, the Philip Glass Ensemble, will kick off the Center for the Arts’ first season held in its newly-built home.

The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech will open its first full season in its new home with a performance by a legendary American composer, end with a multimedia theater performance for children by an Italian troupe, and in between will host professional dance companies, experimental plays, a popular NPR host, a bluegrass festival and even a Pops performance by the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra.

Executive director Ruth Waalkes has said one of the goals of the new $100 million institution with its state-of-the-art 1,260-seat performance hall has been to complement, not duplicate, the programming that already exists in the Roanoke and New River valleys . Sure enough, the lineup of 21 acts sports little overlap with the Jefferson Center’s jazz offerings or the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre’s comedians and Broadway in Roanoke shows.

The acts are also chosen based on their potential to involve community members and create opportunities for educational programming, Waalkes said.

Click here to read the rest of the story.