A unique exhibit of art by Hannah Gettes, a former Orange County school graduate. Hannah was a beloved and bright young lady who tragically lost her life in February after wrestling with anxiety and substance abuse. It is the hope of those who love and cherish Hannah that this gallery show will not only honor... Read More →
Four local artist-illustrators present art that outlines a story. Featuring art work from Kevin Flynn Bell, Michi Doan, Eliza Murphy, and Barbara Younger. June 23 through July 25, with reception on Friday, June 25 from 6-9 pm. Open Wed through Sun. See margaretlanegallery.com for current hours. Margaret Lane Gallery, 121 W Margaret Lane, in downtown... Read More →
Check out the live stream on YouTube <!--or Facebook starting at 6/27/2021 at 12:00pm! <!--p></p--> School of Rock Chapel Hill’s Mid-Season Preview Shows will once again be Live-Streamed from The Cat’s Cradle! The Best of Weezer The Best of The Beach Boys Stevie Ray Vaughan vs ZZTop Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy Led Zeppelin’s... Read More →
Free, self-guided activities available in person Visit us virtually or find art activity kits to enjoy with your friends or family group in the galleries. This month, enjoy art-inspired activities exploring the wide-ranging themes and works in Drawing Attention including word art, watercolors, and landscapes. Zoom Storytime | 2:30 P.M. EDT Join the Ackland’s Public... Read More →
Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket) Free Ticket Required Join Dana E. Cowen, Sheldon Peck Curator for European and American Art before 1950, for an in-depth look at Visions of Venice. In this virtual discussion, participants will learn more about the circumstances of Whistler’s 1879 trip to Venice, his unique views of the floating city, his... Read More →
Describing the Durham-based Hiss Golden Messenger is like trying to grasp a forgotten word: It’s always on the tip of your tongue, but hard to speak. Songwriter and bandleader M.C. Taylor’s music is at once familiar, yet impossible to categorize: Elements from the American songbook—the steady, churning acoustic guitar and mandolin, the gospel emotion, the... Read More →
$0.00 - $5.00; registration required. Families with kids ages 6-9 are invited to join us virtually for a hands-on art-making class inspired by art on view in Drawing Attention. This month, we’ll make Blind Contour Portraits with instructor Allison Tierney! Class sessions will be limited to 15 participants.* A supply list and Zoom meeting link... Read More →
John R Miller is a true hyphenate artist: singer-songwriter-picker. Every song on his thrilling upcoming debut solo album, Depreciated, is lush with intricate wordplay and haunting imagery, as well as being backed by a band that is on fire. One of his biggest long-time fans is roots music favorite Tyler Childers, who says he’s “a well-travelled wordsmith mapping out the world he’s seen, three chords at a time.” Miller is somehow able to transport us to a shadowy honkytonk and get existential all in the same line with his tightly written compositions. Miller’s own guitar-playing is on fine display here along with vocals that evoke the white-waters of the Potomac River rumbling below the high ridges of his native Shenandoah Valley.Miller grew up in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia near the Potomac River. “There are three or four little towns I know well that make up the region,” he says, name-checking places like Martinsburg, Shepherdstown, Hedgesville, and Keyes Gap. “It’s a haunted place. In some ways it’s frozen in time. So much old stuff has lingered there, and its history is still very present.” As much as Miller loves where he’s from, he’s always had a complicated relationship with home and never could figure out what to do with himself there. “I just wanted to make music, and there’s no real infrastructure for that there. We had to travel to play regularly and as teenagers, most of our gigs were spent playing in old church halls or Ruritan Clubs.” He was raised “kinda sorta Catholic” and although he gave up on that as a teenager, he says “it follows me everywhere, still.” His family was not musical—his father worked odd jobs and was a paramedic before Miller was born, while his mother was a nurse—but he was drawn to music at an early age, which was essential to him since he says school was “an exercise in patience” for him. “Music was the first thing to turn my brain on. I’d sit by the stereo for hours with a blank audio cassette waiting to record songs I liked,” he says. “I was into a lot of whatever was on the radio until I was in middle school and started finding out about punk music, which is what I gravitated toward and tried to play through high school.”Links: Website | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Join the fun in Kidzu’s Outdoor Garden for a party! We’re hosting a Fairy & Firefly Fete field with fun activities, crafts and friends like the NC School of Science and Mathematics and a performance by the Center Theater Company. Grab the family and join us for some outdoor fun and then stay for dinner... Read More →
Free, self-guided activities available in person Visit us virtually or find art activity kits to enjoy with your friends or family group in the galleries. This month, enjoy art-inspired activities inspired by James McNeill Whistler’s etchings in Visions of Venice including: VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE PEACOCK ROOM | 2:30 P.M. EDT Join the Ackland as... Read More →
Out of an abundance of caution, and with this being our first full capacity concert since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, these safety measures will be in place for the Japanese Breakfast concert: Ticket holders will need to provide proof that they have been vaccinated against Covid-19 prior to entry. Masks will be required inside the venue. Additional standard Covid precautions will be observed. From the moment she began writing her new album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world.How does she do it? With a joyful noise. From pulsing walls of synthgaze and piano on “Sit,” to the nostalgia-laden strings that float through “Tactics,” Jubilee bursts with the most wide-ranging arrangements of Zauner’s career. Each song unfurls a new aspect of her artistry: “Be Sweet,” co-written with Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum, is a jagged, propulsive piece of ‘80s pop that’s followed by a sweetly melancholic ballad in “Kokomo, IN.” As she rides a crest of saxophones and synthesizers through “Slide Tackle,” a piece of nimble pop-funk run through a New Order lens, Zauner professes her desire to move forward: “I want to be good—I want to navigate this hate in my heart somewhere better.”In the years leading up to Jubilee, Zauner also took theory lessons and studied piano in earnest for the first time, in an effort to improve her range as a songwriter: “I’ve never wanted to rest on any laurels. I wanted to push it as far as it could go, inviting more people in and pushing myself as a composer, a producer, an arranger.” She pours that sentiment into the album from the very beginning, weaving a veritable tapestry of sound on the opening track “Paprika.”Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bandcamp
Something to Say showcases art work from residents at Orange Correctional Center in Hillsborough, NC. Come “hear” their messages, expressed through a range of mediums and styles. July 28 through August 22, with a reception on Friday, July 30 from 6-9 pm. Open Wed through Sun. See margaretlanegallery.com for current hours. (Please note, the Gallery... Read More →
There is an art of capturing a particular place and time in the world within the borders of a two-dimensional frame. A drawing, a painting, a photograph is never the place itself, but done well it communicates its distinct spirit. The photographs of Sia Yazdanfar and paintings of Thomas Stevens focus on decided yet unconnected... Read More →
Stained glass by Susan Hope, contemporary sewn textiles by Alice Levinson and cold wax and mixed-media paintings by Jude Lobe. In the gallery and online July 30th through August 22nd. 121 N. Churton Street Hillsborough NC. HGA is owned by 21 local artists featuring painting, sculpture, photography, glass, jewelry, wood, pottery, and textiles. Hours: Tuesday... Read More →
On 8th February 2019, Eric Gales returns with his brand new album ‘The Bookends’ on Provogue/Mascot Label Group and it features collaborations with B. Slade, Doyle Bramhall II and Beth Hart.The challenge for making ‘The Bookends’ was for Gales to challenge himself. “As a guitar player it’s been established that I can play a little bit, just a little bit,” he smiles. But for this album he not only wanted to push himself as a musician, but also as a vocalist, to build up his vocal discography. “What spearheaded that was the artists that I have on the record,” he says.Written over a nine month period, the album was recorded at Recorded at Studio Delux, Van Nuys (CA), The Dog House, Woodland Hills (CA), Blakeslee Recording, North Hollywood (CA) and the day before he was due to fly to LA for pre-production the original producer David Bianco tragically died. It was Bianco’s management who then suggested Matt Wallace. “I heard his work and the kind of people he has produced such as Maroon 5, Faith No More and all these sorta cats. When we met up together it was just perfect. I just trusted the guy and it ended up being great, I love Matt Wallace,” says Gales.Three-time Grammy nominated and Emmy Award winning vocalist B. Slade appears on two songs, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ and bonus track ‘Pedal to the Metal.’ “When he came in during pre-production and we were writing, it was so intense. At first I was a little afraid to sing in front of this guy, because this is what this dude does, he’s a phenomenal person and he just brought it out of me,” he says before continuing. “I don’t know if he was really aware of who I was before we met, but the day that he walked in and he heard the songs, his mind was blown. That was before he even saw me playing guitar, so when he saw me playing he said ‘in my life I ain’t never seen nobody that can play like this.’”The notions of change (‘Reaching for a Change’, ‘Somebody Lied’) and love (‘How Do I Get You’, ‘Whatcha Gon’ Do’) are throughout the album. On ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, Slade’s and Gales vocals take turns to yearn “I tell ya people have lost their mind, happy children so hard to find, desolation all in the streets, plenty babies don’t have food to eat, hey, I ain’t preaching, that’s not my thang, I just know we’ve got to make a change.” ‘It Just Beez That Way’ features Gales beatboxing and playing Slide guitar on record for the first time.Talking about being in the studio he elaborates; “The whole vocal thing was something I consciously wanted to push and Matt was on the same page, saying, ‘there’s gonna be sometimes you might not like me because I’m gonna push you because I feel that I know what you can do, and its more than just guitar playing’. It was just really powerful and moving.”Doyle Bramhall II and Gales’ friendship dates back to the 1990s and Eric Clapton’s right hand man features on the triumphant ‘Southpaw Serenade’, while powerhouse vocalist Beth Hart joins Gales on a rousing rendition of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends.’ “Why that song? Well we both have similar stories,” he says. “We’re survivors you know, drug addiction and her from depression. If you’ve got the right support and you can have help from your friends it will all be awesome.”Links: Website | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
We have a full line up of Art, Music, and Spoken Word and more: Art • Opening for Something to Say, featuring art work from residents at Orange Correctional Center (OCC) in Hillsborough. Come “hear” their messages, expressed through a range of mediums and styles. This show is one result of a collaboration among the... Read More →